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Reply #30 posted 12/08/10 2:38pm

Astasheiks

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NDRU said:

I can not see Prince as Robert Johnson!

Ain't that the Darn Truth, this man supposedly Sold his Soul to the Devil so he could play like a Star, which is supposedly well documented and some body think Prince is going to play this B Arse Role!!!! eek rolleyes omg

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Reply #31 posted 12/08/10 2:48pm

NDRU

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Astasheiks said:

NDRU said:

I can not see Prince as Robert Johnson!

Ain't that the Darn Truth, this man supposedly Sold his Soul to the Devil so he could play like a Star, which is supposedly well documented and some body think Prince is going to play this B Arse Role!!!! eek rolleyes omg

that, plus this it would mean not wearing makeup, not wearing weird clothes, not being glamorous or effeninite, drinking, and playing music that he really does not play --but other than that he's perfect! lol

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Reply #32 posted 12/08/10 4:06pm

Astasheiks

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NDRU said:

Astasheiks said:

Ain't that the Darn Truth, this man supposedly Sold his Soul to the Devil so he could play like a Star, which is supposedly well documented and some body think Prince is going to play this B Arse Role!!!! eek rolleyes omg

that, plus this it would mean not wearing makeup, not wearing weird clothes, not being glamorous or effeninite, drinking, and playing music that he really does not play --but other than that he's perfect! lol

I clicked on this thread last night and scrolled down and saw this mans photo and was scared out of my wits. Look at his strange grin and fingers looks like a skeleton fingers. And I got this eerie vibe, yep he did what's said here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w..._(musician)

Devil legend

According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Robert Johnson was branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician. He was "instructed" to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The "Devil" played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This was, in effect, a deal with the Devil mirroring the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.

[edit] Various accounts

This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,[31] Edward Komara[32] and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson's rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death.[33]Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.[34] Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House's observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus[35] and Robert Palmer.[36] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.[37] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in 1971 David Evans's biography of Tommy,[38] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.[39]

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zinnerman of Hazelhurst, Mississippi learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zinnerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson.[40] Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth uncovered Ike Zinnerman's daughter and the story becomes much clearer, including the fact that Johnson and Zinnerman did practice in a graveyard at night (because it was quiet and no one would disturb them) but that it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed. Johnson spent about a year living with, and learning from, Zinnerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back up to the Delta to look after him. Conforth's article in Living Blues magazine goes into much greater detail.[41]

The legendary "Crossroads" at Clarksdale, Mississippi.

The film O Brother Where Art Thou? by the Coen Brothers incorporates the crossroads legend and a young African American blues guitarist named Tommy Johnson, with no other biographical similarity to the real Tommy Johnson or to Robert Johnson. There are now tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" at Clarksdale and in Memphis.[42]

[edit] His own account

Johnson seems to have claimed occasionally that he had sold his soul to the Devil, but it is not clear that he meant it seriously, and these claims are strongly disputed in Tom Graves' biography of Johnson, Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, published in 2008. The crossroads detail was widely believed to come from Johnson himself, probably because it appeared to explain the discrepancy in "Cross Road Blues". Johnson's high emotion and religious fervor are hard to explain as resulting from the mundane situation described, unsuccessful hitchhiking as night falls. The crossroads myth offers a simple literal explanation for both the religion and the anguish.

In "Me And The Devil" he began, "Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/Early this morning, umb, when you knocked upon my door/And I said, 'Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,'" before leading into "You may bury my body down by the highway side/You may bury my body, uumh, down by the highway side/So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride."

The song "Crossroads" by British psychedelic blues rock band Cream is a cover version of Johnson's "Cross Road Blues", about the legend of Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at the crossroads, although Johnson's original lyrics ("Standin' at the crossroads, tried to flag a ride") suggest he was merely hitchhiking rather than signing away his soul to Lucifer in exchange for being a great blues musician.

[edit] Interpretations

The Devil in these songs may not solely refer to the Christian model of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba, himself associated with crossroads—though author Tom Graves deems the connection to African deities tenuous.[43] This contention could stem from a lack of familiarity with the pervasive retention of African religious roots among Southern Blacks early in the 20th century. As folklorist Harry M. Hyatt discovered, during his research in the South from 1935–1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early-20th century said they or anyone else had "sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads," they had a different meaning in mind. Ample evidence indicates African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the making of a "deal" (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with this so-called "devil" at the crossroads.[44]

Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African American and European traditions, and were adapted into literature by, amongst others, Washington Irving in "The Devil and Tom Walker" in 1824, and by Stephen Vincent Benet in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" in 1936. In the 1930s the folklorist Harry Middleton Hyatt recorded many tales of banjo players, fiddlers, card sharks, and dice sharks selling their souls at crossroads, along with guitarists and one accordionist. The folklorist Alan Lomax considered that every African American secular musician was "in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".[45]

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Reply #33 posted 12/08/10 5:00pm

OnlyNDaUsa

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WAIT! Was Robert Johnson an Illuminati too?

"Keep on shilling for Big Pharm!"
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