There are many tales of people achieving all sorts of fortune and fame by selling their souls to the devil. Blues guitarist Robert Johnson is probably the most famous subject of that tall tale. The legend goes that he offered his soul at a Mississippi Delta crossroads, and in return he would receive musical success and talents beyond his wildest dreams. And, yes, to this day he is considered a pioneer of American blues guitar and songwriting. But the devil is in the details. And with a life so shrouded in mystery, it's hard to separate fact from his very appealing fiction.

Humble Beginnings

Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi on May 8, 1911, spending much of his beginnings on a plantation in the Delta. His mother, Julia Major Dodds, was a daughter of slaves. Dodds had ten children with her husband, but Robert was born out of an affair with a field hand named Noah Johnson. Later in Robert's childhood, Julia remarried and moved the family to Robinsonville, Mississippi.

Robert seemed to take to music quickly as a child, demonstrating keen musical ability both on the jaw harp and harmonica. That interest didn't fade as he grew into his teens, as he was absent from school more and more, which his friends attributed to him studying music in Memphis. He would also play around with a makeshift instrument called a diddley bow, which was a wire attached to a house that a person could pull taut and hit with a stick, altering the pitch with a bottle that slides along the wire.

The early and teenage years of Robert Johnson are very much shrouded in mystery. Historians have had to lean on anecdotal tales from other musicians and friends of his from those days, which is a lot like playing a game of telephone. There just isn't much to go on, and his Johnson's nomadic nature made it even harder to get a sense of his beginnings.

He'd pester every local musician he could for a chance to share a stage of a jam session with them. Many times, between other musicians' sets, Robert would take over the stage and play some songs of his own. A bold move for sure. Legendary bluesman Son House knew Robert Johnson during these years, and wasn't exactly blown away by the young man's ability at the time: "Folks they come and say, 'Why don't you go out and make that boy put that thing down? He running us crazy,'" House said. "Finally he left. He run off from his mother and father, and went over in Arkansas some place or other."

When he was 18, Robert married sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis, but tragedy struck soon after, as she died during childbirth. Rumors abounded that it was punishment for his burgeoning musician lifestyle, but he forged ahead, deciding to dedicate his life to becoming a bluesman. He did manage to marry again in 1931, at the age of 20, though she too died while giving birth. This set him on an even more solitary path. Johnson would stay with numerous women, whom he would return to from time to time, but he remained single, adopting different aliases. The women he frequented mostly didn't know about each other, and he preferred it that way.

He was a loner, committed to playing music and travelling the road, playing music at his frequent stops. At his shows he would play mostly crowd-pleasing songs of the time, including jazz and country standards. And even though he would form strong temporary relationships with the townsfolk and local musicians, his stays would be brief, and then he would move on as easily as the breeze.

Birth of the Legend

Son House mentioned that Johnson went to Arkansas for a time, and was somehow very different when he returned to Mississippi. The prevailing thought was that Johnson at the time was a mediocre guitar player, but overnight seemed to have gained an almost supernatural ability at the instrument. That's where the myth came about that he sold his soul to the devil late one night at a Delta crossroads, in order to become a virtuosic guitarist and songwriter. Pop culture has had a long love affair with the idea of a man selling his existence to an evil entity for musical riches.

The 1986 film Crossroads had leading man Ralph Macchio on a countrywide quest to learn about the legend of that devilish pact, and to find a lost song that Robert Johnson never got to show to the world. 2000's O Brother, Where Art Thou saw the trio of prison fugitives led by George Clooney coming across one Tommy Johnson, who, you guessed it, sold his soul to Satan to be able to play the guitar. It's a fantastical story, and that's why it's been told for so long, and in so many mediums. And of course it's fiction, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story? What's more likely is that Robert Johnson practiced tirelessly at home, and at any clubs that would give him an opportunity to play. And he even allegedly admitted to people that during his time away, he had been studying with some kind of guitar teacher.

But it seemed like he had taken those lessons to some kind of new heights. His technique was something almost completely new, in which some of his guitar lines mimicked what the bass parts of a piano would play. In fact, many who studied his playing noticed that he did some kind of impressive combination of playing slide, rhythm, and bass all at the same time, while also singing. Playing non-stop is where those chops came from.