Born 113 years ago today in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, the legendary Robert Johnson. His story is extremely well documented, and his influence can be plainly understood simply by listening to his 41 total recordings from 1936 and 1937.

Keith Richards famously recounted hearing Johnson for the first time, courtesy of Brian Jones. They’d gone to Brian’s apartment, where all he had was “a chair, a record player, and a few records, one of which was Robert Johnson.” Brian played the album, Keith asked who it was. His 2nd question was “Yeah, but who’s the other guy playing with him?” Keith was blown away that one musician could play both parts, by keeping the rhythm in place while picking and bending strings. Keith later elaborated to The Guardian, “we all felt there was a certain gap in our education, so we all scrambled back to the 20s and 30s to figure out how Charlie Patton did this, or Robert Johnson, who, after all, was and still probably is the supremo.” I’ll just let Keith show you:

The album Brian played for Keith was King of the Delta Blues Singers, released by Columbia Records in 1961 at the urging of John Hammond. It featured 16 hotel room recordings, taped by Columbia’s Country music producer Don Law. 11 of the tracks came from November 23rd, 26th & 27th, 1936 in San Antonio, with the remaining 5 cuts recorded June 19th & 20th, 1937 in Dallas.

19 year old Bob Dylan, newly signed to Columbia Records by Hammond, would be given an advance copy by John after one of the sessions for Dylan’s debut album. Bob wrote extensively in Chronicles, Vol. 1 about the incredible impact the album had on him, even the cover art:

“Before leaving that day, he’d given me a couple records that were not yet available to the public…[one] was called King of the Delta Blues Singers by Robert Johnson… I’d never heard of Robert Johnson. Never heard the name, never seen it on any of the compilation blues records. Hammond said I should listen to it, that this guy could ‘whip anybody.’ He showed me the artwork, an unusual painting where the painter with the eye stares down from the ceiling into the room and sees this fiercely intense singer and guitar player, looks no more than medium height but with shoulders like an acrobat. What an electrifying cover. I stared at the illustration. Whoever the singer was in the picture, he already had me possessed.”

Dylan played the album for Dave Van Ronk, who didn’t seem to think much of it. “The record that didn’t grab Dave very much had left me numb, like I’d been hit by a tranquillizer bullet…Over the next few weeks I listened to it repeatedly, cut after cut, one song after another, sitting staring at the record player. Whenever I did, it felt like a ghost had come into the room, a fearsome apparition… If I hadn’t heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down.” Dylan’s copy of the album can be seen in his Bringing It All Back Home album cover:

Bob has been quoting and paraphrasing Johnson lines for more than 60 years. To assemble all of Dylan’s Robert Johnson references would be a blog unto itself. Nearly every song on 1978’s Street Legal include Johnson’s lines, with even one of his titles adapted for “Is Your Love In Vain?” Entire paraphrased verses of two Johnson songs make up the rewritten Planet Waves song “Going Going Gone” included on Bob Dylan at Budokan.

In honor of the May 8, 1911 birthday of Robert Johnson, Today’s Playlist is a song for song original/cover of 1961’s King of the Delta Blues Singers:

#RobertJohnson #BobDylan #KeithRichards #BrianJones #DanielKramer #RollingStones #Budokan #JohnHammond #ColumbiaRecords