Subject: New Robert Johnson Gravesite Found
From:
Steve Latimer
Date: 15 Aug 01 - 11:47 AM
Well, more mystery surrounding Robert.
New Site Found for Grave of Bluesman Robert Johnson By Bruce Olson
GREENWOOD (Reuters) - Pioneer Delta bluesman Robert Johnson, who legend says made a deal with the devil so he could play guitar like no one else, is getting a new shrine.
Johnson, who died in 1938 and already has two grave markers, is about to have a third -- this time at the place where experts think it is most likely he is really buried.
One historian who thinks so is Steve Cheseborough, a blues performer and author of the new guidebook ``Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of the Delta Blues.'' Another is Gayle Dean Wardlow, a record collector and author of ``Chasin' That Devil Music.''
So, too, does Claude Johnson, who recently was declared by the courts to be Johnson's legitimate heir. He will join Wardlow and other blues dignitaries on Thursday to unveil the new headstone at the Little Zion Baptist Church, 63 years to the day after Johnson, just 27, died in mystery and controversy. Located just outside of Greenwood, 110 miles south of Memphis, the new site has been a candidate as the real Johnson grave for at least 10 years, since it is in the graveyard used by the plantation owner on whose land Johnson died.
But the Little Zion site got the seal of approval earlier this year with the discovery of Rosie Eskridge, an 86-year-old Greenwood resident whose husband, Tom, dug the grave in 1938.
She told Wardlow she was there that day, when the then obscure bluesman's body was brought by truck from a nearby plantation in a coffin provided by LeFlore County. ``Tom dug the grave deep,'' Wardlow said. ``Johnson's mother wasn't there. The church deacon said a few words over the coffin and that was it.
CARNEGIE HALL BECKONED
``There was another woman there, the daughter of a sharecropper in whose shack Johnson probably died and who Johnson was probably romantically connected with,'' Wardlow added.
The grave was unmarked and the burial was in keeping with the obscurity of Johnson's life; a life on the move, seeped in the mythology of the blues. When he died promoter John Hammond was looking for him, ready to bring him to New York for an appearance at Carnegie Hall that probably would have made him famous.
Instead, the fame came slowly, long after his death. In 1961 the first Johnson album spawned a squall of interest that led to covers of his songs by the Rolling Stones and other rock bands. A picture of Johnson's album popped up on the cover of the 1965 Bob Dylan release ``Bringing It All Back Home.'' But sales were confined to musicians and dedicated fans of Delta blues.
Robert Palmer's book ``Deep Blues,'' appeared in 1981, giving credit to Johnson as the inventor of some the most original licks in the blues. It also contained a story wherein Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil to become a guitar virtuoso and said he died from poison given him in a Greenwood juke joint by a jealous rival. Palmer said Johnson was buried in Morgan City, about 12 miles (19 km) from Greenwood.
The Morgan City grave, next to a Mount Zion M.B. Baptist Church, ``has more written on it than any other bluesman's and is also where the most offerings are left,'' Cheseborough writes.
THIRD GRAVE
An impressive obelisk that refers to Johnson as ``the king of the blues singers'' was built there in 1990 at about the same time that Columbia released ``Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings.'' It won a Grammy and become one of the best-selling blues discs of all time. The liner notes included testimonials from blues stars Eric Clapton, Robert Cray and Keb Mo.
The third grave is in Quito, between Morgan City and Greenwood, and was located by a Johnson ex-girlfriend in the Payne Chapel M.B. Church. Cheseborough says the girlfriend ''insisted Johnson was in Hell and wouldn't appreciate flowers, much less a tombstone.''
A Georgia rock band, the Tombstones, thought otherwise and placed a marker on the grave, saying ``Robert Johnson, resting in the blues.''
The new grave site near Greenwood is the closest to the juke joint where Johnson was allegedly poisoned. However the death certificate filed with the county includes a report saying Johnson probably died of syphilis. ``The best argument against Johnson being murdered is the fact that he was buried at all,'' Wardlow said.
``If he was murdered there is no way he would have been buried in the churchyard. They would have taken him down to the doggone Tallahatchie River for the fish and the turtles. But the plantation owner, Luther Wade, was a Christian man. He made sure old Robert got placed in the ground.''
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