The Story of Bluesman Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Devil Retold in Three Animations

So many huge­ly suc­cess­ful and tal­ent­ed musi­cians have died at age 27 that it almost seems rea­son­able to believe the num­ber rep­re­sents some mys­ti­cal coef­fi­cient of tal­ent and tragedy. But sev­er­al decades before Jimi Hen­drix, Janis Joplin, Jim Mor­ri­son, Kurt Cobain, or Amy Wine­house left us too soon, Robert John­son—the man who pio­neered sell­ing one’s soul for rock and roll—died in 1938, at age 27, under mys­te­ri­ous and like­ly vio­lent cir­cum­stances. He was already a leg­end, and his sto­ry of meet­ing Satan at the cross­roads to make an exchange for his extra­or­di­nary tal­ent had already per­me­at­ed the pop­u­lar cul­ture of his day and became even more ingrained after his death—making him, well, maybe the very first rock star.

John­son’s few record­ings—29 songs in total—went on to influ­ence Eric Clap­ton, Kei­th Richards, 27 club mem­ber Bri­an Jones and so many oth­ers. And that’s not to men­tion the hun­dreds of Delta and Chica­go blues gui­tarists who picked John­son’s brain, or stopped short of sell­ing their souls try­ing to out­play him. But John­son, begins the ani­mat­ed short above (which tells the tale of the blues­man­’s infer­nal deal) “wasn’t always such an amaz­ing gui­tarist.” Leg­end has it he “cov­et­ed the tal­ents of Son House” and dreamed of star­dom. He acquired his tal­ent overnight, it seemed to those around him, who sur­mised he must have set out to the cross­roads, met the dev­il, and “made a deal.”

The rest of the story—of Robert Johnson’s fatal encounter with the jeal­ous hus­band of an admirer—is a more plau­si­ble devel­op­ment, though it too may be apoc­ryphal. “Not all of this may be true,” says the short film’s title cards, “but one thing is for cer­tain: No Robert John­son, No Rock and Roll.” This too is anoth­er leg­end. Oth­er ear­ly blues­men like Blind Willie John­son and Robert’s hero Son House exert­ed sim­i­lar influ­ence on 60s blues revival­ists, as of course did lat­er elec­tric play­ers like Mud­dy Waters, Howl­in’ Wolf, and B.B. King. John­son was a phe­nom­e­nal inno­va­tor, and a sin­gu­lar voice, but his repertoire—like those of most blues play­ers at the time—consisted of vari­a­tions on old­er songs, or respons­es to oth­er, very tal­ent­ed musi­cians.

Most of the songs he record­ed were in this vein—with at least two very notable excep­tions: “Cross Road Blues” (or just “Cross­roads”) and “Me and the Dev­il Blues,” both of which have con­tributed to the myth of John­son’s pact with Lucifer, includ­ing the part about the dark angel com­ing to col­lect his debt. In the lat­ter song, ani­mat­ed in a video above, Satan comes knock­ing on the singer’s door ear­ly in the morn­ing. “Hel­lo Satan,” says John­son, “I believe it’s time to go.” Much of what we think about John­son’s life comes from these songs, and from much rumor and innu­en­do. He may have been mur­dered, or—like so many lat­er stars who died too young—he may have sim­ply burned out. One blues singer who claims she met him as a child remem­bers him near the end of his life as “ill” and “sick­ly,” reports the Austin Chron­i­cle, “in a state of phys­i­cal dis­re­pair as though he’d been roughed up.”

John­son schol­ar Eli­jah Wald describes his his­to­ry like that of many founders of reli­gious sects: “So much research has been done [on John­son] that I have to assume the over­all pic­ture is fair­ly accu­rate. Still, this pic­ture has been pieced togeth­er from so many tat­tered and flim­sy scraps that almost any one of them must to some extent be tak­en on faith.” John­son’s “spir­i­tu­al descen­dants,” as Rolling Stone’s David Fricke calls his rock and roll prog­e­ny, have no trou­ble doing just that. Nor do fans of rock and blues and oth­er artists who find the Robert John­son leg­end tan­ta­liz­ing.

In the film above, “Hot Tamales,” ani­ma­tor Ric­car­do Maneglia adapts the myth, and quotes from “Cross­road Blues,” to tell the sto­ry of Bob, who jour­neys to the cross­roads to meet sin­is­ter voodoo deity Papa Leg, replay­ing John­son’s sup­posed ren­dezvous in a dif­fer­ent reli­gious con­text. In “Cross­road“ ‘s lyrics, John­son is actu­al­ly “plead­ing with God for mer­cy,” writes Frank DiGia­co­mo in Van­i­ty Fair, “not bar­gain­ing with the dev­il.” Nonetheless—legendary or not—his evo­ca­tion of dev­il­ish deals in “Me and the Dev­il Blues” and grit­ty, emo­tion­al account of self-destruc­tion in “Cross­roads” may on their own add suf­fi­cient weight to that far-reach­ing idea: “No Robert John­son, No Rock and Roll.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

Kei­th Richards Wax­es Philo­soph­i­cal, Plays Live with His Idol, the Great Mud­dy Waters

Leg­endary Folk­lorist Alan Lomax: ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.