Tommy Johnson was a pioneering Mississippi blues artist, born in 1896 on a plantation between Crystal Springs and Terry, whose distinctive falsetto moan and original songs strongly influenced his contemporaries and later performers. One of eleven children, he learned guitar from his older brother LeDell, ran away to the Delta as a young teenager, and returned two years later as an accomplished musician, later linking his development to a crossroads encounter with a mysterious figure. In 1916 he moved back to the Delta with LeDell and their wives, settled on a plantation in Drew, and renewed ties with bluesmen including Charley Patton, Willie Brown, and Dick Bankston. After further travels, he returned to the Crystal Springs area and performed locally with LeDell and his younger brothers Clarence and Mager, while continuing to travel widely, playing in the Delta with Charley Patton and regularly at parties and dances in Jackson with Rubin Lacy, Charlie McCoy, Walter Vinson, and Ishmon Bracey. His recordings for Victor and Paramount from 1928 to 1930 included “Canned Heat Blues,” “Big Road Blues,” “Maggie Campbell Blues,” “Bye Bye Blues,” “Big Fat Mama Blues,” and “Cool Drink of Water Blues,” and he also recorded with the New Orleans-based jazz group the Nehi Boys. Although he did not record after 1930, reportedly because of issues with his rights, he remained a popular performer in Crystal Springs and Jackson, and his songs were widely covered while his influence appeared in the recordings of Kokomo Arnold, the Mississippi Sheiks, Howlin’ Wolf, K. C. Douglas, Floyd Jones, Robert Nighthawk, and several locally documented blues musicians. Johnson, one of the most influential blues artists in Mississippi in the 1920s and 1930s, gave his final performance at a party in Crystal Springs and was buried in the Warm Springs Methodist Church cemetery north of town.