If there is a mythic figure in the blues, it's Mississippi Delta musician Robert Johnson. Johnson only recorded 29 songs in the late 1930s, and he died at the age of 27. But his uncanny styling of traditional tunes and innovative guitar work influenced not only his fellow blues men, but a generation of rock musicians, too. And if there is one song that captures the mystery of this legendary figure, it is "Hellhound On My Trail," a haunting tale of a man pursued by the devil.
"Hell Hound on My Trail’ was among the deepest and darkest of Robert Johnson’s legendary blues masterworks. Together with ‘Me and the Devil Blues’ and ‘Cross Road Blues,’ it provided future generations with a disturbing vision of a blues poet haunted by spirits, doomed to die before he would ever see the fruits of an alleged deal with the devil. Johnson’s lyrics are subject to more worldly interpretation, too, but whether he was singing of escaping from a creature from hell or from the ‘hell hounds’ used by Parchman Penitentiary guards to track escaped prisoners, there is no doubting the harrowed and forsaken depth of Johnson’s performance.
Illustration by Robert Crumb
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