Robert Johnson: Voodoo, Delta Blues, Cursing God, and a Crossroads
DISGRACELAND
Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 13.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2022
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Robert Johnson didn’t just play the blues. He embodied them. He drank and womanized his way through the South, New York, and Chicago in the 1930s, until he finally met the devil at the crossroads for a little trade. So the legend goes, anyway. With the same soul he supposedly sold to the devil, Robert Johnson belted lightning blues that captured trouble in 12 bars. But the trouble he touted would eventually trickle into his own life, one bottle of poison at a time.
This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners and includes descriptions of racial violence and traumatic childbirth.
This episode was originally released on Nov. 1, 2022.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. |
| 0:03.0 | Hey everybody, this is a special episode of Disgraceland |
| 0:07.0 | because I was able to cast one of my favorite singers in soul music today. |
| 0:12.0 | Lee Fields. Lee Fields is an incredible vocalist, great artist. |
| 0:16.0 | You should check him out wherever you stream your music, Amazon music, or wherever you listen. |
| 0:21.8 | Lee Fields plays the part of Sun House's head in this episode. |
| 0:26.4 | He did an amazing job. |
| 0:27.9 | I just want to give a special thanks to Lee. |
| 0:30.1 | And again, if you don't know his music, go check it out. |
| 0:32.8 | You won't be disappointed. |
| 0:34.0 | All right. |
| 0:35.2 | Melotron. |
| 0:55.0 | Music disappointed. All right. Melotron. The stories about Robert Johnson are insane. He drank and womanized his way through his gigs from the South in the 1930s all the way up to New York and Chicago. |
| 1:02.0 | He cursed the name of God to any friend who would listen, often to the detriment of those friendships. |
| 1:09.0 | At the age of 17, he married a 14-year-old, both lying |
| 1:13.4 | about their ages on their marriage license, a relationship that would end in tragedy, and forever |
| 1:19.2 | cast a dark shadow on his spirituality. He worked out his original blues sound by practicing |
| 1:25.4 | guitar in the cemetery at night. |
| 1:30.8 | And when that didn't yield the results he was looking for, |
| 1:34.1 | he went further out of town, to the crossroads, |
| 1:37.6 | where legend has it that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the Lightning Blues guitar talent |
| 1:40.2 | that came to define the Delta Blue genre for all time. |
... |
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