Come On In My Kitchen

(Robert Johnson/King of Spades Music)

The woman I love, took from my best friend.
Some joker got lucky stole her back again.
You better come on in my kitchen,
'Cause it's goin' to be raining outdoors.

Well, she's gone. I know she won't come back:
I've taken her last nickel out of her'nation sack.
You better come on in my kitchen,
'Cause it's goin' to be ______ outdoors.

When a woman gets in trouble, everybody throws her down:
Lookin' for a good friend; one can't be found.
You better come on in my kitchen,
'Cause it's goin' to be raining outdoors.

[Can't you hear that wind hollerin']
[Come listen to that wind outside...]
You better come on in my kitchen,
'Cause it's goin' to be raining outdoors.

Winter time is comin', it's gon' be snow.
You can't make the winter, babe, just drivin' on so:
You better come on in my kitchen,
'Cause it's goin' to be raining outdoors.

Playing Come On In My Kitchen in a juke in St. Louis one evening — "very slow and passionate" — Robert Johnson and his companion, Johnny Shines, looked up at the silence as they finished to find everyone in the place, according to Shines — "both the women and men" — crying. Easily one of the most carefully-crafted love songs I've ever heard, in its second verse Kitchen carries a potent sexual image hidden in a "'nation sack". A donation sack, originally — this was a small, draw-string purse of the type used by traveling, tent-show preachers for the collection of the porfits of their evenings' soul-saving. As a fashion accessory, the "nation sack quickly slipped under the skirts — and between the legs — of riverboat whores, where they would safely and suggestively jingle the profits of their nightly ministrations to attract the souls that they might save. This image of taking "her last nickel out of her 'nation sack" must have carried a world of meaning into the shadows of the levees along the Mississippi.