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"Crossroads"
Single by Cream from the album Wheels of Fire
B-side	"Passing the Time"
Released	January 1969
Format	7" 45 RPM
Recorded	Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco
Genre	Blues rock
Length	4:14
Label	Polydor
Writer	Robert Johnson
Producer	Felix Pappalardi
Cream singles chronology
"White Room" (1969) "Crossroads" (1969) "Badge" (1969)

"Crossroads" is a famous and influential blues-rock song. It has become a blues standard for many blues-rock bands, notably Cream, who released it on their 1968 album Wheels of Fire.

The song was written by Robert Johnson as "Cross Road Blues" with additional lines copied from Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues". Many believe the song is about the original songwriter, Robert Johnson, going to the crossroads to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for being able to play the blues and gain fame. Some historians believe the song is actually about an African-American worried about being lynched for being out after dark in an unfamiliar place of the Deep South in the early 20th century. (See Chapter Eight of Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), especially pages 410 and 411.)

The iconic live recording was captured at the Winterland Ballroom on the 10 March, 1968 and not at the Fillmore as stated by the original Wheels of Fire album. It has also been suggested that the released recording is a shortened edit from a much longer rendition, but this has been disproved by a separate bootleg audience recording available of the entire night's performance.

Unlike Cream's usual arrangement with bassist Jack Bruce singing, guitarist Eric Clapton took the vocals on this recording. Clapton's extended guitar solos from "Crossroads" cemented his reputation as a guitar legend; his work from the track has been voted "the greatest live rock solo ever"^{[citation needed]}. Bruce's fluent bass playing, blurring the line between rhythm and melody, has similarly been honored as the second-best live bass performance of all time.^{[citation needed]}

It was placed at #409 on the 2004 List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

• In 1966 by Eric Clapton's Powerhouse
• In 1970 by The Doors for the album Live in Boston.
• In 1972 by Ten Years After on their album Alvin Lee and Company (titled "Standing at the Crossroads").
• In 2001 by Frank Marino on his album RealLIVE!.
• In 1976 by Lynyrd Skynyrd on their album One More from the Road.
• In 2004 by Rush on their album Feedback.
• In 2007 by John Mayer on his Continuum summer tour.
• The song was featured in the 1999 Freaks and Geeks episode "I'm With the Band".
• A cover of this song was featured in the 2005 PlayStation 2 game, Guitar Hero.

• "Cross Road Blues" lyrics
• "Traveling Riverside Blues" lyrics