Blues is a music that's highly personalized, that deals with fairly intimate personal relationships, so you have to read through the songs to see broader social issues. But the personal relationships described in the blues are affected by social conditions of poverty, racism, the nature of work, rural life, and so on, and these shape how people relate to each other. You have to do a little bit of projection from those lyrics; blues are not usually songs of ideology or protest. But you can detect an overriding aura of dissatisfaction in the blues. They deal with the changes and fluctuations of life, and the possibilities of change, too, on a very personal level.
Robert Johnson was born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, May 8, 1911, but spent much of his early life in levee camps and on plantations in the northern Delta. He moved with his family to Memphis in 1914, staying there until 1918, when his stepfather sent him to live at the Abbay and Leatherman Plantation near Robinsonville, Mississippi. There Johnson began playing harmonica and associating with older blues musicians. He followed local bluesman Willie Brown to parties and fish fries, accompanying him on many pieces. Soon Johnson was playing with Brown and his partner Charley Patton when the latter came to town. By 1930, Son House was out of Parchman Farm and had settled in Robinsonville. House's guitar playing had a profound effect on Johnson, and the younger man abandoned his harmonica for the guitar. House and Brown became a team, hopping rides to Memphis to play for tips in Church's Park with Johnson tagging along. When they were drinking, House, Brown, and Patton would belittle Johnson for his lack of guitar skill. The young man soon left Robinsonville and headed back to Hazelhurst.
Hazelhurst is close to Crystal Springs, Mississippi, where popular Delta guitarist Tommy Johnson (no relation) lived and worked. Robert Johnson married while in Hazelhurst and practiced his picking, learning new songs from phonograph records. There he fell under the spell of local guitarist Ike Zinnerman, a man whom locals claim he imitated closely. Johnson re-emerged in Robinsonville many months later without his wife but displaying a dazzling guitar technique and a raft of new songs sounding suspiciously like records by Lonnie Johnson (no relation), Skip James, Peetie Wheatstraw, Scrapper Blackwell, and Kokomo Arnold. His playing was a juxtaposition of shuffling rhythms and slide guitar leads that dwarfed the playing of his contemporaries. Some believed that Johnson had met the Devil at the Crossroads and exchanged his soul for his extraordinary ability. Although Johnson's songs were derivative of other musicians', they display a personal approach to familiar themes of loss, isolation, and paranoia, while introducing diabolical references. Johnson played everywhere, from the Kitty Cat Club in Helena, Arkansas, to the streets of Friars Point in front of Hirsberg's Drugstore. His wanderlust took him to coal yards, speakeasies, levee camps, and taverns in the Midwest, on the East Coast, and even in Canada. But it was his recordings that were to have the widest impact.
FAMILY LIFE
 Migrant Family Traveling to Chicago | The African American family provided the core unit of the Great Migration. It was these families that came to the North to seek out a better life. The strong ties of the African American family facilitated migration, enabling one or two members to travel north before sending for the remainder of the families. Typically, Delta sharecropper worker as a family in the land, with each member assigned to a specific task that contributed to the greater whole. Families tended to be large because of the endless jobs and chores which needed to be completed each day. Blondine Heron is a perfect example of being part of the large families that lived in the south;she was one of fourteen children. The more children, the more hands to work the soil. Each new born child, however, also meant another mouth to feed. |
| The family provided almost all the social life for the children in the Delta. The vast plantations of the Delta made it so that neighbors were few and far between. In the fields of the sharecropper and in the home, children formed relationships with their many brothers and sisters. The lack of schooling in the rural Delta reinforced the closeness of the Delta families. The school year only lasted four months during planting or harvesting season. Children interacted with other children outside of their families for only four months out of the year.These were some of the contributing factors to the strength of the Delta families, but another reason for close families to be unified was the hatred whites in the Delta felt for African Americans. Episodes such as the Emmett Till case demonstrated to the southern families how important it was |  Sharecropper's House in Mississippi |
 Migrant Family | To join the Great Migration was a bold and daring step. People often traveled with family or traveled to join family already in the North. Once in the North, African Americans secured jobs and then sent for the rest of their families. The migration of a family could take years, but the wait was worth it because the South offered no possible advancement for the African American family. In the North the families changed. People who traveled north rarely did so in families, but rather as individuals or as portions of the family. Once in the North these members of the family lived together in apartment buildings and saved |
One of the larger, more noticeable changes of the African American was the size of the family. The number of children born in the North was significantly less in part because of the difference of space the African American families had. Rather then having access to sprawling land, they found themselves confined to small apartments on the south and west side of Chicago.
People were able to broaden their horizons and experienced new things, such as nine months of school and a variety of jobs social clubs, and churches. Men and women to met many more people in the Northern cities in a variety of places. The family did indeed change but did not disintergrate.
Though there was not the blatant racism in the north as there was in the south, migrants often faced discrimination. The family unit provided support as the migrants adjusted to their new environment. The northern family members told the new migrants how things worked and the rules of the North. Almost all migrants stayed with family members when they initially arrived in city of Chicago. The family is a safe unit of support for people in times of adversity. The life that African Americans had to endure in the south made it necessary for families to remain a close group and this close group lead to success of the Great Migration.
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