Sweet Home Chicago
On the first day of his historic recording career, 25-year-old Robert Johnson sat before a microphone in Room 414 of a San Antonio hotel and recorded a song that would outlive him by centuries. "Sweet Home Chicago" was Johnson's upbeat adaptation of older blues tunes like "Kokomo Blues." He anchored the track with a propulsive, walking bassline on his acoustic guitar, singing with an urgent, yearning voice about escaping to a geographical fantasy of California via Chicago. It eventually evolved into the ultimate, inescapable jamming standard for every electric blues band on the planet.
The floating-verse lineage for this recording (who else recorded it, where the melody or lyric traveled, and how it was adapted) is still being mapped. This section will trace the song's DNA across the archive.
Contributions welcome at OlMrRead@ccblues.com.