Editing Robert Johnson (section)

===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}}