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Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. "Sweet Home Chicago" is a blues standard first recorded by Robert Johnson in 1936. Although he is often credited as the songwriter, several songs have been identified as precedents. The song has become a popular anthem for the city of Chicago despite ambiguity in Johnson's original lyrics. Numerous artists have interpreted the song in a variety of styles.
On November 23, 1936, in San Antonio, Texas, Robert Johnson recorded "Sweet Home Chicago". He changed the character of the song to one of aspirational migration, replacing "back to Kokomo" with "to Chicago", and replacing "that eleven light city" with another migrational goal "that land of California". Create an account to credit all your contributions to your name, receive rewards, status updates and get feedback from our community. To explain lyrics, select line or word and click "Explain".
Music, Songs & Lyrics
All five of Chicago's sports teams have played the song at their games in one form or another. “Sweet Home Chicago” is a blues standard first recorded by Robert Johnson in 1936. The song has become a popular anthem for the city of Chicago despite ambiguity in Johnson’s original lyrics. Don Law"Sweet Home Chicago" is a blues standard first recorded by Robert Johnson in 1936.
Johnson uses a driving guitar rhythm and a high, near-falsetto vocal for the song. His guitar accompaniment does not use Kokomo Arnold's bottleneck guitar style. Instead, he adapted the boogie piano accompaniments of Roosevelt Sykes to "Honey Dripper" and by Walter Roland to "Red Cross" to guitar. Leroy Carr's "Baby Don't You Love Me No More" shares the rhythmic approach and the feel of Johnson's initial two verses.
Comments
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly. General CommentI just can't stop listening to the long guitar solo to this, this song is very cool to listen to. The Blues Brothers, the fictional group fronted by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, performed it in the climatic concert scene of the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. In the song's intro, Belushi's character announces, "dedicate to the late great Magic Sam".
Johnson succeeded in evoking an exotic modern place, far from the South, which is an amalgam of famous migration goals for African Americans leaving the South. To later singers this contradictory location held more appeal than obscure Kokomo. Tommy McClennan's "Baby Don't You Want To Go" and Walter Davis's "Don't You Want To Go" were both based on Johnson's chorus. Later singers used Johnson's chorus and dropped the arithmetical verses. There you can add structure tags, correct typos or add missing words.
Eric Clapton
Duke included a songwriting credit for Roosevelt Sykes, who recorded the song as "Sweet Old Chicago" in 1955. Neither Sykes nor Parker included a reference to California, a practice that is followed by subsequent performers. As the song grew to be a homage to Chicago, the original lyrics that refer to California were altered in most subsequent renditions. The line "back to the land of California" is changed to "back to the same old place", and the line "I'm going to California" becomes "I'm going back to Chicago".
Indeed, California is mentioned in the song more than Chicago, both during this refrain and in one of the stanzas ("I'm goin' to California/ from there to Des Moines, Iowa"). These perplexing lyrics have been a source of controversy for many years. In the 1960s and 1970s, some commentators speculated this was a geographical mistake on Johnson's part.
Overall, it uses some sly moves with the right and left hand that make it sound more complicated than it is.. Using sleights of timing to, for instance, stick a treble side ornament in only when the bass-notes fretted work conveniently alongside it. In other words, it’s simpler than it sounds once you peel back the curtain.
However, Johnson was a sophisticated songwriter and used geographical references in a number of his songs. Johnson sang this as the first verse and used it as the refrain. Otherwise, his verses retained the structure of Arnold's recording, with similar counting verses.
Johnson’s small body of recordings, to many, serve as a textbook example of 1930s blues, as well as a musical virtuoso who transformed a multitude of styles into his own. Robert Johnson, known by many as the very archetype of a “bluesman,” is to both musicians and listeners highly influential for his recorded body of unique and highly powerful songs. A more sophisticated and humorous interpretation has the narrator pressuring a woman to leave town with him for Chicago, but his blatant geographic ignorance reveals his attempt at deceit. Writer Alan Greenberg mentions that Johnson had a remote relative who lived in Port Chicago, California, which could add ambiguity as to which Chicago the lyrics are actually referring.
Here are all the possible meanings and translations of the word sweet home chicago. In 1958, Junior Parker recorded the song as an upbeat ensemble shuffle, with harmonica accompaniment. Duke Records released it as a single, which reached number 13 on the Billboard R&B chart.
Finally, using the same tune, Sam Montgomery sang of a land "where the sweet old oranges grow" in a song by that name. It is unclear whether the reference to oranges was corrective of Johnson's geographical confusion or reflective of an earlier song that Johnson changed. Like Chicago, California was a common such destination in many Great Depression-era songs, books, and movies. Music writer Max Haymes argues that Johnson's intention was "the land of California or that sweet home Chicago". Another suggests it is a reference to Chicago's California Avenue, a thoroughfare that predates Johnson's recording and which runs from the far south to the far north side of the city. The lyrics only obliquely refer to Chicago itself, in the song's refrain, where the song narrator pleads for a woman to go with him back to "that land of California, to my sweet home Chicago".
As a blues standard, numerous artists have recorded “Sweet Home Chicago”. Steve LaVere, the manager of Johnson’s recording legacy, commented, “It’s like ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ to the blues crowd”. I dont no what it is about it, it just seems right to listen to. Its just a perfect blues song, and im lucky to have been blessed with knowledge of robert johnson.
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