For the last twenty plus years, my passion has been the music of Robert Johnson, the delta blues guitar player who died on August 16, 1938 at the age of 27 after recording only 29 songs. Of course, we all know the story about the devil, the crossroads, selling and trading souls, and all, is fiction but it was not the story that first got my attention about Robert Johnson, anyway. It was his unique sound and playing of the guitar.

After hearing Robert Johnson for the first time, I was immediately convinced he had discovered something very nontraditional about playing the guitar and I wanted it really badly. I became obsessed with Robert Johnson’s music. I was absolutely sure, at the time, there were many other guitar players, besides me, who wanted to learn how to play guitar like Robert Johnson did. So, I wrote down my own discoveries about his music, technique, and guitar tunings and eventually put it all in a book.

After about fifteen years, Finding Robert Johnson, the Official Guide to the CrossGuitar Method and Secret Devil Tuning was finally finished and published in 2006. By then, there were several other books already in the marketplace about the music of Robert Johnson, although my findings were very different from what others had published. Except for the nine “slide” songs in open-G and/or open-A tuning, my conclusions as for the guitar tunings used on the remaining twenty songs were completely different.

After many hours, days, weeks and even years of listening, analyzing, and testing the complete repertoire of Robert Johnson, I discovered some of his songs were played in a completely different key from the open tuning he was using; a technique I named CrossGuitar. I had come to realize that this particular playing technique was very similar to cross harp. Should you play harmonica, you understand what I am talking about. I have played harmonica since I was ten years old, so I was very familiar with the cross harp technique.

Not only did I find Robert Johnson’s approach to the guitar unique, I also concludeded he had used a dominant-seventh chord as an open guitar tuning for many of his songs. This particular open guitar tuning was unorthodox and not used by any of Johnson’s contemporaries at the time and until Finding Robert Johnson, the Official Guide to the CrossGuitar Method and Secret Devil Tuning was written, it had never been published. The dominant seventh chord contains a unique tritone (a diminished fifth or augmented fourth) and is referred to in classical music as “the devil in music.” Although, I never believed the “devil at the crossroad” myth surrounding Robert Johnson, I named this tuning devil tuning. Besides, I knew the name would be easily recognized and could relate back to Johnson. The real person who claimed he had actually sold his soul to the devil as an exchange for a secret guitar tuning, as told by his brother LeDell, was Tommy Johnson. If this is the tuning that Tommy Johnson was referring to when the devil retuned his guitar at the crossroad and handed it back to him, then the secret is out and the devil at the crossroad story can be laid to rest once and for all, because, you see, I never went to the crossroad or sold my sold to the devil.

Currently, it seems many guitar players still want to play guitar like Robert Johnson did. However, there are still those who disagree to the guitar tunings Robert Johnson used. Total agreement as to these tunings may never happen. A small riff or phrase in a particular Johnson song, exactly as he plays it on record, can totally eliminate an assumed tuning. To accurately duplicate the twenty-nine songs recorded by Robert Johnson, note-for-note, can be a life’s work. I have to agree with Eric Clapton when he said, “Robert Johnson was the greatest folk blues guitar player that ever lived.” When it comes to delta blues fingerstyle and slide guitar, Robert Johnson was the absolute best, period!

The book, Finding Robert Johnson, the Official Guide to the CrossGuitar Method and Secret Devil Tuning, is not only a “how to” guitar teaching book showing the twenty Robert Johnson’s songs in question and outlined in a new horizontal tab format using devil tuning, it also includes a complete chapter about Robert Johnson’s life. One chapter takes the reader into the recording studios of all five recording sessions of Robert Johnson in 1936 and 1937. There the songs of all five recording sessions are detailed in a sequential order, step by step, explaining how Robert Johnson could have tuned his guitar, what key he was playing in, where the capo was placed on the fretboard, and even what guitar playing pattern he was using, according to my conclusions. There are no stones left unturned. You may be convinced that this devil tuning and the CrossGuitar method of playing the guitar as explained in the book, Finding Robert Johnson, the Official Guide to the CrossGuitar Method and Secret Devil Tuning, just well may have been Robert Johnson’s best kept secret which he took to his grave.