{"id":5310,"date":"2024-08-10T13:20:52","date_gmt":"2024-08-10T17:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=5310"},"modified":"2024-08-14T08:42:37","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T12:42:37","slug":"crossroads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/crossroads\/","title":{"rendered":"Crossroads Blues (Robert Johnson and hitchhiking)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Crossroads Blues (Robert Johnson)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VbWQWMrEClM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I worked this one up when I wrote <em>Riding with Strangers<\/em>, because it was an obvious choice for someone who had written a book about Robert Johnson and now was doing a tour centered on hitchhiking. I didn&#8217;t do a lot of playing on that tour, but for five dates in Idaho I was <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-5311\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Rosalie-Sorrels.jpg?resize=195%2C242&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"242\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Rosalie-Sorrels.jpg?w=282&amp;ssl=1 282w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Rosalie-Sorrels.jpg?resize=242%2C300&amp;ssl=1 242w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/>traveling with Rosalie Sorrels, who with incredible generosity added her name and voice to my presentations, trading songs and doing the driving.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a funny story about that: since I&#8217;d written a book about how much I enjoyed that form of travel, I figured I had to live the part, so I hitched from the first date, in Portland, Oregon, to the last one in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rosalie lived way up in the mountains above Boise, down a dirt road, and I&#8217;d been wondering how I&#8217;d get past Boise and up to her place&#8230; which wasn&#8217;t made easier when a driver dropped me off on the highway west of town&#8230; and then a taxi pulled over.<\/p>\n<p>The driver was a young woman, and it turned out that she was off work and just driving around because it was a beautiful day, and damned if she didn&#8217;t take me all the way up into the mountains and down the dirt road to Rosalie&#8217;s cabin. So I showed up in a taxi, and Rosalie came out, ready to tease me for chickening out and paying for the ride&#8230; and, long story short, the driver came in for a drink, we had a lovely evening, and Rosalie told that story at every stop on the tour.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3151 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/hitchcover.jpg?resize=176%2C271&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"176\" height=\"271\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/hitchcover.jpg?w=250&amp;ssl=1 250w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/hitchcover.jpg?resize=195%2C300&amp;ssl=1 195w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 176px) 100vw, 176px\" \/>I hadn&#8217;t performed &#8220;Cross Road Blues&#8221; before that, because so many other people played it, but worked up a version for that tour and tailored it to fit my own experience. I didn&#8217;t change much, in terms of the lyrics, but obviously my attitude and experiences as a white guy hitchhiking in the\u00a0 twenty-first centuries were different from what inspired Robert Johnson to compose the song as a Black man in the Depression-era Mississippi Delta.<\/p>\n<p>Before I get to that, though: Johnson&#8217;s song is about being stuck at a crossroads in rural Mississippi, trying to &#8220;flag a ride,&#8221; not about selling his soul to the Devil. Samuel Charters had another theory: that it was about a crisis of faith, with Johnson at life&#8217;s crossroads, calling on the Lord to save him &#8212; and it&#8217;s true that he starts with the verse about falling on his knees and praying, which supports Sam&#8217;s interpretation. But there is also a verse where he calls on his friend Willie Brown (a terrific guitarist, who I&#8217;ve covered in my post about &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/future-blues\/\">Future Blues<\/a>&#8220;) and the one about wishing his girlfriend knew he was out there.<\/p>\n<p>So I can see Sam&#8217;s interpretation, but I still hear it as a song about hitchhiking, and I sing the verse about falling on my knees after the one about flagging ride, remembering a couple of times when, despite being a lifelong atheist, I waited so long on a hot day, with no water and night falling, that I did get on my knees and pray. Those moments were brief and I was laughing at myself, even while I hoped the gesture might change my luck and certainly couldn&#8217;t hurt it.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5280\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/rjcover.jpg?resize=200%2C302&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"302\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/rjcover.jpg?w=200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/rjcover.jpg?resize=199%2C300&amp;ssl=1 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>Johnson&#8217;s situation was a lot less funny. That verse about the sun going down &#8212; if I got stuck on the road at night, the worst that could happen was I&#8217;d be cold and miserable for a few hours, but Mississippi was full of &#8220;sundown towns,&#8221; where Black people could be jailed if they were found after dark&#8230; if someone wasn&#8217;t mean or drunk enough to kill them.<\/p>\n<p>So I sing a lot of the same words, but they have a very different feel. I&#8217;m also playing a different guitar part, because this is a project about memory, and even the parts I thought I remembered from his playing seem to have evolved into other licks.<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s still his song, but when I sing it I&#8217;m picturing my own experiences &#8212; which makes a lot more sense than trying to pretend, even for a minute, that I&#8217;m Robert Johnson.<\/p>\n<p>(Though I generally try to reshape them to fit my own style and abilities, I&#8217;ve reworked a few other Johnson songs and written about them in previous posts: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/roll-and-riverside\/\">Traveling Riverside Blues (Rolling and Tumbling)<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/from-four-until-late\/\">From Four Until Late<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/walking-blues\/\">Walking Blues<\/a>.&#8221;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I worked this one up when I wrote Riding with Strangers, because it was an obvious choice for someone who had written a book about Robert Johnson and now was doing a tour centered on hitchhiking. I didn&#8217;t do a lot of playing on that tour, but for five dates in Idaho I was traveling &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/crossroads\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Crossroads Blues (Robert Johnson and hitchhiking)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Crossroads Blues (Robert Johnson and hitchhiking) - 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