Editing Robert Johnson (section)

==Life and career==
===Early life===
Robert Leroy Johnson was born in [[Hazlehurst, Mississippi]], possibly on May 8, 1911,{{sfn|Conforth|Wardlow|2019|p=32}} to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker, with whom she had ten children. Charles Dodds had been forced by a [[Lynching in the United States|lynch]] mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert, but in less than two years she brought the boy to [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]] to live with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.{{sfn|Guralnick|1998|pp=10–11}} Robert spent the next 8–9 years growing up in Memphis and attending the Carnes Avenue Colored School where he received lessons in arithmetic, reading, language, music, geography, and physical exercise.{{sfn|Conforth|Wardlow|2019|p=45}} It was in Memphis that he acquired his love for, and knowledge of, the blues and popular music. His education and city upbringing placed him apart from most of his contemporary blues musicians.

Robert rejoined his mother around 1919–1920 after she married an illiterate sharecropper named Will "Dusty" Willis. They originally settled on a plantation in Lucas Township in [[Crittenden County, Arkansas]], but soon moved across the [[Mississippi River]] to [[Commerce, Mississippi|Commerce]] in the [[Mississippi Delta]], near [[Tunica, Mississippi|Tunica]] and [[Tunica Resorts, Mississippi|Robinsonville]]. They lived on the Abbay & Leatherman Plantation.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.msbluestrail.org/blues-trail-markers/abbay-leatherman|website=[[Mississippi Blues Trail]]|title=Abbay & Leatherman{{snd}}Robinsonville|access-date=September 25, 2018}}</ref> Julia's new husband was 24 years her junior. Robert was remembered by some residents as "Little Robert Dusty",{{sfn|Guralnick|1998|p=11}} but he was registered at Tunica's Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census, he is listed as Robert Spencer, living in [[Lucas, Arkansas]], with Will and Julia Willis. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927.<ref>{{Cite magazine|last=Freeland|first=Tom|date=March–April 2000|title=Robert Johnson: Some Witnesses to a Short Life|magazine=[[Living Blues]]|volume=|issue=150|issn=0024-5232|page=49}}</ref> The quality of his signature on his marriage certificate{{sfn|Wardlow|Komara|1998|p=201}} suggests that he was relatively well educated for a man of his background. A school friend, Willie Coffee, who was interviewed and filmed in later life, recalled that as a youth Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and [[jaw harp]].{{sfn|Wald|2004|loc=p. 107, quoting Robert Mugge's ''Hellhounds on My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson'' (2000)}} Coffee recalled that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying in Memphis.{{sfn|Pearson|McCulloch|2003|p=6}}

Once Julia informed Robert about his biological father, Robert adopted the surname Johnson, using it on the certificate of his marriage to fourteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth shortly after.{{sfn|Wald|2004|p=108}} Surviving relatives of Virginia told the blues researcher [[Robert "Mack" McCormick]] that this was a divine punishment for Robert's decision to sing secular songs, known as "selling your soul to the Devil". McCormick believed that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.<ref name="Search">{{Cite AV media|people=|year=1992|title=[[The Search for Robert Johnson]]|medium=Film|time=|publisher=|id=|quote=}}</ref>

Around this time, the blues musician [[Son House]] moved to Robinsonville, where his musical partner [[Willie Brown (musician)|Willie Brown]] lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a little boy who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Soon after, Johnson left Robinsonville for the area around Martinsville, close to his birthplace, possibly searching for his natural father. Here he mastered the guitar style of House and learned other styles from [[Ike Zimmerman|Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman]].{{sfn|Pearson|McCulloch|2003|p=7}} Zimmerman was rumored to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight.{{sfn|Pearson|McCulloch|2003|p=94}}
When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he seemed to have miraculously developed a mature guitar technique.{{sfn|Guralnick|1998|p=15}} House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson's pact with the devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson's technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.{{sfn|Wardlow|Komara|1998|p=}}

While living in Martinsville, Johnson fathered a child with Vergie Mae Smith. He married Caletta Craft in May 1931. In 1932, the couple settled for a while in [[Clarksdale, Mississippi]], in the Delta, but Johnson soon left for a career as a "walking" or itinerant musician, and Caletta died in early 1933.{{sfn|Conforth|Wardlow|2019|pp=112–113}}

===Itinerant musician===
From 1932 until his death in 1938, Johnson moved frequently between the cities of [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]] and [[Helena, Arkansas|Helena]], and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas.{{sfn|Pearson|McCulloch|2003|p=12}}{{sfn|Gioia|2008|p=172}} On occasion, he traveled much further. The blues musician [[Johnny Shines]] accompanied him to Chicago, Texas, New York, Canada, Kentucky, and Indiana.{{sfn|Pearson|McCulloch|2003|loc=p. 56, quoting Robert Neff and Anthony Connor's ''Blues'' (1975)}} [[Henry Townsend (musician)|Henry Townsend]] worked with him in St. Louis.{{sfn|Townsend|Greensmith|1999|p=68}} In many places he stayed with members of his large extended family or with female friends.{{sfn|Guralnick|1998|p=28}} He did not marry again but formed some long-term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically. In other places he stayed with whatever woman he was able to seduce at his performance.{{sfn|Guralnick|1998|p=24}}{{sfn|Gioia|2008|p=175}} In each location, Johnson's hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere. He used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.{{sfn|Gioia|2008|pp=172–173}}

Biographers have looked for consistency from musicians who knew Johnson in different contexts: Shines, who traveled extensively with him; [[Robert Lockwood Jr.]], who knew him as his mother's partner; [[David "Honeyboy" Edwards]], whose cousin Willie Mae Powell had a relationship with Johnson.{{sfn|Edwards|1997|p=100}} From a mass of partial, conflicting, and inconsistent eyewitness accounts,{{sfn|Schroeder|2004|p=22}} biographers have attempted to summarize Johnson's character. "He was well mannered, he was soft spoken, he was indecipherable".{{sfn|Guralnick|1998|p=29}} "As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way".{{sfn|Wald|2004|p=112}} "Musicians who knew Johnson testified that he was a nice guy and fairly average—except, of course, for his musical talent, his weakness for whiskey and women, and his commitment to the road".{{sfn|Pearson|McCulloch|2003|p=111}}

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Musical associates have said that in live performances Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5D7113CF93BA15751C0A9629C8B63|first=Ben|last=Sisario|date=February 28, 2004|title=Revisionists Sing New Blues History|website=[[Nytimes.com]]|access-date=May 22, 2010}}</ref>{{snd}}and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, he had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries later remarked on his interest in jazz and country music. He also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, he would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Shines was 20 when he met Johnson in 1936. He estimated Johnson was maybe a year older than himself (Johnson was actually four years older). Shines is quoted describing Johnson in Samuel Charters's ''Robert Johnson'':
{{blockquote|Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of a peculiar fellow. Robert'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd be coming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks.{{nbsp}}... So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along.<ref>{{harvnb|Charters|1973|p=}}</ref>}}

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman about 15 years his senior and the mother of the blues musician [[Robert Lockwood Jr.]]. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. He reputedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases, he was accepted, until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

In 1941, [[Alan Lomax]] learned from [[Muddy Waters]] that Johnson had performed in the area around [[Clarksdale, Mississippi]].{{sfn|Lomax|1993|p=}} By 1959, the historian [[Samuel Charters]] could add only that [[Will Shade]], of the [[Memphis Jug Band]], remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him in [[West Memphis, Arkansas]].{{sfn|Charters|1959|p=}} In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York City.{{sfn|Conforth|Wardlow|2019|pp=238-246}} In 1938, [[Columbia Records]] producer [[John H. Hammond]], who owned some of Johnson's records, directed record producer [[Don Law]] to seek out Johnson to book him for the first "[[From Spirituals to Swing]]" concert at [[Carnegie Hall]] in New York. On learning of Johnson's death, Hammond replaced him with [[Big Bill Broonzy]], but he played two of Johnson's records from the stage.

===Recording sessions===
{{Main|Robert Johnson recordings#Sessionography}}
In Jackson, Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out [[H. C. Speir]], who ran a general store and also acted as a talent scout. Speir put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who, as a salesman for the ARC group of labels, introduced Johnson to [[Don Law]] to record his first sessions in San Antonio, Texas. The recording session was held on November 23–25, 1936, in room 414 of the [[Gunter Hotel]] in San Antonio.{{sfn|Conforth|Wardlow|2019|pp=152–153}} In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections and recorded alternate takes for most of them. Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "[[I Believe I'll Dust My Broom]]", "[[Sweet Home Chicago]]", and "[[Cross Road Blues]]", which later became [[blues standards]]. The first to be released was "[[Terraplane Blues]]", backed with "[[Last Fair Deal Gone Down]]", which sold as many as 10,000 copies.{{sfn|Conforth|Wardlow|2019|pp=185–186}}

Johnson traveled to [[Dallas]], Texas, for another recording session with Don Law in a makeshift studio at the [[Vitagraph]] (Warner Bros.) Building,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/us/dallas-church-preserving-the-legacy-of-robert-johnson.html?_r=0|last=Christensen|first=Thor|date=November 19, 2011|title=Dallas Church Preserving the Legacy of Robert Johnson|website=[[Nytimes.com]]|access-date=April 15, 2021}}</ref> on June 19–20, 1937.{{sfn|Conforth|Wardlow|2019|pp=204–205}} Johnson recorded almost half of the 29 songs that make up his entire discography in Dallas and eleven records from this session were released within the following year. Most of Johnson's "somber and introspective" songs and performances come from his second recording session.{{sfn|Wald|2004|p=167}} Johnson did two takes of most of these songs, and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his era.{{sfn|Wald|2004|p=130}} In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78-rpm side.{{sfn|Wald|2004|p=132}}