John Mellencamp ~ No Better Than This
Recorded In Savannah, Memphis, And San Antonio With 1 RCA 77 DX Microphone (Savannah & San Antonio) or 1 RCA 44 (Memphis)- Mono To An Ampex 601 ¼” Reel To Reel.
Right Behind Me (San Antonio, Room 414, Sheraton Gunter Hotel)
No Better Than This (Memphis Sun Studio)
Clumsy Ol’ World (Savannah First African Baptist Church)
Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio is where Robert Johnson first recorded for Brunswick Records in November of 1936; Mellencamp’s version of Johnson’s “Stones In My Pass Way” was the first track on Trouble No More, an album of blues and folk songs released in 2003. The room has been carpeted in the intervening years so a hardwood floor was placed over the carpet to better approximate the ambience heard on Johnson’s records. Mellencamp sang facing the corner of the room that Johnson had almost 74 years earlier.
