ROBERT JOHNSON BLUES words by Joel Sattler

I hear them singing in the hotel
Sounds like somebody's having fun
The hookers look into the sky
For a warning of the sun
And on the other side of town
Someone just shot off a gun

He was born a black dirt farmboy
Hear the steamboat whistle wail
Grown a Mississippi picker
Left riding on the rails
Running from the Crossroads
With a hellhound on his trail

Said he sold his soul to Satan
That much is surely plain
Said he had bad luck with women
And it drove him near insane
Hard to tell it's hard to tell
When all you love's in vain

O they must have seen you coming
You were such an easy mark
Murdered in the city
Swallowed by the city sharks
Barking on you hands and knees
A dog dying in the dark

Hear them crying on the jukebox
with a 12-piece orchestra
Hear them crying on the jukebox
Blue-eyed hypochondria
Rich kid wailing out the blues
Like he had amnesia

The blues were born inside a brother
From the ending of a belt
Blues were rooted in the Delta
In the music that he felt
On a hot and heavy morning
When he couldn't get no help


Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson
I will remember you
Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson
I want to sing a song for you
You never made a hundred dollars
Off those million-dollar blues




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The following is taken from the Wikipedia
[and, thus, is in the public domain]:


Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 - August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician,
among the most famous of Delta blues musicians.
His landmark recordings from 1936-1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent
that have influenced generations of musicians.
Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend.

Johnson's songs, vocal phrasing and guitar style have influenced a broad range of musicians,
including Muddy Waters, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Johnny Winter, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton;
Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived".
Johnson was among the first musicians to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "early influence" category in 1986.
He was ranked fifth in Rolling Stone's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.....


....Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, probably on May 8, 1911 or 1912,
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 to whom she had borne ten children.
Dodds had been forced by a lynch mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners.
Julia herself left Hazlehurst with baby Robert, but after some two years,
sent him to live in Memphis with Dodds, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.

Around 1919, Robert rejoined his mother in the area around Tunica and Robinsonville, Mississippi.
Julia's new husband was known as Dusty Willis; he was 24 years younger than she.
Robert was remembered by some residents as "Little Robert Dusty."
However, he was registered at the Indian Creek School in Tunica as Robert Spencer.
He is listed as Robert Spencer in the 1920 census with Will and Julia Willis
in Lucas, Arkansas, where they lived for a short time.
Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927 and the quality of his signature on his marriage certificate
suggests that he studied continuously and was relatively well educated for a boy of his background.
One school friend, Willie Coffee, has been discovered and filmed.
He recalls that Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp.

After school, Robert adopted the surname of his natural father,
signing himself as Robert Johnson on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929.
She died shortly after in childbirth.

Around this time, the noted blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville
where his musical partner, Willie Brown, already lived.
Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a boy who had followed him around and tried very unsuccessfully to copy him.
Johnson then left the Robinsonville area, reappearing after a few months with a miraculous guitar technique.