Robert Johnson: Lost and Found

Illustrations

The Mississippi blues artist David “Honeyboy” Edwards, in a photo taken during the Smithsonian Institution’s 1991 Festival of American Folklife. Edwards received a National Heritage Fellowship in 2002. (Smithsonian photo) Johnny Shines, one of Johnson’s occasional traveling companions, performs at the 1991 Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C. Shines died in 1992. (Smithsonian photo) The guitar and piano player Henry Townsend, another participant in the 1991 Smithsonian festival, worked with Johnson in St. Louis in the thirties. (NCTA photo, Kathy James) Robert “Junior” Lockwood got to know Johnson during the time he was seeing Lockwood’s mother and is the only artist known to have received guitar instruction from Johnson. (Smithsonian photo) Big Joe Williams was the quintessential “walking musician.” Born in Crawford , Mississippi, in 1903,Williams was a road warrior for more than five decades, working with artists as diverse as Peetie Wheatstraw, Robert Nighthawk , Charlie Musselwhite, and Bob Dylan. (Smithsonian photo) Although the Three Forks Store, twelve miles southwest of Greenwood near state Route 7, was once believed by some researchers to be the site of Robert Johnson’s final gig, it’s doubtful that Johnson ever played there.The building that once housed the store, converted to a residence once the store closed, was demolished within a year after this photo was taken in 2000. (McCulloch photo) Not far from the site of the former Three Forks Store, a small flat gravestone, often adorned with guitar picks and coins left by passing blues pilgrims, marks the spot identified in 1990 as Robert Johnson’s final resting place. The site, located next to Payne Chapel M. B. Church in the rural hamlet of Quito, was picked out by one of Johnson’s long-ago girlfriends, whose testimony is no longer regarded as reliable. (McCulloch photo) North of Morgan City, not far from the banks of the Yazoo River, Columbia Records installed this memorial in front of Mount Zion M. B. Church.The site was selected in 1991 on the basis of Johnson’s death certificate, which said he was buried at “Zion Church.” If Johnson died in the Greenwood vicinity, however, it is unlikely that his body would have been transported almost all the way to Morgan City for burial. (McCulloch photo) Jook houses, like this one in Shelby, are still common in the Mississippi Delta, but live music is probably less common than it was before World War II. In jook houses nowadays, patrons are more likely to be entertained by juke boxes. (McCulloch photo) Commissioned by Johnson’s biographer Stephen LaVere, this memorial now stands in the cemetery next to Little Zion M. B. Church just north of Greenwood .The cemetery is the most recently identified—and most likely—site of Johnson’s burial in August 1938.The artist is thought to have died at a residence on Star of the West Plantation, which adjoined the church property. (McCulloch photo) ...