Standin' at the Crossroads

There are three clearly blocked out lines of question-question-answer statements across

five verses as "Cross Road Blues" follows the 12 bar blues form with some style variances. The song appears to "speed up" as the verses progress, which lends to the heightened sense of despair as the story is told seemingly faster. In actuality, the first lines of the first couple verses are extended to a 15 bar form which is what gives us the sense of a quickened pace toward the end as the verses return to 12 bar form. What we hear in the last verse is a standard 12 bar blues form, with a two measure ending phrase included. To analyze the form further, I will reference each of the three lines in order within each verse-form. For the first two verses, there are six measures in the first line instead of the standard four, with two extra measures extending the guitar's response to his lyrical question before moving on to the second line. Verses three and four extend the first line by only one measure, making a total of five measures. The second line is only extended by one measure in the first verse, again making a total of five measures.

The third line remains the standard four measures throughout all five verses, with the exception of the two measure ending in the fifth verse finishing out the full four measures of that line.

The first few twangs of the guitar hook you into this blues tale and set the tone for the story being illustrated by Robert Johnson's expressive voice. It is a story of desperation and hope, of regret and loneliness, of a man on the brink. His guitar cries the words he isn't singing.

The words he feels but cannot express with verbal language. Like the voice of a spirit singing through his guitar, the sliding high notes wail at him as if to say, "tell me more." A strong pluck of a single string at the apex of his lyrical answer punctuates the downward spiral, the sinking down of his soul. Emotion and banter between guitar and player builds with every verse, and by the end of the song Johnson has imprinted the blues deep into all who hears it. The story has no definite beginning, as if we were dropped into the middle, and it is unfinished, it could seemingly go on forever. Poetic imagery within in the lyrics allow a scene to be painted in our imagination of a man standin' at the crossroad tryin' to flag a ride as the risin' sun's goin' down only to be passed by, lord save his soul.

I have been fascinated by the delta blues ever since hearing "Devil Got my Woman" by

Skip James on the soundtrack of a movie way back in the 1990's. There was something so haunting and truthful about the whiney vocal style and twangy guitar picking that grabbed at my soul. Then I heard Robert Johnson and my heart leaped. His tell-tale strong plucked single note in the third line seems to imitate is own voice. This particular song called to me for analyzation because I have never mentally broken his songs out in my head during casual listening, as I often do with other artists, and I wanted to figure out why I hadn't. I believe it is because at times there is no separation between his voice and his guitar, which has a mesmerizing effect on my mind. The form of this song in particular feels like it is organic and not calculated at all; as if he is performing it for the first time on this recording. Yet he could have been deliberately stretching the measures for a specific affect. I would have to listen to alternate recordings of this song to determine whether or not the 12 bar variation was intentional. While writing this paper I listened to the song on repeat. It played at least 50 times, and I never got tired of it. I heard something different each time; a new line of lyric or call/response of the guitar or a backbone rhythm.

I connect with Johnson's bouncy guitar style and whirring voice, and I feel the blues.