Talk:Come On in My Kitchen

So, who decided to write this article? There is mention of a nation sack on this page, but the lyrics read "notion sack" not nation sack. a notion sack was part of a sewing kit. I will give this a day or two but I plan on a severe editing of the article around this. kardworx (talk) 05:47, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Removed material

Some of the information has been incorporated. Some has been contradicted - with authorities. Here is the full text in case somebody can justify and reinsert it:

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The song features several usages of slang that have inspired scholarly analysis.

Oh-ah, she's gone
I know she won't come back
I've taken the last nickel
out of her nation sack

A nation sack is an occult "hoodoo" object.[Hyatt, op. cit.] Robert Johnson would have likely learned of the nation sack during his youth, much of which was spent in the Memphis area. In his later years he made his home base (between his frequent road trips) in nearby Helena, Arkansas, a town that was a center for blues musicians.

When Johnson has "taken the last nickel out of her nation sack" he has "violated two (or even three) taboos ... he touched her nation sack, he stole her money...". He has broken the power of the love spell. Further, the folklorist H.M. Hyatt documents that in one nation sack spell "(nine silver dimes in a nation sack with lodestone for protection and trade) -- the money itself was part of the magical charm, which he thereby destroyed."

So Johnson's trespass into the nation sack, whose magical power was believed to bind him to his woman friend, has ironically broken the spell and sent away the woman he is yearning for.

In another verse Johnson also expresses appreciation for the troubles women can face—among others, in terms of loss of reputation. He tells how a woman "in trouble" is outcast and deserted, friendless. It seems he is offering shelter and comfort from these hardships.

You better come on
in my kitchen
baby, it's goin' to be rainin'
outdoors

Winter time's comin'
hit's gon' be slow
You can't make the winter, babe
that's dry long so

"Dry long so" is slang for dullness or fate. Johnson is telling the woman to just accept winter will be too hard to get through alone, so she'd be wiser to see it through in the warmth of his kitchen.

The difficulties of love are referred to throughout the story: infidelity, loss and betrayal. Overall the lyrics conjure up a vision of painful conflict in a relationship. The woman has gone off with another man; but maybe things didn't work out and Johnson is saying "don't spend the winter alone, come back with me." Or perhaps this is wishful pleading on Johnson's part. Another interpretation is that he has lost one woman, and now he is offering love and shelter to another woman who has got "in trouble" and is an outcast, possibly pregnant. As in many of Johnson's songs, the lyrics tend to evoke an intense emotional experience rather than simply convey precise facts. The explicit relations of the song's characters are never quite defined, nor is it explained how the situation came to be. Typical of the Delta blues in particular, it is the intense immediacy of feeling that is primarily expressed by the singer/narrator.
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SignedDavidCrosbie (talk) 16:33, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

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