Robert Johnson was a legendary musician born in 1911 in Mississippi, famous for creating the Delta blues style and for pioneering guitar techniques. As a young man he wasn’t a particularly good guitarist until he spent a year studying with musician Ike Zimmerman at night in a graveyard. When he returned to the music scene audiences were shocked to see him transformed into a master musician. Rumors began to circulate that Johnson had made a pact with the devil: incredible guitar skills in exchange for his soul. Johnson’s life ended too soon in 1938. He had been chatting up a bar owner’s wife one night and his drink was poisoned.⠀
Verlato gives us the moment when the legend was born, when Johnson makes the infamous pact with the devil (the crouching figure with a cloven hoof, a skeletal hoof, and a smoking guitar) at the crossroads. A tumultuous whirlwind of guitars and demons in jeans and cowboy boots is about to touch down in front of Johnson, as lightning cracks over farmland in the background.
Nicola Verlato, Robert Johnson and the Devil, 2010⠀
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