An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 14 | COUNTRY BLUES 335

lines. (Like most slide guitarists, he favors “open” tunings, with the strings

retuned to produce a major chord.)

Each of the fi ve stanzas in “Walking Blues” is set to a twelve-bar blues chorus;

Johnson’s single alteration of the basic blues progression is an arrival on the

subdominant chord at the beginning of the third phrase, withholding the

expected dominant chord until the second bar. Somewhat unusual is the dis-

tribution of the text across the three phrases: both lines of the couplet are sung

in the fi rst phrase, with the fi rst line repeated in phrase 2 and the second in

phrase 3. In other words, instead of playing an instrumental fi ll in bars 3–4, as

he does in bars 7–8 and 11–12, Johnson anticipates the second line of the couplet.

This places emphasis on the words, and those words reveal another aspect of

Johnson’s craft.

Like most country-blues songs, “Walking Blues” draws on a common fund of

verbal formulas, beginning with a standard opening, “I woke up this morning.”

But where many blues performers recycle stock phrases in a seemingly arbitrary

sequence, so that stanzas can be sung in almost any order with no loss of mean-

ing, Johnson crafts a series of stanzas that develop the opening imagery, fl eshing

out an ever more detailed picture of the persona’s mental distress: his urge to

leave, then his reason for leaving—a woman who has left him and thus mistreated

him—and fi nally a description of the woman’s physical attributes, which he com-

pares to the fi nely calibrated mechanism, or movement, of an Elgin watch. Only

the fourth stanza feels out of place; it seems to belong to a different song, which

could be titled “Worried Blues.” “Walking Blues” demonstrates a key element of

Listen & Refl ect

1. “Riding the blinds” (or “blind,” as Johnson sings it) was a hobo term for hopping a freight
   train. Are there other expressions whose meaning eludes you? If so, how do they affect
   your response to the song?


2. How does Johnson’s vocal delivery enhance or detract from the lyrical content?

CD 2.17 Listening Guide 14.1

timing section text comments

1:59 stanza 5 She got Elgin movement from her head down

to her toes

Break in on a dollar most anywhere she goes ooh

Ooh from her head down to her toes oh honey

Lord, she break in on a dollar most anywhere

she goes

The new melodic fi gure of stanza

3 returns; the triplets from the

introduction return in the last 2 bars

to create a framing coda.

note “Walking Blues” borrows from a 1930 record with the identical title by Son House, whom Johnson

viewed as a mentor. House’s lyrics use many of the same phrases but lack the large-scale coherence of

Johnson’s version.

“Walking Blues” ROBERT JOHNSON

172028_14_332-360_r3_ko.indd 335 23/01/13 8:37 PM