Robert Johnson's Mississippi Blues Crossroads

Did He Meet the Devil Here?

In the juke joints around Clarksdale, Mississippi, Robert Johnson was known as the kid who could barely play the guitar he often carried. Stories are told of musicians inviting Johnson to join them on stage, knowing that, before he got very far, the audience would be laughing.

He disappeared for a while. When he returned, no one who heard him could believe he was the same man. He blew everyone away, playing the songs that would make him famous, among them "Cross Road Blues" and "Me And The Devil Blues."

Maybe the light bulb went on; the same one writers see when they find their voices, when everything falls into place. Maybe Robert Johnson really did cut a deal with the Devil at a crossroads near Clarksdale, or the Mississippi river town of Rosedale. He never denied it, and the rumor followed him for the remaining six years of his life. Maybe it was another guitar player, Tommy Johnson, no relation, who met Satan. Maybe it never happened. Such a rendezvous would run contrary to what we know about the rational world. But what if it did?

Blues songs, be they Delta or urban, tell stories whose characters are larger than life, whose settings bend reality. Anything becomes possible. Exchanging guitars with the Devil - yours for his on which you can play anything flawlessly - at exactly midnight, is imagery that brings a song lyric, novel, or screenplay to life.

The 1986 film "Crossroads" touches on the legend, featuring a fictional Delta bluesman who knew Robert Johnson, and who has some unfinished business of his own with the Devil back in Mississippi.

If the meeting did occur, three possible locations have been identified.

One is the intersection of Mississippi state routes 1 and 8 in Rosedale, a town mentioned in the lyrics of his "Traveling Riverside Blues:" "Lord, I'm goin' down to Rosedale, gon' take my rider by my side . . . "

Others are the two junctions of US routes 49 and 61, roads found in countless blues and rock songs, still the main highways linking Clarksdale, Helena, and Memphis.