Mrs. Annye Anderson

“An intimate memoir by blues legend Robert Johnson's stepsister, including new details about his family, music, influences, tragic death, and musical afterlife. Brother Robert does much to pull the blues master out of the fog of myth.” – Rolling Stone

Though Robert Johnson was only twenty-seven and relatively unknown at the time of his death in 1938, his enduring recordings have solidified his status as a progenitor of the Delta blues style. In Brother Robert, nonagenarian Annye C. Anderson sheds new light on a real-life figure largely obscured by his own legend: her stepbrother, Robert Johnson. For decades, Anderson and her family have ignored the tall tales of Johnson "selling his soul to the devil" and the speculative accounts that passed for biography. This book chronicles Johnson's unconventional path to stardom, from the harrowing story behind his birth, to his first strum of the guitar on Anderson's father's knee, to the recordings that would one day secure his legacy. Readers get Anderson's personal anecdotes and recollections passed down to Anderson by members of their family – the people who knew Johnson best.