The Song Game (part 2)

ThemDangMartians said:
...Strange song ...interesting how he says "she's got a mortgage on my body now lien on my soul.." ...could the devil have appeared to him as a woman?... ( if the crossroads story were true of course.)...inquiring minds.
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That's an interesting take. I always took it that he had hooked up with a rich, white plantation owner's wife from the "I ain't gon' to state no color but her front teeth crowned with gold" He was bragging, even though he says he wasn't going to say her color, the only people back then that could have afforded gold crowns would have been wealthy white people, especially in the Depression era deep south. So I took that line of the "mortgage on my body" that she owned the land while him or his were sharecroppers on her land, but now that they've been stepping out, she owned him totally, "lien on my soul". All she had to do is point a finger and he woulda been, dragged down the street, strung up and lynched, and thus owned his soul. He loved to drink and loved him some wimmens, he was a "travelling man".

Friar's Point that's mentioned in the song is supposedly where Muddy Waters first saw Johnson play. The story goes that Johnson was playing out front of a drug store and tearing it up and there was a crowd around watching and listening and Waters watched for awhile, but left because he thought Robert Johnson was a dangerous man.

I've been a huge Robert Johnson fan, his musical genius is undeniable, but the mysteries around the man himself is fascinating.
 
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