SOURCE: "Standing at the Crossroads Between Vinyl and Compact Discs: Reissue Blues Recordings in the 1990s," in Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 105, No. 416, 1992, pp. 215-26.

In the following essay, Pearson discusses the "Robert Johnson myth" and examines the reception of Johnson's work as a recording artist.

Thinking about Robert Johnson generates questions about the impact of phonograph recordings on folk tradition. After all, Robert Johnson is characterized as a bellwether—the artist who represents the transition from country-dance musicians limited to local influences to a new breed of professionals whose technique and repertoire were influenced by phonograph recordings. Fairly or not, Johnson is portrayed as an innovator who conceptualized and shaped his songs in a modern way, as preformed units conditioned not by the needs of an audience of dancers but by the limitations of recordings.

To a certain degree, the strange career of Robert Johnson has been...