alternate takes for most of them. Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom", "Sweet Home Chicago", and "Cross Road Blues", which later became blues standards. The first to be released was "Terraplane Blues", backed with "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", which sold as many as 10,000 copies. Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session with Don Law in a makeshift studio at the Vitagraph (Warner Bros.) Building, on June 19–20, 1937. Johnson recorded almost half of the 29 songs that make up his entire discography in Dallas and eleven records from this session were released within the following year. Most of Johnson's "somber and introspective" songs and performances come from his second recording session. Johnson did two takes of most of these songs, and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his era. In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78-rpm side. Death Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi, of unknown causes. Johnson's death was not reported publicly. Almost 30 years later, Gayle Dean Wardlow, a Mississippi-based musicologist researching Johnson's life, found Johnson's death certificate, which listed only the date and location, with no official cause of death. No formal autopsy had been done. Instead, a pro forma examination was done to file the death certificate, and no immediate cause of death was determined. It is likely he had congenital syphilis and it was suspected later by medical professionals that this may have been a contributing factor in his death. However, 30 years of local oral tradition had, like the rest of his life story, built a legend which has filled in gaps in the scant historical record. Several differing accounts have described the events preceding his death. Johnson had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about from Greenwood. According to one theory, Johnson was murdered by the jealous husband of a woman with whom he had flirted. In an account by the blues musician Sonny Boy Williamson, Johnson had been flirting with a married woman at a dance, and she gave him a bottle of whiskey poisoned