Practically all that remains of Robert Johnson, the blues guitarist and singer many consider to be the father of rock and roll, are two photographs and 29 songs.
Almost everything else about his life and death is in dispute, from the folk tale that he sold his soul to the devil for his musical skills to the circumstances surrounding his murder in 1938 at the age of 27.
At least three different sites in Greenwood, Miss., are purported to be Johnson's grave.
Despite this vagueness, or maybe because of it, everyone froMick Jagger to Prince, from Martin Scorsese to Henry Winkler has been involved in plans to produce a movie based on this blues guitarist's life.
Out of nearly a dozen projects, nothing has been released besides "Crossroads," a film starring Ralph Macchio, which is loosely based on the search for one of Johnson's lost songs, and "The Search for Robert Johnson," a British documentary in which the blues musician John Hammond explores Johnson's legacy.
Now another Johnson project has been completed. Peter Meyer, a Dallas filmmaker, has spent the last eight years working on a docudrama titled "Can't You Hear the Wind Howl: The Life and Music of Robert Johnson."
Through re-enactments and interviews, the film tells what Mr. Meyer believes to be the life story of Robert Johnson.
It features Danny Glover narrating the documentary portions and Kevin Moore, a latter-day blues guitarist known as Keb' Mo', as Johnson.
In a recent interview, Mr. Meyer said he had originally hoped to have Mr. Moore perform the songs.
But Johnson's techniques proved to be so fiendishly difficult to duplicate that they decided to reduce the noise and hiss on some of Johnson's original recordings and have Mr. Moore pretend to play and sing the songs.
"It still wasn't easy," said Mr. Moore, who also performed the film's incidental music.
"It's very difficult music to copy. It's hard enough to be myself from night to night."
For Mr. Meyer, making the film turned out to be a very expensive journey. Not because of the difficulty in piecing together Johnson's life, but because of the cost in getting the rights to film the two photographs of Johnson and to show, for the first time, a letter Johnson wrote while he was dying.
Mr. Meyer says he hopes to release the movie early next year through either theaters or television. But don't expect it to be the last word on the legendary bluesman.
As Johnson sang in "From Four Till Late," "When I leave this town. . . . you'll have a great, long story to tell."