IN: Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel Maus. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines Arcade and Raw has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for The New Yorker, where he made several high-profile and sometimes controversial covers. He is married to designer and editor

Hired by Tina Brown as a contributing artist in 1992, Spiegelman worked for The New Yorker for ten years. Spiegelman's first cover appeared on the February 15, 1993, Valentine's Day issue and showed a black West Indian woman and a Hasidic man kissing. The cover caused turmoil at The New Yorker offices. Spiegelman intended it to reference the Crown Heights riot of 1991 in which racial tensions led to the murder of a Jewish yeshiva student. Spiegelman had twenty-one New Yorker covers published, and submitted a number which were rejected for being too outrageous.  Within The New Yorker's pages, Spiegelman contributed strips such as a collaboration titled "In the Dumps" with children's illustrator Maurice Sendak and an obituary to Charles M. Schulz titled "Abstract Thought is a Warm Puppy". An essay he had published there on Jack Cole, the creator of Plastic Man, called "Forms Stretched to their Limits" was to form the basis for a book in 2001 about Cole called Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to their Limits.  The same year, Voyager Company published a CD-ROM version of Maus with extensive supplementary material called The Complete Maus, and Spiegelman illustrated a 1923 poem by Joseph Moncure March called The Wild Party. Spiegelman contributed the essay "Getting in Touch With My Inner Racist" in the September 1, 1997 issue of Mother Jones.  Spiegelman's influence and connections in New York cartooning circles drew the ire of political cartoonist Ted Rall in 1999. In an article titled "The King of Comix" in The Village Voice, Rall accused Spiegelman of the power to "make or break" a cartoonist's career in New York, while denigrating Spiegelman as "a guy with one great book in him". Cartoonist Danny Hellman responded by sending a forged email under Rall's name to thirty professionals; the prank escalated until Rall launched a defamation suit against Hellman for $1.5 million. Hellman published a "Legal Action Comics" benefit book to cover his legal costs, to which Spiegelman contributed a back-cover cartoon in which he relieves himself on a Rall-shaped urinal.  In 1997, Spiegelman had his first children's book published: Open Me... I'm a Dog, with a narrator who tries to convince its readers that it is a dog via pop-ups and an attached leash. From 2000 to 2003 Spiegelman and Mouly edited three issues of the children's comics anthology Little Lit, with contributions from Raw alumni and children's book authors and illustrators.
QUESTION: what did he do for the new yorker?
IN: "Cross Road Blues" (also known as "Crossroads") is a blues song written and recorded by American blues artist Robert Johnson in 1936. Johnson performed it as a solo piece with his vocal and acoustic slide guitar in the Delta blues-style. The song has become part of the Robert Johnson mythology as referring to the place where he supposedly sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical talents, although the lyrics do not contain any specific references. Bluesman Elmore James revived the song with recordings in 1954 and 1960-1961.

Little is known about Johnson's life and musical career, although his recordings are well documented. In October 1936, Johnson auditioned for music store owner and sometime talent scout H. C. Speir in Jackson, Mississippi; Speir passed on Johnson's contact information to Ernie Oertle, who was a representative for ARC Records. After a second audition, Oertle arranged for Johnson to travel to San Antonio, Texas, for a recording session. Johnson recorded 22 songs for ARC over three days from November 23 to 27, 1936. During the first session, he recorded his most commercially appealing songs. They mostly represented his original pieces and reflected current, piano-influenced musical trends. The songs include "Terraplane Blues" (his first single and most popular record) along with "Sweet Home Chicago" and "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom", which became blues standards after others recorded them.  A second and third recording date took place in San Antonio after a two-day break. Johnson reached back into his long-standing repertoire for songs to record. The material reflects the styles of country blues performers Charley Patton and Son House, who influenced Johnson in his youth. The songs are among Johnson's most heartfelt and forceful, and music historian Ted Gioia sees a shift in the lyrical themes:  At the close of the San Antonio session, the darker, more apocalyptic side of Johnson's work emerges ... [he] evokes the themes of damnation and redemption, darkness and light ... glimpses into the musician's inner life, and all its attendant turmoils.  "Cross Road Blues" was recorded during Johnson's third session in San Antonio, on Friday November 27, 1936. The sessions continued at an improvised studio in Room 414 at the Gunter Hotel. ARC producers Art Satherley and Don Law supervised the recording and used a portable disc cutting machine. It is unknown what input, if any, they had into Johnson's selection of material to record or how to present it. Two similar takes of the song were recorded.
QUESTION:
When did he do his first recording?