Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville Blues Trail South Haven, MS

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MISS US 61

Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville

Abbay & Leatherman, one of the oldest and largest cotton plantations in the Delta, is known to music enthusiasts worldwide as the boyhood home of blues icon Robert Johnson (c. 1912-1938). Johnson lived here with his family in a tenant shack by the levee during the 1920s. The powerful and impassioned recordings he made in 1936-37 are often cited as the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll, and the facts, fantasies, and mysteries of his life and death are a continuing source of intrigue.

Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville

Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville

Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville

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Robert Johnson would become known as the “King of the Delta Blues,” heralded not only as a dramatic and emotional vocalist but also as an innovative and influential master of the guitar and a blues poet who could chill listeners with the dark depths of his lyrical vision. But he was recalled only as a good harmonica player who had limited skills as a guitarist during his adolescent years here on the Abbay & Leatherman Plantation. Johnson left the Delta around 1930, but when he reappeared about two years later he possessed such formidable guitar technique that Robinsonville blues luminary Son House later remarked that Johnson must have “sold his soul to the devil.”  The 1986 Hollywood movie Crossroads was based on the legend of Johnson’s alleged deal with the devil, as were several subsequent documentaries and books.

Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, the illegitimate son of Julia Dodds and Noah Johnson. May 8, 1911, is often cited as his birthdate, although some sources, including a census listing and his death certificate, point to 1912. His mother once sent him to Memphis to live with his father, Charles Dodds (aka Charles Spencer) but took him back after she married Willie “Dusty” Willis at Abbay & Leatherman in 1916. Johnson, then known as Robert Spencer, reportedly lived here for a decade or more beginning in about 1918. Records from the nearby Indian Creek School verify his enrollment there. However, the 1920 census shows Will and Julia Willis and Robert Spencer in Lucas, Arkansas, in the same county where Abbay & Leatherman owner Samuel Richard Leatherman once acquired additional cotton-farming property.

Johnson married Virginia Travis in Tunica County in 1929, but his 16-year-old wife died in childbirth on April 10, 1930. Back in Hazlehurst, Johnson found himself a new wife, Callie Craft, as well as a musical mentor, guitarist Ike Zinnerman.  He soon left married life behind to pursue a career as an itinerant musician, now able to play alongside the best bluesmen in the Delta, including Son House and Willie Brown, and to entertain crowds wherever he went with a reputation for being able to play any song after hearing it just once. He began recording in 1936, and though his recordings proved highly influential in the course of blues and rock ‘n’ roll history, few of them sold well during his lifetime. His death near Greenwood on August 16, 1938, has often been attributed to poisoning, although the case remains a mystery. Johnson was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in its first year, 1980, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame also in its initial year, 1986.

I'm gon' get up in the mornin',
I believe I'll dust my broom.
Girlfriend, the black man you lovin'
My girlfriend can get my room.
"I Believe I'll Dust my Broon""
Robert Johnson
An aerial view of part of the Abby & Leatherman plantation from the 1920s. At its peak, more than 45-0 families lived and worked here, according to Bobby Leatherman. The plantation traces its history back to 1831 when Richard Abby purchased land from the Chickasaw Indians tribe. 

“I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” was one of many of Robert Johnson’s classics later covered by blues and rock performers. Others include “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Cross Road Blues,” “Love In Vain,” “Come On In My Kitchen,” and “Stop Breakin’ Down Blues.”

The deep Delta blues of Son House and fellow Delta legends Charley Patton and Willie Brown were a major inspiration to Robert Johnson. House, Brown, Louise Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin, Woodrow Adams, Willie Johnson, and Tommy Bankhead were among the blues recording artists who lived and performed at various times on plantations in this area.

The mystique surrounding Robert Johnson helped propel the boxed set, The Complete Recordings, to the Billboard pop music charts in 1990. It was the first album to feature a photograph of Johnson; earlier album covers, including that of the historic 1961 compilation King of the Delta Blues Singers, relied on illustrators’ imaginations.

Willie Coffee and R. L. Windum were local childhood friends of Robert Johnson. Coffee was one of several musicians who played in the area at house parties and juke joints but who never recorded commercially; others he recalled included Willie Polk, Robert Newman, Henry Neyland, Mitchell Winters, Mamie Fletch, Will Loving heart, Walter Rogers, and Sol Henderson. Windum (1910-2003) and Johnson played harmonica together as youngsters. He recalled “Three O’Clock in the Morning” as a favorite harmonica piece of Johnson’s.

LONGUEROR Recording Company
“I Believe I'll Dust My Broom”
 Robert Johnson

Welcome to one of the many sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail 

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org

Son House Miss US 61 Blues Trail South Haven, MS

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Miss US 61

Son House

Eddie James "Son" House (1902-1988) plumbs the emotional depth of the blues perhaps more than any other Delta blues artist. A preacher at times, a barrel-housing bluesman at others, House has fiercely torn between the sacred teaching of the church and the secular lure of the blues life. House, who lived in the Robinsonville-Laekr Cormorant area in the 1930s and early 40s, was a major influence on both Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. 

Son House

Son House

Son House

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SON HOUSE Son House is regarded as one of the preeminent blues artists, but during his early career in the Delta, his renown was largely confined to local jukehouse audiences. He later attained international prominence during the 1960s “blues revival” through passionate, trance-like performances that highlighted his aggressive guitar style. He would occasionally rise from his chair to sing spirited a cappella gospel songs.

 House was born near Lyon in Coahoma County on March 21, 1902, or by some accounts years earlier. Through his association with Delta blues legend Charley Patton, House first recorded for the Paramount label in 1930, though sales were minimal in the Depression era. Like other Robinsonville-area blues artists, including Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Brown, House performed mostly at weekend suppers and dances held at sharecroppers’ houses. Tunica County locals have recalled House living and working on the Harbert, Tate, and Cox plantations, though he preferred to sing or preach. When the spirit called, he would preach at various churches, only to resume his nightlife as a bluesman.

House was a tractor driver on the R. E. Neunlist plantation in 1941 when he was recorded for a Fisk University-Library of Congress study led by Alan Lomax and John Work III. On September 3, they recorded House, Willie Brown, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin, and Leroy Williams at Clack Store, a commissary and train station that stood at this site. (A chugging locomotive can be heard on the recordings.) Despite problems with local authorities, Lomax later recalled, “Of all my times with the blues, this was the best one.” The second Library of Congress session in Robinsonville in 1942 would be the House’s last recording in Mississippi.

In 1964 a group of blues aficionados, including Dick Waterman, drove to Robinsonville to look for House, only to learn he had long retired from music and had moved in 1943 to Rochester, New York. His subsequent “rediscovery” was reported in Newsweek, and Waterman would manage House’s comeback career, often booking him as the closing act at festivals. The most notable of the albums House recorded was the 1965 Columbia LP Father of Folk Blues. House performed little after the early ‘70s, and from 1976 until his death on October 19, 1988, he lived in Detroit with his wife Evie, whom he had married in Robinsonville in 1934. He is buried in Detroit.

Oh, I'm gon' get me religion,
I'm gon' join the Baptist church.
I'm gon' be a Baptist preacher,
And I sure won't have to work.
The above Paramount label courtesy of Yazoo Records is the only copy of the record known to record collectors journals. It was recorded in 1930. Left The Columbia LP "Father of Folk Blues" was recorded in 1965
The above photo of Fiddlin' Joe Martin was from a 1967 recording session in Robinsonville, conducted by David Evans
Son House in Philadelphia, Penn.
The Clack Store stood at this site until it was razed in 1993. House sometimes preached at a church behind the store. This photo was taken in 1984.

PARAMOUNT Recording Company
“Preachin’ The Blues-Part 1”
Son House

Welcome to one of the many sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail 

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7951199/eddie-james-house