Now, with an estate worth more than $1 million and new generations of fans embracing the blues, there's a new dispute: the singer's lineage ….
By Reed Branson, The Commercial Appeal Jackson, Miss.
GREENWOOD, Miss. - Robert Johnson, the nomadic Mississippi bluesman whose talent and myth are revered around the world, was buried 60 years ago in a pauper's grave somewhere near here.
Nobody, it seems, claimed the body of the dirt-poor blues musician. His death remains mysterious. His gravesite, disputed - as is much of Johnson's life and his mythical deal with the devil at a Delta crossroads.
Now, with an estate worth more than $1 million and new generations of fans embracing the blues, there's a new dispute: the singer's lineage. And the legal battle that will unfold in a courtroom here Monday among those who claim to be his heirs could prove unique in the annals of estate law.
"It's a tremendous inheritance and a potential stream of income for decades," says Willis Brumfield, the temporary administrator of the Johnson estate and former chancery clerk for Leflore County for 20 years. "I don't know of any other case . . . in Mississippi quite as involved or complex."
Claud L. Johnson, a 66-year-old gravel truck driver from Crystal Springs, Miss., will try to convince a Leflore County chancellor that he is the son of the blues singer.
"In this instance, we're trying to prove something that happened seven decades ago. We have to find people who were living then and still have the capacity to recall what they knew," said Jim Kitchens, attorney for Claud Johnson. "I think we can prove Claud is Robert Johnson's son."
An estate that was once little more than the intangible echoes of an artist, today has $1.3 million on deposit and is documented in 2 feet of legal pleadings archived in the picturesque Leflore County Courthouse on the banks of the Yazoo River in Greenwood.
One person to have benefited from Johnson's estate is manager Steve LaVere, a controversial archivist well-known in Memphis and national music circles. LaVere, who lives in California, could not be reached after repeated attempts over two weeks. In 1974, he signed a management contract with one of Johnson's half-sisters.
While the dispute here is over heirs, the outcome could ultimately affect whether anyone challenges LaVere's control.
(Memphis photographer Ernest Withers, in a pending civil case in U.S. District Court in Memphis, has accused LaVere of stealing the rights to photographs Withers loaned him.)
"There's a lot of people who don't necessarily wish LaVere wins this thing. There's a lot of ill feelings," said Gayle Dean Wardlow, who in 1968 discovered Robert Johnson's death certificate and authored the newly published Chasing that Devil Music.
"I don't have any ill feelings (toward LaVere), but he comes on like he owns the world."
Regardless, the legal battles are likely to rage on. This year, the court found that the half-sister and grandson of one of Johnson's half-sisters were legitimate relatives. Claud Johnson's claim, if found valid, would usurp their claim.
And a third man is appealing a court decision in an attempt to be established as a cousin.
"There's a great deal of interest and attention paid by many serious blues fans whether the artist or the heirs receive the benefits of the music they created," says Tom Freeland, an Oxford attorney and blues scholar. "There's also an extreme amount of interest in and not a great deal known about his life. Inevitably, some details will come out."
