Robert johnson - The Crossroads

Every blues player knows the story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil in a dark Memphis night , right there on that eternal crossroads of the blues, and it is indeed a worthy story with mythical proportions and just the right amount of 'badboy' factor the blues players like so much.

Now, as I am more from the followers of the church of tom waits, who clearly said in his hoarse holy psalms that everybody knows there is no devil, it's just god when he is drunk, and was a marketing and advertising executive for the better part of a decade, I am not really impressed with stories of selling your soul to the devil.
I am however very impressed with Robert Johnson's work.

I think that one of the things these megagroups were so impressed by is the fact Johnson did break the rules whenever he wanted to. Yes, it IS a 13 bar blues, so? What are you going to do about it?

When Clapton recorded his Robert Johnson sessions , he was talking about the separation between the guitar parts and the singing parts : "I mean, to do those two things at the same time…until I….and I still can't do it completely right, I can kind of get an approximation , but it's almost one of those things…when you listen to it, it just sounds so relaxed, and yet when you come to try and do it you find out how almost virtually impossible it is."
Maybe it was the devil's gift after all…

One last comment about the whole devil story, just to prove again that with all dues respect, tom waits did get this one right…isn’t it strange that in order to sell your soul to the devil you have to go to the cross(roads)? Just saying….