"Travelling Riverside Blues," sometimes called "Mudbone" or "Mud Bone," is a blues song written and recorded in Dallas, Texas by the bluesman Robert Johnson. Johnson's June 20, 1937 recording has a typical 12 bar blues structure (though as is common in downhome blues of this era, the length of each verse is in fact thirteen-and-a-half bars of 4/4), played on a single guitar tuned to open G, with a slide. It was first released on the 1961 compilation LP King of the Delta Blues Singers. The song has proved popular with more recent blues musicians.
The song is well known for the lyrics:
- "I want you to squeeze my lemon
- until the juice runs down my leg."
The song was made internationally famous by the band Led Zeppelin, whose version of the song is most known to modern listeners.
Read more about Travelling Riverside Blues: Led Zeppelin Version, Other Versions
Famous quotes containing the words travelling, riverside and/or blues:
“Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Upset at the young wife’s
first loss of virtue
in a riverside thicket,
a flock of birds
flies up,
mourning the loss
with their wings.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“The blues women had a commanding presence and a refreshing robustness. They were nurturers, taking the yeast of experience, kneading it into dough, molding it and letting it grow in their minds to bring the listener bread for sustenance, shaped by their sensibilities.”
—Rosetta Reitz, U.S. author. As quoted in The Political Palate, ch. 10, by Betsey Beaven et al. (1980)