Description
Crossroads Ring
It’s getting dark and cold, you’re waiting to flag a ride at the crossroads of highway 61 and highway 49 at Clarksdale, Mississippi, or perhaps it’s the place where highway 8 intersects with highway 1 at Rosedale. No one will remember. You’re alone and you don’t have the right color. The disturbing feeling of anxiety starts to crawl at the back of your neck, when suddenly from a long distance you hear the rumbling sound of a car. As it gets nearer you realize that it’s the roaring thunder of the V8 engine of a black shiny Terraplane car.
You carry an old Oscar Schmidt cheap Stella guitar packed in this ragged cardboard case.
You always wanted a nice Gibson, but never had the money, only held one or two in your lap during a photo session.
The car stops, the door opens and you begin your journey to San Antonio, Texas.
You will end up in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel, where you will record a few blues tracks that will change the world.
The story of Robert Johnson and the legend about the way he sold his soul to the devil has been told time and again, so I have no intention to give you all the details about his life, his music, the 27th club etc.
I’d like to give you a different perspective about the crossroads and the devil and to show you the unbelievable impact that crossed the gulf of time and space, influencing the likes of Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix among others and pioneering the path to the electric Chicago Blues guitar.
Many have tried to speculate that the crossroads and the “deal with devil” were in fact related to the Haitian Voodoo deity- Papa Legba, guardian of the crossroads who acts as the intermediary between the loa (the spirit world and humanity). He stands at a spiritual crossroads and gives (or denies) permission to speak with the spirits of Guinee, and is believed to speak all human languages. In Haiti, he is the great elocutioner. Legba facilitates communication, speech, and understanding, usually depicted as an old man, while the dog is his sacred animal.
So when someone bears in mind the “crossroads blues” and the “black dog blues” it’s easy to see why Papa Legba popped in, HOWEVER, the conservative society, treated people like Johnson who sang the secular blues as sinners, not to mention his wild nomadic life, it’s easy to realize that the whole “devil theme” was actually the fact that he was a black sheep, someone with passion who didn’t fit in the “normal” crowd.
When you listen to his music and lyrics, they project a different attitude and different style from the other Delta Blues artists.
That is the reason that almost more than 20 years after his death, when his recordings came out they simply changed the music scene entirely, creating a huge impact on both sides of the Atlantic.
It is always people with passion, those crazy outsiders who actually change the world.
The Crossroads Ring is the symbol of the outsider, of the spirit of adventure, the spirit of passion roaming endlessly …
You may bury my body.
Down by the highway side
So my old evil spirit
Can get a Greyhound bus and ride…
