Robert Johnson

Robert Leroy 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. Eric Clapton called Johnson the most important blues singer who ever lived, and his King of the Delta Blues Singers album sold 5,000 copies in 1961 before reaching 1 million by 1990.