OXFORD, Miss. – Music fans around the world have marked Aug. 16 as a day of mourning. No doubt most think back to 1977 when Elvis Presley sang his last tune.
But a few will have 1938 on their minds. That’s when a different American music pioneer died just outside Greenwood. Robert Leroy Johnson was a bluesman who had little commercial success during his lifetime, but his recordings still affect music that’s made today.
“We have his death certificate,” said Greg Johnson (no relation), curator of the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi’s J.D. Williams Library. “It’s a certified copy. The original is on file in Leflore County.”
By itself, Robert Johnson’s certificate makes official the tragic death of a 26-year-old man.
But as part of the Blues Archive, it helps document Mississippi’s native music that grew out of slave spirituals and work songs and became the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll. Read the entire story.