Robert Johnson

Highway 61 & Highway 49, Clarksdale, MS

Last updated 8/27/2026

Robert Johnson recorded only 29 known songs across two recording sessions in 1936 and 1937 before his death in 1938 at just 27, yet that remarkably small recorded output has had an influence on subsequent blues and rock musicians disproportionate to almost any other artist's catalog size in music history. The legend that Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a rural Mississippi crossroads in exchange for his extraordinary guitar ability became one of the most enduring and widely repeated myths in American music, a story that's shaped blues mythology for nearly a century despite having no factual historical basis. His technically advanced guitar playing, combining complex fingerpicking patterns with a driving rhythmic slide technique, was considered so far ahead of his contemporaries that later musicians, including Eric Clapton and Keith Richards, have both described their initial reactions to hearing his recordings as genuinely disorienting given how advanced his technique sounded relative to the era's other blues recordings. Johnson's mysterious death, reportedly from poisoning at 27, made him one of the founding members of music's "27 Club," and his songs "Cross Road Blues" and "Sweet Home Chicago" have become foundational blues standards, covered by countless subsequent artists and cementing Johnson's reputation as one of the most influential musicians in blues history despite his brief recorded career.

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Top 6 Blues Artists of All Time
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