Chords for Deals with the Devil: A Brief Musical History

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If folktales are to be believed, the Devil [G] seems to have quite [Gm] the interest in [Dm] music.
Whether it's the satanic imagery that's [E] ever-pervasive in metal,
or the legendary fiddle duel in The Devil Went [Am] Down to Georgia,
it would appear that the Prince of Darkness [G] likes a good tune as much as you and I.
But there's one tale of the Devil in [E] music that captivates like no other,
and it's one that's been told [Am] for centuries.
The Deal with the Devil.
[E] Nearly everyone knows this kind of story now, and that's because it has a rich history dating back several centuries.
Let's take a closer look.
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_ _ [C] _ [E] _ [Dm] _ _ Deals with the Devil have [F] appeared in Western mythology for a long time,
but they really first started catching [D] on in the late 1500s,
thanks to a man named Johann Faust.
Faust was a German alchemist [Dm] and magician who was alleged to have made a pact with the demon Mephistopheles in return for his soul.
His talent [D] became famous after being documented in Christopher Marlowe's play, The Tragical History of Dr.
[Dm] Faustus.
A hundred years later, [D] the myth first made its way into music, thanks to Giuseppe Tartini.
In 1713, the Devil appeared to [Gm] Tartini in a [D] dream, and Tartini made a pact for [Eb] his soul.
In the [Gm] dream, he gave the Devil a violin, and the [Cm] Devil performed the most [G] beautiful sonata he had ever [D] heard.
Immediately upon waking up, Tartini tried [A] to write down [Gm] what he heard, and created [Bm] the Violin Sonata [G] in G,
[Cm] better known as the Devil's Trill Sonata.
[Gm] Despite the success of this piece, Tartini [D] wrote that his [G] effort was
so inferior [Bb] to what I had heard, that if I could have subsisted on [Eb] other means,
I would have broken my [Bb] violin and abandoned music forever.
[Eb] It would seem that the Devil's [Dbm] interest in violin didn't [Db] wane, as [F] rumors of another violinist co-horting with the [Bb] Devil came about a century later.
Niccolo [Em] Paganini [G] is considered by some to be the greatest violin [Em] virtuoso ever to have [B] lived.
He started music at the age of five on the mandolin, was [Em] composing by the age of seven, and performing live at [Eb] twelve.
[B] And he was such a virtuoso that the [G] public began to surmise that his talents [Em] must have come from dark [B] dealings.
On top of his skills, [G] Paganini had [F] a pale, [Em] lanky look, with long [B] fingers and flaming eyes.
The legends of his performances are something else to behold.
[G] Some reports say [Em] audiences made the sign of the cross as they [B] watched him perform, to protect themselves from evil.
[Em] Other stories have him continuing to play flawless notes on broken [B] strings, and contorting his body into weird shapes [Em] while performing.
[G] One fan even left a [B] Vienna concert, claiming he had seen the Devil aiding [Em] Paganini.
[B] At the age of 54, [Em] Paganini [B] died.
And one of the last things he did before he [C] died, was send away a priest who [G] had come to perform last [Bm] rites.
This [G] cemented his association with the Devil in many people's minds.
Less than [D] a hundred years [Dm] later, legends of the Devil meddling in musical affairs started once more.
[D] In the 1920s and 30s, a pair of blues musicians in the Mississippi Delta are alleged to have run-ins with the Devil.
First came Tommy Johnson, a guitar [A] virtuoso known for his eerie yodeling.
[D] Johnson's brother Liddell spread the legend of Tommy's Faustian bargain.
One night, the story [Dm] goes, Tommy Johnson went to the crossroads just before midnight,
[D] and played guitar until a big black man came up to him, took his guitar, and tuned it.
After that, Tommy Johnson could [Dm] play the guitar like no man alive.
Outside of the alleged deal with the Devil, [D] and his influence on blues music, Johnson's life was rather uneventful though.
That can't be sad for Robert Johnson, [Dm] unrelated to Tommy, another musician who apparently made a Faustian bargain.
Johnson was one of the most impressive guitar players of his time, and one of the most important musicians of all time.
And when he was a young man in the late [A] 1920s, he started to play guitar, [G] but apparently he had no [D] talent for it.
Fellow blues man Son House famously remembered how Johnson played the guitar.
Such a racket you never heard.
It'd make the people [Dm] mad, you know.
They'd come out and say, [G] why don't y'all go in and [D] get that guitar away from that boy?
He's running people crazy with it.
I'd come back in and I'd scold him about it.
Then one [A] day, Robert Johnson left Robinsonville, where he had been living.
[G] When he came back, [D] he was a changed man.
Johnson returned with [Bm] incredible guitar skills, sliding [N] around the neck seamlessly while maintaining [B] steady rhythms.
Legend has it when Keith Richards [G] first heard Johnson play, he thought it was two guitar players.
Rumors started to grow that, like Tommy Johnson before [B] him, Robert had sold his soul to the devil at midnight [Gbm] at a crossroads.
And if you listen to Robert [G] Johnson's music, it's easy to believe it too.
Atop his virtuoso play, Johnson's lyrics have a haunting [D] desperation to them, and he even sings of his relationship with the devil.
Hellhound on my Trail is a masterful song that takes the [G] trope of the rambling [D] blues man and puts a new spin on it.
The reason Johnson is a traveling, wandering vagabond is because he's got hellhounds following him.
You could even look at this [G] song as the middle of a trilogy [D] of songs chronicling his run-in with the devil.
Crossroad Blues is where he sells his soul.
And then the trilogy ends with Me and the Devil Blues, which has some of the most haunting openings the devil _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ came for Robert Johnson's soul.
Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband [Dm] and died at just 27 years [G] old.
Since Robert [D] Johnson, the devil has continued his relationship with music,
but no Faustian bargains like that of Paganini or Robert Johnson have been struck, at least not that we know of.
Though it's been nearly a century since Johnson, so maybe it's time for the devil to dip his toes back into the music game.
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