The Delta Blues Scene
The musicians who inspired ME AND THE DEVIL’s Robert Johnson
Lantern Theater Company’s world premiere digital production of Me and the Devil — directed and co-written by Steve H. Broadnax III and extended through February 27, 2022— focuses on Robert Johnson, a major figure of the Delta Blues. This was a unique style of the blues developed in the Mississippi Delta, prominently featuring acoustic guitar and harmonica. Slide guitar was a distinguishing element of the genre, and the singing style ranged from quiet introspection to passionate cries. Most Delta Blues musicians were itinerant, traveling the region to perform wherever they could.
Robert Johnson serves as a fulcrum on the blues continuum: He is the product of the Delta Blues musicians who came before him, but his innovations to that form helped launch a new generation of blues artists and a new genre for them to play.
One of the things that made Johnson’s playing so unique was his tuning. He used four tunings as well as a capo to blend modern and traditional styles to his liking. His long fingers also allowed him more dexterity than his peers, and his could play chords, bass chords, and fills all at once — also while singing. His contemporaries could usually only strum and sing at the same time; fills meant not strumming. He also incorporated piano rhythms and bass riffs into his guitar playing, becoming the first to play the piano boogie walking bass line on the guitar (while simultaneously playing chords and singing). This technique convinced many listeners that there were actually two guitars being played, as pioneered in the Memphis Blues style, but there was truly only one: Robert Johnson’s.
These innovations were made possible by the musicians he came up around and admired. While other blues genres cropped up across the country — like Texas Blues, developed by luminaries like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lead Belly — Johnson was most influenced by Delta Blues musicians of 1920s and 30s Mississippi and Arkansas. Here are just a few of them.
Charley Patton
Known as the Father of the Delta Blues, Charley Patton was one of the first Delta Blues musicians. He influenced and inspired nearly everyone who came after, including Robert Johnson, Son House, and Willie Brown (who he played with on a number of occasions). Patton was known for his gravelly voice, which he used in a style called “hollerin’,” and for his showmanship on the guitar. Unlike many other Delta Blues artists, though, Patton did not make his living by traveling — he stayed in Mississippi and played scheduled gigs at taverns and plantations.
Willie Brown
Willie Brown frequently played with Son House in the Robbinsville area, becoming another major influence on Robert Johnson. He was a guitarist who preferred to accompany other artists as a side man rather than take the spotlight as a solo artist. Most notably, he played with Son House, Charley Patton, and Robert Johnson himself, providing a direct link from Robert Johnson to Patton, the foremost blues musician of the region.
Son House
Son House (born Edward James House Jr.) was a blues guitarist and singer, most remembered for his passionate vocal delivery and slide guitar technique. He started as a preacher, and when he moved into secular blues music he brought the rhythm and power of his preaching into his songs. In 1930, Charley Patton invited him to record together, and shortly thereafter he moved to the Robbinsville area to play with Willie Brown, where he encountered and influenced Robert Johnson. House retired in the early 1940s, only to be “rediscovered” by primarily white audiences in the blues revival of the 1960s. He toured the US and Europe before retiring again in 1974.
Isaiah “Ike” Zimmerman
Isaiah “Ike” Zimmerman was a blues guitarist from Alabama who had a particularly important influence on Robert Johnson: he was Johnson’s guitar teacher. Zimmerman would often practice in cemeteries at night so as to not disturb anyone, and Johnson joined him in these practices in the months that he was studying with Zimmerman — which was used as evidence for the myth that he sold his soul to the devil. Zimmerman never made any recordings, but his influence is embedded in Robert Johnson’s contributions to the art form.
Sonny Boy Williamson II
Sonny Boy Williamson II, designated so as to differentiate him from another popular blues musician in Chicago by the same name, was a harmonica player and singer in the Delta Blues scene. He and Robert Johnson came up around the same time and were associated on the juke joint circuit, and his first recording was a cover of Johnson’s “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom.” He had a successful radio show, and his career spanned enough years that he started it playing with Robert Johnson and ended it playing with Jimmy Page.
David “Honeyboy” Edwards
David “Honeyboy” Edwards was a Delta Blue guitarist and singer from Mississippi who was a close friend and traveling companion of Robert Johnson. Edwards’ playing was characterized by distinct slide guitar and intricate fingerpicking, and he and Johnson traveled throughout the South playing at juke joints, fish fries, on corners — anywhere there was an audience. When he died in 2011, hours before a scheduled gig, he was 96 years old and the last surviving member of the original generation of Delta Blues musicians.
These are just some of the Delta Blues players in and around Robert Johnson’s orbit. In his short but brilliant career, he absorbed the best of his forerunners and contemporaries, and pioneered a style that would influence blues musicians in the Delta, in Chicago, and across the Atlantic for decades. But biographical details on these players and others are scarce, and what did get recorded is largely because they caught the interest and resources of white researchers and musicians. With the little we know about these major artists, we must also wonder how many other extraordinary Black musicians of the Jim Crow south faded from history.
Related reading: Robert Johnson: The Man and the Myth — The legendary bluesman at the center of Me and the Devil
Me and the Devil was filmed at St. Stephen’s Theater in Center City Philadelphia in June 2021 with strict adherence to all CDC, state, and local health and safety guidelines, and is streaming on demand and extended through February 27, 2022. Visit our website for tickets and information.
