Hazlehurst, Mississippi, Where Robert Johnson Was Born

Hazlehurst became Copiah County's seat in eighteen seventy-two, replacing Gallatin after the railroad arrived and shifted the economic center of gravity. The county seat went where the tracks went. The town was named for George Hazlehurst, a railroad engineer who surveyed the line.

But Hazlehurst is remembered today because of a child born here, most likely on May eighth, nineteen eleven: Robert Johnson. The man who would become the King of the Delta Blues grew up in Tunica County and Memphis, but came back to the Hazlehurst area in his early twenties to hone his playing with guitarist Ike Zimmerman. He recorded only twenty-nine songs between nineteen thirty-six and nineteen thirty-seven, but those recordings shaped the entire arc of American blues and rock. The house where Johnson was born has been moved to downtown Hazlehurst, where a Mississippi Blues Trail marker now stands.