When blues musician Robert Johnson disappeared from the Mississippi Delta for months in the early 1930s, fellow musicians said he left with mediocre skills. But when he returned, he could play the guitar with dazzling speed, precision and complexity.
He had mastered the slide guitar and could coax such haunting tones from its hollow body, it gave listeners gooseflesh. Now he sang lyrics with supernatural themes: hellhounds on his trail and Satan knocking at his door. In one of his 1936 songs, “Cross Road Blues,” he described falling on his knees at a crossroads, crying out for spiritual intervention.
