Table of Content
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. Can be used in FL Studio, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Reaper, Cubase, Propellerhead Reason, Logic, Sonar, Cakewalk, Audacity software. Scrobbling is when Last.fm tracks the music you listen to and automatically adds it to your music profile.
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. As a blues standard, numerous artists have recorded “Sweet Home Chicago”.
Sam & Dave
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. 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.
All lyrics, Chords, Tablatures and sheet musics provided for educational purposes and personal use only. Otherwise, his verses retained the structure of Arnold's recording, with similar counting verses. 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.
Sweet Home Chicago
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".
In the 1960s and 1970s, some commentators speculated this was a geographical mistake on Johnson's part. However, Johnson was a sophisticated songwriter and used geographical references in a number of his songs. 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.
"Sweet Home Chicago" lyrics
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. 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.
Steve LaVere, the manager of Johnson’s recording legacy, commented, “It’s like ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ to the blues crowd”. We have thousands of midi files available for free download and our website. You can also help by sharing the code below on your social networks, websites, blogs, youtube, among others. 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".
Don Law"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. “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. Like Chicago, California was a common such destination in many Great Depression-era songs, books, and movies.
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". 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.
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". 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. The downloads found here are provided by people who have no links with the artists.
