Come On in My Kitchen
"Come On in My Kitchen" is a blues song by Robert Johnson. Music writer Elijah Wald has described it as "a hypnotic lament" and "his first unquestionable masterpiece".
A sometime traveling companion and fellow musician, Johnny Shines, recalled that Johnson's performance of the song could be overpowering:
Background
Blues scholars have identified a body of previously recorded songs with direct and indirect melodic similarities. Edward Komara suggests a line of recordings with notably high degree of sales and of imitation by other artists: 1925's "How Long Daddy How Long" ; 1928's "How Long, [How Long Blues]" ; 1930's "Sitting [on Top of the World]: ; and 1934's "Six Feet in the Ground". Former neighbours report that Johnson learned "How Long" from Carr's record in the year following its release.Komara suggests that Johnson's thumbed bass lines in "Come On in My Kitchen" were directly inspired by Carr's piano in "How Long" and that part of humming and slide guitar playing copied the violin of Lonnie Chatman of the Sheiks on "Sitting on Top of the World". Elijah Wald suggests that Johnson's main inspiration was Tampa Red's 1934 "Things 'Bout Coming My Way".
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.
Lyrics
In his two takes, Johnson created two texts based on the refrain and on a consistent emotional projection. In both, his opening verse is a wordless hum, and his central verse is the spoken address to his woman "Can't you hear that wind howl" as his guitar imitates the sound of winter wind. Only two sung verses are common to both takes. One describes the isolation of the woman: "Everybody throws her down". The other establishes the regretful retrospective mood of the singer:This verse had been used by Skip James in "Devil Got My Woman." Some critics believe that Johnson copied the verse either directly from James or indirectly through Johnny Temple In the song, his woman "is up the country, won't write to me". Johnson says he "went up the mountain" only to see that "another man got my woman". He is an orphan: "Ain't got nobody to care for me." The woman won't come back: "I've taken the last nickel, out of her nation sack." In one interpretation, the nation sack would have contained nine silver coins as a love spell. In the other verse, winter is coming but "That's dry long so."