Did Blues Legend Robert Johnson Really Sell His Soul to the Devil?
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, legend says that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads in exchange for his musical talent. It is one of the most enduring myths in American music history.
Johnson’s grandson Steven Johnson shares the story and sets the record straight, tracing Robert Johnson’s life from Hazlehurst to the Mississippi Delta, explaining how years of discipline, mentorship, faith, and hardship shaped the King of the Delta Blues, and why the truth is far more powerful than the legend.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.0 | And we continue with our American stories. |
| 0:17.4 | Up next, a story out of Mississippi where we broadcast in Oxford about an hour south |
| 0:22.9 | of Memphis. And this story is about the King of the Delta Blues. We're talking about Robert |
| 0:28.8 | Johnson. Much of his life is shrouded in lore and mystery. Here to separate fact from fiction |
| 0:34.5 | is Robert's grandson. Let's get into the story. |
| 0:42.7 | Robert Johnson born May 8, 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, which is a town in Coppire County, Mississippi. |
| 0:51.0 | And his mother name was Ms. Julia Dobbs. Julia had about five kids. Robert was the |
| 0:57.6 | youngest and she was married to a guy named Charlie Dobbs. Charlie Dobbs was not Robert's dad, |
| 1:08.0 | okay? Charlie Dobbs was a man that got in trouble in Hayes or Hearst because, you know, |
| 1:15.3 | the racial tension and everything. Mr. Charlie was, he was one of those that, okay, I'm going to do |
| 1:21.5 | what I do. And so he had to get out of town because he wanted to do what he wanted to do. And he left |
| 1:27.4 | Julia and the kids there. |
| 1:29.3 | Well, while they were there, a man by the name of Noah Johnson started, you know, calling him. |
| 1:36.3 | Corship. |
| 1:37.6 | Noah Johnson is robbers biological father. |
| 1:41.5 | Okay. |
| 1:42.6 | And the family, she took the family from Hayeshurst, moved to the Delta area and, you know, |
| 1:49.1 | considered to be a sharecropper. |
| 1:51.8 | And from sun up to sundown, you were working the fields for little or no money. |
| 1:57.5 | You were living on land, on plantation, where they still were plantations. |
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