Robert Johnson Trivia
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69 free Robert Johnson trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Robert Johnson recorded 29 songs in five days across two hotel-room sessions in Texas, died at 27 of causes still argued over, and became the most mythologised musician in American history. This quiz covers the man and the legend: his childhood between Hazlehurst and the city, the older bluesman who remembered him as a hopeless guitarist, the mysterious teacher who practised with him at night, the makeshift studios, the poisoned whiskey and the death certificate that raised more questions than it answered. It also follows the afterlife: the Carnegie Hall concert he never lived to play, the 1961 LP that reached a young Bob Dylan, the British guitarists who turned his songs into rock standards and the lawsuits, box sets, stamps, photographs and heir rulings that followed. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to details only blues obsessives will know. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Johnson, his discography and his key songs, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 69 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01According to the most famous legend about him, what did Robert Johnson trade for his musical talent?
His soul
His soul. The tale grew up to explain how a middling player could come back from about a year away as a master; historians credit long hours of practice under an older guitarist instead.
Q 02Which singer is in the '27 Club' with Robert Johnson?
Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin. She, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones all died at 27 between 1969 and 1971, and once Kurt Cobain followed in 1994 the 'club' was traced back to Johnson's death in 1938.
Q 03The hall of fame that inducted Robert Johnson in 1986 calls him perhaps the first ever what?
Rock star
Rock star. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's biography gives its reasons in a single line: he was 'steeped in mystery, killed mysteriously, his legend eclipsed only by his skill'.
Q 04Robert Johnson first recorded in what makeshift studio?
A hotel room
A hotel room. The engineers set up their machines in one room and recorded the performers in another; for his second and last session, seven months later, they used an empty warehouse floor instead.
Q 05Where did Robert Johnson mostly perform to earn his living?
Street corners and juke joints
Street corners and juke joints. He drifted from town to town playing for tips, and to hold a crowd he would play the pop hits of the day as readily as his own dark blues.
Q 06Which Grammy award did Robert Johnson receive in 2006, almost seventy years after his death?
Lifetime Achievement
Lifetime Achievement. The Recording Academy gave its career prize to a man whose entire recording career had lasted only seven months.
Q 07Which British group's 1968 album Wheels of Fire popularised 'Crossroads'?
Cream
Cream. The trio taped its version live at San Francisco's Winterland in March 1968, and that fiery four-minute take turned Johnson's song into a standard that rock bands have covered ever since.
Q 08Which was Robert Johnson's most commercially successful record in his lifetime, selling up to 10,000 copies?
Terraplane Blues
It uses a car that will not start as an extended metaphor for a girlfriend's suspected infidelity.
Q 09Roughly how many songs make up Robert Johnson's entire recorded output?
30
About 30. He cut just 29 songs in five days of recording spread over 1936 and 1937, yet generations of musicians have gone on playing and praising that sliver of work ever since.
Q 10In which Texas city did Robert Johnson make his first recordings in November 1936?
San Antonio
San Antonio. The site is now so revered that in 2009 John Mellencamp went back to the very spot where Johnson had played, to record a song written for the occasion.
Q 11Robert Johnson's final recording session, in June 1937, took place in which city?
Dallas
Dallas. A modest hit from his first session got him invited back to Texas, and over one June weekend there he cut 'Love in Vain' and 'Me and the Devil Blues', among other songs.
Q 12Which English-born producer recorded Robert Johnson and later ran Columbia's country division?
Don Law
Don Law recalled Johnson as so shy that he played facing the wall, a picture that shaped the myth. Others think he was hiding his fingering or bouncing his sound off the corner.
Q 13Which record label first issued Robert Johnson's 78s in 1937 and 1938?
Vocalion
Vocalion pressed eleven Johnson 78s in his lifetime and one more after his death. CBS bought the label's parent company in 1938, which is how Columbia came to hold his recordings.
Q 21Near which Mississippi town did Robert Johnson die?
Greenwood
Greenwood. News of his death travelled so slowly that months later a New York producer was still trying to book him for a concert at Carnegie Hall.
Q 22Led Zeppelin borrowed the lemon-squeezing line of 'The Lemon Song' from which Robert Johnson song?
Traveling Riverside Blues
Traveling Riverside Blues sat unreleased for 23 years after Johnson's death. Led Zeppelin then lifted its bawdiest line and taped their own version of the song for the BBC in 1969.
Q 23Which album carries the Stones' country-tinged version of Robert Johnson's 'Love in Vain'?
Let It Bleed
Q 14Which 1961 Columbia album finally brought Robert Johnson's music to a wide audience?
King of the Delta Blues Singers
King of the Delta Blues Singers appeared when Columbia had no photograph of Johnson to use, so its cover is a painting of a guitarist whose face is never shown.
Q 15Which young Columbia signing was mesmerised by an advance copy of Robert Johnson's 1961 LP?
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan had never heard of Johnson when he was handed an acetate before its release. He later wrote that without that record, hundreds of his own lines would never have been written.
Q 16Which Delta bluesman remembered the young Robert Johnson as an embarrassingly bad guitarist?
Son House
Son House recalled crowds begging him to make the boy put the guitar down. When Johnson came back a dazzling player, House's talk of a pact with the devil fed the legend.
Q 17Which guitarist, said to practise in graveyards at night, became Robert Johnson's main teacher?
Ike Zimmerman
Ike Zimmerman is the plain answer to the devil story: Johnson's sudden mastery came from a long apprenticeship with him. Their graveyard sessions are said to have been chosen simply for the quiet.
Q 18The crossroads deal-with-the-devil story was originally told about which other, unrelated bluesman?
Tommy Johnson
Tommy Johnson's brother LeDell said Tommy told of a stranger at a crossroads who tuned his guitar and handed it back. The Coen brothers gave a guitarist of that name the same tale in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Q 19A note on the back of Robert Johnson's death certificate records a plantation owner's opinion that he died of what?
Syphilis
Syphilis was only the plantation owner's guess. The front of the certificate, tracked down by researcher Gayle Dean Wardlow in 1968, gives no cause at all, because no doctor ever saw Johnson.
Q 20In David 'Honeyboy' Edwards's telling, how was Robert Johnson killed?
He drank poisoned whiskey
He drank poisoned whiskey, Edwards said, laced by a jealous husband at a country dance. Edwards watched him try to play on while already ill, and Johnson died a few days later.
Let It Bleed gave the song extra chords and a country lilt. The cover grew so popular that it set off a long court fight over who owned Johnson's song.
Q 24In which city did Robert Johnson live as a small boy, before his years in the Delta?
Memphis
Memphis is where he lived as a boy in the household of his mother's husband. An older half-brother is said to have shown him his first guitar chords.
Q 25Which blues guitarist, son of Robert Johnson's partner Estella Coleman, learned guitar directly from him?
Robert Lockwood Jr.
Robert Lockwood Jr. was barely four years younger than Johnson, who all but adopted him. The link stuck for life: he performed as Robert Jr. Lockwood.
Q 26Which bluesman travelled the road with Robert Johnson as far as New York and Canada?
Johnny Shines
Johnny Shines recalled that Johnson would walk off in the middle of a set while the money was pouring in, and not be seen again for two or three weeks.
Q 27Which Mississippi bluesman recast Robert Johnson's 'Dust My Broom' as an electric Chicago-style hit in 1951?
Elmore James
Elmore James had played alongside Johnson in the late 1930s. His electric remake became a national hit, and he reused its opening slide riff on record after record.
Q 28Which magazine first published a photograph of Robert Johnson, in 1986?
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone ran it almost in passing, more than a dozen years after a researcher found it in the keeping of Johnson's family. Until then even his album covers had hidden his face.
Q 29How did retired truck driver Claud Johnson come to inherit Robert Johnson's music royalties?
Courts ruled him Johnson's son
Courts ruled him Johnson's son after a woman of 80 testified that she had seen his parents together in the woods in 1931. The 1998 ruling, upheld in 2000, was worth over $1 million.
Q 30Which British guitarist, on first hearing Robert Johnson, asked who the other guy playing with him was?
Keith Richards
Keith Richards was hearing two guitars where there was one: Johnson played bass line, rhythm and melody at once. It was bandmate Brian Jones who had put the record on.