Radiolab - Crossroads

In this short, we go looking for the devil, and find ourselves tangled in a web of details surrounding one of the most haunting figures in music--a legendary guitarist whose shadowy life spawned a legend so powerful, it's still being repeated...even by fans who don't believe a word of it.

Duration: 29m
Broadcast on: 16 Apr 2012
Audio Format: other

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Oh, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC and NPR. I gotta say I'm suddenly regretting this. I was looking forward to this all day, but now it's- I didn't expect it to be so profoundly dark. You're scared? Oh, dude, you don't need to be doing that. Pat, like a moron, just turned his lights off just a freak. Do you ever do that when you're driving out in the water? So that's a producer Pat Walters and I got one. This is the one. This is the one right here? This is the Red Crossroads. Alright, so where are you? So Pat and I- I know it's Pat. I know it's you, and you're driving in the dark? Yes, this is what he takes me set up. So a little while back, Pat and I went down to Clark'sdale, Mississippi, which is a little tiny town out in the sticks of Mississippi Delta. Drove down this dirt road, and this was dark, I mean, curtain of black dark, until we got to this place where our little road crossed another little road and made kind of an axe. Should we get out of the car? Yeah. Alright. And we got out of the car and we stood there. Okay, we have to be completely silent. And waited. Five minutes to midnight. Because we were told if we stood in that very spot till midnight, the devil would come and talk to us. What? What's that over there? Stop it. I'm going to beat you with this microphone if you do that one more time. Why- why- I should just wait and find out, I guess. No, you should ask. Would you like to know why we were waiting for the devil? Yes. What a bunch of tool bags we are. Okay, so I've been interested for years in this story of Robert Johnson and the Crossroads. I mean, do you know him, Robert Johnson? Yeah. He'd be one of the great blues musicians of all times, influenced a ton of people, Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin. He's also the center of this myth. Should you rate me in time when did Robert Johnson live? So here's the story. Yeah. 1920s, Robert Johnson is a kid in Mississippi. Wants to play the blues, hang around blues guys, but he sucks. Other blues guys would laugh at him.

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