YEAR
1986
INDUCTED BY
Robert Palmer
CATEGORY
Early Influences
His playing was to die for—or at the very least, sell your soul to Satan for.
Legend has it that Robert Johnson met the devil at a crossroads and gave him his soul in exchange for mastery of the guitar. Steeped in mystery, killed mysteriously, his legend eclipsed only by his skill, Robert Johnson may be the first ever rock star.
Robert Johnson
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Michael Hill
Robert Johnson stands at the crossroads of American music, much as it is rumored that he once stood at a Mississippi crossroads and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his unique musical gifts.
His life and art, hopelessly intermingled because of the few facts we know about him, are symbolic of the folk blues as they passed from the delta to the secular world, and of the psychic toll exacted on those who embraced a dark midnight, knowing they would never witness the dawn to follow.
