Chords for Elijah Wald plays Robert Johnson's From Four Till Late

_ _ _ _ Robert Johnson's From Ford Till Lake is an interesting example of how music
overlaps between city and country, and also an interesting example of how blues
[N] experts like me can get things wrong.
In my book, I followed the lead of everybody
I'd seen before who said that this was Robert Johnson trying to play sort of in
the style of Blind Blake, which I think is true and which is certainly the way
I'm going to play it.
And then after my book Escaping the Delta came out, _ Paul
Garron, who's [E] a blues expert from Chicago, suddenly emailed me saying, wait a
minute, [G] _ _ _
[N] Johnny Dunn, who was a Memphis trumpet player who worked with a lot of
major blues queens and quite popular in the early 20s, had recorded a thing
called Four O'Clock Blues that's exactly the same tune as From Ford Till Lake, but
he recorded it in I think _ _ 1922 or 21, so 15 years before Robert Johnson.
And
presumably it was a song that was just around and people were singing, but no
one ever sang the lyric Johnson sang until he did, and who knows whether it
was being sung around [B] Memphis by jazz bands and was [Gb] picked up by
Robert Johnson and he turned it into sort of more of a country [N] sounding blues,
or whether it was a song being sung out in the country and Johnny Dunn picked it
up.
In any case, _ this is sort of a cross between how Blind Blake might have
played it and [Ab] how Robert Johnson played it, From Ford Till Lake.
_ [G] _ _ [Am] _
_ [Ab] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
[Ab] _ [G] _ _ _ _ [C] From Ford Till Lake, [F] I was wringing [Fm] my hands [C] and crying. _
[G] [C] Say _ [E] _ [F] from Ford Till Lake, [Gbm] I was wringing my hands [C] and crying. _
[G] _ [A] _ _ Well [D] I believe to [Am] my soul
[G] that your daddy, he's Gulf Coast man. _
[Eb] _ [C] _ [G] _ _ [C] And from Memphis to Norfolk [F] that's a [Fm] 36 hour [C] ride. _
[G] _ [C] _ _ [E] Say [F] from Memphis to [Gb] Norfolk it's a [Ab] 36 hour [C] ride. _
[Em] _ [A] _ _ _ [D] Well a man is like a prisoner, [G] _ he's never
[C] satisfied. _
[Eb] _ [C] _ _ [G] _ And a woman is like a [C] dresser, some [F] man is [Fm] always fumbling through [C] her
drawer.
[B] _ [G] _ _ _ [E] Say a [F] woman's like a dresser, some man [C] is always [B] fumbling through her drawer.
[B] _ [G] _ _ [A] _ _ [Dbm] That's [D] cost so many men to try [G] to act like a Santa [F] Claus.
[Ab] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ [C] _
_ [E] _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ [Eb] _ [C] _ _ [E] _ _ [F] _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[F] _ [A] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ [Am] _
_ [G] _ _ _ [Em] _ _ _ _
[Eb] _ [C] _ [G] _ _ _ [Em] _ _ [B] _
_ [C] _ _ [G] _ _ [Em] _ _ _
[C] _ _ _ [E] _ _ [F] _ _ _
_ [C] _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _
_ [Bm] _ _ [A] _ _ [Am] _ _ _
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ [C] _ _ _
[C] _ [G] _ _ And from Ford [C] Till Lake she
runs with a [Fm] no good bunch and clowns. _
[G] _ [C] _ _ [E] _ [F] Yeah from Ford Till Lake she runs with [C] a no good
bunch and clowns.
[G] _ [A] _ _ Well [D] she spends all her time [G] running good men's reputations [C] down. _
[Eb] _ [C] _ _ [G] _ And when I leave this town I'm going to bid [Fm] you farewell.
[C] _ _
[Gbm] _ [G] _ _ _ [E] _ Say when [F] I leave this town [Bm] I'm going to
[C] bid you farewell. _
_ [Db] _ _ [A] _ _ When [D] I come [D] back again [G] I'll have many strange [C] stories to tell.
[F] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ [C] _ [Gb] _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ [G] _ _
[F] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
[C] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _