On the Road Again

"On the Road Again" is a song recorded by the American blues-rock group Canned Heat in 1967. A driving blues-rock boogie, it was adapted from earlier blues songs and includes mid-1960s psychedelic rock elements. Unlike most of Canned Heat's songs from the period which were sung by Bob Hite, second guitarist and harmonica player Alan Wilson provides the distinctive high pitched vocal, sometimes described as a falsetto. "On the Road Again" first appeared on their second album, Boogie with Canned Heat, in January 1968. An edited version was released as a single in April 1968 and became Canned Heat's first record chart hit and one of their best-known songs. Earlier songs "On the Road Again" is based on early blues songs by Tommy Johnson and Floyd Jones. The lyrics to Johnson's "Big Road Blues" (1928) include: "Well I ain't goin' down that big road by myself ... If I don't carry you gonna carry somebody else". In "Dark Road" (1951), Jones "reshaped Tommy Johnson's verses into an eerie evocation of the Delta": Jones later remade "Dark Road" with the title "On the Road Again" and added: