Robert Johnson is one of the most celebrated figures in blues history.  Although he died when he was just twenty-seven years old, his impact on blues culture and blues mythology, as well as his influence on the development of blues guitar styles, has been substantial to say the least.

If Robert Johnson had never been born, the blues might have seen fit to invent him, as his story has become the archetype of blues life.

According to the myth, Johnson obtained his amazing guitar skills by selling his soul to the devil. (That Johnson wrote songs about the devil and explored in his music the fight between good against evil strengthened the myth, which endured after his death and grew larger as the years passed.)  Aside from this Faustian explanation, we know little about how Johnson came to acquire his compelling skills, as both a songwriter and guitarist, in such a remarkably brief time.

Johnson's recording catalog adds up to a grand total of only twenty-nine tracks; it is criminally lean compared to those of such blues giants as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, and others.  Yet most blues scholars and critics agree that there is more than enough musical available to proclaim Johnson a musical genius.

Robert Santelli -- The Big Book of Blues : A Biographical Encyclopedia