"Hellhound On My Trail" is a blues song written and performed by Robert Johnson. It was recorded in Dallas, Texas, on June 20, 1937, as the first song cut at his last session, and released as a 78 rpm single on Vocalion Records that September. The recording is a solo performance with voice and slide guitar in open E minor tuning, with a droning bass string, and it follows the 12-bar blues form. Blues historian Ted Gioia calls it one of Johnson's best known and most admired performances. The phrase predates him, appearing in Sylvester Weaver's "Devil Blues" (1927) and in "Funny Paper" Smith's "Howling Wolf Blues No. 3" (1931). The title was changed to "Hellhound" on the 1961 Columbia reissue King of the Delta Blues Singers. The song was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1983, included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, and added to the National Recording Registry in 2003. Covers include versions by Fleetwood Mac, Canned Heat, Cassandra Wilson, James Cotton, Rory Block, The Mountain Goats and Eric Clapton.
