Illustration by Robert Crumb
If I hadn’t heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down—that I wouldn’t have felt free enough or upraised enough to write.
— Bob Dylan
Chronicles: Volume One
Wikipedia:
“Come On in My Kitchen” is a blues song by Robert Johnson. Johnson recorded the song on November 23, 1936 at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas – his first recording session. The melody is based on the song cycle by the string band the Mississippi Sheiks, “Sitting on Top of the World” (1930)/Things About Coming My Way (1931)/I’ll Be Gone, Long Gone (1932)/Hitting The Numbers (1934).
Johnson’s arrangement on slide guitar (in open tuning, commonly thought to be open G) is based on Tampa Red’s recording of the same tune with the title “Things ‘Bout Coming My Way”. Tampa Red had recorded an instrumental version in 1936, and the song had been recorded earlier by him in 1931, and by Kokomo Arnold in 1935 (Tampa Red may in fact have been the first to use the melody with his song “You Got To Reap What You Sow” (1929) based on Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell’s version).
Johnson’s recording was released on the Vocalion label (no. 03563) as a “race record” – cheap records for the black consumer market. The song was among those compiled on the King of the Delta Blues Singers LP in the 1960s. (A slower alternate take was also later found and released on CD collections; this version also has ten extra lines of lyrics.)
Come on in my kitchen by Robert Johnson:
Continue reading The Best Songs: Come on in my kitchen by Robert Johnson
“I am a high school English teacher, but have also taught French and. Photography. My passion for many years, besides photography and music, has been baseball. I coached at the same high school for 35 years and have had 4 players play in the Major Leagues. I also coached for 10 summers in the Alaska League, a college-level league, 5 summers in Anchorage and 5 in Honolulu, Hawaii. My photographic interests these days revolve primarily around travel. My wife and I go somewhere every summer, our favorite destinations being Cuba, Italy, Croatia, Morocco, France and Southeast Asia, and numerous other destinations. I am currently in the laborious process of scanning most of my thousands of rock n roll slides and negatives. Feel free to email me if you have questions about artists you may want to see photographs of 
