78 RPM - Robert Johnson - Cross Road Blues / Ramblin' On My Mind - Vocalion - USA

78 RPM Record

Artist:	Robert Johnson
Label:	Vocalion
Country:	USA
Catalogue:	03519
Date:	20 Apr 1937
Format:	10"
Genre:	Blues
Collection:	I Own It I Want It
Community:	2 Own, 8 Want
Price Guide:	$13763
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PRICE GUIDE

$13763

Track	Artist	Title	Composer	Rating
A	Robert Johnson	Cross Road Blues	Robert Johnson	6.0 Rate
B	Robert Johnson	Ramblin' On My Mind	Robert Johnson	7.0 Rate

Notes

Vocal Blues with Guitar Accompaniment.
Recorded on November 23 & 27, 1936, San Antonio, Texas.
Also issued on Perfect 7-05-81 (800 copies) and Romeo 7-05-81 (100 copies) in May 1937.

Images

Comments and Reviews


BigBadBluesMan 18th Feb 2015



BigBadBluesMan 18th Feb 2015



fixbutte 1st Sep 2014		And here is something about the one record of Willie Brown that has been found ("Future Blues” has actually been covered by artists like Canned Heat, Dr. John and Johnny Winter) and the two records that have not surfaced yet, although they were apparently pressed, Paramount 13001 (“Grandma Blues” b/w “Sorry Blues”) and Paramount 13099 (“Kicking In My Sleep Blues” b/w “Window Blues”). $25,000 have been offered to anyone who turns up either record in playable condition. Willie Brown, where are you?



fixbutte 1st Sep 2014		On "Cross Road Blues" (take 1), Robert Johnson sings, "You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown / That I got the crossroad blues this mornin', Lord, babe, I'm sinkin' down". On my last comment, I had speculated if this Willie Brown was a woman like the Willie Mae of "Love In Vain". That was obviously not the case. On take 2, Johnson sings something like "tell my friend-boy Willie Brown", and most sources agree that the mentioned Willie Brown was a blues musician from the Delta himself. Like Robert Johnson he lived in Robinsonville, Mississippi (from 1929 to 1935). He performed with Charley Patton and Son House and recorded six sides for Paramount Records, but only one of the three 78 rpm records has been found yet (Paramount 13090 "M & O Blues" / "Future Blues", on which he is heard with Patton). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Brown_(musician) for more.



fixbutte 28th Aug 2014		The fourth single of Robert Johnson brought what is now widely seen as his most important recording, inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and included in the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “Cross Road Blues” is a spectacular slide guitar piece with a melody that has no obvious external source, sung with plausible passion and sympathy. Most probably the ambiguous lyrics have ensured the song’s fame though. It starts with the lines (on the first take), “I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees / Asked the Lord above ‘Have mercy now, save poor Bob, if you please’”. Obviously the singer, at first kneeling in despair to beg forgiveness, then tries to hitch a ride but nobody seems to care for him until the night comes, “Standin' at the crossroad, I tried to flag a ride / Didn't nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by / Standin' at the crossroad, risin' sun goin' down / I believe to my soul now, po' Bob is sinkin' down”. In both takes, however, a loving sweet woman might help him in his distress. Actually the singer does not even mention the devil, but prays to the Lord above. The prayer may have been unsuccessful, as he feels like sinking down some hours later, but this (though adopted by Cream) was only the random last line of the second take of the song. On the first take, he subsequently sends for his friend Willie Brown (a woman like Willie Mae?) and is looking in all directions for a sweet woman. Nevertheless the song has become part of the mythology according to which Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical talents. As he sings about the crossroads as a place of decision, it became the supposed locale of the deal with the devil, attached to the legend probably only several decades after the recording of this song.



fixbutte 27th Aug 2014		“Ramblin' On My Mind” is another blues song that deals with travelling. Its melody was obviously taken from “M & O Blues” which had been a successful record by Walter Davis in 1930. The lyrics of the two recorded takes vary considerably, and it seems that both versions were used on the different pressings of the record on Vocalion, Perfect and Romeo. Anyway it is some kind of a sequel of “I Believe I'll Dust My Broom” (on the second take Johnson quite similarly sings, “I believe my time ain’t long”), with the singer going to leave his baby that treats him so unkind. Like on that recording, Johnson combines a boogie shuffle on the bass strings of his guitar with triplets on the treble strings, this time, however, using a bottleneck for the first time. Actually Elmore James adopted these slide triplets for his hit version of “Dust My Broom”. The second take of “Ramblin' On My Mind” was included in the very influentual King Of The Delta Blues Singers compilation in 1961, and five years later it was covered for the first time, by John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers on the legendary Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton album, featuring Clapton’s first solo lead vocal on this song.



fixbutte 1st Aug 2014		A-side label edited, "unknown" B-side and its label image added, release date completed and notes added. This was the fourth single of Robert Johnson. It's worth knowing that none of Robert Johnson's records was commercially successful ("Terraplane Blues" was only a minor regional hit in the Mississippi Delta) and he was nearly forgotten in the 1950s - until "with the album King of the Delta Blues Singers, a compilation of Johnson's recordings released in 1961, Columbia Records introduced his work to a much wider audience—fame and recognition he only received long after his death" (see Wikipedia). "Cross Road Blues" was the first track on the King of the Delta Blues Singers LP (actually not its first take - as used on the Vocalion 03519 record - was selected for the album but its previously unreleased second take), and it finally became one of Johnson's most famous songs via the cover version of Cream of 1968, now titled "Crossroads". Many other renditions, mostly using Cream's arrangement, followed.



fixbutte 18th Jul 2014		@Oteb13 It's nice that you try to add all Robert Johnson singles here, submitting some images that are available on the web. It's downright ridiculous, however, when you say that the B-sides of these records are "unknown". There are not many artists whose records are better documented. So it's laziness in my eyes what you practice.