Robert Johnson Buys the Blues
It is not just theatre that The Devil enjoys. As they say, The Devil has all the best tunes, and these next two examples will prove just that. In the late 1920s, a young man worked on the Dockery Plantation, Mississippi. He didn’t want to be a farm labourer all his life, but longed to be able to play the blues. He made no secret of his desire, and his co-workers told him to make his way to a nearby crossroads at midnight. That very night, the blues were born, and the young man, Robert Johnson, became a star.
There were no witnesses to the pact, but another bluesman, Henry Goodman, later had a vision that told the tale. ‘The man stands up, tall, barrel-chested, and black as the forever-closed eyes of Robert Johnson’s stillborn baby… he says, “Stand up, Robert Johnson… [do] you want to play that guitar like nobody ever played it before? Make a sound nobody ever heard before? You want to be the King of the Delta Blues and have all the whiskey and women you want?”‘ The Devil had his mongrel dog let out a plaintive howl to demonstrate the sound of the blues.
‘The dog ain’t for sale, Robert Johnson, but the sound can be yours. That’s the sound of the Delta Blues’, said The Devil. Johnson sold his soul on the spot, and music was changed forever. Johnson later immortalised the encounter in the song, ‘Cross Road Blues’: ‘I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees/asked the Lord above/”have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please”‘. The tale of someone selling their soul to The Devil in exchange for some earthly power recalls Dr. Faustus, testifying both to the power of the folk motif and man’s fear of sin.