John Barleycorn Must Die
1970 studio album by Traffic
John Barleycorn Must Die is the fourth studio album by English rock band Traffic, released in 1970. It marked the band's comeback after a brief disbandment, and peaked at number 5 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, making it their highest-charting album in the US, and has been certified a gold record by the RIAA. In addition, the single "Empty Pages" spent eight weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 74. The album was marginally less successful in the UK, reaching number 11 on the UK Albums Chart.
The album was released as Island ILPS 9116 in the United Kingdom, United Artists UAS 5504 in the United States, and as Polydor 2334 013 in Canada.
Background and content
In late 1968, Traffic disbanded, with guitarist Dave Mason leaving the group for the second time prior to the completion of the band's eponymous album Traffic. In 1969, Steve Winwood joined the supergroup Blind Faith, while drummer and lyricist Jim Capaldi and woodwinds player Chris Wood turned to session work. Wood and Winwood also joined Blind Faith's drummer Ginger Baker in his post-Blind Faith group Ginger Baker's Air Force for their first album, Ginger Baker's Air Force (1970).
At the beginning of 1970, after the demise of Blind Faith, Winwood returned to the studio ostensibly to make his first solo album, originally to be titled Mad Shadows. He recorded two tracks with producer Guy Stevens, "Stranger to Himself" and "Every Mother's Son", but yearned for like-minded musicians to accompany, inviting Wood and Capaldi to join him. Thus Winwood's erstwhile solo album became the reunion of Traffic (minus Dave Mason), and a re-launch of the band's career.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “John Barleycorn Must Die” as 1970 studio album by Traffic. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1970 studio album by Traffic. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q914549. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970, 1968 and 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Barleycorn Must Die” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.