Love in Vain

Recorded during the same 1937 Dallas sessions, "Love in Vain" reveals a completely different side of Robert Johnson's genius. Moving away from standard Delta blues structures, Johnson utilized a surprisingly sophisticated, almost jazz-like chord progression. He tenderly fingerpicked while singing a profoundly sorrowful narrative about watching a train take his lover away. The Rolling Stones recognized its structural brilliance decades later, adapting it into a devastating country-rock ballad on Let It Bleed.