78 RPM - Robert Johnson - Come On In My Kitchen / They're Red Hot - Vocalion - USA

78 RPM Record

Artist:	Robert Johnson
Label:	Vocalion
Country:	USA
Catalogue:	03563
Date:	1 Jun 1937
Format:	10"
Genre:	Blues
Collection:	I Own It I Want It
Community:	1 Owns, 4 Want
Price Guide:	$4986
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PRICE GUIDE

$4986

Track	Artist	Title	Composer	Rating
A	Robert Johnson	Come On In My Kitchen	Robert Johnson	6.0 Rate
B	Robert Johnson	They're Red Hot	Robert Johnson	Rate

Notes

Vocal Blues with Guitar Accompaniment.
Recorded on November 23 & 27, 1936, San Antonio, Texas.
Dime store issues on Perfect 7-07-57 and Romeo 7-07-57 (July 1937).

Images

Comments and Reviews


BigBadBluesMan 18th Feb 2015



BigBadBluesMan 18th Feb 2015



fixbutte 29th Aug 2014		"They're Red Hot" is the only song of Robert Johnson in the hokum style. It is interesting, however, that surviving contemporaries of Robert Johnson recall a musician so versatile he could sing and play pop songs, cowboy or country numbers and even play polkas on the guitar. As Johnny Shines said in an interview, “We passed a place, a white dancing hall, and the big bands was playing in there, whatsoever kind of music they was playing, we used to have to listen to. Hide around outside and listen. So we’d go home, and when we get ready, we’d play those same pieces.” They played them for their audience, black or white, with only a blues once in a while, and lots of popular songs in between. “They're Red Hot” demonstrates what Johnson could do outside of the blues to entertain his audience. After the frequently repeated refrain, “Hot tamales and they're red hot, yes she got 'em for sale” (tamales are a spicy Mexican food), the song starts with the funny verse, “I got a girl, say she’s long and tall / She sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall”, which goes back to much older songs and would appear in many songs later. Several other verses in this vein follow, some of them with sexual innuendo, some of them just nonsense. A very light-hearted song that one could dance to, it makes an attractive counterpart to the meditative flipside.



fixbutte 29th Aug 2014		As already said, the refrain of "Come On In My Kitchen" is melodically close to those of "Things 'Bout Coming My Way" by Tampa Red and "Sitting On Top Of The World" by the Mississippi Sheiks. The words of the refrain, “You'd better come on, in my kitchen / It's goin' to be raining outdoors" give the song an accommodating, homely mood that is quite unusual for a rambling artist (and which possibly was the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s refrain for “Shelter From the Storm”). Otherwise the lyrics of both takes are quite different. Only two sung verses are common to both takes, and the order of these is interchanged. The first verse in the first take (which is the second verse in the second take) was obviously adapted from Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman”, “The woman I love, took from my best friend / Some joker got lucky, stole her back again”. The other common verse (the first one in take 2, and the fourth in take 1) is surprisingly sympathetic to the opposite sex, “When a woman gets in trouble, everybody throws her down / Lookin’ for her good friend, none can be found”. After a spoken verse which is in both takes, saying “Oh, can't you hear that wind howl?”, the first take appropriately ends with the invitiation to the woman to come in before the hard winter comes, whereas in the second take the singer wants someone to love and care for him. Johnson sings and plays the song, especially in the first take version, in a very slow and passionate way, with wonderful slide guitar figures, like he apparently did on his live performances of the song, where he could make both women and men in his audience cry, according to Johnson’s occasional traveling companion and fellow blues musician, Johnny Shines. As said by Elijah Wald, in his Escaping the Delta book, the song (at least the first take of it) is a hypnotic lament and an unquestionable masterpiece.



fixbutte 30th Jul 2014		"Come On In My Kitchen" was based on Tampa Red's "Things 'Bout Coming My Way" which in turn was inspired by "Sitting On Top Of The World" by the Mississippi Sheiks. From Wikipedia: "The structure of this melodic family is an eight bar blues with a couplet followed by a refrain. The repeated refrain gives textual unity to the song, and generally sets an emotional tone to which the couplet verses conform. Many longer refrains were melodically close to the Sheiks' But now she's gone, I don't worry / I'm sitting on top of the world and Tampa Red's But after all, my hard traveling / Things is 'bout coming my way Johnson's variant is You'd better come on, in my kitchen / It's goin' to be raining outdoors" "Come On In My Kitchen" was recorded at Johnson's first recording session on Nov 23, 1936 at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, with two takes preserved. Interestingly, it was the faster take 2, now considered as inferior, that was issued in 1937 on Vocalion 03563. The well-constructed, definitive take 1, however, is much better known now as it was chosen for issue on the widely distributed Columbia LP collection King Of The Delta Blues Singers in 1961, and thus became a favorite cover for white (often British) blues and rock musicians. "They're Red Hot" is very interesting, too, as it is no blues at all but a racy song in the hokum tradition. Again from Wikipedia: "According to Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta, Johnson in his own time was most respected for his ability to play in such a wide variety of styles—from raw country slide guitar to jazz and pop licks—and to pick up guitar parts almost instantly upon hearing a song. ... Unusual for a Delta player of the time, a recording exhibits what Johnson could do entirely outside of a blues style. 'They're Red Hot', from his first recording session, shows that he was also comfortable with an 'uptown' swing or ragtime sound similar to the Harlem Hamfats ..."



fixbutte 29th Jul 2014		A side label edited, B side label added, and exact release date completed. This was Robert Johnson's fifth original single issued by Vocalion.

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Linked Releases

USA - Perfect - 1937