“32-20” isn’t exactly even Johnson’s song, it turns out. It’s largely a cover of Skip James’ “22-20 Blues,” (plus 10, of course) and this is sort of what makes it interesting geographically. In Johnson’s version, he sings several verses with the lyric:

What’s interesting is that Hot Springs – wait, what is he saying?! That if his baby don’t come when called he’s gonna kill her? Please tell me there’s another way to interpret that, because otherwise that…is…a bummer.

Eesh. Let’s instead talk about how James’ original was set in Wisconsin, not Arkansas. Wisconsin! Home of the blues! This is laid out at Harry’s Blues Lyrics & Tabs Online, by the way. It’s uncredited, natch, but the story goes that when Johnson borrowed the tune, he migrated its setting from Grafton, Wisconsin to Arkansas. What’s fun about that is that in this recording, taken from that big Robert Johnson anthology from 1990, “The Complete Recordings,” you can skip past all of the mayhem to the ~2:16 mark and hear ol’ Robert apparently forget he moved the location and instead sing “all the doctors in Wisconsin sure can’t help her none.”

Never minding that he’s right: if the lady’s only going to bring a .38 Special to a gunfight with her boyfriends, the doctors from anywhere probably aren’t going to be able to stop the bleeding and reassemble the organs and reconstruct the…Listen, we none of us are doctors and we none of us know what to do with bitches who been gutshot. But if you are the girlfriend of either Skip James or Robert Johnson (or any one of hundreds of people who have covered this classic), you should consider what old timey abuse victims called the “midnight skidaddle.”

Let’s wrap this up in a bulleted list:

• Johnson probably meant “Hot Springs” when he said “Wisconsin”
• we got a dead lady on our hands no matter how we slice it

MAPPING IT

It’s tempting to put this one down at the site of that old chair factory that housed Skip James’ label, Paramount - downtown Grafton, Wisconsin. But Hot Springs, maybe. Because that’s where this was gonna happen:

• int. early-20th-century emergency room, yellowing walls; a woman on a table struggles for breath
• PHYSICIAN
• looks up from a gutshot victim at blues singer Robert Johnson
• ROBERT JOHNSON
• shakes head menacingly at physician
• PHYSICIAN
• Turns to an imaginary sitcom camera, shrugs shoulders, twists face comically. Fin.

HEARING IT