Cross Road Blues

ARC producer Don Law set up a makeshift recording studio in Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio. On the last day of a grueling multi-day session, a 25-year-old Robert Johnson recorded two takes of 'Cross Road Blues.' He accompanied his anguished vocals with an aggressive, polyphonic slide guitar technique that sounded like two men playing at once. While it only sold modestly upon its 1937 release in the Delta, Eric Clapton later famously adapted the song with Cream in 1968, transforming a lonely Mississippi acoustic lament into the a foundational example for heavy, electric blues-rock.