Growing Up in Memphis
Charles Dodds had to move out of Mississippi to Memphis as a result of the problems he was having with some Hazelhurst landowners. He was forced by a lynch mob to leave town. Julia left Hazlehurst with her baby Robert, but two years later, she sent the boy to Memphis to live with her distant husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.
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Robert grew up in Memphis, learning the basics of the guitar from one of his brothers. Then, when he was around eight or nine in 1919, Robert went back to live with his mother and her new husband in the Mississippi Delta plantation. Her husband was known as Dusty Willis, who was 24 years younger than her.