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Historic place

Vitagraph / Warner Bros. building (Robert Johnson sessions)

508 Park Ave, Dallas, TX

In a third-floor storage room at 508 Park Avenue, Robert Johnson recorded 13 songs in June 1937, including Hell Hound on My Trail.

📅 1937–1937🏛️ Music VenueClosed
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The story

Robert Johnson recorded the Dallas half of his catalog in an unused storage area on the third floor of the former Vitagraph and Warner Bros. building at 508 Park Avenue. The sessions were Saturday, June 19, and Sunday, June 20, 1937. Don Law produced, Art Satherley oversaw the work for the American Record Corporation, and Vincent Liebler engineered.

Wikipedia's session table counts 13 distinct songs across 27 takes, three songs on the first day and ten on the second. Another account counts seventeen sides on the second day alone, using a different method. It was Johnson's fifth and last session for the company. He died on August 16, 1938, near Greenwood, Mississippi, under circumstances one source calls mysterious.

What's There Now

The sources opened do not say what the building is used for today.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Johnson was recorded solo, with no other musicians.
June 19 covered 3 songs and June 20 covered 10.
The counts of songs and sides differ between sources because they count masters, takes and alternates differently.

Nearby history

Old Dallas Central Library

1954 Commerce St · 283 m away
A George Dahl library that replaced the 1901 Carnegie building and later became the Dallas Morning News headquarters.

Dallas Grand Hotel

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Interurban Building (Interurban Terminal)

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The downtown terminal where Dallas' interurban electric lines met, replacing three smaller stations.

Joske's

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The store became Joske's in 1979 and closed soon after Dillard's bought the chain in 1987.

Neiman Marcus Downtown Flagship

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Neiman Marcus rebuilt here after a fire burned its Elm Street store, and stayed 112 years until the flagship closed on S

Whitacre Tower (One AT&T Plaza)

208 S Akard St · 504 m away
A 37-story tower built on the cleared block for Southwestern Bell.

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Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_recordings