Robert Johnson
name: label: Collection Collector
content: McCormick, Mack
setName: label: See more items in
content: Robert "Mack" McCormick Collection
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1910-2015, undated
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAH.AC.1485, Series 7
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: This series is the result of many years of extensive research and collecting data for what was to be a definitive publication relating to the life of bluesman Robert Johnson. Tentatively titled "The Biography of a Phantom," McCormick settled on the title who "Killed Robert Johnson" (WKRJ) connecting many threads of the story by marking his research files with "WKRJ."  The series is divided into two subseries: Subseries 7.1: Research, and Subseries 7.2: Who Killed Robert Johnson manuscript dating from 1955-2015.

Archivists and curators have encountered unverifiable and sometimes suspect information in McCormick's research materials and manuscript drafts pertaining to Robert Johnson; it is apparent that McCormick sometimes falsified documents and in other instances deliberately planted false information within his research materials and manuscript drafts. More specifically, while McCormick's original recordings and notes associated with his 1972 interviews with Johnson's sisters Carrie Thompson and Bessie Hines have been removed from public access pending an ongoing Ethical Returns investigation, along with the portions of his manuscript drafts that drew from them, in later manuscript versions and notes found in Series 7.1 and 7.2, McCormick fabricated observations and stories from those interviews, at times with an aim to thwart potential litigation directed at him, and/or to challenge various family members' heirship claims to the estate of Robert Johnson. Caution thus is warranted, and independent verification encouraged before relying upon the findings reported in these research notes and book manuscript drafts, particularly regarding McCormick's interactions with Robert Johnson's family members. For context and examples pertaining to McCormick's fabrications and the motives behind them as related to this series, see the Editor's Preface and Afterword in Robert "Mack" McCormick, Biography of a Phantom: a Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey, edited by John W. Troutman (Washington DC: Smithsonian Books, 2023).