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In the last year of his life, Robert Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois. He spent some time in Memphis and traveled through the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas. By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as so-called race records.

His death occurred on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27 at a little country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles from Greenwood.

There are a number of accounts and theories regarding the events preceding Johnson's death. One of these is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance. One version of this rumor says she was the wife of the juke joint owner, while another suggests she was a married woman he had been secretly seeing. Researcher Mack McCormick claims to have interviewed Johnson's alleged poisoner in the 1970s, and obtained a tacit admission of guilt from the man. When he was offered an open bottle of whiskey, his friend and fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson knocked the bottle out of his hand, informing him that he should never drink from an offered bottle that has already been opened. Robert Johnson allegedly said, "don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand". Soon after, he was offered another open bottle and accepted it. That bottle was laced with strychnine. Johnson is said to have survived the initial poisoning only to succumb to pneumonia three days later, in his weakened state. His life was short but his music would serve as the root source for an entire generation of blues and rock and roll musicians.

The precise location of his grave remains a source of ongoing controversy, and three different markers have been erected at supposed burial sites outside of Greenwood. Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Little Zion church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A marker was placed at this location in 2002.

Among the Mississippi Delta bluesmen believed to have exerted the strongest influences on Johnson's music are Charley Patton, Willie Brown, Tommy Johnson, and Son House. Peter Guralnick, in Searching for Robert Johnson, quotes Son House, "We'd all play for the Saturday night balls, and there'd be this little boy standing around. That was Robert Johnson. He was just a little boy then. He blew harmonica and he was pretty good with that, but he wanted to play guitar."