"Farther Up the Road" or "Further On Up the Road" is a blues song first recorded in 1957 by Bobby "Blue" Bland. It is an early influential Texas shuffle and features guitar playing that represents the transition from the 1940s blues style to the 1960s blues-rock style. The song became Bland's first record chart success and one of his best-known tunes. As a blues standard, "Farther Up the Road" has been performed and recorded by numerous blues and other artists, including Eric Clapton who has made it part of his repertoire. In 2022, Bland's recording was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in the 'Classics of Blues Recording – Singles' category. Background The songwriting for "Farther Up the Road" is credited to Joe Medwick Veasey, a Houston-area independent songwriter/broker, and Duke Records owner Don Robey. In an interview, blues singer Johnny Copeland claimed he and Medwick wrote the song in one night; Medwick then sold it the next day to Robey, with Robey taking Copeland's songwriting credit. According to Bobby Bland, Medwick wrote the song with no involvement by Robey. The guitar work on the song has been attributed to three different guitar players: Pat Hare, Mel Brown, and Wayne Bennett. However, Bland noted that Hare was the session guitarist, having been chosen by arranger/trumpeter Joe Scott. It was Hare's only session with Bland, although he was in Junior Parker's Blue Flames, who sometimes provided backup while Bland was on tour. Bennett and Brown were Bland's later guitarists. Composition and lyrics "Farther Up the Road" has been called a "seminal Texas shuffle" featuring "a style which Bland evolved as his own, with his light, melodic vocals riding over an ebullient shuffle". According to music critic Dave Marsh, "Bland's deep vocal and Scott's arrangement, which swings as hard as it rocks, links Ray Charles' big band R&B to more modern currents in Southern soul". Bland's smooth vocals are contrasted with Pat Hare's raucous, overdriven guitar fills and soloing, a style which prefigured the blues-rock sound of the late 1960s. Music critic Dave Marsh adds that the song is "a virtually perfect Texas blues ... [Pat Hare's] signature lick provides the missing link between T-Bone Walker and Eric Clapton". The backing arrangement is provided by the Bill Harvey Orchestra, who added a big band-influenced intro and outro as well as chord substitutions to the twelve-bar scheme. The song has been notated