There is no reference in any of Tommy’s songs that he had made such a bargain, and Mager Johnson-another brother-was apparently furious with LeDell for telling the tale, considering it slanderous.īefore judging LeDell too harshly or dismissing him as a superstitious backwoods preacher, it is worth noting that his statements are in line with the world he lived in at the time. As Evans told Barry Lee Pearson in a 1993 interview, LeDell’s tales needed to be taken with a grain of salt. He was one of the few black musicians to whom the epithet ‘legendary’ rightfully applies.”īut again, the Devil’s contract was posthumously attributed to Tommy, by his brother no less, who in the same interview claimed to have been pursued by a winged serpent whilst riding his bicycle, and having observed the devil’s baby born to a white woman. As ethnomusicologist-and the man who conducted the interview with LeDell in 1966-Professor David Evans said, “For about thirty years Tommy Johnson was perhaps the most important and influential blues singer in the state of Mississippi.
If Charlie Patton was the musical father of the Delta Blues, Tommy was the forgotten uncle, and undeservedly so. The myth is also attached to Tommy Johnson (1896 – 1956), Robert’s predecessor and no relation, as evidenced by LeDell’s quote. Indeed, Robert’s deal with the devil was posthumously pinned to him almost twenty years after his death. Nor did he ever claim to any such pact during his life, and those who knew him best-men like Johnson’s fellow rambling bluesman Johnny Shines-found the whole idea preposterous bordering on slanderous (and a diminution of his talent by ascribing it to some otherworldly force). Perhaps the most infamous-and erroneous-application of this myth is to the country bluesman Robert Johnson, although Robert himself never claimed to have sold anything in his song “Cross Road Blues”, let alone something as noticeable as his soul.
#SEE YOU AT THE CROSSROADS SONG MOVIE#
In recent times it has been attached to bands such as Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and was the subject of a 1986 movie starring Steve Vai and Ralph Macchio. In the history of wandering musicians, few stories capture the imagination like that of the Faustian pact at the crossroads, where one trades one’s immortal soul to the Devil for musical mastery in this world. LeDell Johnson, brother of bluesman Tommy Johnson (1896-1956) You could sing any kind of tangled up song you want to, and I’ll bet you he would play it.
He used to play anything, don’t care what it was.
#SEE YOU AT THE CROSSROADS SONG HOW TO#
That’s the way I learned how to play anything I want.” And he could. And then he’ll play a piece and hand it back to you.
A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar, and he’ll tune it.
You have to go by yourself and be sitting there playing a piece. You have your guitar and be playing a piece sitting there by yourself. Get there, be sure to get there just a little ’for twelve o’clock that night so you’ll know you’ll be there. He said, “If you want to learn how to play anything you want to play and learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where a road crosses that way, where a crossroad is. He said the reason he knowed so much, said he sold hisself to the devil.
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