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SUMMARY
This essay examines some historical questions and cultural constructions surrounding the song “Sweet Home Chicago” and its composer Robert Johnson. Noting that while the song has enjoyed long life, Johnson's lyric (describing Chicago as a “land of California”) has not, the essay critiques primitivist readings of Johnson while posing an African American cultural myth-Chicago as promised land of the Great Migration-as the subtext of his puzzling line. Finally, it considers whether mundane-sounding revisions of Johnson's lyric indicate a reduction in Chicago's mythic status, from safe haven to “same old place.”