"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:
“You had been travelling for days
With an old lady, who marked
A neat circle on the glass
With her glove, to watch us
Move into the wet darkness
Kissing, still unable to speak.”
—John Montague (b. 1929)
“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.)
“As one delves deeper and deeper into Etiquette, disquieting thoughts come. That old Is- It-Worth-It Blues starts up again softly, perhaps, but plainly. Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness. The letters and the conversations of the correct, as quoted by Mrs. Post, seem scarcely worth the striving for. The rules for finding topics of conversation fall damply on the spirit.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)