Robert Johnson Estate: 1998

views updated

Robert Johnson Estate: 1998

Claim: That Claud Johnson was the biological son and sole heir of Robert L. Johnson
Claimant: Claud L. Johnson
Contestants: Robert M. Harris, Annye C. Anderson
Claimant's Lawyers: James W. Kitchens, Nancy A. Olson
Contestants' Lawyers: Stephen E. Nevas, Karla Kithcart
Judge: Jon M. Barnwell
Place: Greenwood, Mississippi
Dates of Hearing: October 12-15, 1998
Decision: In favor of claimant

SIGNIFICANCE: Mississippi probate and paternity laws helped to settle the estate of a major figure in American folklore.

When Robert Johnson was buried in a pauper's grave, it seemed unlikely that the itinerant musician would be remembered by anyone but the working people he had entertained at country dances and juke joints. In fact, Johnson's music and mysterious life became one of the enduring legends of American musical history, but not until decades after his death. The question of who should profit from his genius took even longer to answer.

Johnson was not well known outside of the Mississippi delta during his lifetime. His astonishing musical talent, coupled with the low opinion of blues musicians held by church going members of the African American community, stoked rumors that Johnson had sold his soul to the devil in order to play and sing so well. After he was poisoned by a jealous husband at a dance near Greenwood, Mississippi, and died horribly a few days later on August 16, 1938, it was whispered that Satan had claimed Johnson's soul. The 27-year old musician's entire known legacy consisted of 29 recorded songs. As country blues faded with the advent of other musical styles, so did interest in Robert Johnson.

In the 1960s, a resurgent interest in rural American music made the blues popular again. Johnson's mastery of the guitar and the imagery of his lyrics distinguished him from his contemporaries, creating plenty of curiosity about his mysterious life. The rediscovery also began generating a lot of money, not only from sales of Johnson's small but influential body of recordings, but also from enormous publishing and performance royalties generated whenever musicians like Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones recorded new versions of his songs.

It was assumed that Johnson had died without leaving any heirs. In the 1970s, however, blues researcher Stephen LaVere located Johnson's half-sister, Carrie Thompson, who was living in Maryland, unaware of her long-dead brother's influence on popular music. By contrast, LaVere was aware of the profits inherent in a claim to Johnson's as yet unprobated estate, as well as the publishing rights to two photographs of the musician, whose likeness had never been seen by modern admirers. On November 20, 1974, Thompson assigned all of her rights to Robert Johnson's works, the photographs, and any other materials concerning Johnson she possessed over to LaVere. In return, LaVere agreed to pay Thompson 50 percent of all royalties collected by him as a result of his efforts to capitalize on Johnson's musical and artistic legacy. Thompson's claim to be Johnson's only surviving heir was legally assumed to be true. If any other descendants should come forward, sharing profits with them would be her responsibility, not LaVere's.

In 1981, as Thompson's health failed, she granted power of attorney over her affairs to Annye Anderson, a half-sister by her father Charles Dodds' second marriage. In 1982, Anderson's lawyer advised her to choose an attorney in Mississippi, the place of Johnson's death, so that his estate could be officially probated. Thompson died in 1983, leaving Anderson and Thompson's grandson, Robert Harris, as the only known heirs to Johnson's legacy and revenue from the LaVere agreement. When a formal petition to open the estate of Robert L. Johnson in the chancery court of Leflore County, Mississippi, was finally filed on June 1, 1989, Anderson was appointed administratrix.

An Unknown Heir

Anderson's control of the Johnson estate seemed secure. On February 19, 1992, however, a retired gravel truck driver from Crystal Springs, Mississippi, filed a petition in which he claimed to be the son and sole heir of the dead guitarist. Claud Johnson swore that his mother had told him throughout his childhood that Robert Johnson was his father.

Claud Johnson's initial claim was dismissed after Anderson's attorneys argued that Johnson had missed a statutory deadline for presenting himself as an heir. Under a Mississippi law designed to equitably settle all existing pre-1981 claims by "illegitimate" children seeking inheritances from intestate fathers, such claims were required to be filed and adjudicated within three years of July 1, 1981. Claud Johnson's claim was filed years after the 1984 deadline.

When Johnson appealed, the court focused on his contention that Anderson had not performed her administrative duties properly. Appellate judges agreed that Anderson's failure to properly open the Johnson estate in 1982 and seek out possible heirs had benefited her, to the detriment of Claud Johnson. On March 26, 1996, the court reversed the earlier ruling. Waiving the 1984 deadline in the interest of fairness, the court allowed Claud to prosecute his claim to be Robert L. Johnson's son and heir.

The paternity issue came before the Leflore County Court on October 12, 1998. Claud Johnson's birth certificate, which identified his father as "R. L. Johnson, laborer," was introduced to establish that Claud was born on December 16, 1931. His mother, Virgie Jane Cain (formerly Smith), testified in a videotaped deposition that she had been intimate with Robert Johnson—and Johnson alone—in March 1931, nine months before Claud was born. The tryst, Cain said, took place in a wooded area by a Copiah County road.

Elderly witnesses agreed that there had been a relationship between Virgie Smith and Robert Johnson. Eighty-year-old Eula Mae Williams startled the court when she testified that she had watched Virgie and Robert making love in the woods in March of 1931. Williams unapologetically testified that she too had been in the woods with a man, with whom she witnessed what must have been Claud Johnson's conception.

On October 15, 1998, Judge Jon Barnwell declared that Claud was the son of Robert Johnson. The judgment entitled Claud to an inheritance of over $1.3 million. Lawyers for Anderson and Harris contested the ruling, questioning the identity of the "R. L. Johnson" listed on Claud's birth certificate and arguing that a note on Robert Johnson's death certificate suggested that he suffered from syphilis and was therefore sterile. Despite uncertainty about where the musician was actually buried, attorneys also wanted DNA proof of kinship between Claud and Robert Johnson.

On June 15, 2000, the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the Leflore County decision, ruling that Claud Johnson was in all likelihood the son of the blues master. The court dismissed the scribble on the back of the death certificate as unreliable. Robert Johnson's 1931 marriage to a woman who died giving birth to a stillborn child further suggested to the court that he had not been sterile. In rebuffing the demand for DNA evidence, the court borrowed an image from Johnson's "Me and the Devil Blues."

Such proof "would be nigh impossible to obtain since Johnson's grave site is unknown," wrote Justice Mike Mills. "As far as we know, Johnson is buried down by the highway side, so 'his old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride.'"

—Tom Smith