The cover of
Brother Robert shows the third known photograph of Johnson, never before seen by the public. Anderson and her older half-sister, who she called Sister Carrie, kept that photo close for decades, storing it in a box that originally held sewing machine oil.
Hachette Books
Anderson s story begins with her family s roots in Hazlehurst, Miss. including her first memory of Johnson in Memphis when he swept her up and carried her up a set of steps like lightning and spans the decades after her brother s death, when a mostly-white audience invented the story of Johnson selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads, a myth that was more racist caricature than anything having to do with his actual life.
Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson in June. Ben James
Blues legend Robert Johnson has been mythologized as a backwoods loner, his talent the result of selling his soul to the devil. Wrong and wrong again, according to Johnson s younger stepsister, who lives in Amherst, Mass. She tells his true story in
Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson, a memoir about growing up with her brother she published in June.
Her name is Annye Anderson, but unless you re older than she is and fat chance of that, as she s 94 you better call her Mrs. Anderson. People say, Don t you have a first name? Anderson says from the couch in her living room. I say, Yes, I do. And they wait for it. But I tell them, Mrs. Anderson will do just fine.
Blues brother: Amherst woman pens family memoir about fabled musician Robert Johnson
Annye Anderson’s memoir about her stepbrother, the famous bluesman Robert Johnson, features a previously unseen photograph of the guitarist one of just three photos known to exist of him.
Annye Anderson outside her old family home in 2018 in Memphis, Tennessee, where she once lived with Robert Johnson. Photo by and courtesy of Preston Lauterbach
Historian and co-writer Preston Lauterbach with Annye Anderson by a mural in Memphis that celebrates her beloved stepbrother, bluesman Robert Johnson. Photo courtesy of Preston Lauterbach
Robert Johnson’s music was revived for a larger audience in the 1960s by British rockers such as Eric Clapton, then was snatched up by white publishers, leaving Johnson’s family with nothing.