"The greatest music artefact of the 20th century!" trumpets Moments In Time, an upstate New York autograph dealer that claims to have the guitar that Robert Johnson, the King of The Delta Blues and one of the most mysterious and iconic figures of 20th century music, once owned, writes Will Hodgkinson.
Holy grails like this, needless to say, don't come cheap. The asking price for Johnson's Gibson L1, which would have been manufactured between 1926 and 1930 and was a good acoustic, steel-string guitar for its time, is six million dollars.
The question however, is authenticity - a Gibson L1 guitar is not a one-off like a painting by Picasso. This makes it very hard to prove that this one really was Johnson's, particularly as Moments In Time have not provided any history of the artefact.
Two photographs of Johnson exist. In one he looks mean and troublesome, in the other spruce and smiling, his huge claw-like fingers clenching what is unmistakably a Gibson L1. But the Gibson in the photograph looks a lot more battered than the one Moments In Time are currently selling. "It is simply extreme lighting, reflection and shadow!" claims the dealer's website.
The sale of the guitar marks another stage in the ever-growing mythology of Robert Johnson. This inspiration for all rock bands from the Rolling Stones to the White Stripes will always be a romantic figure because so little is known about him. He only put 29 songs down on tape and died in 1938 aged 27, possibly at the hands of a cuckolded husband.
But the real reason for the $6m price tag is that the devil got in on the deal. Just outside the Mississippi town of Clarksdale, on the intersection of Highway 49 and Highway 61, is the place were Johnson reputedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a few mean guitar licks. Blues scholars have come to blows over the exact location of Johnson's Faustian pact, but the rumour seems to be rooted in a case of mistaken identity.
It was Ledell Johnson, brother of the blues guitarist Tommy and no relation to Robert, who told the folklorist David Evans that the only way to get really good at guitar was to go to a crossroads with your instrument at midnight and wait for a large black man to walk up to you, take your guitar, tune it up a bit, and then give it back, your soul now his forever. One cannot help but feel that Ledell Johnson's story was a chance to have a bit of fun at the expense of an overly earnest white academic, but Moments In Time must be pleased that he did.
