Robert Johnson’s Crossroads

The story goes that the young bluesman Robert Johnson took his guitar to a Delta crossroads at midnight, and a big man, the Devil, tuned it for him and handed back genius in trade for his soul. Johnson recorded twenty-nine songs that remade American music and died at twenty-seven, poisoned, in 1938. The crossroads of highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale claims the legend with a sculpture of guitars. The music is real and immortal; the deal is the myth that guards it.