Some people are born to be musicians. They have music in their souls. They come out with their fingers ready to touch ivory or grip the guitar.
Regardless of what lot they have in their early life, it leads them to music, and they are motivated by song.
Many have a deep desire to make the songs they carry with them a reality for others, but few have the talent – the naturally born skill – to see it through. So they have to take desperate actions to make their dreams a reality.
It’s said that when such a talent rises out of nothing and then quickly disappears, they must have sold their soul for fame.
It’s a legend stemming back to medieval Europe but has planted its roots more firmly in the American South, where opportunities for young Black Americans in the post-slavery US were slim and hard to come by.
Therefore, it was reckoned that men who wielded incredible talent had to get it from somewhere dubious, such was the case of Robert Johnson – arguably the inventory of the Rock Star Curse and a founder of the early movement of blues and rock and roll.
10 /10 Mississippi Blues
Robert Leroy Johnson was born in 1911, possibly in May, to Julia Dodds. He was one of ten children in a big family. Unfortunately, his family suffered discrimination.
His father, a reputable furniture salesman, was driven out of town by a lynch mob, and his family was forced to flee to Memphis under a new name.
There, young Robert’s primary education took place at the Carnes Avenue Colored School.
9 /10 Little Dusty
Robert’s mother again married a man much younger than her, an illiterate sharecropper named Will “Dusty” Willis.
After Robert’s mother separated from him in Memphis and then reunited around 1920 and took him back with her new, much younger husband, this led to Robert being called “Little Robert Dusty.”
However, he continued using the assumed name of Spencer when he registered for school.