A well-researched biography of Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson that emphasizes the intentionality of his career as a musician rather the mythical and mystical phenom often depicted. Conforth demonstrates that Johnson saw his musicianship as a way to escape a life of backbreaking labor in favor of one of excitement, novelty, physical and sexual freedom, and even wealth and fame. Johnson could do things with a guitar that no one else had thought of, but this talent was not just inherent; his near-constant playing at jukes, parties, dances, and street corners honed his skills. Conforth traces his work on the way to recording sessions in Texas, where he shaped his sound and jealously guarded his technique from those who might imitate him. A tour of northern cities—Chicago, Detroit, and NYC—near the end of his life suggests what might have been had the twenty-six-year-old loved to old age. The trip itself must have been a revelation to him, as he moved through neighborhoods of urban blacks who had escaped the South’s poverty and race terrorism. Only the electric guitar, just coming into wide use in 1938, seemed to stymie him: “Although he like the volume, Robert told the guitarist…he ‘couldn’t make it talk’ like he wanted” (245). Poisoned by a jealous husband, Johnson never got the chance to move with the times, and that’s a terrible shame.