You better come on
In my kitchen
It's going to be raining
outdoors
Like anyone for whom
the road becomes home,
Peter Goronik points out,
Robert Johnson established
safe harbors
everywhere he went,
links within the community
which he could put down an
d pick up again
when he returned in a month or a year.
In Helena, he established a relationship
with Robert Lockwood's mother,
probably 15 years older than he,
which was evidently as stable
over a long period of time
as any on which he embarked.
There was also Raoul Walter Horton's
And in West Memphis,
Johnson and Johnny Shine's
cousin, Kevin Fraser,
stayed at the Hunt Hotel
where Robert took up with
a female midget
who ran errands for the three blues men.
In Friars Point,
there was a runty little girl named Betty.
In every town in which they stopped,
there was someone to take care
of
Johnson, a woman,
not necessarily a glamour girl,
but someone who would look after him.
Better come on in my kitchen,
it's going to be raining our
dogs.
Women to Robert,
Johnny Shines has written,
were like motel or hotel rooms,
even if he used them repeatedly.
He left them where he found
them.
Heaven helped him.
He was not discriminated.
Probably a lot like Christ.
He loved them all.
He preferred older women in their 30s
over the younger ones
be cause the older ones would pay
his way.
Mack McCormick discovered at least half a dozen
women involved in two - three -week relationships
in the eight years following his first
wife's death.
By McCormick's account,
they were shy young girls
for the most part.
Similar to the older women
whom Shines describes,
in one respect they provided
food and shelter
We're a footloose musician
and we're not considered
the most desirable or attractive
catches in the community.
You better come on in my kitchen.
It's going to be raining
outdoors.
Johnson had a very un usual reputation.
He was not crude, but he was direct.
He would simply ask them,
Can I go home with you?
Can I be with you?
These were young girls
living with their families
in a rural situation
and for the most part their
answer was yes.
The relationship ended when
their husband came home,
or her Johnson moved on.
You'd come on, in my kitchen.
It's going to be rainin' outside.
Women
with whom he stayed
de scribed to Mac McCormick how they would wake up in
the middle of the night to discover him fingering the guitar strings
almost soundlessly
at the window by the light of the moon.
He was a guy, Johnny Shine said,
that could find a way to make a song
sound good with a slide,
regardless of its contents
or nature.
His guitars seemed to talk, repeat,
and say words with them
like no one else in the world could.
The sound affected most women
in a way that I could never understand.
One time, in St. Louis,
we were playing one of the songs
that Robert liked to play with
someone once in a great while.
Come on in my kitchen.
He was playing very slow
and passionately.
And when we had quit,
I noticed no one was saying anything.
And I realized they were crying,
both women and men.
You better come on in my kitchen.
It's going to be raining outdoors
You better come on in my kitchen
It's going to be raining outdoors