Robert Johnson

Born near Jackson, Mississippi, 1911 or 1912; died 1938.With the exception of Elvis Presley, no one has a better claim to have set the parameters of rock, musically and lyrically, than Robert Johnson, king of the Delta blues singers."If you want to learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and your go to where the road crosses that way, where a crossroads is. Get there be sure to get there just a little ' fore 12 that night so you know you'll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself…A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want."