Creating A Lasting Impression Those chops came in handy, as Johnson in 1931 was gaining enough traction to be able to play lots and lots of gigs.
For most of the 1930s, Robert Johnson moved from his Mississippi Delta stomping grounds, to Memphis and Arkansas, busking on street corners with his acoustic guitar for tips. When other musicians would offer him gigs, he'd travel to New York, Chicago, and many other cities around the country.
Johnny Shines was one of the musicians he would often share bills with during his touring. Turns out Shines is one of the sole sources of information that we have about Robert Johnson during those years.
Shines met Johnson through a mysterious piano player up in Memphis, and even though the two didn't quite hit it off, eventually a friendship was formed. The two would hit a new town and set up on opposing street corners, playing for tips.
They both had a wandering spirit, Shines remembered: "Robert was a guy, you could wake him up anytime, and he was ready to go. You say 'Robert I here and train. Let's catch it, ' and he wouldn't exchange no words with you. He was ready to go.
It didn't make no difference where. Just so he was going." Every single gathering you could imagine in the American South where you could enjoy music, Johnson and Shines would entertain at.
House parties, soul food dinners, even coal yard and sawmills, the two would play music for the people gathered there. They encountered some hairy moments at a stop in Arkansas, where Shines' cousin got into a shooting match with his father-in-law.
Johnson and Shines took that as an omen, and spent a few months in the northern part of the country, near Detroit. But Robert felt the call of the Mississippi Delta deeply, and always returned back home.
Robert Johnson did seek out a more permanent partner in 1936, but this was in the form of making connections so that he could finally lay down some music in the studio. He was eventually paired up with producer Don Law, but it wasn't a conventional studio they recorded in.
It was a hotel in San Antonio. Regardless of the facilities, those three days of recordings would go down as some of the most important sessions ever in the history of blues and rock music.
