This highly acclaimed biography from the author of Last Train to Memphis illuminates the extraordinary life of the most influential blues singer of all time, the legendary guitarist and songwriter whose music inspired generations of musicians, from Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones and beyond.
The myth of Robert Johnson's short life and mysterious death has often overshadowed his music. According to legend, Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for an unmatched musical ability that would set him apart from his peers in the Mississippi Delta. When he died in 1938 at the age of just twenty-seven, supposedly poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he'd been flirting with at a dance, he had recorded only twenty-nine songs, but those songs would endure as musical touchstones for generations of blues performers.
This brilliant book explores both the myth and the music of Robert Johnson. As in his masterful biographies of Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, and Sam Cooke, Peter Guralnick here gives readers an insightful, thought-provoking, and deeply felt picture of Johnson and of the rich Delta blues tradition which his music exemplified.
