“Hello Satan; it’s time to go.”
The King of the Delta Blues Singers, an itinerant guitarist whom modern musicians still credit as a tangible influence on their own work. In rural 20th century America, blues was the devil’s music, an unwelcome distraction from churchgoing piety and the competing gospel music tradition, and Johnson was the foremost purveyor of blasphemous but soulful signatures like “Crossroads Blues” and “Hellhound On My Trail.” So large loomed his profile that a legend persists to this day that a young Johnson sold his soul to Satan in exchange for his musical prowess.
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