Two men are trying to find Robert Johnson's crossroads.

Where did blues legend make deal with devil? 

1991 By Steve Walton 
Clarion-Ledger 

Bradley Seidman and Jeff Twiss say their research will end the decades-old debate in blues folklore about where 1930s musician Robert Johnson sold his soul to Satan. 

Johnson, according to legend, met the devil at a desolate crossroads somewhere in the Delta and traded his soul for blues greatness. Johnson left the meeting able to play the acoustic guitar better than anybody, but the devil had rights to his soul, says the story.

"Robert Johnson has become such a mythological person, it's getting harder to separate fact from fiction. I know the deal went down, I just want to find out where," said Seidman, 36, who lives in Chicago and uses Bradley Lastname as the signature for his surrealist paintings. 

Columbia Pictures used the Johnson myth as the basis for its 1986 movie Crossroads. The $10 million motion picture was filmed at several Delta locations and used an intersection on a plantation east of Beulah in Bolivar County as the legendary crossroads. 

Several crossroads have been called the site of the devil's deal, but none has been confirmed and many people doubt the story's truth. 

"I don't think it was a particular crossroads. That's sort of a mythical place," said Malcolm White of Hal and Mal's restaurant and nightclub in Jackson. Tourists often ask White about the crossroads' location. "I get a couple a month," White said. 

"I don't know about the crossroads' credibility. It's kind of a joke," said Jim O'Neal. founding editor of Living Blues magazine and owner of Rooster Blues Records and Stackhouse Record Shop in Clarksdale.

"I guess it depends on your beliefs, whether such a deal could be made at all."

"Thing is, he sold his soul to the devil, he got paid off pretty late. His songs are on the charts now, 52 years after his death," O'Neal said, laughing.

Johnson's songs include Crossroad Blues, Me and The Devil Blues and Hellhound on Aly Trail.

Johnson died Aug. 16, 1938, 27 years after his birth in Hazlehurst. Some say he was poisoned by a jealous husband, while others say he was stabbed to death in a juke-joint scuffle. 

"What I'm doing could easily be passed off as flippant or nonsense," Seidman said. 

Indeed, the pair's "research" is less than scientific A lot less. They plan to dig dirt from tour Delta crossroad sites this weekend and have a 1-ounce sample of the dirt weighed film time in January. The four sites were chosen from Living Blues magazine, which had an article on the crossroads debate in its November-December issue. 

Seidman could not explain where he got the hypothesis. 

The location where his soul was sold. that soil is going to weigh differently," Seidman said of the 1- ounce dirt samples. "It Will just make the scales go wild. It will be like the needle of a magnetic compass at the North Pole. That's a good comparison." They base their hypothesis on parapsychological research which claims the soul has weight, Seidman said. Parapsychology is the branch of psychology that studies psychic phenomena, such as Telepathy and telekinesis. Seidman claims to have no special powers.

 Twiss, 36, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Morton, laughed at a couple of Seidman's remarks. "I guess it was just a laugh of joy," Twiss said after Seid-man said his research will benefit everyone. 

Can I go back and change something. I think the correct word is delight — joy inaccurate," he said later. 

Twiss also speculated about why the dirt would weigh differently where .Johnson dealt with the devil. 

"When you buy something, you want to examine it, so when Johnson handed his soul over, some probably spilled," Twiss said. "And there might be some soil erosion." 

Seidman said skeptics would be people irritated at themselves for not thinking of doing this research first. Even skeptics would demand to know the results of their work, he said. 

"This is a research project," Seid-man said with a little irritation in his voice. "There's no ulterior mo-tive. I'm not selling anything. This isn't a publicity stunt. Its research."