Robert Leroy Johnson

A page dedicated to the Greatest #Blues Guitarist Ever Existed & The Father of Rock n' Roll...And God Blues Us All... #RobertJohnson #bluesmusic

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

I am bringing life to this account again...4 years later...everything has been lost...everything but the knowledge...this has been enriched and ready to be shared with whomever is interested to know about the life and music of @RobertJohnsonL ...as old fiends will remember, this acc is dedicated to the #blues Legend Robert Leroy Johnson! I have studied, as much as possible that can be, his life & his music & I will try to share this wonderful experience through songs, interviews and stories...trying to keep his Legacy Alive...

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

To appear more modern and flashy, #RobertJohnson bought a wooden-bodied guitar with an imitation resonator to provide more volume. RJ wasnt the only guitarist to try to impress people with such a piece of musical chicanery. Years later, a very young B. B. King fashioned a fake resonator plate out of an old piece of tin and attached it to the top of his guitar. Like Robert's, the plate did nothing, but it looked and special unique. RJ swore to all who would listen that the metal plate (which actually did nothing) increased the volume of the instrument, and that with this new guitar he was leaving the old folks behind. "We asked him many times, Why do you have it on there?"" Willie Moore related. "He say, "Well, that makes my guitar sound louder, see. This here's put on there to make it sound louder. He didn't have no electric to it." True resonator guitars had just started being manufactured, and many companies, such as Regal, began releasing imitation resonators: plain wooden guitars with a fake metal resonator plate on the top of the body.

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

@BackacheSleeper was given by his sister and was the cover of her book "Brother Robert"

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

Robert Leroy Johnson was born this day, 8th of May 1911...the Greatest #Blues Guitarist Ever Existed...And God Blues Us All... #RobertJohnson

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

@HR_39 Yes it is and was given by his sister and was the cover of her book "Brother Robert"

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

#RobertJohnson 's rules for making money were simple & specific: 1. Find the right place to play (aka find where the black neighbourhood was) 2. Divide up the work. You play in this corner & make your own money & I will play on the next corner and make mine...

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

John Paul Hammond, was probably the first white to record a #RobertJohnson 's song in his debut album in 1963. The song was "Crossroads Blues" which was later more famously recorded by Cream.

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

An amazing song by Kokomo Arnold "Old Original Kokomo Blues" recorded in Chicago in September 1934. #RobertJohnson adapted "Sweet Home Chicago" after Arnold's record was released… https://t.co/kw09Tt2gH0

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

@Hakkiles34 https://t.co/As5B3a84Y6

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

The truth behind #RobertJohnson's death:
One month prior his death, he had been diagnosed with ulcer by a Memphis doctor and was also suffering from esophageal varicose which caused the chest pains he experienced and complained for.
Son house warned multiple times RJ on his "whiskey & women" cocktail. "When you be playing a good piece and girls like it and call you 'Daddy play it again Daddy' well don't let it run you crazy...You liable to get killed..."
And guess what…
The person who poisoned RJ, Ralph Davis, found out through mutual friends that his wife & RJ were having an affair. When he heard that RJ was playing at Three Forks Juke, he decided to act on Saturday night the 13th of August...he gave the unknowing Beatrice of corn liquor with several mothballs...Ralph Davis admitted few years later "I really didn't want to cause any trouble". Normally this poison (passagreen or naphthalin) causes confusion, nausea, vomiting & other gastrointestinal distress. While not fatal, it was strong enough to cause his ulcer & varices to hemorrhage.
After RJ was dropped off at his Baptist Town room, he was languished in pain for 2 days, his stomach cramps & his nausea worsened. He must have vomitted causing some of the varices in his esophagus to rupture blood who was followed by a larger fatal attack soon after.
No one knows where he was buried. 3 markers were made though to remember him. A cenotaph in Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church at Morgan City, a small marker with the epitaph “Resting in the #Blues ” at the Payne Chapel & a marker at Little Zion Church in Greenwood.

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

Rose Eskridge provided info that her husband Tom Eskridge, had dug #RobertJohnson 's grave with a sharpshooter at the Little Zion Church. Tom insisted to find someone to say few words. A jackleg preacher Rev. Starks was called who made his living by providing spiritual services...

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

#RobertJohnson developed quite a local following around Hazlehurst and was known to everyone as simply ‘R.L.’. LaVere claims that RJ was given this nickname because he would introduce himself as ‘Robert Lonnie’ (supposedly in honor of the already famous guitarist Lonnie Johnson...

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

Final year at Hollyfield & Clive Blewchamp lent
@EricClapton a #RobertJohnson 's album which sparked his greatest obsession. He would write in his autobiography "I realized that, on some level, I had found the Master, & that following this man's example would be my life's work"

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

@BlueZephyr19 Could be...the only person proven to be there that night was SBW II

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

David "Honeyboy" Edwards recalled "All the folks kept on hollering 'Play Play Play'. #RobertJohnson tried but he couldn't; he said 'I'm sick. I can't play'. They laid him on a bed in the back room. A guy with an old car took him back to Greenwood, to his room in Baptist Town"...and that was the beginning of the end...

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

In 1936, when Don Law recorded #RobertJohnson, plastic hadn’t been invented yet so they had no tape machines. “Direct to disc” had a different meaning...only few portable mics available. No one cared about mic's frequency response...“Vintage sound” was just then being invented...

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

The map around Leatherman Plantation…the place where Mack McCormick’s odyssey came to an end…After all the fumbling and the dead ends, he had found people who had known #RobertJohnson. They knew him by another name as Robert Spencer, but they knew him as a neighbor and friend, had watched him grow up and drift away. They shared not isolated recollections, but a whole interlocking pile of them. Whatever "midnight streets" Johnson had traveled, the dusty road that runs due west from Robinsonville straight to the levee was the one where he was a familiar face, a man known easily, if not deeply, with the familiarity of long association. Ironically, his painstakingly marked-up map had not helped him in the ways expected. The marks he made around Robinsonville and its outskirts were several in number, but they were part of a chain, largely tracing back to one source. By comparison with other towns he had pinpointed, Robinsonville had only seldom been mentioned by independent sources, whereas places such as Helena, Arkansas, were mentioned and seconded by as many as ten different people I'd interviewed separately. Robert Johnson himself hadn't helped any as he left no songs mentioning Tunica Country, Commerce or Hazlehurst…

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

Alan Lomax @LomaxArchive was instrumental in introducing #blues & #RobertJohnson to a much wider white audience. He crisscrossed the American south with a 350 pound portable recording machine in the track of his car. He didn't wait for the music to come to him...

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

#RobertJohnson found Zimmerman playing in a small town near Hazlehurst. The only true remnant of the town is this abandoned general store. Local residents recall this building being used as a juke so it's at least fairly to say that this might be the place of that first encounter...(?)

[Robert Leroy Johnson @RobertJohnsonL]

The Red Hot @ChiliPeppers guitarist John Frusciante, during their 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik, said that he listened #RobertJohnson every night throughout the writing & recording of the album which album is recognized as an influential alternative rock explosion of early 90s...