Robert Johnson / The Complete Recordings / 1990
I Believe I'll Dust My Broom
resigned but defiant, laced with dark comedy
A blues traveler resolves to leave a faithless lover behind, moving through resignation, jealousy, and a restless fantasy of searching the whole world for someone better. The recurring image of sweeping out a room stands in for both departure and emotional housecleaning, delivered with the sly humor and stoicism typical of Delta blues.
infidelity and betrayal departure and self-reliance restless wandering wounded pride gallows humor
Who's speaking
A first-person male narrator addresses his unfaithful lover directly at times, and speaks past her to an implied audience at others; his voice is proud, wounded, and only half-serious about his grander claims, which makes him a knowingly unreliable narrator when he boasts of global search parties for a replacement.
What happens
The song opens with a decision to leave, expressed through the domestic image of sweeping a room clean. It moves into a plan of active searching — letters, phone calls, town names — for the woman who wronged him, then curdles into a blunt condemnation of her promiscuity. A brief return to the leaving theme reasserts his resolve before a final verse escalates the search motif to absurd, global proportions, ending on a note of comic overreach rather than resolution.
How it's built
Built from the classic 12-bar blues AAB stanza, each verse restates a line before delivering a punchline or twist. The broom-dusting image bookends the song, framing the middle verses' escalating threats and complaints. There's no bridge in a formal sense, but the shift from realistic geography to fantastical global searching functions as a kind of comic turn near the end.
Craft
- double entendre
- The act of dusting a broom carries a double meaning of literal domestic finality and a folk superstition/euphemism for moving on or even magical cleansing, letting the narrator sound practical and vaguely ominous at once.
- anaphora
- The AAB structure repeats the first line before the resolving third line, a hallmark of blues form that builds tension and lets small variations carry weight.
- hyperbole
- The narrator's search escalates from nearby towns to entire countries and continents, exaggerating his devotion or spite for comic and rhetorical effect.
- apostrophe
- Direct address to the departing lover personalizes the complaint and turns private grievance into public performance, typical of blues confession.
Reading it
On one level this is a straightforward blues of romantic betrayal and resolve to leave, with the broom serving as a compact symbol of both departure and ritual cleansing. A stronger reading treats the escalating search — from nearby towns to entire continents — as ironic self-mockery: the narrator knows his boast is absurd, and the humor undercuts his wounded pride, making the song as much comic performance as heartbreak. The two readings aren't mutually exclusive; the blues form thrives on holding grief and joke in the same breath.
Context
Recorded in the 1930s during Johnson's brief documented career, this song became one of his most influential compositions, later reworked by Elmore James into an electric blues standard that helped define the postwar Chicago sound. Johnson's original is spare, acoustic, and rhythmically loose in the way solo Delta blues often was, which contrasts with the driving slide-guitar riff the song became known for in later hands. I'm not certain of the specific recording session details beyond its general dating to Johnson's known sessions.
Listen for
- the recurring broom image and how the guitar phrasing echoes a sweeping, cyclical rhythm
- the shift from local town names to distant countries in the search verses
- subtle vocal inflections suggesting irony or wounded pride rather than pure anger
- the way each AAB stanza's third line lands as either threat, joke, or resignation
- the contrast between domestic imagery and grand geographic claims
About Robert Johnson
Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues musician and songwriter. His singing, guitar playing and songwriting on his landmark 1936 and 1937 recordings have influenced later generations of musicians.
1911 - 1938 / United States
Full biography and catalogue