Me And The Devil Walking Side By Side

The Real Story Behind One of Blues' Most Covered Songs

Most guitarists encounter Me And The Devil Walking Side By Side as the first Robert Johnson song they try to learn. It has that perfect combination of simple chord shapes and an intimidating reputation. The song came out in 1937 on a Paramount Records session in San Antonio, and Johnson recorded two takes that day. The first take was deemed unsatisfactory, so they re-recorded it. The surviving master is the one everyone knows. That version runs about three minutes and uses an alternating bass pattern over open G tuning with a slide. Here is the practical tuning and basic structure. You drop to open G: standard tuning with the low E down to D, the B down to A, and the high E stays the same. So it reads D-G-D-G-B-D from low to high. You play this with a slide on your ring finger, usually a glass or metal slide. The chord progression is essentially G to C back to G, but because you are sliding, the actual movements are more fluid than a basic chord chart would suggest. The main pattern works like this. Your thumb plays an alternating bass on the fifth and fourth strings while your fingers or slide handle the top three strings. On the G chord, your thumb rocks between the sixth and fourth strings. Move to the C, and your thumb shifts to the fifth and third strings. Then back to G. That alternation is the whole engine of the song. Listen to the original and focus only on the bass note. It does not stop. The constant pulse is what makes this track sound full when played solo.

For the actual melody and vocal phrasing, you are mostly working in the first position with the slide. The opening line has you sliding up from the fifth fret to the seventh on the B string, then dropping back. The verses follow a call-and-response pattern where the vocal line mirrors a guitar figure. This is important because many tutorials teach it as just a backing track, but Johnson treated the guitar as a second voice. If you only play the bass alternation and strum chords, it will sound flat compared to the record.

What Nobody Tells You About Playing This Song

The biggest mistake I see people make is trying to copy the slide technique from video tutorials without actually listening to the recording closely. The original has a very specific vibrato and timing that comes from Johnson pressing the slide lightly and rocking his wrist, not from heavy pressure or fast vibrato. Most beginners press too hard, which kills the sustain and makes every note sound muddy. Light contact is the rule here. Rest the slide just enough to make clean contact with the string without depressing it into the fretboard. Another issue is the right hand. The alternation between the fifth and fourth strings for the G section needs to be even. When I first learned this, my bass notes were all over the place rhythmically. I spent weeks isolating just the thumb movement, playing it slowly with a metronome at around 60 beats per minute, making sure each bass note landed exactly on the beat. Once that locked in, the whole thing started sounding closer to the record. It took probably three weeks of daily practice before it sounded right. The song uses a lot of partial chords and open string drones. You do not need to barre anything. The open strings do most of the work. This is one reason the song sounds rich despite using only three chord positions. The open G and B strings ring continuously while you move the slide around them. If you muting those open strings too aggressively, you lose the harmonic content that makes the arrangement interesting. Let them ring where they can.

Common Problems and How to Fix Them

One edge case that comes up often involves the transition between verses and the turnaround. The original record has a distinctive break where Johnson stops the vocal and plays a quick descending figure before restarting. This figure uses the G, D7, and C shapes in rapid succession. If you are trying to play along with the record and miss this part, you will fall out of sync. The fix is to learn this turnaround as a separate lick and practice inserting it at the end of each verse until it becomes automatic. It is only four bars, but it defines the structure. Another practical problem is slide positioning. Glass slides tend to slip on fingers with sweaty palms, especially if you are playing without gloves. I switched to a heavier metal slide and wrapped a small piece of medical tape around my ring finger to create grip texture. This solved the slipping issue entirely during longer practice sessions. It is a small detail that makes a noticeable difference in consistency. If you do not have a slide, you can approximate the sound using barrés and open chord shapes, but it will never quite match the fluidity of a slide performance. The melodic lines that weave through the verses rely on microtonal pitches between the frets, which a bare finger cannot replicate. You really do need a slide for this song to sound right.

Why This Song Matters Beyond the Tabs

Robert Johnson recorded only twenty-nine confirmed songs in his career, and Me And The Devil Walking Side By Side is among the most recognized. It has been covered by Cream, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Blind Willow, and countless blues and rock artists. The lyrical content draws from the folk trope of meeting the devil at the crossroads, which connects to the broader mythos around Johnson himself. Whether or not those legends are true is irrelevant to playing the song. What matters is the musical architecture, and it is deceptively sophisticated for something that sounds straightforward. The song sits in 4/4 time with a moderate tempo, typically around 72 to 78 beats per minute depending on the artist. The structure follows a loose twelve-bar blues framework but deviates from it enough that calling it a standard twelve-bar would be inaccurate. The verse repeats the same harmonic movement while the vocal melody changes, which is typical of Delta blues form. Understanding this helps you improvise your own variations rather than playing it note for note every time. If you want to dig deeper, the Paramount 78rpm originals are available through the Robert Johnson box set releases, and there are well-produced compilations like The Complete Recordings that present the tracks in chronological order. Listening to multiple takes and session vargs gives you a clearer picture of what Johnson was actually doing in the studio versus what later artists projected onto him.