The legend of the wandering musician who sold his soul to the devil

In the pages of The Last Days of Robert Johnson, every detail is important. There's a very evocative moment told in an almost anecdotal way: the mentor of a very young Robert Johnson, the man who taught him to play the guitar, marvels at his progress. How is it possible to learn so quickly? he asks. In this scene, cartoonist and screenwriter Franz Duchazeau expresses several things. First, how difficult it is to explain how Johnson progressed so much in such a short time. Second, the realization of his immense talent, inversely proportional to the amount of music he left behind for posterity.

Robert Johnson recorded only 29 songs in his lifetime, yet his legacy is vast, and he has had a tremendous impact on the history of popular music, especially modern rock and blues. Such talent at such a young age led to the emergence of many legends surrounding the musician: the most famous claims that he sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in exchange for supernatural guitar-playing abilities.

The Last Days of Robert Johnson (translated by Regina López Múñoz), also published in Catalan under the title Els darrers dies de Robert Johnson (translated by Carlos Mayor), is a 236-page black and white graphic novel published in Spain by Andana Gràfica. Through a kind of road comic , Duchazeau evokes not only the final moments of the famous bluesman in 1938 but also recalls some of the passages that marked his life: a father who abandoned him, a childhood in the cotton fields, an abusive stepfather, and even the death of the love of his life and his son in childbirth. Johnson wanders from town to town like a modern medieval troubadour, determined to earn a few dollars with his guitar.

With precise and delicate pencil strokes, Duchazeau captures with dazzling talent the life, the houses, the cars, and the landscapes of the towns that rise on the banks of the Mississippi Delta. This comic strip immerses us in dusty roads and the heat of a summer that seems to never end. It is a brilliant portrait of the rural South of the United States during the Great Depression. We see Johnson playing in bars and facing a racist and hostile environment, consumed by alcohol and his ghosts, spiraling ever deeper into a self-destructive spiral. He also appears performing magic with his guitar and a style that has led him to be considered one of the founding fathers of so-called Delta blues. His guitar playing, with complex rhythmic and melodic accompaniments that seemed to be played by more than one person, is a testament to his talent.

The Last Days of Robert Johnson intersperses lyrics from his songs that the reader must be able to decipher to fully understand this work, which demands attention to nuances and flashbacks. One of the songs featured in these vignettes is "Cross Road Blues" (later covered by Eric Clapton as "Crossroads "), in which he recalls the time he came to a crossroads ("I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees / Asked the Lord above, 'Have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please'"). Over time, these lyrics, which deal with helplessness, became connected to the legend of the devil's pact and helped build the myth. The crossroads has since become a cultural symbol of the blues and has accompanied the idea of ​​the cursed artist.

Duchazeau evokes much more than the final moments of the famous bluesman.

The Last Days of Robert Johnson chooses to distance itself from all mythology and delve into an introspective and artistic vision of who was undoubtedly one of the most prominent figures of the blues, an extraordinary guitarist who died prematurely and unclearly at the age of 27. Yes, like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse. Songs like Love in Vain , Sweet Home Chicago or Hellhound on My Trail have become classics of the genre. The dark atmosphere of many of his songs, such as Me and the Devil Blues , which does mention the devil, have fueled all kinds of interpretations of Johnson's life and death.

Read also The note More Robert Johnson in cartoons

It's clear that in The Last Days of Robert Johnson, Duchazeau moves away from conjecture and prefers to showcase the versatility and complexity that always accompanied the elusive figure of the Black musician. It's worth noting that this isn't the first comic-book biography of the guitarist and composer. In 2015, an album titled Love in Vain: Robert Johnson 1911–1938 by Mezzo and Jean-Michel Dupont was published in Spanish. The work, also in black and white, in this case focuses much more on the myth surrounding Johnson. His short life is ripe for more than one comic.