Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson recorded only 29 songs before dying in 1938 at approximately 27 years of age, yet those recordings—made in two sessions in San Antonio and Dallas in 1936 and 1937—became the foundation of the entire blues canon. His influence is so profound that Howlin' Wolf listed Johnson as his primary inspiration, and Eric Clapton called Johnson "the most important blues singer who ever lived." Johnson's "King of the Delta Blues Singers" album sold just 5,000 copies on its 1961 release but had reached roughly 1 million by 1990. Despite this famously small recorded catalog, his songs have been covered by over 1,000 artists, and his lyrics about Faustian bargains remain a defining theme of the genre.