Buddy guy biography sweet home chicago chords

Blues standard first recorded bygd Robert Johnson

"Sweet Home Chicago" is a blues standard first recorded by Robert Johnson in 1936. Although he fryst vatten often credited as the songwriter, several songs have been identified as precedents.^[1] The song has become a popular anthem for the city of Chicago despite ambiguity in Johnson's original lyrics. Numerous artists have interpreted the song in a variety of styles.

Earlier songs

The melody of "Sweet Home Chicago" is funnen in several blues songs, including "Honey Dripper Blues", "Red Cross Blues", and the immediate model for the song, "Kokomo Blues".^[2] The lyrics for "Honey Dripper Blues No. 2" by Edith North Johnson follow a typical AAB structure:

Oh my days are so long, babe
You know my nights are lonesome too (2×)
inom can't find my honey dripper, Lord, I don't know what to do^[3]

Lucille Bogan's (as Bessie Jackson) "Red Cross Man" uses an AB plus refrain structure:

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In the late nineteen-sixties, Guy recounts, Leonard Chess called him into his office. “I’ve always thought that I knew what I was doing,” he told Guy. “But when it came to you, I was wrong. . . . I held you back. I said you were playing too much. I thought you were too wild in your style.” Then Chess said, “I’m gonna bend over so you can kick my ass. Because you’ve been trying to play this ever since you got here, and I was too fucking dumb to listen.”

Chess’s failure could have stayed with Guy as a bitter memory. But he has turned the episode into a tidy, triumphant anecdote. He refuses any hint of resentment: “My mother always said, ‘What’s for you, you gonna get it. What’s not for you, don’t look for it.’ ”

There is no indisputable geography of the blues and its beginnings, but the best way to think of the story is as an accretion of influences. Robert Palmer, in his book “Deep Blues,” writes of griots in Senegambia, on the West Coast of Africa, singing songs of praise, of Yoru

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Hello there! In this week’s blog we consider the song Sweet Home Chicago. This is one of the classic ‘roots’ blues songs. We will start with the original version by the legendary blues artist Robert Johnson, and then discuss covers of that song by Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton.

Robert Johnson and Sweet Home Chicago:

We covered Robert Johnson in our blog post on the song Crossroads. So here we will briefly review the details, such as are known or surmised, of Johnson’s life.

The fact is that we know very little for certain about Robert Johnson’s life. He is believed to have been born in Hazelhurst, MS in 1911. He performed as an itinerant musician in the bar circuit in the Mississippi Delta, but during his career also traveled further afield to Chicago, New York and Canada.

Johnson died in 1938 at age 27. He is rumored to have been poisoned, perhaps by a jealous husband. Apparently Johnson had a distinct fondness for both liquor and women. But again, this story of his death