"Sweet Home Chicago" is a popular blues standard in the twelve bar form. It was first recorded and is credited to have been written by Robert Johnson. Over the years the song has become one of the most popular anthems for the city of Chicago despite ambiguity in Johnson's original lyrics.

In fact, the song is a variation of "Kokomo Blues", a song popularized by Scrapper Blackwell, Madlyn Davis and most notably by James Arnold. Arnold's version of the song, which he recorded in 1934 as "Old Original Kokomo Blues", was such a success that he changed his performing name to Kokomo Arnold.

The earliest recorded version of the song by Scrapper Blackwell in 1928 referred to Kokomo, Indiana, a city well known to the Indianapolis-based guitarist. Kokomo was famous for the number of traffic lights. It was known to truckers as "stop light city" and to blues singers after Arnold as "level light city".

Blackwell's original began:

"Mmmm
Baby don't you want to go
Pack up your little suitcase
Papa's going to Kokomo"

Arnold's more copied version had the chorus:

"Crying oh
Baby don't you want to go
Back to that that level light city
To sweet old Kokomo"

Johnson rewrote Arnold's chorus, perhaps because his Southern audience felt no connection with Indiana, perhaps to create a novelty, perhaps to avoid copyright claims. Whatever the reason, he chose to substitute two locations which every listener had some notion of:

"But I'm cryin' hey baby
Honey don't you want to go
Back to the land of California
To my sweet home Chicago"

 
 Artist: Robert Johnson
Title: Sweet Home Chicago

Oh
Baby, don't you want to go
Oh
Baby, don't you want to go
Back to the land of California
To my sweet home Chicago

Oh
Baby, don't you want to go
Oh
Baby, don't you want to go
Back to the land of California
To my sweet home Chicago

Now one and one is two
Two and two is four
I'm heavy loaded baby
I'm booked, I gotta go
Cryin', baby
Honey, don't you want to go
Back to the land of California
To my sweet home Chicago

Now two and two is four
Four and two is six
You gon' keep on monkeyin' ‘round here friend-boy,
You gon' get your
Business all in a trick
But I'm cryin', baby
Honey, don't you want to go
Back to the land of California
To my sweet home Chicago

Now six and two is eight
Eight and two is ten
Friend-boy, she trick you one time
She sure gon' do it again
But I'm cryin', baby
Honey, don't you want to go
Back to the land of California
To my sweet home Chicago

I'm goin' to California
From there to Des Moines, Iowa
Somebody will tell me that you
Need my help someday, cryin'
Hey, hey
Baby, don't you want to go
Back to the land of California
To my sweet home Chicago