Johnson is generally considered the archetypal influence on the blues as both a musical form and as an American mythology. His mastery of the guitar as a fully articulated counterpart to the singing voice, not simply a rhythmic background accompaniment to it, inspired his contemporaries and influenced generations of later musicians, notably Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. The combination of his prodigious musical ability and the paucity of information regarding his brief life and violent death has made Johnson's one of the most enduring legends in American music.
Biographical Information
Johnson was born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, the son of Julia Ann Majors and Noah Johnson. Julia was married to Charles Dodds, Jr.,…show more content… Julia and her son eventually moved to Memphis and lived with Spencer, his mistress, and their children. Julia left after a time, and her son, then known as Robert Spencer, stayed until 1918. He then left to rejoin his mother, who had married Willie "Dusty" Willis, in Robinsonville, in northwestern Mississippi. After learning of his real father when he was in his early teens, he became Robert Johnson. His interest in music apparently developed around this time. He mastered the Jew's harp and the harmonica and then started learning the guitar. While local bluesman Willie Brown gave him some informal lessons, it was Brown's friend Charlie Patton who probably exerted the most profound early influence on Johnson; Patton is regarded as a virtuoso guitarist and singer who played a combination of gospel, spiritual, and popular music that critics cite as instrumental to the birth of the blues. Johnson followed these men to the juke joints and barrelhouses where they played, and learned by studying their performances. In early 1929 Johnson married Virginia Travis, and the two lived with his half-sister on the Klein plantation near Robinson-ville. Accounts suggest that Johnson was an attentive husband and proud
