Why Is Blues Called the Devil’s Music?

Written by

René Ostberg

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

History

The story is a familiar one to many music lovers. A bluesman meets a sinister, shadowy figure at a crossroads late at night. The mysterious figure takes the musician’s guitar, tunes it, and hands it back to its owner. Suddenly, the bluesman can play the guitar better than ever. He and the mystery man, possibly Satan himself, part ways—the musician taking away a wickedly good talent and the Devil taking away the bluesman’s soul.

The crossroads legend is one of many stories linking blues to the Devil. Indeed, more than one great blues musician is said to have exchanged his soul for creative brilliance and technical mastery. (More on that below.) But it’s not the reason why blues is called “the Devil’s music.”

Secular versus sacred music

In African American tradition, secular and sacred music have similar roots, both developing from the experience of African Americans in the South during slavery and after Emancipation. The difference was in the way these two kinds of music expressed this experience. Sacred music—such as hymns, spirituals, and, later, gospel songs—offered stories of redemption, hope, righteous living, freedom from oppression, and salvation. Secular music—beginning with blues but later including jazz, rhythm and blues (R&B), and rock and roll—typically voiced more worldly concerns.

Early blues musicians sang of hardship and hard luck, temptations that couldn’t be resisted, and relationships gone wrong. Some blues lyrics recounted sexual encounters or grisly murders. True to the genre’s name, the blues could be bawdy, humorously describing the pleasures of the flesh, or sorrowful, conveying heart-wrenching despair.

Because of this earthy subject matter—and because churchgoing often conferred social status and “respectability”—blues music acquired a reputation as being vulgar and “sinful.” Moreover, it was often performed in juke joints, barrelhouses, and other places that encouraged “licentious” activities such as drinking, gambling, or dancing. For these reasons, blues was called “the Devil’s music.”

Two sides of the same coin?

At the same time, blues and gospel have been described as “two sides of the same coin.” James Cone, a Methodist minister and professor who founded the concept of Black liberation theology, argued in his book The Spirituals and the Blues (1972), “the blues and the spirituals flow from the same bedrock of experience, and neither is an adequate interpretation of black life without the commentary of the other.” Indeed, many artists from both genres have influenced each other or blended the sacred and secular in their songs. Among the famous blues, R&B, and soul singers who started their careers singing in church are B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, and Mavis Staples.

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Some blues musicians, however, struggled to reconcile their religious upbringing with their careers in secular music. For example, Son House, born in Mississippi about 1902, became a preacher when he was a teenager and initially scorned blues music and guitar playing. By his mid-20s he was playing the blues. Yet his song repertoire reveals a lingering inner conflict. In one version of his “Preachin’ the Blues” (1930), he sings, “Oh, up in my room I bowed down to pray / Then the blues come along and they blew my spirit away.” Other lyrics wink at religious hypocrisy (“I’m gonna be a Baptist preacher, and I sure won’t have to work”) and proclaim that his love for women and whiskey can’t be helped.

Another blues great, Howlin’ Wolf, became completely estranged from his mother because of her objections to his career. Citing her religious beliefs, she rejected the money that he made from his music and later refused to see him when he became seriously ill with kidney disease.

On the other hand, some blues musicians fully leaned into the “Devil’s music” label, as evidenced by such songs as Peetie Wheatstraw’s “The Devil’s Son-in-Law” (which was also his nickname, along with “the High Sheriff from Hell”) and Lonnie Johnson’s “Devil’s Got the Blues.” And then there’s that crossroads myth.

Who met the Devil at the crossroads?

The crossroads legend seems to have originated with the unearthly skills of Tommy Johnson, a singer and guitarist born in Mississippi in the 1890s. But when most people hear the story, they think of fellow Mississippian, singer, and guitar genius Robert Johnson, born in the 1910s (and no relation to Tommy). In some accounts Robert Johnson’s bargain with the Devil lent him only eight more years to live in exchange for a remarkable musical ability. He died in 1938 when he was about 27. The two years before he died, he recorded most of the songs that would make his name, including such ominously titled compositions as “Cross Road Blues,” “Hellhound on My Trail,” and “Me and the Devil Blues.”

(Read Britannica’s article on the “27 Club.”)

It’s possible the crossroads story was something conjured by Tommy Johnson to promote his dazzling skills and cultivate a mystique, much as rockers such as the Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, and Marilyn Manson would later do. But the “Devil’s bargain” theme is notably absent in Johnson’s recordings. Instead, the tale may have been spread by Johnson’s brother. In 1966, a decade after Tommy Johnson’s death, his brother LeDell (who was both a preacher and a musician) told the crossroads story to ethnomusicologists David Evans and Marina Bokelman, claiming it was Tommy’s explanation for his newfound musical prowess after having been away from home for a couple years. At some point the “Devil’s pact” tale was also being repeated about Robert Johnson, but the details of when it became attached to him or who originated it are similarly murky.

Others have attempted to debunk the crossroads legend. In his book Deep Blues (1981), music historian Robert Palmer ascribed Robert Johnson’s excellent guitar-playing talent to a dedicated practice of the craft after coming under the wing of fellow musician Ike Zinneman (or Zimmerman). Yet the legend endures—as do lingering associations between blues and the Devil.

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