The Songs He Didn’t Write
BOB DYLAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
The Songs He Didn’t Write Bob Dylan Under The Influence by Derek Barker
A CHROME DREAMS PUBLICATIO In association with ISIS Magazine First Edition published in 2008 Published by Chrome Dreams PO Box 230, ew Malden, Surrey, KT3 6YY. UK
[email protected] WWW.CHROMEDREAMS.CO.UK ISB 9781842404249 Copyright © Derek Barker 2008 The moral right of the author has been asserted
Publishing Editor: Rob Johnstone Layout Design: Tracy Barker Cover Design: Sylwia Grzeszczuk
All rights reserved o part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Printed and bound in Great Britain by William Clowes Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk
The Songs He Didn’t Write
BOB DYLAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
Derek Barker
THAKS AD ACKOWLEDGMETS This book is the result of twenty-three years of writing about Bob Dylan and as such it would be impossible to thank all those who have contributed help and information throughout those years. I would, however, like to make special reference to – Tracy Barker (for all her hard work with sourcing illustrations, masterminding the layout and for simply putting up with me), Toby Richards-Carpenter (for his many suggestions and for steering me back on course when I was drifting too far from shore), Paul Comley (for his eagle eye), Antonio J. Iriarte (for checking appendix 1 for factual errors and finding some), Ian Woodward (for his friendship and for all the information he has given to me over the years, some of which must have found its way into this book), to everyone at Chrome Dreams (my publisher), especially my editor and friend Rob Johnstone, Richard Ruck (for final proofing), Sylwia Grzeszczuk (for the cover design) and to Jeff Rosen at Bob Dylan’s office for his help and understanding across the years. Glen Dundas (for his “Tangled” series of books which helped me to untangle things). Michael Gray (especially for information about the David Bromberg recording sessions). Manfred Helfert (for his “Roots Of Bob Dylan” website www.bobdylanroots.com). Stefan Wirz (for his comprehensive website www.wirz.de). Olof Björner (for his detailed files at www.bjorner.com). The Grateful Dead Family Discography (for a wonderful source of information about traditional songs www.deaddisc.com). Sid Griffin (Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, The Band, and the Basement Tapes). Oliver Trager (Keys to the Rain).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Renowned authority on the life and works of Bob Dylan, Derek Barker founded the international Bob Dylan magazine ISIS in September 1985 and has edited this highly respected journal uninterruptedly for the past twenty-thee years. The magazine now has subscribers in thirty-two countries. Derek has contributed regularly to BBC Radio programmes about Bob Dylan and has been featured on the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio Northern Ireland, BBC Radio Scotland as well as numerous local radio stations. He also appeared on the BBC 2 television program The Culture Show and Channel 4s Breakfast News talking about Dylan. Derek has had his writings published in journals in England, the USA and Japan. Several books by Derek have been published, the first of which, a collection of writings and interviews from ISIS Magazine, “ISIS: A Bob Dylan Anthology” (Helter Skelter Publishing, 2001) received universal rave reviews. It sold out a hardback edition, two paperback printings and a 2004 revised edition. The second collection of writings from ISIS, “Bob Dylan Anthology 2 - 20 Years of ISIS” (Chrome Dreams, 2005) remains in print. Derek is due to have a Japanese language book about Bob Dylan published in 2008. Derek has also appeared in numerous documentary films and his status as an expert on all things Dylan is such that he regularly advises premier auction house Christie’s (both in London and New York) on the authenticity of items of Dylan memorabilia.
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Introduction By the late 1980s, a forty-something Dylan badly needed to re-connect with his vision, and in the summer of 1987 he made the radical, some would even say unwise, decision to team-up with the psychedelic Godfathers of jam, the Grateful Dead. The live album from the tour was a train wreck. However, according to Dylan, his liaison with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead saved his career! In his memoir “Chronicles Volume One”, Dylan writes that his creativity was at an alltime low and that part way through rehearsals with the the Dead he walked out of the studio on Front Street in San Rafael: “I wasn’t planning on going back” Dylan said, “I started up the street–maybe four or five or six blocks went by and I heard the sound of a jazz combo playing up ahead ... I looked in and saw that the musicians were playing at the opposite end of the room. It was raining and there were a few people inside ... It looked like the last stop on the train to nowhere ... something was calling me to come in ... I got within four feet of the stage and just stood there against the bar, ordered a gin and tonic and faced the singer”. Dylan goes on to describe him as “an older man” wearing “a mohair suit, flat cap with a little brim and shiny necktie”. He describes the drummer’s Stetson hat and says that the rest of the band was neatly dressed. Apparently, the singer reminded him of Billy Eckstine, a honey-dripper from the 1940s. Dylan even remembered some of the songs – ‘Time On My Hands’ and ‘Gloomy Sunday’. “All of a sudden, I understood something faster than I ever did before” says Dylan. “I could feel how he worked at getting his power, what he was doing to get at it. I knew where the power was coming from and it wasn’t his voice ... I used to do this thing ... It was a long time ago and it had been automatic ... This technique was so elemental, so simple and I’d forgotten ... Returning to the Dead’s rehearsal hall as if nothing had happened, I picked it up where I’d left off, couldn’t wait to get started ... I played these shows with the Dead and never had to think twice about it. Maybe they just dropped something in my drink, I can’t say, but anything they wanted to do was fine with me. I had that old jazz singer to thank”. It matters not that the events described by Bob Dylan in “Chronicles” never actually happened, or if they did, then certainly not as he portrayed them. The bar and restaurant in question, Pier 15 on the San Rafael Canal – where a member of the Grateful Dead camp found Dylan – never had live music, and there was not even a jukebox. There is another story regarding a different epiphany, which supposedly happened a few months later on October 5, 1987 while Dylan was onstage at Piazza Grande in Locarno, Switzerland. When and where he found his inspiration is immaterial, what matters is, that he had reconnected with the past and could now clearly see the future. Bob Dylan had begun listening to music as a child and by his early teens he had immersed himself in everything from rural blues to R&B and from country to rock‘n’roll. These lifeaffirming sounds first reached young Bobby in his isolated Hibbing home via the knobs and dials of his radio set. When he began playing in bands in the 1950s, rock’n’roll was his thing, Little Richard was his idol and live covers of ‘Jenny, Jenny’, ‘Ready Teddy’ and
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‘Lawdy, Miss Clawdy’ were the order of the day. When he arrived in Minneapolis, essentially to attend college, he quickly traded his electric guitar for a Martin acoustic and set about learning to play every traditional, blues and Woody Guthrie number he could unearth. This material would become the cornerstone of live gigs during his apprenticeship around the folk clubs of New York’s Greenwich Village, and it was from these songs that some of his own greatest compositions would be born. The traditional ‘Lord Randal’ became ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, ‘Scarborough Fair’ was transformed into ‘Girl From The orth Country’ and ‘ottamun Town’ was moulded into the epic ‘Masters Of War’. Countless folk ballads were used by Dylan as templates for his own songs. The idea for ‘John Brown’, the tale of a young man returning home from war, so disfigured that his own parents could not recognize him, was almost certainly lifted by Dylan from ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew You’. Even ancient folk characters like the gypsy Davey would turn up brandishing a blowtorch in Dylan’s mid-sixties stream-ofconsciousness songs. After the drug-fuelled rollercoaster ride that was the early-mid 1960s, Dylan desperately needed to take stock. He did this in his personal life by going back-to-basics in the relaxed setting of upstate Woodstock with his wife, children and dog. When this strategy worked in his private life, he simply applied the same approach to his music. After time away from both the recording studio and the concert stage, Bob Dylan was ready to make music again. The basement of an unremarkable, if rather garish pink-painted ranch house midway between Woodstock and West Saugerties provided the setting, while American roots music provided the material. The time spent in the now legendary basement of Big Pink, in the shadow of Overlook Mountain, was probably the most creative period of Dylan’s entire career, and the time he invested in recording scores of “covers” enabled him to rediscover how to write songs. Nine months after falling from his 650 single-carb Triumph motorcycle, on July 29, 1966, Bob Dylan was back in business. Apart from his debut LP, which contained only two original compositions, Dylan’s first extensive collection of recorded cover songs came with the release, in 1970, of the double album “Self Portrait”. The press greeted the album with almost universal derision. “What is this shit!” was the opening line to Greil Marcus’ lengthy Rolling Stone review. “I once said I’d buy an album of Dylan breathing hard. But I’d never said I’d buy an album of Dylan breathing softly”, added Marcus. Dylan would later claim in a succession of interviews that he had deliberately put out a substandard record in order to get people off his back and to shake off the “spokesman of a generation” tag. In spite of all his efforts, and in the face of the negative press reception, the album quickly went gold in the United States and topped the album chart in the United Kingdom. It seems that the album’s popularity has not diminished with time. A readers poll, commissioned in 2000 by ISIS Magazine placed “Self Portrait” at number twenty in a listing of forty-two Dylan albums ahead of “Shot Of Love”, “Saved”, “Empire Burlesque”, “ashville Skyline”, “ew Morning” and “Good As I Been To You”.
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If Greil Marcus and the rest of the press-pack thought things couldn’t get any worse, then they were sadly mistaken, because the outtakes from “Self Portrait” would soon be released to the world in the shape of the “imaginatively” titled album “Dylan”. This shoddy hotchpotch of leftovers, remnants from the “Self Portrait” and “ew Morning” recording sessions, was intentionally put out by Columbia in 1973 as a below par reprisal product to get even, or at least to fire a warning shot across Dylan’s bow, after his defection to David Geffen’s Asylum Records label. Dylan would soon return to the Columbia Records fold with what many consider his best ever album “Blood On The Tracks”. Just as Dylan had gone back-to-basics with his Big Pink recording sessions, he now did the same with his concerts. The concept of the 1975/’76 Rolling Thunder Revue tours was to get away from the recent trend of highly organized stadia concerts with the back-to-basics approach of a travelling show. This tour evoked memories of the old-time 19th century American medicine shows and the fabled gypsy bands of old Europe. These two “revue” tours were the perfect vehicle for traditional songs like ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’, ‘The Water Is Wide’, ‘Railroad Boy’, ‘Dink’s Song’ and pseudo traditional numbers like ‘Dark As a Dungeon’ and ‘Deportees’. The idea of constantly rearranging and reinventing his own songs was now beginning to develop, and from this time on Dylan would make little or no attempt to replicate the music on his records, but instead would “cover” his own songs. On his 1978 world tour, Dylan went for an altogether more big-band sound which saw traditional numbers give way to blues covers like ‘Love Her With a Feeling’, ‘She’s Love Crazy’ and ‘I’m Ready’. The 1980 “Musical Retrospective” tour found Dylan playing gospel-type numbers like Dallas Holm’s ‘Rise Again’, Dick Holler’s ‘Abraham, Martin And John’ and the traditional tale of ‘Mary From The Wild Moor’. Other covers such as Jim Krueger’s ‘We Just Disagree’ and Dr. Hook’s ‘A Couple More Years’ were also in evidence. In the mid-1980s the temporary loss of his muse forced Dylan to record other artists’ songs, but due to poor choices of material the ploy failed and the resultant albums, “Knocked Out Loaded” and “Down In The Groove”, were a definite nadir in Dylan’s recorded output. By the end of the 1980s Bob Dylan was desperately in need of a direction home and as stated previously, the unlikely providers of that inspiration were the kings of improvisation the Grateful Dead. Dylan’s short time in the company of the Dead, a band steeped in traditional music, prompted a process in which he began to reacquaint himself with the murky and mysterious musics of the great American past, and in doing so, he also began to reacquaint himself with his own songs. In the early ’90s Dylan released a pair of cover albums, “Good As I Been To You” and the aptly titled “World Gone Wrong”. The choice of material was outstanding and these two records (along with “Oh Mercy”) were the absolute highpoint of his recorded output between May 1985 and 1997’s “Time Out Of Mind”. In retrospect, one wonders if Dylan could even have made “Time Out Of Mind” and the albums that followed (“Love And
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Theft” and “Modern Times”) without first revisiting songs like ‘Delia’, ‘Broke Down Engine’ and ‘Stack-a-Lee’. Heavily populated with traditional and country blues songs, “Good As I Been To You” and “World Gone Wrong” were the culmination of a return to the roots music that had been reflected in Dylan’s concert performances over the previous four years. During this period, when Dylan’s live performances of his own songs were often experimental – some might even say he treated some of them with irreverence – his renditions of traditional numbers and songs by other artists (Ry Cooder’s ‘Across The Borderline’ immediately comes to mind) were exemplary. In fact, for a lengthy period (1988 to the end of 2002), Dylan’s “cover” performances, both traditional and contemporary, completely underpinned and reinvigorated his live shows. Even when the regularity of these cover songs fell away (2003 - 2008), their occasional inclusion, ‘Samson And Delilah’ and ‘Pancho & Lefty’ at the 2004 Bonnaroo Music Festival, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘A-11’ in Reno 2005, and ‘Blue Monday’ at Brixton 2005, always seemed to lift these gigs. Dylan’s treatment of other people’s songs is fascinating. In many instances he has sung these songs word-perfect, taken great care over his diction, and stayed faithful to the originals (‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’). There are other instances, however, when he has radically rearranged covers to make them his own (an electric ‘Barbara Allen’!). Yet on almost every occasion, faithful or rearranged, the care and attention lavished on these cover songs has been extraordinary. During the most recent years of the so called “Never Ending Tour”, Dylan has concentrated almost exclusively on his own material, but the songs that first reached young Bobby Zimmerman through the radio set in his isolated North Country home, have remained a part of his fabric, and fifty years later Bob Dylan is playing those songs on his own hour-long XM, Satellite Radio show. If we did not know this already, then Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour shows have confirmed just how deep his knowledge of music, especially of the “old songs”, is. In 2008 the man from Minnesota seems comfortable in his own skin, possibly more than at any other time in his long career. Nevertheless, Bob Dylan thrives on change and his current concerts will eventually take another change in direction. What this change will be, no one yet knows, but like so many times before it will probably involve another injection of “The Songs He Didn’t Write”.
otes on how to use this book Before beginning work on this project, one of my first and possibly most difficult decisions was choosing the criteria for inclusion in the book. I could have included everything; a four-year-old Robert Zimmerman singing ‘Some Sunday Morning’ for his Grandmother, or that day’s encore, Johnny Mercer’s 1940s radio favourite ‘Accentuate The Positive’. I could have included Bob Dylan singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to band members – he has done
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that in concert on many occasions – or maybe a hotel room jam. The February 1986 jam with Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks comes to mind. I decided, however, that these types of items were not worthy of inclusion. Also omitted are Dylan’s studio appearances as a guest musician on other artists’ albums; the so-called “sideman” sessions. Sound-checks, studio warm-ups, and what are obviously non-serious attempts at recording are also absent. These subjective choices were not always straightforward, but as the self-appointed referee, my decision is final. It would have been easier to simply include everything. I felt, however, that the inclusion of frivolous items would only serve to dilute the worth of the book. Therefore, when you read in this book that Bob Dylan played ‘Dolly Dagger’ in Perth on March 18, 1992, you will know that this was a serious attempt at covering the Jimi Hendrix song. What is included? – all of the songs which Dylan has covered on record, plus an extremely comprehensive listing of the songs performed during his early informal coffeehouse appearances and private party sessions, through the many Basement Tapes songs and on to the proliferation of live covers which Dylan has included in many of his concert performances of the past twenty years. I have no doubt that this work contains some omissions and errors. Anyone who says they can write the definitive book on this subject is either a liar or a fool. This book is complete up to the October 2008 release of the Columbia Records rarities box-set “Tell Tale Signs”.
The Main Text: This book contains five hundred and fifty songs which Bob Dylan has covered either on record or in concert. Each entry catalogues when and where the song was performed, the year of the tour and, in most cases, the date and venue of the first and last (most recent) performance. Also included is the background to the song, from whom Dylan might have learned it, and in most cases a short biography of the artist in question. In many instances the text also directs the reader to an entry, or entries, in appendix one and two.
Appendix One: The intention of this appendix is to take many of the songs contained in the main text out of alphabetical isolation and to place them in the historical and chronological settings in which they were performed or recorded. This enables the reader to view the entire setlist or album session, to see which songs came before or after the song in question, to see if the song was an isolated cover or, if in the case of Dylan’s early performances, it was part of an entire set of cover songs. Perhaps the song in question is an isolated Woody Guthrie number, or maybe it is grouped together with other Woody Guthrie numbers. We can see clearly that Dylan’s only known performance of, say ‘Talking Hugh Brown’ took place in Hugh Brown’s Minneapolis apartment and that the song was grouped together with several of Woody Guthrie’s “Talking” songs. The eighty chronological sessions within this appendix also allows the reader to view the development of Dylan’s own song-writing and hopefully turns this book into more than just an encyclopaedia.
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Appendix Two: This appendix provides the reader with a basic, but useful guide, as to which of the many available CD bootlegs contain the songs discussed in this book. This list has been kept concise so as to gather together the maximum number of songs over the minimum number of discs.
Appendix Three: A collection of notes about significant people, places and artefacts frequently referred to the main text of this book can be found in a short section near the back of the book. Derek Barker, October 2008
Photo: Duncan Hume
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Bob Dylan 2008
1913 Massacre
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1913 Massacre (Woody Guthrie) Bob Dylan probably performed this Guthrie song a number of times during the early 1960s, but the only recording that has found its way into collectors’ hands is from the New York Carnegie Chapter Hall concert. This event took place on November 4, 1961. For further information see Appendix 1:14. This recording can be found on a number of bootleg CDs including “Acoustic Troubadour”, “Hard Times In YC” and “His Gotham Ingress”. See Appendix 2 for further details. Woody Guthrie wrote ‘1913 Massacre’ after reading about the tragic event in Mother Bloor’s autobiography “We Are Many” (1940). A labour organizer from the East Coast, Ella Reeve Bloor was an eyewitness to the events at Italian Hall on Christmas Eve, 1913. On that fateful day, the striking miners of Calumet, Michigan, their wives and children, about five hundred people in all, were gathered on the second floor of Italian Hall for a Christmas party which was sponsored by the Western Federation of Miners. Shortly after the festivities began, someone yelled “Fire!” and in the ensuing chaos seventy-four people were crushed and suffocated to death on the stairway. Fifty-nine of the dead were children. There was no fire. There are conflicting stories about what actually happened that Christmas Eve, and it has never been established who cried “fire!” and why. The popular theory is that the shout was made by the anti-union company management to disrupt the party. One story regarding the incident states that the doors at the bottom of the stairway opened inward and that when the fleeing hoard reached the bottom they were simply pressed up against the doors which prevented them from opening. However, this theory appears to have emerged many years later (circa 1952) and photographs taken at the time suggest the doors in fact opened outward. In addition,
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1913 Massacre neither the coroner’s inquest nor the contemporary newspaper reports made any reference to the doors being a contributing factor. The version of events that was prevalent at the time, and which found its way into Woody Guthrie’s song, was that thugs working for the company had plotted the whole affair and that they were holding the doors shut from outside. The song has been covered by several artists including Jack Elliot, Alex Campbell and Woody’s son Arlo Guthrie. Guthrie’s recording is available on the albums “Struggle” and “Hard Travelin’”. Most Bob Dylan enthusiasts will, I’m sure, already know much of the Woody Guthrie story. However, it would be remiss of me if I did not provide a brief résumé of the great man’s life here. Guthrie was, after all, the biggest single influence on Bob Dylan’s early career and life. Dylan wrote in his book “Chronicles Volume One”: “The Songs of Woody Guthrie ruled my universe” … “The first song I’d wind up writing of any substantial importance was written for Woody Guthrie”. Slightly built, with a shock of curly hair, Woody Guthrie was bright and intuitive, a keen observer and one of life’s true originals. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma on July 14, 1912 to Nora Belle Sherman and Charles Edward Guthrie. His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, who was elected to the presidency that year. Charles Guthrie was a land speculator who at one time owned thirty plots of land in Okfuskee County. He was involved in politics and was a Democratic candidate for office in the County. During his early life in Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie experienced a series of tragic personal losses, the effects of which would haunt him for the rest of his life. First, his older sister Clara died in a coal oil fire when Woody was only seven. His father was severely burned in a later fire and although the circumstances of these tragedies remain unclear, they may have been the result of actions by Guthrie’s mother who, unknown to the family at the time, was probably suffering from the rare degenerative neurological disease, Huntington’s chorea. She was eventually committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane, where she later died. Huntington’s is a genetic disease which would eventually result in the death of Woody Guthrie. Woody developed an enduring love of rambling and when, in 1931, Okemal’s boomtown went bust, Woody left Texas and ended up in Pampa. It was there he married Mary Jennings and together they had three children. As a result of the dust storms which hit the Great Plains in 1935 Woody, like many others, headed out on Route 66 looking for work to support his family, who remained behind in Pampa. His travels eventually took him to California where he got a job on KFVD radio playing a mix of traditional music and some of his own compositions. Woody’s show was extremely successful, but wanderlust won the day and his next stop was New York City. He arrived in New York in 1940 and was immediately embraced by the city’s folk music community. Guthrie now made his first real recordings, several hours of conversation and songs for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress. He also recorded an album, “Dust Bowl
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1913 Massacre Ballads”, for the New Jersey label, Victor Records, and began hosting a weekly radio show entitled “Pipe Smoking Time”.
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At this time Woody was also involved with a radio programme called “Back Where I Come From”. The fifteen-minute CBS radio programme aired three nights a week at 10:30 pm., and ran from September 1940 to January 1941. The show was written by Alan Lomax who came up with the idea that each programme should be devoted to a theme such as trains or marriage, etc. Who would have thought that almost seventy years later, Bob Dylan would be the host of a similar themed radio show, “Theme Time Radio Hour With Your Host Bob Dylan”? For further information about “Theme Time Radio Hour” see the Appendix 3 at the back of this book. Guthrie now had enough money to bring his wife and children to New York, where they rented a comfortable apartment in uptown Manhattan. For the first time in decades, Woody was not living in poverty. He joined the Almanac Singers, whose other members were Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell. In 1942 Guthrie became romantically involved with a dancer named Marjorie Mazia. The couple married in 1945 and had four children: Cathy (who tragically died in yet another house fire), Arlo, Joady, and Nora Lee. At the time, Guthrie was serving in the U.S. Merchant Marines but due to his involvement with Communism he was drafted into the US Army. By the end of the 1940s, Woody’s behaviour had become extremely erratic and by the early 1950s, his health had deteriorated to the point where he was committed for short periods to various New York hospitals. Doctors were unable to pinpoint his problem, although alcoholism and schizophrenia were suggested as probable causes of his violent outbursts. In July 1952 Woody was admitted to Brooklyn State Hospital for further tests but doctors remained baffled as to exactly what the problem was. One doctor wrote: “This is one of those cases which stubbornly defies classification”. However, on September 3, 1952 he was finally diagnosed as suffering from Huntington’s Disease, the same genetic disorder from which his mother is believed to have died. Guthrie’s ever worsening condition put a massive strain on his marriage and he and Marjorie eventually separated. Woody married again and he and his new wife, Anneke Van Kirk Marshall, had a child together. However, the strain of being married to a partner with Huntington’s eventually proved too much and this relationship also ended in divorce. Even before the divorce, Guthrie’s second wife Marjorie re-entered his life and would continue to care for Woody until his eventual death. Signs of his illness came and went but on May 28, 1956 Guthrie was arrested whilst wandering aimlessly around in New Jersey and was involuntarily committed to Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey where he remained until 1961. His condition worsened to the point where he could not play the guitar, type, or even hold a pen. Marjorie had Woody moved back to Brooklyn State Hospital and in his final days he received rather more sensitive care in Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens. By this point Guthrie could only communicate by pointing to cards which read “Yes” or “No”. Finally, after almost two decades of suffering, Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967. His ashes were cast into the waters off Coney Island.
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20-20 Vision Woody Guthrie’s death went some way to helping raise awareness of the disease and led Marjorie to found the Committee to Combat Huntington’s Disease – later the Huntington’s Disease Society of America. None of Woody Guthrie’s three remaining children with Marjorie have developed symptoms of Huntington’s, but two of the three children he had with his first wife, Mary, were diagnosed with the disease. Both died at 41 years of age. In his lifetime Woody Guthrie published two novels, created numerous works of art and wrote many poems and prose pieces and almost 3,000 song lyrics. Bob Dylan first heard Woody Guthrie in 1959. He was introduced to Guthrie’s music by Flo Castner, an aspiring actress that he’d met at the Bastille, a coffee house in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dylan knew of Woody Guthrie through his recordings with Cisco Houston and Sonny Terry, but he’d never heard Guthrie perform alone. Castner suggested they should visit her brother’s home because he had some solo Guthrie records in his collection. Dylan wrote with great passion about this first encounter with solo Guthrie in “Chronicles Volume One”: “[Flo Castner’s brother had a] set of about twelve double side 78 records, I put one on the turntable and when the needle dropped, I was stunned–didn’t know if I was stoned or straight”. “All these songs made my head spin. It made me want to gasp. It was like the land parted … I couldn’t believe it … He was so poetic and tough and rhythmic. There was so much intensity … He was like no other singer I ever heard, neither were his songs”. “He would throw in the sound of the last letter of a word whenever he felt like it and it would come like a punch … His repertoire [was] really beyond category. [His songs] had the infinite sweep of humanity in them ... For me it was an epiphany … I listened all afternoon … I could sing all of these songs, every single one of them and they were what I wanted to sing. It was like I had been in the dark and someone had turned on the main switch of a lightning conductor”. Around the time of this “epiphany” Dylan was given a hardback copy of Guthrie’s autobiography “Bound For Glory” and his recently discovered love for Woody Guthrie’s music quickly developed into an obsession and a lifestyle. It is just possible that Bob Dylan’s recent decision to host a themed radio show and to write his own autobiography, “Chronicles Volume One”, were stimulated by the memories of Wood Guthrie’s radio show and autobiography? Perhaps part of Dylan’s thought process was that he too would like to leave a similar legacy for young musicians in the future. In any event, there is no doubting the fact that Woody Guthrie was Bob Dylan’s first hero.
20-20 Vision (Milton Estes / Joe Allison) Bob Dylan has only performed this song once, in concert on October 25, 1991, at the City Coliseum in Austin, Texas. The excellent performance, which is spoilt by a rather unruly US audience, may have been a tribute to the song’s co-author, Texan Joe Allison. This recording can be found on several bootleg CDs, including “Golden Vanity” and the “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”, where it is erroneously filed under “trad., arranged Dylan”.
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32-20 Blues Dylan played Jimmy Martin’s truly excellent 1954 recording of this song on show fifteen in Series One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “Eyes”.
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“King of Bluegrass”, Jimmy Martin, began his career in 1949 as lead vocalist for Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys. Martin’s high voice mixed with Monroe’s tenor came to be known as the “high lonesome”. Martin split from Monroe in 1954 and worked briefly with the Osborne Brothers until he formed his own full-time band, The Sunny Mountain Boys. Jimmy Martin’s 1954 recording of ‘20-20 Vision’– a song about lost love (for RCA) featured the Osborne brothers and the distinctive, driving fiddle of Red Taylor. Martin recorded the song again in 1964 (for Columbia). Both of these recordings are currently available on the Bear Family Records’ Jimmy Martin five-CD box-set.
32-20 Blues (Robert Johnson) She got a thirty-eight special, but I believe it’s most too light, She got a thirty-eight special, but I believe it’s most too light, I got a 32-20, got to make the caps alright. Dylan recorded this song in May 1993 at the “World Gone Wrong” album sessions. See Appendix 1:77 for further details about this recording session. The song was released in October 2008 on the rarities compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006” (2008). Johnson’s ‘32-20 Blues’ – a song about settling an argument with your woman by cutting her in two with your gun! (Dylan sings, “Got to shoot my pistol, got to shoot my Gatling gun”) – was greatly influenced by Skip James’ 1931 song ‘22-20 Blues’ and the evidence of this can be found in Johnson’s lyrics. In the first two verses of his song Johnson changes James’ “Wisconsin” lyric to “Hot Springs” (Arkansas). However, in the third and final verse Johnson forgets the words and sings James’ original “Wisconsin” lyric. As an aside, it is said that one of the reasons the brass-bodied National Style ‘O’ resonator guitar was popular among juke-joint and nightclub performers was because the body was capable of stopping a bullet from a 32-20, which was a popular revolver in the 1930s. Robert Johnson’s life is not well documented and the many myths that have surrounded him over the years have muddied the waters even further. Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi sometime around May 8, 1911. He was the eleventh child of Julia Major
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32-20 Blues Dodds, who had previously borne ten children to husband Charles Dodds. Robert was born out of wedlock, and he did not take the Dodds family name. When Robert learned about his real father, a field-worker named Noah Johnson, he began calling himself Robert Johnson. Robert travelled with his mother who had been forced to work as an itinerant field-worker, picking cotton. It is not known for certain if Johnson attended school. Some accounts say that he could neither read nor write, while others tell of his strikingly beautiful handwriting. He learned the guitar in his teens and numbered among his tutors such esteemed blues figures as Charley Patton and Son House. During the Depression years of the early 1930s, Johnson set out to earn a living as a musician. Legend states that Robert Johnson took his guitar to the crossroads at midnight near Dockery’s plantation where he was met by a large black man – the Devil – who took the guitar and tuned it so that Johnson could play absolutely anything he wanted. The price however, was Johnson’s soul. Mentions of either the Devil or other supernatural happenings are plentiful in Johnson’s limited output. There are varied accounts regarding the events which led to Johnson’s death but all agree that a woman and a jealous partner were involved. The story goes that at a dance Johnson was offered an open bottle of whiskey, which his friend and fellow blues legend, Sonny Boy Williamson, knocked out of his hand, informing him that he should never drink from an offered bottle that had already been opened. However, Johnson was offered a second open bottle which he accepted and drank from. The whiskey was laced with strychnine. Johnson lived for three days before he eventually died on August 16, 1938 at a country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He was just twenty-seven years of age. Even in death Robert Johnson remains a mystery and the exact location of his grave remains a source of ongoing controversy. Three different markers have been erected at supposed burial sites outside of Greenwood. Research in the 1980s strongly suggested that Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church near Morgan City, Mississippi. The grave was unmarked and in 1990 a monument, partly paid for by Columbia Records, was placed at this location. More recent research, Marker at Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church however, points to a gravesite under a large pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church, north of Greenwood. Sony Music has paid for a marker to be placed at this site. The last word is probably best left to Martin Scorsese who summed Johnson up with the words: “The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend”.
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900 Miles The whole of Robert Johnson’s recorded output was cut in three days’ worth of sessions in November 1936 and a further two days in June 1937. In his lifetime the Vocalion label released twenty-two sides of Johnson’s work on eleven 78rpm singles. One further single was released shortly after his death in 1938. In 1990 Columbia released a two-CD set entitled “The Complete Recordings”. The set contained all fortyone takes of his twenty-nine known songs; five more than were originally issued on Vocalion. Since that time, however, one further recording has been discovered, an alternate take of ‘Traveling Riverside Blues’. This brings the number of known Johnson recordings to forty-two.
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Bob Dylan said of Robert Johnson in “Chronicles Volume One”: “Hammond said I should listen to [Robert Johnson’s “King Of The Delta Blues”]. He showed me the artwork … I stared at the illustration. Whoever the singer was in the picture, he already had me possessed… When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armour. I immediately differentiated between him and anyone else I had ever heard. Johnson’s voice and guitar were ringing the room and I was mixed up in it … [His] words made my nerves quiver like piano wires … I copied Johnson’s words down on scraps of paper so I could more closely examine the lyrics and patterns, the construction of his oldstyle lines and the free association that he used, the sparkling allegories [and] big-ass truths … John Hammond had told me that he thought Johnson had read Walt Whitman. Maybe he did, but it doesn’t clear up anything. I probably used about five or six of Robert Johnson’s blues song forms, too, unconsciously, but more on the lyrical imagery side of things. If I hadn’t heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down-that I wouldn’t have felt free enough or upraised enough to write. Robert Johnson’s code of language was like nothing I’d heard before or since”. 900 Miles (Traditional) I am walkin’ down this track, I’ve got tears in my eyes, I’m tryin’ to read a letter from my home, An’ if this train runs me right, I’ll be home tomorrow night, ’Cause I’m nine hundred miles from my home.
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A-11 Dylan played this song in 1960 at the St. Paul Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. The session tape, which features twenty-seven songs, remains the property of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further information about this session see Appendix 1:3. This recording can be found on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Whilst this is the only known early recording of this song by Dylan, it is extremely likely that he performed this song regularly during 1960 and possibly into 1961. This song was also recorded by Dylan in the basement of Big Pink in the summer of 1967. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. Although ‘900 Miles’ is most often associated with Woody Guthrie, it is in fact a traditional song. Cisco Houston also performed the song both solo and with Woody Guthrie.
A-11 (Hank Cochran) I don’t know you from Adam, But if you’re gonna play the jukebox, Please don’t play A-Eleven. Bob Dylan performed this Hank Cochran song five times in eight days during March 2005. The first performance of the song was on March 11, 2005 in Portland, Oregon, at the University Of Portland. The last time this song was played on this tour was on March 18, 2005 in Reno, Nevada, at the Reno Hilton. The reason for Dylan’s sudden yet fleeting inclusion of this song in his sets at this time remains a mystery to me. Nashville songwriter Hank Cochran wrote many country hits including ‘I Fall to Pieces’ for Patsy Cline. His bar-room weepy, ‘A-11’, was a hit for Buck Owens who included the song on his 1964 album “Together Again/My Heart Skips A Beat” (Capitol ST-2135). Johnny Paycheck also scored a minor hit with ‘A-11’ in 1965. Along with Eddie Cochran, Hank was once one half of the teenage duo, The Cochran Brothers. The two Cochrans were, however, unrelated.
Abner Young (Unknown) This puzzling song is performed by a young Bob Dylan in the apartment of Karen Wallace, St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1960. A fragmentary tape, which was put together as a “sampler” of this performance circulates among collectors. For further information see Appendix 1:3. Dylan does not appear to have played this song again and its origin is something of a mystery. This recording can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”.
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Abraham, Martin & John Abraham, Martin & John (Dick Holler)
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‘Abraham, Martin & John’ was written by Dick Holler in 1968 and first recorded by Dion that same year. The song pays homage to the memories of icons of social change, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, John and (Robert) F. Kennedy. The song was a response to the assassinations of King and Robert F. Kennedy in April and June 1968 respectively. Dylan regularly performed ‘Abraham, Martin & John’ as a duet with his backing singer Clydie King during his concert performances of 1980 and 1981. The song, which is notable as being the only single to have reached the Top Forty, five times with five different artists, was instrumental in reviving Dion’s flagging career. Singer and songwriter Dick Holler has written a number of hit singles over the years including the slightly less poignant ‘Snoopy vs. The Red Baron’, which was co-written with Phil Gernhard.
Accidentally Like a Martyr (Warren Zevon) A few weeks after Warren Zevon announced that he was terminally ill with cancer, Dylan began his 2002 Fall tour in the USA. At the opening concert in Seattle, Washington (October 4), Dylan surprised his audience by playing a song that left many people guessing. The song, ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’, a Warren Zevon number, was a tribute to its writer. Six songs later Dylan played another of Zevon’s songs, ‘Boom, Boom Mancini’, and before the concert ended, he paid a further tribute by performing a third Zevon song, the utterly gorgeous ‘Mutineer’. Although this was the only performance of ‘Boom, Boom Mancini’, ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’and ‘Mutineer’ were both played frequently on the remainder of the tour and a further Zevon song, ‘Lawyers, Guns And Money’, was also added to the sets. For Dylan to perform four covers as tributes to Zevon was an astonishing and unprecedented homage to an extraordinary yet criminally under-appreciated talent. It should be noted however, that Warren Zevon was not the only contemporary artist to be covered by Dylan on his 2002 Fall tour. In fact, this leg of the “Never Ending Tour” illustrates quite graphically just how important cover songs have been to the NET. On this leg of the tour, Dylan shocked everyone by throwing into the mix not just the Warren Zevon numbers, but also songs like Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’ and the Rolling Stones ‘Brown Sugar’, to name but two. Anyone wishing to track down recordings from this tour could do worse than to start with the concert from Red Bluff, California on October 7, 2002. This is a great show and is available in stunning audio quality. Dylan knew Zevon well and had played on his 1987 album “Sentimental Hygiene”– contributing harmonica to a track entitled ‘The Factory’. Zevon’s illness, mesothelioma,
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Acne was a form of cancer associated with exposure to asbestos, so it was ironic that the track contained the line “kicking asbestos in the factory”. Zevon had a lifelong phobia of doctors and seldom received medical assessments or treatments for illnesses. In 2002, after a long period of untreated illness and pain, he was encouraged by his dentist to see a physician. When he did so, Zevon was diagnosed with the inoperable cancer. Although he was only given months to live he survived to see the birth of twin grandsons in June 2003 and the release of his album “The Wind” (August, 2003). When the diagnosis became public, Zevon told the media that he just hoped to live long enough to see the next James Bond movie, “Die Another Day”, a goal he also accomplished. Warren Zevon died on September 7, 2003, aged fifty-six, at his home in Los Angeles, California. “The Wind” was certified gold in December 2003 and Zevon received five posthumous Grammy nominations. A longstanding friendship between Bob Dylan’s son Jakob and Warren Zevon’s son Jordan ensured that Jakob, along with his band The Wallflowers, recorded a version of ‘Lawyers, Guns And Money’ for the Artemis Records tribute album to Warren Zevon, “Enjoy Every Sandwich” (Artemis Records RCD17304, 2004). Bob Dylan’s contribution was a live performance from his 2002 US Fall tour. The song, ‘Mutineer’, is from his concert in Red Bluff, California (October 7, 2002) and not an audience recording from Australia as stated in the CD booklet. ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’ is released on Warren Zevon’s truly excellent 1978 gold award album “Excitable Boy” (Asylum 118).
Acne (Eric Von Schmidt) Dylan shared vocal duties with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on this doo-wop satire of teenage angst in which the song’s narrator is rejected by his senior prom date. The song was recorded live at the Riverside Church, New York on July 29, 1961 for the WRVR radio programme, Saturday Of Folk Music. The broadcast took place the same day. The song was not officially released until 2000 when it was included on the soundtrack album “The Ballad Of Ramblin’ Jack”. The song was captured on tape for a second time in March 1962 when Dylan performed it at the New York apartment of Cynthia Gooding. This recording is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. For further information about these two performances see Appendix 1:9 and 1:20.
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Across The Borderline Across The Borderline (Ry Cooder / John Hiat / Jim Dickinson)
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This song was played regularly throughout Bob Dylan’s 1986 tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It then made sporadic appearances in Dylan’s live shows from 1988 until 1998 with an especially splendid performance occurring at the Guitar Legends festival in Seville, Spain (October 17, 1991). Bob Dylan’s performance from Montreux (July 9, 1990) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000”. This is a gorgeous squeezebox driven rendition which benefits from a wonderful Dylan vocal that is perfectly complemented by Ry Cooder’s accordion player, Flaco Jimenez. This song, which is very reminiscent of Woody Guthrie’s ‘Deportee’ (including the use of Spanish in the lyrics), tells the story of someone who has crossed the border, assumedly from Mexico to the United States, only to find that the streets of the “promised land” are not paved with gold. The song was first released on Ry Cooder’s 1978 album “Get Rhythm”. Bob Dylan played Freddy Fender’s and Ry Cooder’s 1982 recording of ‘Across The Borderline’ on show forty-four of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The show in question was themed “Texas”.
Adelita (Traditional) This traditional Mexican song was first attempted by Dylan during the “Planet Waves” session at The Village Recorder Studios in Santa Monica on November 10, 1973. However, this recording does not circulate among collectors. The song was again performed by Dylan, Dylan’s son-in-law Peter Himmelman, and Harry Dean Stanton at Chabad Television Studios, Los Angeles on September 24, 1989 and broadcast live on the Chabad Telethon programme L’Chaim To Life! See entry for ‘Hava eigeilah’ for further details.
Ain’t o More Cane On The Brazos (Traditional) Over the years many traditional songs have been credited to whoever claimed authorship of them and thus ‘Ain’t o More Cane’ or ‘Ain’t o More Cane On The Brazos’ is sometimes credited to Lead Belly, Ernest Williams and on a number of occasions to James ‘Iron Head’ Baker. The simple truth is nobody really knows who wrote this song and as such it should be considered traditional. Dylan himself has followed in this tradition by claiming authorship of songs such as ‘Rollin’ And Tumblin’’ (from his “Modern Times” album) and has been somewhat criticised for doing so. Several versions of the song were collected by John and Alan Lomax during their 1930s field trips for the Library of Congress. One recording made in 1933 and performed by the aforementioned Ernest Williams and James ‘Iron Head’ Baker was included on the compilation “Afro-American Spirituals, Work Songs, And Ballads” (Archive of Folk Songs
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Alabama Getaway AFS L3). This compilation album, along with five others, was released in 1942 on thirty 78 rpm records. This release, which was the third in the series, is available on the Rounder label as a remastered compact disc (Rounder CD 1510, 1998). It is possible that Dylan was turned on to the song by listening to Odetta’s 1959 recording released on her album “My Eyes Have Seen” (Vanguard VRS 9059). Interestingly, this Odetta album contains two other songs, ‘Motherless Children’ and ‘Saro Jane’ (Appendix 1:3), which were also performed by Dylan in the early 1960s. In his autobiography “Chronicles Volume One” Dylan writes about how he first discovered Odetta: “I found a local record store in the heart of Dinkytown [1959 or early 1960]. What I was looking for were folk music records and the first one I saw was Odetta on the Tradition label [Odetta’s first two albums were on Tradition]. I went into a listening booth to hear it. Odetta was great. I’d never heard of her until then ... I learned almost every song off the record right then and there, even borrowing the hammering-on style”. The Brazos River flows 1,280 miles from its source, Blackwater Draw, through Texas to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. En route the Brazos passed several prison farms where black inmates were sent to work on chain gangs chopping sugar-cane and cotton. The work required that the prisoners stand in several inches of muddy water in dense, snake-infested stands of cane. The area around the water was thick with mosquitoes and the summer heat was so intense that prisoners would keel over from sunstroke. The lyric “Go down old Hannah, don’cha rise no more” is the workers’ plea to the sun – known as old Hannah by black workers – to set and not to rise again. These chain gangs continued to exist into the 1960s and could be seen from the main highways passing west of Houston. Dylan performed this song at Gerdes Folk City, September 1961 (see Appendix 1:12), the Gaslight Café, October 1962 (see Appendix 1:31), and at the Lone Star Café, February 16, 1983. The performance from Gerdes Folk City is not in circulation among collectors. The performances from the Gaslight and Lone Star do circulate among collectors and the Gaslight recording can be found on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Alabama Getaway (Garcia / Hunter) Written by Robert Hunter and the late Jerry Garcia and released as a single by the Grateful Dead, ‘Alabama Getaway’ was adopted by Dylan into his live act soon after Garcia’s
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Alberta #1 passing on August 9, 1995. The song, which was not a particular favourite among Dylan fans, remained a constant feature in Dylan’s sets until 1999 and was last played live in the summer of 2003. The Grateful Dead’s recording was released on their album “Go To Heaven” (1980). Bob Dylan’s performance from Philadelphia PA (December 16, 1995) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000”. These 1995 renditions, which featured the song as the regulation first encore at most shows, were rather frantic guitar hero affairs. The sleeve to the “Genuine ET Covers Collection” gives the time as seven minutes. In reality it’s only 5.44 but perhaps it felt like seven!
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Alberta #1 (Traditional, arranged Bob Dylan) The Song ‘Alberta #1’, also known as ‘Alberta, Let Your Hair Hang Low’, was released by Dylan on his album “Self Portrait”. The writing credits on “Self Portrait” assert Dylan as the composer of the song, but the “Self Portrait” songbook is more accurate in stating “Arranged by Bob Dylan”. Regardless, Dylan’s office copyrighted the song to Big Sky Music in 1970 but, tellingly, the lyrics do not appear in the official lyrics book “Bob Dylan Lyrics 1962 – 2001”. For further information see Appendix 1:67. The exact origins of this song are unknown. Some scholars are of the opinion that it originated in Barrelhouses of New Orleans, while others believe it to be a prison work song, even though neither the original song nor Dylan’s version appear to have any connection to prisons. This view of the song probably came about because of the song’s distant connection to the traditional ‘Long Time Man Feel Bad’, which Dylan performed in the early 1960s. ‘Long Time Man Feel Bad’ contains the lyrics “Can’t get no letters, Can’t even roam” and “If they’d just let me go home”, which are probably the sentiments of an inmate. The song is associated with ‘Alberta’ mainly because of the tune, but also the lyric “Alberta let your hair grow long, Let it grow on down ’till it reaches the ground”.
Alberta # 2 (Traditional, arranged Bob Dylan) Dylan’s performance of this song differs from that of ‘Alberta #1’. For information about the traditional song ‘Alberta’, see entry for ‘Alberta #1’. For further information regarding the recording session, see Appendix 1:67. This song was released by Dylan on his album “Self Portrait”.
All I Have To Do Is Dream (Boudleaux Bryant) Dylan made this strong recording, complete with its dominant bass line, at the first “ew Morning” album session on May 1, 1970. See Appendix 1:68 for details about this session. The version performed here is the song written by Boudleaux Bryant and made famous by
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All My Tomorrows the Everly Brothers and should not to be confused with the instrumental number that Dylan recorded during the Basement sessions. Bob Dylan played the Everly Brothers recording of ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’ on show nine of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “Dreams”. All My Tomorrows (Sammy Cahn / Jimmy van Heusen) Written by Tin Pan Alley mainstay Sammy Cahn in collaboration with Jimmy van Heusen, this song was made famous by Frank Sinatra in the film “Hole In The Head” (1959) and later released by Sinatra on his album “All The Way” (1961). Dylan performed this song (in part) at Pine Knob Music Theater, Clarkston, Michigan on June 30, 1986, while on tour backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. After the song Dylan said: “Alright, alright. I want to tell you right now why we did that song. There’s a very special person around tonight. And it’s her birthday today; she wanted to hear that song”. Answers on a post card please. (The) All-American Boy (Bill Parsons / Orville Lunsford) Less of a cover and more of a re-write of the Bobby Bare song. ‘(The) All-American Boy’ was originally a satire about Presley’s relationship with his manager Col. Tom Parker. This adaptation of the song appears to be Dylan venting his anger toward his manager, Albert Grossman, with whom relations were at an all-time low. Dylan informed interviewer Michael Iachetta: “Songs are in my head like they always are. And they’re not going to get written down until some things are evened up. Not until some people come forth and make up for some of the things that happened”. Dylan recorded this song – on twelve-string guitar – in 1967 with the Hawks in the basement of Big Pink (Appendix 1:60). This arrangement of the song was copyrighted to Bob Dylan in 1973. Alligator Man (Jimmy ‘C’ Newman / Floyd Chance) Dylan recorded a song entitled ‘Alligator Man’ during the June 1, 1970 “ew Morning” sessions (Appendix 1:69). The song was shortlisted for inclusion on the Columbia-released “Dylan” album (1973), but it failed to make the final cut. This song does not circulate among collectors and the author is not identified on the Columbia recording sheets. The likelihood is, however, that the song in question is the Jimmy Newman 1961 country hit. After scoring with several hits on the Country Chart, Jimmy ‘C’ Newman (the ‘C’ is not his middle name; it actually stands for Cajun), was hired as a regular performer on the now famous Louisiana Hayride. Newman soon became a member of the Grand Ole Opry and went on to forge a career that includes thirty-three Top 100 country hits.
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And It Stoned Me ‘Alligator Man’ (Sun 122) reached number Twenty-Two on the Country Chart and has since been covered by, amongst others, Alex Chilton, the Greenbriar Boys, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Meteors, Greg Kihn, and Stoneground.
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And It Stoned Me (Van Morrison) Bob Dylan joined Van Morrison for his performance of ‘And It Stoned Me’ after the two men had spent time together while in Greece. Morrison was in Athens for the filming of a BBC TV special documentary about him. The performance involved four songs, ‘Crazy Love’, ‘And It Stoned Me’, ‘Foreign Window’ and ‘One Irish Rover’. These songs were filmed by the BBC on June 27, 1989 at Philopappos (Hill of the Muses), in Athens, Greece. The performances of ‘Crazy Love’, ‘Foreign Window’ and ‘One Irish Rover’ were included in the “Arena: One Irish Rover” documentary broadcast on BBC 2 television (UK) on March 16, 1991. Dylan performed the song again on July 6, 1989 in the Baldwin Memorial Pavilion, Rochester Hills, Michigan. The original recording was the lead-off track on Morrison’s excellent 1970 album “Moondance”. Bob Dylan’s performance from Rochester Hills, MI (July 6, 1989), which features strong vocals, can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground (Willie Nelson) Dylan’s performance of this Willie Nelson song, an outtake from the “Infidels” album sessions, was released in 1983 as the B-side to Dylan’s single ‘Union Sundown’. The song was originally released in 1980 by Nelson on the “Honeysuckle Rose” soundtrack album. The correct title of this song is ‘Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground’. Angel should be in the singular and not the plural as printed on sleeves and labels of Dylan’s CBS releases in the UK. Also, some CBS singles released in the UK and in continental Europe wrongly credited Bob Dylan as the songwriter.
Annie’s Going To Sing Her Song (Tom Paxton) This song was recorded by Dylan on March 4, 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions. The song was not included on the album and it does not circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:66 for further information.
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Annie’s Song Paxton first released ‘Annie’s Going To Sing Her Song’ on his Elektra album “Tom Paxton 6” (EKS-74066, 1970). The album charted in the US in the Spring of 1970 so the song would have been completely contemporary with Dylan’s recording.
Annie’s Song (John Denver) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006 some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. In his Bob Dylan encyclopaedia, Gray cringes at the thought of Dylan recording this John Denver song. Little is known about the Acme sessions and most of the songs have not circulated among collectors. It is possible, therefore, that this recording isn’t ‘Annie’s Song’ but rather ‘Annie’s Going To Sing Her Song’, which Dylan had previously recorded at the “Self Portrait” album sessions on March 4, 1970. See entry for ‘Annie’s Going To Sing Her Song’.
Answer Me, My Love (Rauch / Winkler / Sigman) This song was originally written with German lyrics, under the title ‘Mutterlein’, by Gerhard Winkler and Fred Rauch. English lyrics were added by Carl Sigman in 1953. The song was a Top Ten hit for Nat King Cole in 1954. Dylan performed this rather nice ballad eight times in concert in 1991, including an especially fine performance aided and abetted by Richard Thompson at the Guitar Legends festival in Seville, Spain (October 17, 1991). Bob Dylan’s performance from Evanston, IL (November 4, 1991) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
Any Way You Want Me (That’s How I Will Be) (Schroeder / Owens) The only known performance of this song came about when Dylan recorded the number for an intended tribute to Elvis Presley. The recording session took place at Sony’s New York studios on September 30, 1994. There were several takes of the song but the album remains unreleased. A tape of the recording does however circulate among collectors. It also appeared in 2008 on the bootleg CD “GBS 4 – Fourth Time Around”. Written by Aaron Schroeder and Cliff Owens, Elvis Presley originally recorded ‘Any Way You Want Me (That’s How I Will Be)’ at RCA Studios, New York on July 2, 1956. This
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Around And Around session was the first to include the Jordanaires. The song, which was released as the B-side to ‘Love Me Tender’, enjoyed a ten-week stay on the Billboard Pop Chart, peaking at Number Twenty-Seven.
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Around And Around (Berry) Dylan pulled out a surprise performance of this Chuck Berry number at the Leysin Rock Festival in Leysin, Switzerland on July 10, 1992. He also joined “the Dead” on stage when they played the song on August 2, 2003 at the Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Illinois. ‘Around And Around’ was originally released by Berry in March 1958 as the B-side to ‘Johnny B. Goode’ (Chess 1691). The song has been covered by many artists including the Rolling Stones, The Animals, David Bowie, and the Grateful Dead.
Arthur McBride (Traditional) Also known as ‘Arthur McBride And The Sergeant’, this Irish folk song was first collected around 1840 in Limerick. In the song, the narrator and his cousin, Arthur McBride, were taking “a stroll down by the seaside” when they were approached by two British military recruiters (a sergeant and corporal) and a “little wee drummer”. The earliest versions of this song name the recruiters as Sergeant Harper and Corporal Cramp. In Dylan’s version, which was probably copied from an adaptation by Paul Brady (released on the album “Andy Irvine And Paul Brady”, Mulligan, LUN 007, 1976), the soldiers are Sergeant Napper and Corporal Vamp. Also like Brady’s adaptation, which Dylan follows closely, the episode takes place on Christmas morning. The soldiers attempt to recruit the narrator and Arthur McBride into the military by extolling the many virtues of serving the King of England. However, when the two men decline the offer, stating that they would be sent to France “Where [they] would be shot without warning”, the situation turns ugly and a fight ensues. However, before the soldiers can draw their blades, the two Irishman are able to use their trusty shillelaghs and the King’s men are quickly dispatched. As for the poor wee drummer, after using his drum as a football, McBride and his cousin throw the drum, “In the tide for to rock and roll”. So, there you have it, the first “rock’n’roll” drummer; a mere 157 years before the genre was invented! Although Dylan probably derived his version of ‘Arthur McBride’ from Brady, or Brady and Irvine, he had previously used a part of the melody of the song in his 1964 composition ‘Ballad In Plain D’, which means that he had knowledge of the song from some considerable time before Brady’s recording. ‘Arthur McBride’ appears on the Bob Dylan album “Good As I Been To You” (Columbia, 472710 2, 1992). This is a lovely rendition marred only by some slightly indistinct diction. For further information see Appendix 1:76. For information about Paul Brady, see entry for ‘Mary And The Solider’.
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Baby Ain’t That Fine
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Baby Ain’t That Fine (Dallas Frazier) Dallas Frazier’s songwriting career caught fire in 1966-’67 when three of his songs, ‘There Goes My Everything’, ‘Ain’t Had o Lovin’’, and ‘I’m a People’ became huge hits for Jack Greene, Connie Smith and George Jones respectively. After these successes Frazier decided to take a stab at performing his own songs, releasing his album “Elvira” (Capitol ST-2552, 1966). The album contained the song ‘Baby Ain’t That Fine’, which became a Top Twenty Country hit for the duo, Melba Montgomery and Gene Pitney. This single was in the Country Chart the year before Dylan began his “Basement sessions”. The song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made while he was living in the town of Woodstock in upper New York State, which later became known as the Basement Tapes (1967). This recording sounds a little more primitive than the main body of Basement Tapes songs, and was possibly recorded in the “Red Room” in Dylan’s Hi Lo Ha Woodstock home before the musicians relocated to the basement at Big Pink. The position of this song on the tapes / bootleg CDs also seems to indicate this. Many of the very early “Basement sessions” feature Dylan playing a twelve-string guitar and this cut, which is missing the first couple of seconds, is no exception.
Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (Traditional, arranged Eric Von Schmidt) Recorded by Bob Dylan in November 1961 and released on his debut album, ‘Baby, Let Me Follow You Down’ is a traditional song for which Reverend Gary Davis has claimed authorship. The song was popularized in the late 1950s by blues guitarist Eric Von Schmidt from whom Dylan learned the number. Von Schmidt describes the evolution of the song in his book “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” in which he explains that he learned the song from Geno Foreman who in turn had taken it from a 78 record entitled ‘Mama, Let Me Lay It On You’ released by Blind Boy Fuller in 1936. The song was adapted and the title changed to ‘Baby, Let Me Follow You Down’ in the late 1950s and by the early ’60s it had become a featured song in the many coffee houses of Greenwich Village. However, the
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Baby Please Don’t Go song dates even further back than Blind Boy Fuller’s 1936 recording. Walter Coleman recorded a version of ‘Mama, Let Me Lay It On You’ a few months before Fuller popularized it and the great Memphis Minnie was certainly performing the song in the early 1930s.
B
Dylan played this song frequently in the early 1960s (see Appendix 1:15, 1:16, 1:18 & 1:30) and even made a demo of it for his music publisher, Witmark. A rocking electric version of the song was a regular feature in Dylan’s infamous 1966 “Judas” concerts and the song appeared again when Dylan included it in the Winterland Palace, San Francisco concert as part of his short set for The Band’s farewell concert, which was later released as “The Last Waltz”. Interestingly, the song is erroneously credited on this release to Rev Gary Davis. After a lengthy rest, ‘Baby, Let Me Follow You Down’ reappeared on June 9, 1988, when the song was played during the mid-point acoustic segment of Dylan’s set at Cal Expo in Sacramento, CA. The last outings so far for the song were in September 1989 when it was again played during the acoustic spot at three shows on Dylan’s fall tour of the United States. One of these performances (Berkeley CA, September 3, 1989) is included on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The song also appears on the official live CD from Dylan’s 1966 world tour, “The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966”, and on the excellent Dylan box-set collection “Biograph” (1985). Baby Please Don’t Go (Traditional, adapted Big Joe Williams) Dylan performed this song early in his career and one of those performances is available on a privately circulated recording know as the Minnesota Hotel Tape. The recording was in fact made by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher. Dylan recorded the song for his second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” but it failed to make the final cut. This recording does however, circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:18, 1:19 & 1:22 for further details of performances. The song, which is probably derived from the traditional ‘Another Man Done Gone’, is a classic and extensively covered blues. Authorship has been claimed by several blues musicians but Big Joe Williams was the first artist to record the song and most subsequent versions are taken from Williams’ recording. Dylan’s version almost certainly comes from Big Joe Williams, from whom he probably learned the song firsthand.
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B
Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do? Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do? (Jimmy Reed) This Jimmy Reed blues probably should not qualify for inclusion here as it was performed only as part of a rehearsal for the Farm Aid fund-raising event. However, it is possible that this song was being seriously considered for the performance proper. The rehearsal, which was held at Soundstage 41 in Universal Studios, Los Angeles, took place on September 19, 1985.
Back Door Blues (Traditional) This Dylan performance, which circulates among collectors on the “Banjo Tape” (Appendix 1:41), was recorded in the basement of Gerdes Folk City in January or early February 1963. The song, which is also known as ‘Who You Really Are’, is partly taken from Lead Belly’s ‘Living The Blues’, aka ‘Grasshopper In My Pillow’. The song is most closely associated with Casey Bill Weldon and Kokomo Arnold. This performance is a great example of Dylan’s guitar technique and his unquestionable ability on the instrument. This is also an interesting and unusual performance in that it features Dylan playing a twelve-string. (See Appendix 1:41 for further details).
Backwater Blues (Traditional) Also known as ‘It Rained Five Days’, this song, often associated with Big Joe Williams and the great Bessie Smith, was performed by Dylan during his early days in the Greenwich Village folk clubs, and a recording of the song, made at Carnegie Chapter Hall on November 4, 1961, survives and circulates among collectors (see Appendix 1:14). Dylan introduces this extremely intense performance as being a song that Lead Belly used to do. Bob Dylan played Lonnie Johnson’s 1927 recording of ‘Backwater Blues’ on show twentythree of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “Water”. The song is one of many that chronicle the frequent and perilous risings of the Mississippi River. The Great Flood of 1927 inspired a plethora of folk and blues songs by the likes of Bessie Smith (‘Backwater Blues’), Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie (‘When The Levee Breaks’), Lonnie Johnson (‘Broken Levee Blues’) and Charlie Patton (‘High Water Everywhere’), to name but a few.
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Ball And Biscuit Dylan appears to be equally gripped by this tragic event, which has inspired some of his own songs; ‘Down In The Flood (Crash On The Levee)’ (written in 1967 and released on “The Basement Tapes” in 1975); his homage to Charley Patton, ‘High Water (For Charley Patton)’ (released on “Love And Theft”, 2001), and even more recently, ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ (released on “Modern Times”, 2006).
B
In his introduction to the Carnegie Chapter Hall performance Dylan says: “Here’s a song just about everybody knows. Lead Belly used to sing this”. This one-off performance can be found on several bootleg CDs including “Acoustic Troubadour”, “Hard Times In ew York City” and “His Gotham Ingress”.
Ball And Biscuit (Jack White) This White Stripes’ number was performed by Dylan, with the song’s writer, Jack White, as an encore on Dylan’s spring tour of 2004 (State Theater, Detroit, Michigan, March 17, 2004). The song can be found on The White Stripes album, “Elephant” (2003).
Ballad Of Ira Hayes (Peter LaFarge) Dylan’s recording of this Pete LaFarge song, which features Bob on piano, appears on the Columbia released album “Dylan” (1973). See Appendix 1:69 for further details. Ira Hayes was a full-blood Pima Indian who, along with five other members of the Marine Corps, raised the United States flag on Mount Suribachi on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima (1945). Tragically, Hayes, who after World War ll suffered from acute alcoholism, died in a cotton-field on the Pima reservation on a night in January 1955. Hayes had lain all night on the cold ground and his death was attributed to exposure.
Ira Hayes
The song’s writer, Pete LaFarge, was also a Native American. According to anecdotal sources, LaFarge was a descendent of Rhode Island’s nearly extinct Narragansett Indian Tribe but was raised by the Hopi-Tewa people on a reservation near Santa Fe, New Mexico. LaFarge told Sing Out! magazine that the Pima people are “cousins” of the Hopi-Tewa and that Cisco Houston had “worked [him] terribly on this [song]”. It seems that Houston contributed a line to the song but did not want his name to be included in the song’s credits. Although
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B
Banks Of The Royal Canal (The Auld Triangle) Dylan has never performed this song live, he did rehearse it with the Grateful Dead in 1987. The Peter LaFarge version was released on his album “Peter LaFarge, Ira Hayes And Other Ballads” (1962).
Banks Of The Royal Canal (The Auld Triangle) (Brendan Behan) See entry for ‘Royal Canal’.
Barbara Allen (Traditional) In Charlotte town, not far from here, There was a fair maid dwellin’, Had a name was known both far and near, An’ her name was Barb’ry Allen. ‘Barbara Allen’, also variously known as ‘The Ballad Of Barbara Allen’, ‘Barb’ry Allen’, ‘Barbara Ellen’, etc., is a traditional folk song of which there are numerous versions. The song, which probably originated in Britain or Ireland, has been classified as “Child Ballad” #84. The song has been collected throughout Europe and extensively researched in the United States by Alan Lomax. For further reading see “The Folk Songs Of North America” (Doubleday, 1960). The story is a simple one. In Scarlet Town, a young man named Sweet William lies dying and calls for Barbara Allen. He asks for her love but she feels he had once slighted her and refuses. Later, when she hears “the death bell knelling”, she is smitten by remorse and asks her father to dig a grave for her. This done, she “will die for him tomorrow”, and be buried next to him in the old churchyard where a red rose later blossoms from his heart, and a briar from hers. “They grew, they grew so awfully high / until they can grow no higher / and then they tied a lovers knot / the red rose and the briar”. Dylan, who actually pronounces the name Barb’ry Allen (this is common in many of the traditional versions), performed this song in the Greenwich Village folk clubs during the early 1960s. One rendition, performed at the Gaslight Café in October 1962, was captured on tape and is in circulation among collectors. Dylan revisited this song in 1981 when he surprised British audiences with an electric rendition. ‘Barbara Allen’ returned to Dylan’s live sets again in 1988 and would continue to appear sporadically (fifty-seven times) until 1991. In these later readings Dylan tends to deliver the song as an edgy drama rather than the tender ballad of old. These later performances can be found on numerous bootleg CDs including “Golden Vanity” and the “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000”.
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Barefootin’ Barefootin’ (Robert Parker)
B
This song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, in May 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:80). This track is often mislabelled by Dylan discographers. ‘Barefootin’ b/w ‘Let’s Go Baby (Where the Action Is)’ (Nola 721) reached Number Two on the R&B Chart and Number Seven on The Pop Chart in the summer of 1966 for the song’s author Robert Parker. Ironically, ‘Barefootin’, which was recorded in 1965, remained unreleased for a year because of Nola records’ disinterest in the song.
Be Careful Of Stones That You Throw (Bonnie Dodd) A tongue can accuse or carry bad news, The seeds of destruction it will sow, So unless you have made no mistakes in your life, Be careful of stones that you throw. This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made while he was living in the town of Woodstock in upper New York State and which later became known as the Basement Tapes (1967). This recording sounds a little more primitive than the main body of Basement Tapes songs and was possibly recorded in the “Red Room” in Dylan’s Hi Lo Ha Woodstock home before the musicians relocated to the basement at Big Pink. The position of this song on the tapes / bootleg CDs also seems to indicate this. Many of the very early “Basement sessions” feature Dylan playing a twelve-string guitar and this cut is no exception. See Appendix 1:69 for further details. Bob Dylan played The Staple Singers’ 1964 recording of ‘Be Careful Of Stones That You Throw’ on show five of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “Classic Rock”. I think there must be a pun here somewhere. The song was written by Bonnie Dodd and originally released without success by Little Jimmy Dickens (1949). ‘Stones’ was then picked up by music publisher Fred Rose who persuaded Hank Williams Sr. to cover the song under his Luke The Drifter persona (1952). In 1963 Dion propelled the song to Number Thirty-One on the Billboard Chart and six years later Hank Williams Jr. made it to Number Thirty-Seven with the song. That same year, 1969, ‘Be Careful Of Stones That You Throw’ was released on the album “Luke The Drifter JR Volume 2”.
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B
Belle Isle Belle Isle (Traditional, arranged Bob Dylan) This song was released on the “Self Portrait” album where it is erroneously credited to Bob Dylan. ‘Belle Isle’ is more likely an Irish folk song that eventually migrated to Canada by way of who knows where. Dylan scholar Michael Gray wrote at length about the origins of this song in a two-part article “Back to Belle Isle” published in the now defunct Dylan fanzine “The Telegraph” (issues 29 & 31). How and where Dylan learned the song is hotly disputed but an almost identical version to the one recorded by Dylan had previously appeared in Sing Out! magazine. See Appendix 1:65 for further details.
Bells Of Rhymney (Idris Davies / Pete Seeger) This song was recorded in 1967 with the Hawks in the basement of Big Pink. A fragment of an earlier performance also exists (see Appendix 1:17 & 1:60 for further details). The words were written as a poem by Idris Davies, a coal miner in Rhymney, which is situated near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. The poem, which was written in a style similar to the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges And Lemons’, was about the 1926 British General Strike, during which the young poet vowed to educate himself and leave behind his life of toil as a miner. The poem was put to music by Pete Seeger in 1957. In a BBC Radio 4 interview Seeger said: “I ran across a book by Dylan Thomas with a chapter called Welsh Poetry in the English language, and there were the words to ‘The Bells of Rhymney’”. Dylan has problems with the pronunciation of some of the Welsh place names in the song, especially Rhymney, which should be pronounced Rum-ney. The Byrds had the same pronunciation problems when they recorded their heavenly version, which was released on their debut album “Mr Tambourine Man” (June 1965). Dylan also slips up on several other lyrics, including singing “the bad bells of Rhymney” instead of “the sad bells of Rhymney”, which alters the meaning of the song somewhat.
Belshazzar (Johnny Cash) This interesting song, with its strong vocal performance, was recorded by Dylan and the Hawks in 1967 in the basement of Big Pink. (See Appendix 1:60 for further details). Written by Johnny Cash, the song refers to the controversial, supposed King of Babylon, Belshazzar, who appears in the Book of Daniel. Daniel 5:1-4 describes “Belshazzar’s Feast” in which the sacred vessels of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, brought to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, were profaned
34
Big Boss Man by the company. Some scholars dispute that Belshazzar ever existed or, if he did, that he was a King.
B
I quote Johnny Cash from the book “Man In Black” (Zondervan): “It was fitting that our first public appearance was a performance in a church in North Memphis … I sang three or four gospel songs, then introduced one I had written myself called ‘Belshazzar’. The response to my songs that night made me feel a door had opened…” The song can be found on the “Original Sun Sound Of Johnny Cash” (1965).
Big Boss Man (Luther Dixon and Al Smith) Written by Luther Dixon and Al Smith in 1960, Jimmy Reed took this popular blues to Number Thirteen on the R&B Chart in 1961. Bob Dylan performed this song on August 6, 2003 when he sat in with the Grateful Dead during their set at the Germain Theater in Columbus, Ohio.
Big River (Johnny Cash) This is another Johnny Cash composition recorded by Dylan in 1967 with the Hawks in the basement of Big Pink. Two takes exist from this session. The first take is however only fifty seconds in length. The second take, which runs for two minutes forty-two seconds, is halted at Dylan’s request (see Appendix 1:60 for further details). Dylan also recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session, and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire, were all performed as duets. This recording was never released but it does circulate among collectors. Dylan performed ‘Big River’ as an encore on August 7, 1988 at the County Bowl in Santa Barbara, California. The song appeared again on November 8, 1999 in Baltimore, Maryland and on March 16, 2000 in Santa Cruz, California. He performed the song twice more when he sat in with the Grateful Dead during their summer sets in Atlanta, Georgia and Somerset, Wisconsin. Johnny Cash’s recording can be found on “Original Sun Sound Of Johnny Cash” (1965). Bob Dylan’s bouncy performances from Santa Barbara, CA (August 7, 1988) and Santa Cruz, CA (March 16, 2000) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000”.
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B
Big Yellow Taxi Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell) Dylan’s recording of this Joni Mitchell song appears on the Columbia-released album “Dylan” (1973). This rather lacklustre rendition of Mitchell’s song was clearly never intended (by Dylan) for release (see Appendix 1:72 for further details). Dylan’s rendition is faithful to Mitchell’s original until the final verse when he changes the lyrics to: Late last night I heard my screen-door slam, A big yellow bulldozer took away the house and the land. Don’t it always go to show, You’ll never know what you got till it’s gone? They paved paradise, they put up a parking lot. According to Mitchell, the lyric, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”, came to her after first seeing a stunning view of the Pacific Ocean from a Hawaii hotel window which, when she went out onto the balcony was ruined by a huge and ugly concrete car park below. The original was released on Mitchell’s album “Ladies Of The Canyon” (1970). Black Cross (Joseph S. Newman) ‘Black Cross’, aka ‘Hezikiah Jones’, was written in 1948 by Joseph S. Newman and published as part of a collection of poems entitled “It Could Be Verse”. The poem was recorded by Richard “Lord” Buckley – who is often erroneously credited with writing the piece – live at the Ivar Theatre, Los Angeles in 1959. It was originally released on his album “Way Out Humor” (World Pacific, 1959), which was re-released as “Lord Buckley In Concert” (Demon Verbals, 1985). Bob Dylan was influenced greatly by the Lord and a copy of “The Best Of Lord Buckley” can be seen on the mantelpiece on the front cover of Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home” album. Dylan performed the piece regularly in the early 1960s but only three recordings are known to have survived. These renditions, which Dylan makes his own through his inimitable talking blues style delivery, are available on the “Minnesota Hotel Tape” (recorded in the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher on December 22, 1961), the Carnegie Chapter Hall tape (November 4, 1961), and the “Second Gaslight Tape” (recorded in the Gaslight Café in October 1962). (See Appendix 1:14, 1:18 & 1:31 for further details). Dylan wrote in his memoir “Chronicles Volume One”: “…Buckley had a magical way of speaking. Everybody, including me, was influenced by him in one way or another”. Black Jack Davey (Traditional) Black Jack Davey come a-riden’ on back, A-whistlin’ loud and merry,
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Black Muddy River Made the woods around him ring, And he charmed the heart of a lady, Charmed the heart of a lady.
B
Much covered under countless titles, including ‘The Raggle Taggle Gipsies’ and ‘The Gypsy Davy’, this British ballad, written in about 1720, tells the tale of a rogue, often a gypsy, who tries, successfully, to charm the daughter of a squire. When the squire returns home and discovers what has happened he rides off in search of her. The final encounter has the daughter refusing to return home, saying “What care I for your fine feather sheets”. In other versions the lady is married, and her lord comes home to find his lady “gone with the Black Jack Davey”. He saddles his fastest horse to follow her. He finds his lady and bids her to return home, asking, “would you forsake your husband and child?”, to which she replies that she will not return, preferring the cold ground and the gypsy’s company to her lord’s wealth and fine bed. Dylan would have known this song from Woody Guthrie’s early version (‘Gypsy Davy’) released on the album “Woody Guthrie, The Early Years” (Tradition FS-204) and his early 1960s performances of the song are almost certainly borrowed from Guthrie. However, between first hearing the song and its recording by Dylan in 1992, there is no doubting that he had come across and collected a number of other versions of the song, including Mike Seeger’s 1988 adaptation released on the album “Fresh Oldtime String Band”. Dylan’s recording follows this version closely. Dylan probably borrowed his ‘Boots Of Spanish Leather’ theme from the song ‘Gypsy Davy’ and the same gypsy wreaks havoc with a blowtorch in Dylan’s ‘Tombstone Blues’, which suggests that even during Dylan’s 1960s drug fuelled stream of consciousness explosion of words he was still occasionally drawing on traditional motifs. Bob Dylan’s recorded version appears on his 1992 album “Good As I Been To You” (see Appendix 1:76 for further details). Dylan performed the song regularly in concert during 1993. For Dylan’s 1961 performance of ‘Gypsy Davy’, see Appendix 1:6. Also see entry for ‘Gypsy Davy’.
Black Muddy River (Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia) Written for the Grateful Dead by lyricist Robert Hunter with help from the late Jerry Garcia, ‘Black Muddy River’ was performed by Dylan at three of his 1992 shows. The song made its first appearance in Melbourne, Australia on April 6, 1992. It popped up twice more on April 30 (Eugene, USA) and May 17 (Los Angeles, USA). It would be an understatement to say Dylan’s Melbourne performance was loose. Apart from the refrain, the lyrics – which are a little difficult to decipher – bore little resemblance to the original Hunter composition. This off-the-wall rendition is, nevertheless, a really fascinating performance. Bob Dylan’s rendition from Melbourne (April 6, 1992) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
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B
Blessed Be The ame Blessed Be The ame (Unknown) Dylan performed a song entitled ‘Blessed Is The ame’ during his gospel shows of late 1979 and early 1980s. A total of forty-three performances exist. The song is often listed as “traditional” or as being composed by William H. Clark, Ralph E. Hudson and William J. Kirkpatrick. However, the song performed by Dylan at these concerts does not correspond with the Clark, Hudson, Kirkpatrick hymn or any traditional offering that I have come across. Nor for that matter, does it bear any resemblance to the Mississippi John Hurt recording from 1929 of that name, which is often credited as being Dylan’s source. This gospel number may therefore be a Dylan original. It was certainly copyrighted by Bob Dylan’s music publishing company, Special Rider Music, on November 13, 1979. Blood In My Eyes (Lonnie Chatmon) Dylan released this song on his 1993 album “World Gone Wrong” (see Appendix 1:77 for further details). In the booklet notes to the CD, Dylan informs us that the song was “done by the Mississippi Sheiks, a little known de facto group whom in their former glory must’ve been something to behold”. The Mississippi Sheiks were a popular guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s and, although various line-ups existed, they consisted mainly of the Chatmon family who came from Bolton, Mississippi and were well known throughout the Mississippi Delta. The combo took their name from the Rudolph Valentino movie “The Sheik” and the group’s name is actually pronounced Mississippi “Shakes”. Dylan performed ‘Blood In My Eyes’ during the first sets of his November 16 and 17, 1993 Supper Club shows. These performances circulate among collectors.
Blue Bonnet Girl (Glenn Spencer) This song, originally recorded by Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers, was performed beautifully by Dylan in 2000 at the IU Auditorium in Bloomington, Indiana. The song, originally written by Glen Spencer for the Pioneers (of whom his brother Tim was a member), is currently available on their album “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” (1997). The Bluebonnet is the State flower of Texas (a State closely associated with Sons of the Pioneers), but it is also the name of the traditional Scottish Tam o‘Shanter hat. Due to the lack of chemical dyes, the original Tam o‘Shanter was made only in blue.
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Blue Monday Although not listed on the sleeve or in the booklet, the Indiana University performance (November 1, 2000) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. It appears as track twenty-one on disc eight. (To make matters even more confusing, ‘Blue Bonnet Girl’ is erroneously listed as appearing on disc six (track eighteen). This performance, also supposedly from Indiana, is listed as being from January 11, 2000, which is clearly not possible because Dylan was not touring at this time).
B
Blue Monday (Bartholomew) ‘Blue Monday’ was written by Dave Bartholomew in 1954. The song was originally released that same year by Smiley Lewis (Imperial 5268). It was popularized in 1956 by Fats Domino (Imperial 5417). Bob Dylan played ‘Blue Monday’ as a one-off performance at the Brixton Academy, London, England on November 23, 2005. He also played Smiley Lewis’ 1954 original recording of the song on show three of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “Days of the Week”. Dylan’s performance of ‘Blue Monday’, which came in the midst of an amazing five-night residency in Brixton, was quite special. During this set of shows he gave his audience covers of ‘Rumble’, ‘London Calling’ and ‘Waiting For You’. His performance of ‘Blue Monday’, which stayed surprisingly faithful to the Fats’ original, was a big tribute to the big man who had recently lost his home and almost his life in Hurricane Katrina.
Blue Moon (Richard Rodgers / Lorenz Hart) ‘Blue Moon’ was first captured on tape by Bobby Zimmerman’s (Dylan) teenage friend, John Bucklen. The six-song tape, extracts of which were featured in the BBC television documentary “Highway 61 Revisited” (see Appendix 1:2), contains songs and dialogue between Zimmerman and Bucklen about the music which they are playing. This performance can be found on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. ‘Blue Moon’ was released by Dylan on the “Self Portrait” album (1970). The song was also worked up during an informal jam session, with Tom Petty, Benmont Tench and Stevie Nicks, which took place in the Park Royal Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand on February 6, 1986. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were under contract to MGM when they were commissioned to write a song for “Hollywood Party”. The song was not recorded and
39
B
Blue Moon Of Kentucky MGM Song #225 ‘Prayer (Oh Lord, Make Me a Movie Star)’ was registered for copyright as an unpublished work on July 10, 1933. The tune was given new lyrics by Hart and was to be used as the title song of the MGM film “Manhattan Melodrama” (1934). However, the song, now entitled ‘It’s Just That Kind Of Play’, was cut from the film before its release. MGM then asked for another number for the film and Rodgers, who was still taken with the melody, asked Hart to write a third lyric and the song became ‘The Bad In Every Man’. A fourth set of lyrics came about when Jack Robbins, head of the MGM’s publishing company, asked Hart if he would write a more commercial set of lyrics. The result was ‘Blue Moon’. The song has been covered many times and the list of artists who have recorded it reads like a who’s who of the era. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Frankie Laine, Tony Bennett and Mel Tormé all released the song, although the Mel Tormé version was the only one to make it onto the Billboard Chart. Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie released the best known Jazz covers and of course Elvis Presley covered the song as only Elvis could. The song’s biggest success arrived in 1961 when the Marcels’ version (Pye 7N 25073), reached the top spot on the US Chart. Legendary DJ, Murray The K. promoted the record as an “exclusive” and reportedly played the song twenty-six times during his four-hour radio show. The record went on to sell a million copies. (See Appendix 1:2 & 1:64 for further details).
Blue Moon Of Kentucky (Bill Monroe) Dylan performed this song during his 1999 joint US tour with Paul Simon. The song was performed twenty-one times, the first being at Fillmore Auditorium, Denver, Colorado (June 5, 1999), and the last to date being at the Blockbuster Pavilion, Charlotte, North Carolina (September 5, 1999). All performances are shared vocals with Paul Simon. Bob Dylan played Bill Monroe’s 1947 recording of ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ on show thirty-two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. Kentucky-born William “Bill” Smith Monroe wrote ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ in 1946 but did not record the song himself for several years. The song has undergone many adaptations since its original release. A young Elvis Presley chose to perform ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ when he auditioned for the Grand Ole Opry in 1954 and his “irreverent” supercharged version was released on the B-side of his debut single, ‘That’s All Right Mama’
40
Blue Suede Shoes (July 1954). At Monroe’s urging, Ralph and Carter Stanley recorded a country cover of the song in 1954, shortly after Elvis Presley’s single was released. Presley later apologized to Monroe for changing his arrangement, which Monroe had written and recorded in 3/4 waltz time. In 1989, the General Assembly chose ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ as the official bluegrass song of the State of Kentucky.
B
Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins) Bob Dylan performed this Carl Perkins classic during a “double header” tour of the USA with Van Morrison. The song was played as a duet with Morrison, during Morrison’s set, and the pair were backed by Van Morrison’s tour band. Dylan’s contribution is, however, minimal. There were two performances: January 21, 1998, in Madison Square Garden, New York, and January 24, at the Fleet Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Dylan’s performance from New York (January 21, 1998) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. In late 1955, a desperately poor Carl Perkins wrote the song ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, supposedly after overhearing a boy wearing blue suedes caution his date not to step on them. Bill Haley’s song ‘Watcha Gonna Do’, which begins with the same opening phrase and has a very similar melody and arrangement to Perkins’ song, was a probable influence. The record was a massive success for Perkins, reaching Number One on the US Country Music Chart, Number Two on the Pop Chart and Number Three on the R&B Chart and was the first Sun record to sell a million copies. Ironically, although Elvis Presley’s cover only made it to Number Twenty on the Pop Chart, it’s his version that most people now remember best. Bob Dylan kicked off show forty-two of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme with one of the most famous pairs of shoes in rock‘n’roll– Carl Perkins’ original 1956 recording of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. The theme of this show was, you guessed it, “Shoes”.
Blue Yodel o. 1 (T for Texas) (Jimmie Rodgers) Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire, are all performed as duets. This recording was not released but it does circulate among collectors. As stated in my introduction to this book, songs used to warm up the band or general studio doodles are not included in this encyclopaedia. However, it seems quite evident that most of the songs at this session were being considered for release, perhaps not as part of “ashville Skyline”, but as some future product. A feasibility study, but in studio time!
41
B
Blue Yodel o. 1 (T for Texas) Bob Dylan played Bob Downen’s recording of ‘Blue Yodel o. 1’ on show forty-four on his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. ‘Blue Yodel o. 1 (T for Texas)’ was a national phenomenon in the United States. The song was a Jimmie Rodgers original composition which drew heavily on traditional blues while showcasing Rodgers’ distinctive guitar style and the bonechilling yodel that would become his trademark. Rodgers’ lyrics, which portrayed hard times, both with work and women, were to become recurring themes in no less than thirteen ‘Blue Yodel’ songs. Dylan first heard Jimmie Rodgers as a teenager at home in Hibbing, Minnesota. He regularly played Rodgers’ old 78s when he visited his then girlfriend, Echo Star Helstrom. Helstrom’s father owned a large record collection that contained a fair amount of Rodgers’ material. “I used to sit there mesmerised”, Dylan wrote in his book “Chronicles Volume One”. Warmly referred to by many as the “Father of Country Music”, Jimmie Rodgers was the first figure to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. The youngest of three sons, Jimmie Rodgers was born on September 8, 1897 in Meridian, Mississippi. Rodgers’ love for entertaining began at a young age and the allure of the road was soon irresistible to him. By the age of thirteen, he had embarked on travelling shows, only to be brought home by his father who found him his first job working on the railroad as a waterboy, which was where he learned about the blues from black workers on his crew. At the age of twenty-four, he contracted tuberculosis and was forced to quit his job. Ironically, his illness gave him the chance to get back to his first love, music. In a career that lasted just six years, Rodgers’ recorded one hundred and eleven sides for the Victor label. Among the most important of these recordings were his series of ‘Blue Yodels’, in which he drew from Appalachian ballads, rural blues, black spirituals, and white popular music. Rodgers made his final recordings, which included his last single ‘Fifteen Years Ago Today’, on May 24, 1933. Jimmie Rodgers died two days later from tuberculosis. He was thirty-five years old. In 1997, Bob Dylan released a tribute album to Jimmie Rodgers. The album, “The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute”, was the first release on Dylan’s own record label, Egyptian Records. In the liner notes to the album Dylan wrote: “Jimmie Rodgers of course is one of the guiding lights of the 20th century whose way with song has always been an inspiration
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Blue Yodel o. 5 to those of us who have followed the path. … he was a performer of force without precedent with a sound as mystical as it was dynamic. His voice gives hope to the vanquished and humility to the mighty”.
B
Blue Yodel o. 5 (Jimmie Rodgers) Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Although this recording was never released, it seems quite evident that most of the songs at this session were being considered for release, perhaps not as part of “ashville Skyline”, but as some future product. This recording is in circulation among collectors. For information about Jimmie Rodgers’ life and music see ‘Blue Yodel o. 1’.
Blue Yodel o. 8 (Jimmie Rodgers) ‘Blue Yodel o. 8’ (aka ‘Muleskinner Blues’), is one of thirteen ‘Blue Yodel’ songs written and recorded by Jimmie Rodgers over a six-year period (1927 - 1933). Rodgers recorded ‘Blue Yodel o. 8’ in 1930 since which time it has been covered by many other artists. Some versions credit George Vaughn as a co-author; the name is a pseudonym for Vaughn Horton, who wrote new lyrics to Rodgers’ song, creating ‘ew Mule Skinner Blues’. The likelihood is that Dylan learned the song from Woody Guthrie’s 1944 recording for Asch. The lyrics, which are broader than Rodgers’ original, are very close to Guthrie’s version. Dylan performed ‘Blue Yodel o. 8’ at the home of Karen Wallace in St Paul, Minnesota in May 1960, and perhaps tellingly, it was preceded by ‘900 Miles’ another song associated with Guthrie and Cisco Houston. This recording is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. The song was again captured on tape when Dylan played it in the autumn of 1960 in his apartment in Minneapolis. The third and final time that the song made it on to tape was when Dylan performed it, this time in front of an audience proper, in the Finjan Club in Montreal, Quebec on July 2, 1962. See Appendix 1:3, 1:5 & 1:24 for further details. For information about Jimmie Rodgers’ life and music see entry for ‘Blue Yodel o. 1’.
Blues Stay Away From Me (A. Delmore / R. Delmore / Glover / Raney) ‘Blues Stay Away From Me’ was originally recorded by The Delmore Brothers with Wayne Raney in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 6, 1949. Wayne Raney: “About four o’clock one morning in Cincinnati’s Gibson Hotel, Alton and Rabon Delmore and I were getting ready for a recording session the next day. Alton knew
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(The) Bonnie Ship The Diamond a guitar riff he had learned from Henry Glover, a black songwriter on the King Records staff at the time. We decided to put words to it and a song was born. We recorded it the next day”. Bob Dylan is known to have played this song in his suite in the Savoy Hotel, London while on tour in early May 1965. The next known occurrence was in 1972 when Dylan played guitar and also shared the vocal on the song at a session which resulted in the album “Doug Sahm And Band” (Atlantic, SD-7254, December 1972). The song was revisited again when Dylan joined his excohorts, Levon Helm and Rick Danko, during their set at the Lone Star Café, New York (February 16, 1983), for a five-song jam. The last known appearance of the song was in early June 1987 during a tour rehearsal with the Grateful Dead at the Club Front in San Rafael, California.
(The) Bonnie Ship The Diamond (Traditional) The Diamond was a Canadian-built whaler that journeyed to Aberdeenshire, Scotland to join the Peterhead whaling fleet in 1812. Over-fishing in the Greenland Sea, north of Scotland, resulted in Scottish whalers having to make much longer voyages to a newly discovered fishery in the region of the Davis Strait, which lies between Canada and the west coast of Greenland. In 1830 the Resolution, Eliza Swan, Battler of Montrose and The Diamond, along with sixteen other whaling ships, became trapped in ice when they ventured north of the Davis Strait into Baffin Bay. Although many sailors lost their lives in this disaster, the song, ‘Bonnie Ship The Diamond’, is one of good cheer which was clearly written before the tragedy happened. The lyrics talk of arriving back at Peterhead and “When the Greenland lads come hame / Our ship full up with oil, my lads / And money to our name”. This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made while he was living in the town of Woodstock in upper New York State and which later became known as the Basement Tapes (1967). This recording sounds a little more primitive than the main body of Basement Tapes songs and was possibly recorded in the “Red Room” in Dylan’s Hi Lo Ha Woodstock home before the musicians relocated to the basement at Big Pink (see Appendix 1:59 for further details). The position of this song on the tapes / bootleg CDs also seems to indicate this. The song features Dylan playing twelve-string guitar, which was common during the early sessions. This Scottish sea song was often performed during the folk revival of the 1960s and Dylan would have been well aware of the song from his days playing in the Greenwich Village folk clubs.
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Boogie Woogie Country Girl Boogie Woogie Country Girl (Doc Pomus / Reginald Ashby)
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This song was covered by Dylan for inclusion on the album “Till The ight Has Gone: A Tribute To Doc Pomus”, Rhino Records (R2 71878, 1995). The track was recorded at Ardent Studios, Memphis, Tennessee (May 911, 1994). The performance is a rather funky country-swing rendition that features Dylan’s touring band of the time. (John Jackson, Tony Garnier, Bucky Baxter and Winston Watson). ‘Boogie Woogie Country Girl’ was Doc Pomus’ first major success as a songwriter when it was released by Big Joe Turner in 1955. Boom Boom Mancini (Warren Zevon) ‘Boom Boom Mancini’ was one of four Warren Zevon songs that Dylan performed during his Fall 2002 tour of the USA. See the entry for ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’ for further details. Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini was the son of Lenny Mancini, a top-ranked boxing contender whose potential was never realized due to a wounding during World War II. Nevertheless, the Mancini family finally had a champion when Ray stopped Arturo Frias to take the world lightweight boxing title in May, 1982. Ray’s second defence of his crown would change both his life and the face of boxing. On November 13, 1982, Ray Mancini defended his title against a twenty-three-year-old contender from South Korea, Duk Koo Kim. During the fourteen rounds that the fight lasted, Kim sustained brain injuries from which he died five days later. The story has parallels with Dylan’s self-penned song ‘Who Killed Davey Moore?’ (1964). Mancini went to the funeral of Duk Koo Kim in South Korea but afterwards fell into a lasting depression. The referee in charge of the Mancini / Kim fight, Richard Greene, committed suicide in February 1983 and Kim’s mother took her own life four months later. As a result of Kim’s death, the World Boxing Council (WBC) reduced the number of rounds in their title bouts from fifteen to twelve. The WBA, WBO, and IBF all quickly followed suit. Boppin’ The Blues (Griffin / Perkins) Young Bobby Zimmerman along with friends, Howard Rutman and Larry Kegan, cut their own 78 rpm record on Christmas Eve 1956. ‘Boppin’ The Blues’ was one of the eight songs
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The Boxer included as part of their eight-minute medley. No part of this recording is in circulation. See Appendix 1:1 for further information about this set of recordings. ‘Boppin’ The Blues’ was a 1956 US hit for Carl Perkins.
The Boxer (Paul Simon) Dylan covered Paul Simon’s ‘The Boxer’ for his album “Self Portrait” (see Appendix 1:65 for further details). It has been suggested that Simon’s lyrics were an attack on Bob Dylan. However, Paul Simon has reluctantly stated in interview that the lyrics are largely autobiographical, saying that he wrote the song because music critics were unsympathetic towards his work. He stated he felt like a boxer and that everybody was “beating [him] up”. Simon went on to say: “I think I was reading the Bible around that time. That’s where I think phrases such as ‘workman’s wages’ came from, and ‘seeking out the poorer quarters’. That was biblical but I think the song was about me”. It has also been suggested that the line about the whores on Seventh Avenue might refer to Simon’s record label, Columbia Records. “Asking only workman’s wages I come lookin’ for a job / But I get no offers / Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue”. It should however be noted that by the time ‘The Boxer’ was written and recorded, Columbia Records were no longer occupying their prestigious offices and studios at 799, Seventh Avenue, Manhattan. However, because the lyrics seem to refer to an early time, when the narrator was still “lookin’ for a job”, the fact that Columbia Records had, by the time the song was written, moved to West 52nd Street and Sixth Avenue does not affect the story. It would be a great shame if the whores did not symbolize Columbia Records because it is an absolutely wonderful interpretation. Dylan’s performance of the song on “Self Portrait” is pretty damn awful; it is also quite odd. ‘The Boxer’ was recorded by Dylan on March 3, 1970, in Columbia Recording Studios, Studio B in New York City. However, overdub sessions took place for the album on March 11, 12, 13, 17, and also on April 2, 1970. The sessions on March 12 and April 2 involved ‘The Boxer’. What is odd about this is that, for the first time in his recording career, Dylan’s vocal was overdubbed. The story is that the tapes from the New York recording sessions were sent down to producer Bob Johnston at Columbia Recording Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, so that Nashville musicians like Fred Carter Jr. (guitar), Charlie McCoy (bass) and Kenny Buttrey (drums) could “play over” the tapes principally to add a rhythm section, which was evidently absent from the original New York recording.
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Branded Man Kenny Buttrey: “We just overdubbed our parts on it. He wasn’t even there”.
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The fact that Dylan didn’t bother to attend any of the overdub sessions for “Self Portrait” suggests that he had lost interest in the album even before it was finished and had already moved on. In fact, there is evidence that Dylan had made attempts to record several of the original songs that would be included on “ew Morning” even before “Self Portrait” was completed. In any event, by the time “Self Portrait” was released, on June 8, 1970, Dylan had recorded all but three of the songs for “ew Morning”. Dylan would revisit ‘The Boxer’ almost thirty years later when he performed the song live with Paul Simon during their 1999 “double header” concert shows. The first performance of the song was September 2, 1999 at Coral Sky Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida. The last performance was on September 18, 1999 at Starplex Amphitheatre in Dallas, Texas. Branded Man (Merle Haggard) This song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, in March / April 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:80). ‘Branded Man’ is the title song from Merle Haggard’s 1967 Capitol album (ST-2789). Bright Lights, Big City (Jimmy Reed) Jimmy Reed reached Number Three on the R&B Chart in 1961 with this song. Dylan performed the song with “Eric Clapton & Friends” at the Crossroads Benefit concert (June 30, 1999, Madison Square Garden, New York City). The track features Eric Clapton on lead vocal and Sheryl Crowe on accordion. The Crossroads Centre is a “chemical” and alcohol addiction treatment and education centre that provides residential care plus family and aftercare programs on the island of Antigua. The concert was broadcast on VH1 on July 17, 1999 and was released on DVD as “Eric Clapton And Friends In Concert: A Benefit for Crossroads Centre In Antigua” on October 26, 1999. ‘Bright Lights, Big City’ was not included on the VH1 broadcast or on the DVD release. Broke Down Engine (Blind Willie McTell) Dylan says of this song: “‘Broke Down Engine’ is a Blind Willie McTell masterpiece … it’s about variations of human longing–the low hum in meters & syllables … it’s about revival, getting a new lease on life, not just posing there–paint chipped & flaked, mattress bare, single bulb swinging above the bed” (“World Gone Wrong” notes).
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Broke Down Engine Bob Dylan fashioned a completely new arrangement for his “cover” of ‘Broke Down Engine’, which was recorded in Dylan’s garage studio at his home in Malibu, California in May 1993. The song was released on his second consecutive album of “traditional” cover songs, “World Gone Wrong” (see Appendix 1:77 for further details). Despite winning a Grammy Award for “Best Traditional Folk Album”, “World Gone Wrong” only reached Number Seventy in the US and peaked at Number Thirty-Five on the UK Chart. As well as covering some of McTell’s songs, Dylan also paid tribute to the master of the twelve-string by writing the song ‘Blind Willie McTell’. The song was recorded in 1983 and finally released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (1991). Later, in 2003, on the song ‘Po’ Boy’, Dylan again paid homage to McTell by appropriating the line “had to go to Florida, dodging them Georgia laws”, which is taken directly from McTell’s song ‘Kill It, Kid’. “No-one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell”, sang Bob Dylan on his 1983 tribute to the Georgia legend. William Samuel McTell was born just outside of Thomson, Georgia and his date of birth is most frequently referred to as May 5, 1901 although, as with most southern blacks born at this time, this information is likely to be inaccurate. Blind from a very young age, even possibly from birth, McTell learned the guitar from his mother during his early teens and when she died in 1920, he left his hometown to earn a living as an itinerant musician. The deftness of his twelve-string finger-picking technique, coupled with his clear soulshaking tenor voice and clever combinations of old blues couplets, elevated McTell to the pinnacle of his art. It is unfortunate therefore, that none of his records sold in any quantity and that commercial success eluded him. McTell began his recording career on October 18, 1927 when he recorded for Victor Records in Atlanta. The session included ‘Writing Paper Blues’, ‘Stole Rider Blues’, ‘Mr. McTell Got The Blues’ and the superb ‘Mama, Tain’t Long fo’ Day’. During the late twenties and early thirties, McTell made himself available to every recording scout that passed through Atlanta. He recorded as ‘Blind Sammie’ for Columbia, ‘Georgia Bill’ for OKeh, ‘Red Hot Willie Glaze’ for Bluebird, and ‘Blind Willie’ for Vocalion. Between 1937 and 1948, McTell made a living playing for tips in cities across the Eastern seaboard rather than recording. In 1949, after he visited Atlantic records’ boss Ahmet Ertegun, the label released two sides which McTell had recorded years earlier. ‘Broke Down Engine Blues’ and ‘Kill It, Kid’ were put out under the name “Barrelhouse Sammy”. He recorded again, in 1950, for Regal Records and this time McTell adopted the name Pig ’n Whistle Red, which he took from a barbecue joint where he played requests for tips. McTell’s unfortunate recording career ground to a halt around this time, although he was captured on tape in 1956 by record store manager, Ed Rhodes. Of the eighteen songs recorded, fifteen were later released as “Blind Willie McTell’s Last Session” (Prestige /
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Brown Sugar Bluesville). He continued to perform locally in Atlanta, but his life was cut short by illhealth, predominantly caused by diabetes. In the spring of 1959 McTell suffered a stroke. He moved back to Thomson, Georgia to live with relatives but by the summer of that year he suffered a further stroke and a week later, on August 19, 1959, he died in hospital.
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The quality of Blind Willie McTell’s recorded legacy is immeasurable. His most celebrated song, ‘Statesboro Blues’, has been covered by many artists, including Taj Mahal and The Allman Brothers Band. A familiar, if considerably abridged version of the song was recorded at the Fillmore East in March 1971 by The Allman Brothers Band. The song, which was realised on the band’s album “At Fillmore East”, features Statesboro resident and band member Duane Allman on slide guitar. Bob Dylan probably first heard McTell and ‘Statesboro Blues’ on the Sam Charters compilation album “The Country Blues”. Along with the Harry Smith Anthology, Sam Charters’ 1959 album was the most important folk / country blues record of the 1950s. Charters’ album was released in conjunction with his book – the first book-length study of the blues to be published – also entitled “The Country Blues”. In addition to Blind Willie McTell’s ‘Statesboro Blues’, Sam Charters’ album “The Country Blues” (RBF Records RBF 1, 1959) also contained the Memphis Jug Band’s ‘Stealin’ Stealin’’, Big Bill Broonzy’s classic ‘Key To The Highway’ and Bukka White’s ‘Fixin’ To Die’. One of Dylan’s Minneapolis friends “Spider” John Koerner owned a copy of Charters’ album in late 1959 or early 1960 and it is very likely that Dylan heard this material for the first time via Koerner.
Brown Sugar (Jagger / Richards) Dylan premiered this Jagger / Richards classic during the opening show of the October / November 2002 leg of his US tour. The first performance was in Seattle, Washington on October 4, 2002, after which the song was played in the number six slot at every show apart from October 13, when it was replaced by ‘ot Fade Away’. The reason for the song’s inclusion is unclear but it did coincide with the Stones’ much publicized and scrutinized 2002 “Licks” tour. Depending on whom you believe, the song expresses the plight of African slaves who were sold in New Orleans and raped by their white masters; or the inspiration for it came from Jagger’s alleged affair in 1969 with Claudia Lennear, one of Ike Turner’s backup singers; or, according to the book “Up And Down With The Rolling Stones” (by Tony Sanchez), the slavery and whipping is a metaphor for the perils of being “mastered” by Brown Heroin, or Brown Sugar. Make your own mind up. In live performance Dylan himself seemed to treat the song as something of a slave: he used it as a blatant crowd-pleaser and momentum-builder early on in his set. He never bothered
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Buffalo Skinners to master the lyrics precisely, so most versions feature a rather garbled narrative. Still, with guitarists Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton on hand to crank out the riffs and add the ‘Wooh-wooh’s to the song’s conclusion, ‘Brown Sugar’ has been one of the more thrilling Bob Dylan live covers of recent years.
Buffalo Skinners (Traditional, arranged Woody Guthrie) See entry for ‘Trail Of The Buffalo’.
But I Forgive You (Tampa Red) Dylan played two Tampa Red songs, ‘Love Her With a Feeling’ and ‘She’s Love Crazy’, on his 1978 tour. Both were employed as set-openers. However, prior to several shows on this world tour, another Tampa Red song, ‘But I Forgive You’, was played at sound-checks. Recordings of the Pavillon de Paris, Paris, France, sound-check (July 6, 1978) and the Onondaga County War Memorial Auditorium, sound-check in Syracuse, New York (September 22, 1978), circulate among collectors. It seems extremely likely that this song was intended as an alternate opener for this tour.
Buzz, Buzz, Buzz (Byrd / Gray) ‘Buzz, Buzz, Buzz’ was captured on tape by Bobby’s teenage friend John Bucklen. The six-song tape, extracts of which were featured in the BBC television documentary “Highway 61 Revisited” (see Appendix 1:2), contains songs and dialogue between Zimmerman and Bucklen about the music which they were playing. This performance can be found on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. ‘Buzz, Buzz, Buzz’ was released in November 1957 by The Hollywood Flames. The single reached Number Eleven on the US Pop Chart.
Bye, Bye Johnny (Chuck Berry) Dylan performed this Chuck Berry classic twice on his 1986 US tour. The tour featured Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as Dylan’s backing band and on both performances Petty sang lead vocal. The two concerts were at Tacoma Dome, Tacoma, Washington, July 31, 1986 and the following evening at B.C. Place, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (August 1, 1986). Berry released ‘Bye, Bye Johnny’ as a single in 1960 (Chess 1754).
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Bob Dylan “Rolling Thunder Revue” Tour
Canadee-i-o
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Canadee-i-o (Traditional) ‘Canadee-i-o’ (sometimes written as I–O), is something of a tangled tale and a hybrid folksong, combining, as it does, two separate motifs; namely the girl who follows her truelove abroad, and the myth of the shipboard Jonah. Also known as ‘The Wearing Of The Blue’, the song has its roots both in Ireland and Canada. It is believed to have been written before 1839 (Broadside, Bodleian Harding B 11, 1982). According to Frank Kidson, ‘Canadee-I-O’ is a song that first appeared during the 18th century. In form, it is related to the Scots song ‘Caledonia’ – versions of which were collected by Gavin Greig – although exactly which song came first is open to debate. The Scottish song ‘Caledonia’ is however quite different in detail; so much so that it is separate from the ‘Canada-I-O’ texts in the Round Folk Song Index. Although ‘Canadee-i-o’ is often related to ‘Canada-i-o’, the two songs have very different lyrics (one being about a sailor and a lady who dresses as a sailor to be close to her love and to go to Canada, and the other, to quote from the lyrics, is, “Concerning of some lumbermen, who did agree to go / To spend one pleasant winter up in Canada-I-O”. This lyric sounds much closer to ‘Buffalo Skinners’ than it does to ‘Canadee-i-o’. Dylan recorded the song in late July or early August 1992 in the garage studio at his home in Malibu, California. It was released on the album “Good As I Been To You” (see Appendix 1:76 for further details about this recording session). There has been much debate over Dylan’s cover of ‘Canadee-i-o’ and it seems to have become accepted that Dylan’s version was derived from Nic Jones’ recording of the song on his truly wonderful album “Penguin Eggs” (Topic TSCD411, 1980). However, while there is no doubt that Dylan must have heard Nic Jones’ recording and that his lyrics are close to Jones’ version, the sticking point over the credits (or lack of them) is whether Dylan “borrowed” Jones’ arrangement. Contrary to the accepted wisdom on this subject, a cursory listen to the two songs should confirm that the arrangements are in fact quite different. The most acceptable thing would have been for Dylan to have mentioned Nic Jones in the album notes for “Good As I Been To You”; the problem is, there are no such notes.
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Candy Man Candy Man (Traditional, arranged Rev. Gary Davis)
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Candy man been here and gone, Candy man been here and gone, Candy man, salty dog, If you can’t be my Candy man you can’t be my salty dog. Often known as ‘Candy Man Blues’, Dylan’s cover of this song is very close to, and almost certainly derived from, Reverend Gary Davis’ 1957 recording. Nonetheless, Dylan might also have heard Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s recording on Elliott’s eponymous 1961 album. Mississippi John Hurt and Dave Van Ronk are also closely associated with this song. Dylan first met Gary Davis at the Indian Neck Folk Festival on May 6, 1961 and by the end of ’61 had covered several songs associated with him. ‘Candy Man’ and ‘Cocaine’ were performed by Dylan in the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher on December 22, 1961. See Appendix 1:18 for further information about this recording. This performance circulates among collectors and can be found on several bootleg CDs including “Songs For Bonnie”. There has been much debate across the years as to what is meant by the term “salty dog”. The lyric appears in numerous old blues and jazz numbers and probably has different connotations depending on the song in which the lyric is being used. The most common general usage is in reference to an old seafarer. However, in many old blues numbers “salty dog” probably refers to seamen of a different kind. ‘Candy Man’ also contains the floating line “I’d give anything in this god almighty world...” which of course appears in the song ‘Baby, Let Me Follow You Down’. For details about Gary Davis, pictured above, see entry for ‘Death Don’t Have o Mercy’.
Can’t Help Falling In Love (G.Weiss / H Peretti / L Creatore) Recorded at the June 3rd, 1970 “ew Morning” album session (see Appendix 1:71), this recording would eventually be released on the Columbia album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973). One of the album’s better tracks, ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ was co-written by successful New York songwriters, George Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore. The song, which was based on the Jean Paul Egide Martini song ‘Plaisir d’amour’, was “rewritten” for the 1961 movie “Blue Hawaii”, starring Elvis Presley.
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Can’t Lose What You Ain’t ever Had The song was released by Presley (RCA Victor 47 7968) in 1961 and reached Number Two on the Billboard Chart. In 1968, Presley worked out a new arrangement for the song and it became a fixture in his live acts, often closing his shows.
Can’t Lose What You Ain’t ever Had (McKinley Morganfield) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. Recorded April, 1964 in Chicago, Illinois, ‘You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t ever Had’ (Chess 1895) is one of Muddy Waters later recordings. In fact, this song with its lovely sparse fifties feel was probably Waters’ last truly great recording.
Car, Car (Woody Guthrie) See the entry for ‘Riding In My Car’.
Careless Love (Traditional) Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969, during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, most of which come from Cash’s repertoire, are all performed as duets. This recording was never released but it does circulate among collectors. It also appears on a number of bootleg CDs, including “A Fool Such As I” (see Appendix 2 for further information). As stated in my introduction to this book, songs used to warm up the band or general studio doodles are not included in this encyclopaedia. However, it seems quite evident that most of the songs recorded at this session were potentially being considered for release, perhaps not as part of “ashville Skyline”, but as some future product.
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Carrying a Torch Johnny Cash said of the song and the session: “The songs had no starting place and no stopping; we’d get into them and everyone would join in. Bob and I did ‘Careless Love’; whatever we might know the words to…”
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‘Careless Love’, a traditional song with obscure origins, was one of the best known pieces in the performance repertoire of the Buddy Bolden jazz band during the early 1900s. The song became a jazz / blues standard and there are hundreds of recordings in existence, including those by Bessie Smith, Big Joe Turner, Louis Armstrong, Lonnie Johnson, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk and Pete Seeger. Carrying a Torch (Van Morrison) Originally released on the album “Hymns To The Silence”, Dylan performed this Van Morrison song of unrequited love as part of his October / November 2002 US tour. The first of the six performances was on October 19, 2002 at the State University in San Diego, California. The song was last played on November 17, 2002, in the Civic Center Coliseum in Hartford, Connecticut. ‘Carrying a Torch’ was just one of a number of mostly exciting covers played during a tour that also featured the Stones’ ‘Brown Sugar’, Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’, Don Henley’s ‘The End Of The Innocence’, ‘ot Fade Away’ and a rake of other songs, including half of Warren Zevon’s back catalogue. Casey Jones (Wallace Saunders / Lawrence Seibert) This song, about railroad engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones, was recorded by Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions, which took place in Acme Recording Studios, Chicago, in June 1992. This recording is not in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session). “Casey” Jones (March 1863 – April 1900) an Illinois Central Railroad worker was immortalized in song by Wallace Saunders, an African-American “engine wiper” for the Illinois Central after his friend Jones was killed while attempting to stop his train and save the lives of his passengers. The collision happened on April 30, 1900 when Jones’ train, “Ole 382”, ploughed into a stationary freight train at Vaughan, Mississippi. Jones, who had reversed the throttle and applied the emergency stop airbrake, had reduced his speed from seventy-five miles per hour to about thirty-five miles per hour by the time
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Chain Gang the impact happened. The lives of all those aboard his train were saved only because he remained on board to slow the train (Jones was the only fatality of the collision). Popular legend has it that when his body was pulled from the wreckage Jones’ hands were still clutching the whistle cord and the brake. His watch was found to be stopped at 3:52 AM; the time of impact. Ironically, Jones only agreed to drive the southbound Number One the 188 miles from Memphis to Canton because the scheduled engineer, Sam Tate, had called in sick.
Rare picture of Casey Jones on “Ole 382”
Wallace Saunders sung his ballad to the tune of the popular song ‘Jimmie Jones’. It is quite probably that the words to the song have changed over the years but because Saunders neither wrote down nor copyrighted his original version it is not possible to know precisely what words he sang. ‘Casey Jones’ is song number 3247 in the Roud Folk Song Index. Bob Dylan played The Jubilaires’ 1944 recording of ‘Casey Jones’ on show forty-five of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. This show was themed “Trains”. The Grateful Dead’s 1970 recording of ‘Casey Jones’ was also played on the same show. This track is, however, a Garcia / Hunter composition and not the traditional song. The Grateful Dead song first appeared on their 1970 album “Workingman’s Dead”. Dylan also played Furry Lewis’ 1928 recording of ‘Kassie Jones’ on show forty-six of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour”. This version of the song can be found on the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” album. For further information about this Anthology see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’. Dylan would almost certainly have known ‘Casey (Kassie) Jones’ from the “Anthology”, but he possibly heard the song very early on via the Dinkytown musician John Koerner. Dylan mentions Koener sitting around playing this song in his autobiography “Chronicles Volume One”.
Chain Gang (Sam Cooke) This song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, in March / April 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:80). A chain gang was a group of prisoners chained together to perform tasks such as breaking stone, often along the highways and railways of the United States of America. By the mid1950s chain gangs had been abolished in all States except for Arizona.
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(A) Change Is Gonna Come Recorded by Sam Cooke in Studio A in New York City in January 1960 and released on RCA Victor (7730) in July that year, ‘Chain Gang’ reached Number Two on the R&B and Pop Charts.
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(A) Change Is Gonna Come (Sam Cooke) Dylan performed this song on March 28, 2004 in New York for the Apollo Theater Foundation’s 70th Celebration. The concert, “A Hot Night In Harlem”, at which Dylan played only one song, was a benefit for the Foundation. The performance was broadcast on NBC TV on June 19, 2004 and was released in 2008 on the bootleg CD “GBS 4 – Fourth Time Around”. This performance is powerful evidence that, despite the contraction of Dylan’s vocal range in latter years, his powers of interpretation remain undiminished. Defying his ravaged vocal chords, Dylan tears into Sam Cooke’s song with all of the passion that infused some of his earliest work. Just as Dylan connected with the social injustices that befell the African-American community in the 1960s, with songs such as ‘The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll’ and ‘The Death Of Emmett Till’, so his fire is re-ignited by Cooke’s song, which depicts the fear of persecution suffered by black men in a white community, as well as an optimism that things will improve. The song had been previously played on Dylan’s mammoth 1978 world tour but with vocal duties being undertaken by backing singer Carolyn Dennis. ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ was first recorded by Sam Cooke in December 1963 and released on RCA Victor shortly after his death in late 1964. The song became a sensation among the black community and grew to be an anthem for the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ made it to Number Nine on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart, but sadly Sam did not witness the success. Cooke died at the age of thirty-three under what many consider to be mysterious circumstances. He was killed at the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles, California on December 11, 1964. Cooke was shot and killed by the motel’s manager, Bertha Franklin, who claimed her actions were self-defence. The verdict was justifiable homicide. Cooke, who was deeply moved by Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, wrote ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ as an answer song.
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Cocaine Cocaine (Traditional, arranged Rev. Gary Davis) The tale of the song ‘Cocaine’ is a complex one. Firstly, there are a number of songs with the title ‘Cocaine’ which have nothing at all to do with the song in question. There are two main templates for our song, ‘Cocaine’ and ‘Cocaine Blues’, but unfortunately even theses two titles have become interchangeable. The earliest known example is Luke Jordan’s recording from 1927. This appears to have been copied and released in 1929 by white country bluesman Dick Justice. However, these two recordings (template one) bear no resemblance to Dylan’s version. They do, however, have something in common with the traditional song ‘Little Sadie’, versions of which were released by Dylan on his “Self Portrait” album (see Appendix 1:65). This template was found throughout the south, predominantly in Appalachia and the Ozarks in the 1920s. The earliest recorded version seems to be Clarence Ashley’s 1930 recording. The second template, the one used by Dylan, can be identified by the refrain: “Cocaine all around my brain”. This version also usually contains the lines “Hey baby, better come here quick / This old cocaine is making me sick” and “Cocaine’s for horses and it’s not for men / Doctor said it kill you, but he don’t say when”. Dave Van Ronk probably does the definitive version of this song, but Dylan may well have based his rendition on Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s 1958 recording which was released on his Topic album “Jack Takes The Floor”. In his spoken introduction to the song Jack informs the listener that he learned the song from Reverend Gary Davis. In any event, in the early 1960s Dylan made the song his own by changing many of the lyrics. Most versions of ‘Cocaine’ contain a verse (often the opening one), which describes the lady in the song as being “dressed in red” (a lady of the night?). Dylan modifies his December 1961 version (Appendix 1:18), so that the last three (of his five) verses have the lady in question dressed in different colours. The usual red dress is abandoned for white, blue, and in the final verse he somehow manages to rhyme “purple” with “nipples”! His October 1962 rendition, performed at the Gaslight Café in New York City (Appendix 1:31), reinstates the lady in red, whilst subsequent verses have her dressed in white, blue, and then back to white again. Unfortunately, there is no purple this time! Both the December ’61 and October ’62 versions omit the traditional “Cocaine’s for horses…” line. Dylan played the song again, probably in April 1963 (see Appendix 1:47), as an instrumental doodle. After a respite of almost thirty-five years, Dylan reintroduced ‘Cocaine’ to his live sets in the summer of 1997. The song was first performed on August 3, 1997 at a concert in Loon Mountain, Lincoln, New Hampshire. Dylan performed the song twenty-nine times on his 1997 tour, twenty-four times in 1998, and a further fifteen times during 1999. The last performance to date was on November 5, 1999 in the Civic Arena, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Columbus Stockade Blues Note: The October Gaslight Café version of ‘Cocaine’ was officially released on the CD “Live At The Gaslight 1962”. This CD was released in 2005 by Columbia Records and sold through an exclusive eighteen months deal with Starbucks in the USA.
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The version performed in Vienna, VA (August 24, 1997) was released in October 2008 on the rarities compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006”, (2008). The performance from the El Rey Theater, Los Angeles (December 16, 1997) was released in Europe and Japan in 1998 on the ‘Love Sick’ CD single. This track was also included on a bonus disc with the Australian tour limited edition of “Time Out Of Mind”. Bob Dylan’s performance from Bournemouth, England (October 1, 1997) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This four-and-half minute version features pedal steel guitar, and harmonies on the “cocaine all around my brain” line. For details about Rev. Gary Davis, see entry for ‘Death Don’t Have o Mercy’. Columbus Stockade Blues (Darby / Tarlton) Way down in Columbus Georgia, Lord I wish I was back in Tennessee, Way down in that old Columbus Stockade, My friends all have turned their back on me. Bob Dylan performed this song in the home of Karen Wallace in St Paul, Minnesota in May 1960 (Appendix 1:3). Dylan also played Kenny Lane & His Bull Dogs’ 1960 recording of ‘Columbus Stockade Blues’ on show six of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. This show was themed “Jail”. Lane’s recording was released as a single by Strate-8 Records (Strate-8, 1504). The B-side of the single was ‘Froggy Went A-Courtin’’ which Dylan would release much later on his album “Good As I Been To You”. The May 1960 performance can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Columbus Stockade, which was built in the 1850s in Columbus, Georgia and consisted of a jail and a police station, remained in use until the early 1900s. Once an extremely popular country / folk song, ‘Columbus Stockade Blues’ was performed by amongst others Woody Guthrie and over the years the song has become so inextricably
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Come a Little Bit Closer linked with Guthrie that he is often erroneously credited with writing it. The song was however originally recorded by the Columbus-based Country duo of Tom Darby and Jimmie Tarlton, with Darby on vocals and Tarlton on slide guitar. The song would eventually drive a wedge between the two men due to arguments over authorship. The duo recorded the song for Columbia Records in November 1927 and it was originally released as the B-side of their 78rpm record ‘Birmingham Jail’. Both songs went on to be hits but ‘Columbus Stockade Blues’ was a lasting success. The duo accepted $75 for the recording session and agreed to forgo any royalties against sales. Unfortunately for Darby and Tarlton, the record achieved sales approaching the quarter of a million mark. There is compelling evidence that neither Darby nor Tarlton wrote the whole song but rather borrowed substantial portions of it from a much older Appalachians’ song entitled ‘Dear Companion’, a version of which was most famously sung by The Carter Family. Dylan’s version of ‘Columbus Stockade Blues’ was almost certainly taken from Woody Guthrie’s cover of the song which is now available on a number of Guthrie compilation CDs. It is, however, quite possible that Dylan had also heard the Darby / Tarlton recording. Dylan was certainly aware of Darby and Tarlton as early as 1959, having heard their first record, ‘Down In Florida On a Hog’, while visiting friends in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dylan writes about this in his memoir “Chronicles Volume One” in which he states that Darby and Tarlton were “out of this world”. Indeed, many consider Darby and Tarlton’s recordings to be some of the earliest examples of what would become known as Country music and Jimmie Tarlton’s musical career would see him playing with the likes of the Delmore Brothers, Gid Tanner’s Skillet Lickers, Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, all of whom influenced the music of Bob Dylan.
Come a Little Bit Closer (Tommy Boyce / Bobby Hart / Wes Farrell) This number was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions. However, the song was not included on the album and it does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:67 for further information). The song writing team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart are best known for their work with the Monkees, and from August 1966 to June 1970 all but one of the group’s nine
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Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies albums featured their involvement. Amongst the hits which the duo wrote for the Monkees are ‘Last Train To Clarksville’, ‘Valleri’, ‘I Wanna Be Free’ and ‘(I’m ot Your) Stepping Stone’.
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Tommy Boyce, who had a history of successful songwriting that predated the Monkees, met the reallife son of a preacher man, Bobby Hart in the early 1960s. In 1964 they began working with Wes Farrell of Chelsea Records with whom they wrote eight songs including Jay And The Americans Top Ten Hit ‘Come a Little Bit Closer’.
Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (Traditional) Come all you fair and tender ladies, Take warning how you court young men, They’re like bright stars of a summer’s morning, First they’ll appear and then be gone. One of many former English / Scottish folk songs collected from the Southern Appalachians, ‘Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies’ was played by Bob Dylan in the New York home of Eve and Mac McKenzie on December 4, 1961 (see Appendix 1:17). The song was also played in 1967 at one of the early “Basement” sessions (see Appendix 1:60), and again in March 1970 at the final “Self Portrait” recording session (see Appendix 1:67). The recording from the “Self Portrait” session was not released on the final album and it does not circulate among collectors. This lament about false love was collected by amongst others the Ritchie Family and was performed in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the likes of Peggy Seeger, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and the Kingston Trio. The most well known recording from this time was the Kingston Trio’s version which was released as a single and also appeared on the album “Make Way” (Capitol, T1474, January 1961).
Come Back, Baby (Traditional, credited Ray Charles) This book did not set out to include songs that Dylan performed only as a “sideman” and as such this track, recorded by Carolyn Hester for her debut album “Carolyn Hester” (Columbia, CL1796, May, 1962), is here under false pretences. However, the song is interesting by virtue of the fact that Hester has stated that it was Dylan who suggested it to her and that he taught her the song in the apartment of his then girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. The 1994 reissue of Hester’s debut album contains the original track plus an outtake from the same recording session.
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Come Back Baby (One More Time) Dylan almost certainly heard the song via Dave Van Ronk who released it on his 1961 album “Dave Van Ronk Sings…” (Folkways, FA 2383). The song had previously been released as the B-side to Ray Charles’ 1954 single ‘I Got a Woman’ where it is credited to Charles. The latest edition of “Blues and Gospel Records, 1890-1943” states that the earliest known recording of a song entitled ‘Come Back Baby’ was recorded by Whistlin’ Alex Moore in 1937. However, this recording has no connection to the number in question. Two recordings of our song were however made by Walter Davis. The first recording was made on July 12, 1940, while the second, entitled ‘ew Come Back Baby’, dates from 1941. The probability is that Davis reshaped what was originally a traditional song.
Come Back Baby (One More Time) (Billy Lee Riley) Bob Dylan recorded this song at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California in early May 1986 during the “Knocked Out Loaded” album sessions. This track was not included on the finished record and does not circulate among collectors. It is therefore not clear exactly which song was recorded. Various discographers have nominated Ray Charles or B. B. King as the probable song writers. However, if the correct song title is indeed ‘Come Back Baby (One More Time)’ then the song is most likely to be Billy Lee Riley’s 1959 Sun single (Sun 322). One month after the “Knocked Out Loaded” album sessions, Dylan was performing Billy Lee Riley’s ‘Rock With Me Baby’ in concert. Dylan also recorded ‘Rock With Me Baby’ in early April 1987 at the “Down In The Groove” album session. See Appendix 1:79 and 1:80 for further details about these sessions. For information about Billy Lee Riley, see entry for ‘Rock With Me Baby’.
Come See (Woody Guthrie) ‘Come See’ is a song written by Woody Guthrie. Dylan’s only known performance of this number was in the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961 (see Appendix 1:8 for further information). This performance is included on several CD bootlegs including “Songs For Bonnie” and “The Minnesota Tapes”.
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Confidential ‘Come See’ was originally released on Woody Guthrie’s second collection of children’s songs. First released in 1956, a remastered recording was issued on CD by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 1991. Several songs in the collection are instructional, helping children learn to count. Others are probably written by Guthrie with his own children in mind. For information about Woody Guthrie’s life, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
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Confidential (Dorinda Morgan) Although there are only seven known performances of this number during Dylan’s entire career, it is nevertheless a song that has remained with him since he first heard it on the radio in November 1956. Young Bobby Zimmerman quickly set about learning the song, which peaked at Number Seventeen on the US Pop Chart in the November of that year, and when he and two friends, Howard Rutman and Larry Kegan cut their own 78rpm record on Christmas Eve 1956, ‘Confidential’ was one of the eight songs they included as part of their eight-minute medley. None of this recording is in circulation among collectors. See Appendix 1:1 for further information. The song made its second appearance in 1967 when Dylan recorded it at the “Basement” sessions (see Appendix 1:60). The first concert performance of this crooner was in Helsinki, Finland (May 30, 1989). The song was played twice more on the 1989 European tour and then again on January 12, 1990 during the second of four sets in the intimate setting of the small New Haven venue, Toad’s Place. The song was played seven times during 1991, but after that, it has only reemerged once in concert, on September 23, 1995 at The Edge, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Bob Dylan’s performances from Helsinki, Finland (May 30, 1989) and Indianapolis, IN, (November 10, 1991) can both be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The Helsinki ’89 version contains some very tentative harmonica, while the Indianapolis outing (without harp) is a slightly more assured rendition. The original single that Bobby Zimmerman had enjoyed so much was released by R&B artist Sonny Knight whose real name was Joseph Coleman Smith. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts at recording for several labels, Knight had become disillusioned with the music business but just in time he met and was befriended by Hite and Dorinda Morgan, a white middle-aged couple who worked on the fringes of the music business. Knight spent most of his time at the Morgans’, often working away in their tiny home-recording studio, which was where he recorded one of Dorinda Morgan’s songs entitled ‘Confidential’.
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Cool Water The song was originally released on the small Pasadena-based label Vita, but when the record started to sell in larger than expected quantities, Vita transferred the master to Dot Records and it was their release (Dot 45-15507, 1956), which peaked at Number Seventeen on the US Pop Chart. In truth, the record would probably have made it even higher on the chart if it were not for the fact that Vita continued to press records even after they had sold the master to Dot. This of course meant that there were no accurate sales figures for the record. In 1981, Knight wrote an excellent novel about racism and the beginnings of R&B and how the music business changed from the mid ’50s to the mid ’60s. The book, “The Day The Music Died”, was published under his real name, Joseph C. Smith, by Grove Press. Knight died in 1989.
Cool Water (Bob Nolan) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, most of which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the “Basement Tapes” (see Appendix 1:60 for further information). Although this number has been successfully covered by several artists including Frankie Laine, who took it to Number Two on the British Pop Chart in 1955, Dylan’s heartfelt version owes more to Bob Nolan’s original which he recorded as a member of the Sons of the Pioneers. The record, about a man and his mule, Dan, searching the desert for water but only seeing a mirage, was released by the Sons of the Pioneers in the summer of 1948. The record reached Number Nine on the Billboard Chart and remained there for a total of thirteen weeks.
Copper Kettle (Frank Beddoe) This exquisite song was recorded for and released on Dylan’s 1970 album “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970). See Appendix 1:65 for further information. This is what Pete Seeger wrote about the song’s author Frank Beddoe in his book “Pete Seeger, The Incompleat Folksinger” (Simon and Schuster, 1972): “In 1946, a tall awkward man came upstairs to the offices of People’s Songs and offered to help with the typing. The offer was gratefully accepted ... and invaluable help it was, too. A few months later, he said that in his home county, Bexar County, Texas, were some fine
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Corrina, Corrina songs, and that he had mimeographed a collection of them. Later, it appeared that many were rewritten by him, and some were almost totally original songs, but in any case, they went from hand to hand, and some people sing them now as old folk songs, such as ‘Get You a Copper Kettle’”.
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The song was recorded by Joan Baez on her album “Joan Baez In Concert” (Vanguard VRS-9122, September 1962), and included in her 1964 songbook, “The Joan Baez Songbook”. Corrina, Corrina (Traditional, adapted Bob Dylan) ‘Corrina, Corrina’ was released on “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album (CL 1986, 1963). The song was also released as the B-side to Dylan’s first single, ‘Mixed Up Confusion’. See Appendix 1:21, 1:32 for further information. Contrary to the many myths that surround Bob Dylan, especially his “going electric”, “Bringing It All Back Home” was not the first Dylan album to contain electric instruments; that honour goes to ‘Corrina, Corrina’ and “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” LP (track seventeen, Appendix 1:32). Dylan had successfully recorded an acoustic version of this song during the ‘Freewheelin’’ sessions, but he chose instead to release ‘Corrina, Corrina’ as the only electric track on an otherwise wholly acoustic album. At around the same time that Dylan was recording “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album, he was also performing this song live. Two of these performances, April 1962, Gerdes Folk City, New York and August ’62 at the Minneapolis home of David Whitaker, were captured on tape (see Appendix 1:23, & 1:26 for further details about these recordings). Bob Dylan played Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys’ 1940 recording of ‘Corrina, Corrina’ on show thirtyfive of Season One his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. This show was themed “Women’s Names”. Where to start? This traditional folk / blues song has been recorded by a vast array of artists and in many styles, but mostly as a dance number. Versions of the song are known variously as ‘Corrina Blues’, ‘Corrina, Corrina’, ‘Sweet Alberta’, ‘Alberta Blues’, ‘Roberta, Roberta’ and other variations too numerous to list here. Even the spelling of the name varies between Corrina and Corrine. One of the first occurrences of the name Corrina in a song appears in Blind Lemon Jefferson’s ‘Corrina Blues’, which he recorded in 1926 for Paramont Records. Although
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A Couple More Years this song contains the lyric “I ain’t had no true love since Corrina been gone”, it is a very different song both in lyrics and melody. The earliest known recording of ‘Corrina, Corrina’ was released in 1929 by Brunswick (Brunswick 7080). The song was performed by Bo Chatmon (aka Bo Carter) later of the Mississippi Sheiks. Chatmon might even be the author of the song. Bo Chatmon provides the vocal and guitar, whilst Lonnie Chatmon plays fiddle and Charley McCoy plays mandolin and sings harmony. Less than a month after they first recorded the song and before Brunswick had even released it, the boys went back into the studio (December 17, 1928), this time with Walter Vincson, and recorded the song for another label! This time they called the song ‘Sweet Alberta’. It was released on Columbia 14397-D. In 1930, The Mississippi Sheiks, without Bo Chatmon, also recorded the song, or at least a variant of it, under the title of ‘Alberta Blues’ and in 1934 Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell adapted ‘Corrina’ as ‘Hold Them Puppies’. Dylan makes so many changes to his version of the song that he can almost call it his own. He firstly changes the mood of the song from a high-spirited dance-tune to a measured and mournful blues. He also changes many of the lyrics borrowing and adapting the middle, “I have a bird to whistle, and I have a bird to sing”, verse from Robert Johnson’s ‘Stones In My Passway’. The longer version, which Dylan performed at Gerdes in April 1962, contains more borrowings from Robert Johnson. The lyric “I got the devil on my trail and a hellhound by my side” is surely inspired by Johnson’s ‘Hellhound On My Trail’, whilst Dylan’s lovely lyric: You got a 32 Special built on a cross of wood, You got a 32 Special built on a cross of wood, I got a 38/20, gal that’s twice as good. is clearly adapted from Johnson’s lyric to ‘32/20 Blues’. See the entry for Robert Johnson’s ‘32/20 Blues’.
A Couple More Years (Shel Silverstein / Dennis Locorriere) ‘A Couple More Years’ is a song written by Shel Silverstein and the Dr. Hook front-man, Dennis Locorriere. Dylan performed this song on four occasions in concert in the USA in 1980 (November 17, 19, 26 and December 3). Dylan can also be seen performing the song in a hay-barn in the movie, “Hearts of Fire”. Unfortunately, the song, which features Dylan performing solo on acoustic guitar, and which was recorded at Townhouse Studio, London, England (August 27 & 28, 1986), does not appear on the soundtrack album.
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Crazy Love Dylan also played the Shel Silverstein song ‘Carry Me Carrie’ at soundchecks before two US concerts (October 28 and 29, 1978).
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Shel Silverstein first achieved some prominence after he started writing regularly for Playboy magazine in 1956. He is, however, best known for his children’s literature, which includes the titles “Giraffe”, “The Giving Tree”, “A Light In The Attic”, “Where The Sidewalk Ends” and “Falling Up”. For adults he wrote the satirical mock-children’s book “Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book”, and created “Different Dances”, a coffee-table book of adult-themed cartoons. In the world of music, Silverstein was best known for his extensive collaborations with Dr Hook and the Medicine Show. Of the thirty-three songs contained on their first three albums, all but five were either written or co-written by Silverstein, including the band’s early hits ‘Sylvia’s Mother’ and ‘Cover Of The Rolling Stone’. Other artists also had hits with Silverstein’s songs, most notably Johnny Cash with his cover of ‘A Boy amed Sue’ which reached Number One on the Country Chart and Number Two on the Pop Chart in the USA. Shel Silverstein was extremely funny, often irreverent, and incredibly imaginative. He died sometime during the weekend of May 8 and 9, 1999, in Key West, Florida, of a heartattack. He was aged sixty-eight. It is not clear how well Dylan knew Silverstein but they both frequented the same Greenwich Village cafés and clubs in the early sixties and they had many mutual friends. It is known that Dylan visited Silverstein on his houseboat in August 1974 to play him all of the songs from his yet to be recorded album, “Blood On The Tracks”. Dylan was seeking Silverstein’s approval of the songs, which he duly received.
Crazy Love (Van Morrison) ‘Crazy Love’ is a ballad written by Van Morrison and released by him on his 1970 album “Moondance”. The song was also released as the B-side of the single ‘Come Running’ (1970). The photograph on the cover of the single was taken by Elliot Landy and shows Morrison with his then-wife, Janet ‘Planet’ Rigsbee. Dylan twice sang backing vocals on Van Morrison’s ‘Crazy Love’ after the two men got together while in Greece. Morrison was in Athens for the filming of a BBC TV special documentary about him. The first performance involved four songs, ‘Crazy Love’, ‘And It Stoned Me’, ‘Foreign Window’ and ‘One Irish Rover’. These songs were filmed by the
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Crossroads BBC on June 27, 1989 at Philopappos (Hill of the Muses), in Athens, Greece. The performances of ‘Crazy Love’, ‘Foreign Window’ and ‘One Irish Rover’ were included in the “Arena: One Irish Rover” documentary shown on BBC 2 television on March 16, 1991. Morrison also joined Dylan on stage the following evening during Dylan’s June 28, 1989, concert in the Panathenaíkos Stadio in Athens, Greece. The two songs performed were ‘Crazy Love’ and ‘And It Stoned Me’. Van Morrison took lead vocals on both songs.
Crossroads (Robert Johnson) Dylan performed this Robert Johnson classic at the Eric Clapton & Friends Crossroads Benefit Concert which took place in Madison Square Garden, New York on June 30, 1999. Dylan shared the vocal duties with Eric Clapton. This performance was broadcast on the VH-1 telecast of July 17, 1999 and is also included on the DVD “Eric Clapton: Benefit for the Crossroads”, released on October 26, 1999. For details about Robert Johnson’s life see the entry for ‘32/20 Blues’.
(The) Cuckoo Is a Pretty Bird (Traditional) Oh, the cuckoo is a pretty bird, An’ she wobbles as she flies, But she never says cuckoo, Till the fourth day of July. Dylan performed this song during his Carnegie Chapter Hall concert on November 4, 1961 (see Appendix 1:14), and again at the Gaslight Café, New York, in October 1962 (see Appendix 1:31). Unfortunately, only the latter performance is in circulation among collectors. This performance can be found on several bootleg CDs including the “Second Gaslight Tapes” and the “Gaslight Tapes”. This song was also recorded for the BBC television play “Madhouse On Castle Street” (filmed between December 30, 1962 and January 4, 1963). The song was not included in the finished play and it does not circulate among collectors. The earliest known recording of this song, which is often known as ‘The Coo Coo Bird’, is by Clarence Ashley. Ashley’s version was recorded in Johnson City, Tennessee on November 23, 1929. It was released on Columbia COL 15489D and features Ashley on vocals and banjo. Bob Dylan played Ashley’s recording of the song on show twenty-one of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. This show was themed “Birds”. Dylan would certainly have heard Ashley’s original recording, which was contained on the Folkways “Anthology Of American Folk Music” (1952). However, Dylan’s song only
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Cupid contains four stanzas and only three of those come from the original six verse recording. Dylan shifts the opening “cabin” verse to verse three, and changes the name of the person he is looking for from Willie to Nelly. Dylan omits the “Jack O’Diamonds” stanza completely and finishes the song with a verse that is nowhere to be found in Ashley’s original recording. The additional verse appears to be drawn from the folk song ‘Pretty Saro’, which Dylan will attempt, unsuccessfully, during the March 1970 “Self Portrait” album sessions.
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Due to its release date (just a few months before Dylan’s first known performance of the song) Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s recording (PRS 13033) would seem to be the prime candidate for Dylan’s model. However, like Ashley’s recording, Ramblin’ Jack’s rendition is different enough from Dylan’s to make it impossible to draw a definitive conclusion. The truth of the matter is, the song has undergone a multitude of changes over the years and the verses, even in Ashley’s early recording, seem to have no logical connection to each other. One verse is about the cuckoo bird, while another is about building a cabin, another is about playing cards in England and Spain and yet another is about pursuing a lover. One thing is for certain, Dylan’s mournful performance is well worth a listen. It should also be noted that Dylan incorporated the line “The Cuckoo is a pretty bird / she warbles as she flies” into the sixth stanza to his 2001 song ‘High Water (For Charlie Patton)’. For further information about the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’.
Cupid (Sam Cooke) Dylan recorded this well known Sam Cooke song during the first “ew Morning” recording session (May 1st, 1970) See Appendix 1:68 for further information. This recording circulates among collectors and can also be found on several bootleg CDs including “Yesterday” and “Possum Belly Overalls”. According to Rolling Stone magazine, Sam Cooke’s producer had the idea for this song after seeing a young girl on the Perry Como TV show. “She didn’t do anything but just look up at Perry Como in the most wistful-type manner”, said J.W. Alexander, Cooke’s business adviser. Cooke wrote and released the song in 1961 (RCA 7883).
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Da Doo Ron Ron
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Da Doo Ron Ron (Barry / Spector / Ellie Greenwich) ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’, produced by Phil Spector in his now legendary Wall of Sound style, was a 1963 hit for New York City singing group The Crystals. Best remembered for the hit singles ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’, ‘He’s a Rebel’ and ‘Then He Kissed Me’, The Crystals were one of the most successful girl groups of the early 1960s. ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ was released on June 8, 1963 on Spector’s Philles label (Philles 112). According to Darlene Love, the track was recorded by The Blossoms, another group on Spector’s roster, with Love taking the lead vocal. Prior to the song’s release, however, Spector wiped Love’s lead and replaced it with a vocal track recorded by Dolores “LaLa” Brooks of The Crystals. The resultant single made it to Number Three on the Billboard Pop Chart. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Bob Dylan recorded a half worked out rocking little variant of this song, complete with harmonica, on May 1, 1970 at the first “ew Morning” album session. See Appendix 1:68 for further details about this session. This recording circulates among collectors and can also be found on several bootleg CDs including “Yesterday” and “Possum Belly Overalls”.
Daddy’s Going On One More Ride (Shel Silverstein) This Shel Silverstein song may well have been under consideration for inclusion in Dylan’s 1978 fall tour shows. ‘Daddy’s Going On One More Ride’ was played at two sound checks in the space of six shows (October 28, & November 4, 1978). It seems that Dylan was trying out some Silverstein songs at this time because he also ran through ‘Carry Me Carrie’ at these sound checks. These run throughs were certainly concerted efforts and Dylan’s vocals on both ‘Carry Me Carrie’ and ‘Daddy’s Going On One More Ride’ were outstanding. For further information about Shel Silverstein see the song entry for ‘A Couple More Years’.
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Dancing In The Dark Dancing In The Dark (Bruce Springsteen)
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Dylan performed this Springsteen song (much to the amazement of those present), during the second of his four sets at Toad’s Place in New Haven, Connecticut (January 12, 1990). This concert was used by Dylan to prepare for his upcoming “Fastbreak Tour”. This performance circulates among collectors and can also be found on the CD bootleg “Toad’s Place Vol. 2”. The performance itself is a little hard to fathom and the nauseating drum beat doesn’t help. The revved up crowd seem to be enjoying themselves until the song finishes and a few boos appear to ring out. However, a closer listen seems to reveal these are not boos but rather shouts of Bruuuce! The original song was, of course, written and performed by Bruce Springsteen in 1984. This up-tempo number, which was the last song to be written and recorded for the album “Born In The USA”, came about because Springsteen’s producer and manager, Jon Landau, wanted a ‘hit’ single. The song peaked at Number Two on the Billboard Chart. It was held off the top spot by the Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’. The song provided Springsteen with his first Grammy Award (Best Rock Vocal Performance).
Dark As a Dungeon (Merle Travis) ‘Dark As a Dungeon’ is a song written and performed by western swing / country artist, Merle Travis. Travis recorded this poignant lament about the ever present dangers and drudgery of working in the Kentucky coal mines on August 8, 1946, for Capitol Records (Capitol 48001). The number became a rallying song for workers seeking better conditions in the mines. ‘Dark As a Dungeon’ achieved much of its notoriety due to Johnny Cash’s performance of the song during his Folsom State Prison concert, which was released as “At Folsom Prison” in 1968. The album reached Number One on the Country Chart. In a 1973 interview reprinted in the Dorothy Horstman book “Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy”, Travis said: “The saddest songs are written when a person is happy. I was driving home after a date with a beautiful girl in Redondo Beach, California. I had a recording session to do the next morning and needed some material. I parked my car under a street-light and wrote the verses to ‘Dark As a Dungeon’. I got the idea from growing up around the coal mines in Kentucky. My father and brothers were coal miners”. Travis informed the “United Mineworkers’ Journal”: “Taylor, my oldest brother, would come home and get washed up. How well I remember the galvanized tub set in the middle of the floor … When I’d watch him wash the black coal dust from a little rose tattoo on his arm I longed for the day when I could work in the mine and have a tattoo … He practically broke every rib in his body in a mine accident and it changed his whole life...”
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Dark As a Dungeon Fortunately for Travis and for country music, at some stage he decided that mining was not for him after all. In a spoken introduction to the original recording of ‘Dark As a Dungeon’ Travis recalls the time he talked with an old miner from Ebenezer, Kentucky: “I’d known him since the day I was born … an old friend of the family. He said ‘son you don’t know how lucky you are to have a nice job like you’ve got and don’t have to dig out a livin’ from under those hills and hollers like me and your pappy used to’. When I asked why he never left and tried some other kind of work, he says, ‘Naw-sir, you just don’t do that. If you get this old coal dust in your blood, you’re just gonna be a plain old miner as long as you live … it’s a habit, sorta like chewin’ tobacca’”. At the age of twelve, Travis became obsessed with learning Muhlenberg County’s unique guitar finger-picking style. Several local guitar players caught his attention. Mose Rager was his chief inspiration but he also learned much from Ike Everly, the father of Don and Phil of The Everly Brothers fame. The style involved picking a rhythmic accompaniment on the bass strings with the right thumb (equipped with a thumb-pick) while simultaneously playing lead on the treble strings with the index finger. Travis adapted this style into what would later become known as “Travis Picking”. His influence on guitarists like Chet Atkins and Doc Watson is clear for all to hear, and both men named their firstborn sons Travis in his honour. In 1946, Capitol records approached Travis with the idea of cutting an album of folk songs, and although he was not an especially folk-oriented artist, he agreed to the project. Although the ensuing release, which was an album of four 78rpm records entitled “Folk Songs Of The Hills” (Capitol 48001, 1947), did not sell well, it nevertheless contained his two most enduring songs, ‘Sixteen Tons’ and ‘Dark As a Dungeon’, both of which centred around the dangers of coal mining. Tennessee Ernie Ford took ‘Sixteen Tons’ to Number One on the Country Chart in 1955. In June 2006, Bob Dylan played Travis’ 1946 hit ‘Divorce Me C.O.D’ on show nine of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour Show”. The theme of the show was, well, “Divorce”. Bob Dylan covered Travis’ classic mining song ‘Dark As a Dungeon’ in a number of heartfelt duets with Joan Baez on his 1975 “Rolling Thunder” tour, after which the song made sporadic concert appearances in 1989, 1990, 1998 and 2000. It was also played during the “Infidels” album session, where it is listed as ‘Dark Dungeon’.
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Days Of ’49 Days Of ’49 (Traditional)
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In this song we move from coal mining (see previous entry) to mining for gold. A rather nice performance of this song, about the great American gold rush of 1849, was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 and released on the album “Self Portrait”. See Appendix 1:66 for further information. According to Jeff Davis in his notes to “Days Of ’49” (Minstrel, JD-206) “the song originally came from “Old Put’s Golden Songster”, put together by ‘Old Put’ himself in the Gold Rush Days. While there was not much money in the mines, he found that there were plenty of miners willing to pay for music or entertainment, this being a scarce commodity”. In January 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a foreman working for pioneer John Sutter, discovered gold while constructing a saw mill along the American River northeast of present-day Sacramento. Although the discovery was reported in the San Francisco newspapers in March it failed to create much of a stir, as most people did not believe the account. However, in May 1948, newspaperman and merchant Samuel Brannan, took it upon himself to parade a bottle filled with gold dust around the streets of San Francisco while shouting “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” The residents of the city now had visible proof of the discovery and the California Gold Rush was on. News of the discovery soon spread, resulting in some three hundred thousand people coming to California from the rest of the United States and further afield. By December 1849, the inhabitants of San Francisco, then little more than a shantytown made up mainly of tents, had mushroomed to an estimated one hundred thousand inhabitancy. This massive influx of fortune seekers, popularly known as “forty-niners”, Americanized the once Mexican province and guaranteed its inclusion as a state in the union. The Gold Rush also had negative effects with Native Americans being attacked and driven off their traditional lands.
Dear Mrs Roosevelt (Woody Guthrie) Franklin D. Roosevelt, often referred to as FDR, was the thirty-second President of the United States of America. He was elected to the first of four terms in office in November 1932 and was the only American president to serve more than two terms. When Roosevelt was inaugurated in March 1933, the U.S. was at the depths of the worst depression in its history. An estimated thirteen million people (a quarter of the workforce) were unemployed; farmers were in profound difficulty as prices fell by 60% and two million people had become homeless. By the evening of March 4, 1932, all forty-eight US States, as well as the District of Columbia, had closed their banks. Roosevelt battled tirelessly to beat the Great Depression and in so doing he helped the American people to regain faith both in themselves and in their government. In his Inaugural Address, Roosevelt asserted, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. In his first “hundred days”, Roosevelt brought in a sweeping programme of reform to aid the
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Death Don’t Have o Mercy recovery of business and agriculture. His New Deal programme brought relief to the unemployed, whilst the federal agency he created provided work for the jobless. By 1935 the country had achieved some measure of recovery. Working people saw FDR as a hero, while the poor and needy looked upon him as their saviour. Thousands of people wrote letters to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt asking for help and it was in the form of a letter that Woody Guthrie wrote a tribute to her, which he entitled, ‘Dear Mrs Roosevelt’. Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967 at Creedmore State Hospital in Queens, New York, from the degenerative disease Huntington’s Chorea. (For further details about Woody Guthrie see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’). Two tribute concerts were organized at Carnegie Hall, New York in his honour. The concerts took place on the afternoon and evening of January 20, 1968 and Bob Dylan chose to make his first post-accident appearance at these memorial concerts. His image had changed; with shorter hair, spectacles, and an unkempt beard, he resembled a rabbinical student. Dylan performed three Woody Guthrie songs – ‘I Ain’t Got o Home’, ‘Dear Mrs Roosevelt’ and ‘The Grand Coulee Dam’ – at both the Woody Guthrie Tribute Concert concerts. He was backed by Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, and Levon Helm. At the afternoon show Dylan participated in a fourth song ‘This Land Is Your Land’. At the evening concert the additional song was ‘This Train Is Bound For Glory’. On these performances, Woody’s son, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and Odetta were among the performers. The three songs from the afternoon concert were released on “A Tribute To Woody Guthrie, Part I” (Columbia KC-31171, January 1972) and on the Warner Brothers CD, (26036-2, November 1989). Track three was also released on “Live 1961-2000” (SME Records SRCS 2438, February 2001). Track four was released on “A Tribute To Woody Guthrie, Part II” (Warner Brothers, K46144, April 1972) and on the Warner Brothers CD (260362, November 1989). The three songs from the evening concert have not been officially released and are not in circulation among collectors.
Death Don’t Have o Mercy (Gary Davis) Dylan’s May ’61 performance of this Gary Davis song was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The song, or to be more precise the two verses that Dylan performed, was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the
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Death Don’t Have o Mercy “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. This performance is also available on several bootleg CDs including “I Was So Much Younger Then”.
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Gary Davis was partially blind at birth and lost what little sight he had at a young age. He was self-taught on the guitar, beginning at the age of six, and by the time he was in his twenties he probably had one of the most advanced guitar techniques of anyone in blues music. Davis also played banjo and harmonica. Known as Blind Gary Davis on some his early recordings, he was born on April 30, 1896 in Laurens, South Carolina and he died on May 5, 1972 in Hammonton, New Jersey. He began performing at parties and picnics in his hometown Laurens before moving to Durham, North Carolina, in the mid-1920s, where he played on the streets for tips. In 1933, Davis was ordained as a minister of the Free Baptist Connection Church in Washington, North Carolina and for years he toured as a singing gospel preacher. It was during this period that Davis met, and ultimately recorded with, Blind Boy Fuller and other “Piedmont style” blues musicians, including Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. In 1935, Davis cut several sides for the New York based label ARC (American Record Company), a subsidiary of Columbia Records, and in 1940, he made New York City his permanent home. Davis now began to record again, making records for Folkways and Prestige. In 1940 Davis and his wife moved from Long Island to Harlem where they remained for the next eighteen years. Davis became a minister at the New York Missionary Baptist Connection Church and he also taught guitar. His guitar of choice was a jumbo six-string which he affectionately called “Miss Gibson”. Davis usually tuned his guitar to a relatively difficult E-B-G-D-A-E configuration rather than the open tuning favoured by most of his fellow street musicians. His ragtime / blues finger-picking style has influenced generations of players, most notably Dave Bromberg, Stefan Grossman, Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder, Jerry Garcia and Dave Van Ronk, through whom Bob Dylan leaned many of Davis’ songs. Bob Dylan first met the Reverend Gary Davis on May 6, 1961 at the Indian Neck Folk Festival. By late 1961, Dylan was talking about marriage to Suze Rotolo and one evening in the White Horse pub on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, he told journalist and friend Robert Shelton: “We’ll get Reverend Gary Davis ... to perform the ceremony. Naw, he can just sing the ceremony…” Dylan’s friend Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney) married his first wife in a ceremony conducted by Reverend Gary Davis in the Gaslight Café.
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Death Letter Blues Death Letter Blues (House) Bob Dylan’s only known performance of this song was on July 17, 1963 at the Minneapolis home of David Whitaker. See Appendix 1:53 for further information. Unfortunately, this recording does not circulate among collectors. Although the roots to the song seem to have originated with the Delta blues musician, Son House, over the years, recordings of ‘Death Letter Blues’ have been variously credited to Ida Cox, Lead Belly and Son House. The song’s structure is based on House’s earlier recording of ‘My Black Mama Part 2’ (1930). ‘Death Letter Blues’ is about a man who learns of the death of the woman he loves through a letter. He goes to see her corpse lying on the mortuary “cooling board” before attending her funeral. Dylan’s recording of the song does not circulate among collectors and it might in fact owe more to Lead Belly’s version than that of House. However, ‘Death Letter Blues’ was Son House’s signature song and it became the centrepiece of his concert performances during the blues revival of the 1960s. Interestingly, the song, which has been reworked by many musicians, was recorded in 1931 by Skip James as ‘Special Rider Blues’. Dylan would later adopt the name Special Rider for his music publishing company.
Deep Elem Blues (Traditional) This traditional song was performed by Dylan in April 1962 at Gerdes Folk City in New York and again in August 1962 at the Minneapolis home of Dave Whitaker (see Appendix 1:23 & 1:26 for further information). The performance on the David Whitaker home tape is not in circulation. However, the Gerdes Folk City tape does circulate among collectors and the recording can be found on several bootleg CDs including “Bob Dylan’s Dream” and “Paranoid Blues”. Deep Ellum, or Deep Elem (a corruption of “Deep Elm Street”), is an arts and entertainment district in east Dallas, Texas. After the American Civil War, the area was settled as a “freedmen’s town” by former slaves. The district, just east of the Houston River, was far enough from downtown Dallas not to be desirable to whites.
Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins
Starting in 1920, Deep Ellum became known as a hotspot for blues and jazz musicians such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins and Lead Belly. In 1937, one columnist described Deep Ellum as “[the] one spot in the city that needs no daylight saving time because there is no bedtime”. Almost anything could be
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Delia bought in the stores along Deep Ellum including furniture, clothing and jewellery. The area was also famous for its “Pawnshop Row”, where more than ten pawnshops operated until the 1950s. You could find gun shops, tattoo studios, loan offices and domino and pool halls. The red-light district was populated by pimps and prostitutes, card sharps, pigeon droppers (scam artists), craps shooters, reefer men and cocaine sellers. Robberies and even murders were commonplace.
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When you go down on Deep Ellum, Put your money in your socks, ’Cause them Women on Deep Ellum, Sho’ will throw you on the rocks. Lead Belly wrote the lyrics to ‘Take a Wiff On Me’ (a close cousin of the song ‘Cocaine Blues’) about Deep Ellum: Walked up Ellum an’ I come down Main, Tryin’ to bum a nickel jes’ to buy cocaine, Ho, Ho, baby, take a whiff on me. Bob Dylan has said that he was taught the song by Big Joe Williams. Delia (Traditional) The first known Dylan performance of a song entitled ‘Delia’ was captured on tape at the St Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, this song is not included on the circulating tapes and it is therefore not possible to establish which version of ‘Delia’ was played by Dylan. The complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this tape see Appendix 1:3. The next occurrence of a song called ‘Delia’ was in 1992 at the State Theatre in Sydney, Australia (April 15, 1992). The song was played twice on this tour and in May 1993 Dylan recorded an exemplary rendition of the song for his “World Gone Wrong” album. See Appendix 1:77. ‘Delia’ was then performed at the second New York Supper Club show (November 17, 1993) before disappearing from the setlists for seven years. The song was resurrected and played four times on Dylan’s 2000 European tour, the last of those performances being in England at the Telewest Arena in Newcastle (September 19, 2000). It encompassed a beautiful vocal performance from Dylan, filled with wisdom and regret, and is well worth tracking down.
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Delia
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The song gained prominence as ‘Delia Gone’ when it was recorded by Bahaman musician Blind Blake (real name Blake Alphonso Higgs). The song was included on Blake’s “succinctly” titled album (pause for breath) “Blind Blake And The Royal Victoria Hotel “Calypso” Orchestra: A Third Album of Bahamian Song”. The album was released in several formats including a set of five 78s (ART ALP-6), a twelve-inch 33rpm LP (AL 6), and a two record 45rpm set (Art AEP 6). All releases were dated 1952. Variants of this sad tale have been covered by a multitude of artists in an array of genres and under various titles, including ‘Delia (or Delia’s) Gone’, ‘Delia’, ‘Little Delia’, ‘All My Friends Are Gone’, ‘One More Rounder Gone’, ‘All I Done Had Done Gone’, ‘Poor Gal’, ‘She Gone’ and ‘She’s Dead, She’s Dead And Gone’. Blind Blake did not write the song however; that accolade has been lost in the mists of time, and although field recordings date back to the 1920s (it was recorded by jazz band leader Jimmy Gordon at around that time), the title of ‘Delia’ arrived later. Although, as stated earlier, we are uncertain as to exactly which version of ‘Delia’ Dylan sang in May 1960 in the apartment of Karen Wallace, his later performances owe much more to Blind Willie McTell’s 1940 Library of Congress recording than to that of Blind Blake. McTell’s version is currently available on “Complete Library Of Congress Recordings (1940)” (Document BDCD-6001). It’s probably a little futile to attempt to pin Dylan’s version down any further because in the liner notes which accompany his album “World Gone Wrong”, Dylan writes that his recording of ‘Delia’ is “one sad tale” derived from “two or more versions” of the song. In any event, Delia’s tale appears to be based on actual fact. In 1928, Robert Winslow Gordon informed the Library of Congress that he had tracked the source of the “Cooney Killed Delia” song to Yamacraw, a black neighbourhood of Savannah, Georgia. Delia Green, aged fourteen, was shot by Moses “Coony” Houston, aged sixteen, at about eleven o’clock in the evening of Christmas Eve, 1900. Houston appears to have been mocking Delia, whom he was seeing at the time, and inferred to others that he was having a sexual relationship with her. Delia denied this and an argument ensued. Everything quietened down, but as the party was breaking up and the couple were leaving, Houston took out a .39 calibre pistol and shot Delia. The doctor who attended the incident informed newspapermen that the girl would not live and at around 3 am on Christmas morning 1900, Delia died. Houston was convicted of Delia Green’s murder but due to his age there was a recommendation for mercy. He was sentenced to life with hard labour, but was paroled in 1913. Bob Dylan’s performances from Sydney (April 15, 1992) and New York (November 17, 1993) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Both of these renditions are excellent but the New York performance is particularly heartfelt and should be in everyone’s collection.
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Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) (Woody Guthrie / Martin Hoffman)
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‘Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)’ was written in January 1948 after Woody Guthrie read a report that a plane, a Douglas DC-3, deporting migrant farm workers from California back to Mexico, had crashed killing thirty-two people. Of the twenty-eight migrants (twenty-seven men and one woman), only twelve were ever identified. They were buried together in a grave measuring eighty-four feet by seven feet. The Associated Press article dated January 28, 1949 was printed in a number of US newspapers including the New York Times, which ran the piece in their January 29 edition. Fresno, Calif., Jan. 28, (AP). “A chartered Immigration Service plane crashed and burned in western Fresno County this morning, killing twenty-eight Mexican deportees, the crew of three and an Immigration guard. Irving F. Wixon, director of the Federal Immigration Service at San Francisco, said that the Mexicans were being flown to the deportation centre at El Centro, Calif., for return to their country. The group included Mexican nationals who entered the United States illegally, and others who stayed beyond the duration of work contracts in California, he added. All were agricultural workers. The crew was identified as Frank Atkinson, 32 years old, of Long Beach, the pilot; Mrs Bobbie Atkinson, his wife, stewardess, 28; and Marion Ewing of Balboa, co-pilot, 33. Long Beach airport officials said that Mr Atkinson, formerly of Rochester, N.Y., had logged more than 1,700 hours flying time as a wartime member of the Air Transport Command. The guard was identified as Frank E. Chaffin of Berkeley. The plane, which was chartered from Airline Transport Carriers of Burbank, was southbound from the Oakland airport, when it crashed in view of some 100 road camp workers. Foreman Frank V. Johnson said that it ‘appeared to explode and a wing fell off’ before it plummeted to the ground. A number of those in the plane appeared to jump or fall before the aircraft hit the earth, he added. The wreckage was enveloped in flames when the fuel tanks ignited. Not until the fire died down were rescuers able to get near the plane. By then, there was nothing to be done but to extricate the bodies. The scene of the crash is in the mountains about twenty miles west of Coalinga, seventy-five miles from here in the rough coastal area”. The thing Woody noticed most about that article was that although all of the Americans were named in some detail, the migrant workers were simply called “Mexicans”. Guthrie decided to write a memorial to the nameless migrants who lost their lives in Los Gatos Canyon and in doing so he assigned symbolic names to the dead. “Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita; adiós, mis amigos, Jesús y María...” Guthrie wrote the piece without music by simply chanting the words and ‘Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)’ was not performed publicly until a decade later, when a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman added a melody and Pete Seeger began singing the song in concerts. Although the song was popularized by Seeger, most contemporary recordings follow the sparse version released by the Byrds on their 1969 album “Ballad Of Easy Rider”. Due to long-term illness, Woody Guthrie never recorded the song himself. For further information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
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Detroit City (I Wanna Go Home) In 1974, Bob Dylan made a rather lacklustre attempt at performing the song at Felt Forum, Madison Square Garden, New York (May 9, 1974). The occasion was The Friends of Chile Benefit Concert. Two years later, Dylan performed the song five times (quite beautifully) as a duet with Joan Baez on the 1976 leg of his Rolling Thunder Revue tour. The first performance was on May 11, 1976 at Municipal Auditorium in San Antonio, Texas. The song was played for the last time on that tour on May 23 in the Hughes Stadium at the State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Detroit City (I Wanna Go Home) (Danny Dill / Mel Tillis) On November 12, 1990 Bob Dylan performed this song as a one-off at a concert at the University Of Michigan in East Lansing. The song, which was clearly played in homage to East Lansing / Detroit, was the opening number that evening. This performance circulates among collectors. Bob Dylan played Bobby Bare’s 1963 recording of ‘Detroit City’ on show fifty, the final show of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. This show, entitled “Leftovers”, was a tidy up of songs left out from previous shows in Season One. The song, which has been covered by among others Bobby Bare, Dolly Parton, Charley Pride, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Arthur Alexander, Johnny Cash and Tom Jones, was written by Danny Dill / Mel Tillis. Renowned Country songwriter Mel Tillis has written over a thousand songs of which more than half have been recorded by major artists. Although Tillis began recording in the late 1950s, his biggest success came in the 1970s with a long list of Top Ten hits, beginning in 1969 with the Kenny Rogers hit ‘Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town’. Danny Dill is also a well known Country Music songwriter whose greatest achievement is his contribution to the co-written classic ‘Long Back Veil’. The seed of an idea for ‘Detroit City (I Wanna Go Home)’ came about when Danny Dill played a club in Detroit and talked to people who had come north to find work in the car factories. Although these people now had money, some for the first time in their lives, the majority were homesick for Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama. Their only pastime was drinking in the bars and clubs of Detroit and although some eventually made it back home, they did so with no more money than they had left with. Bob Dylan’s laidback perfunctory performance from East Lansing (November 12, 1990) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
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Devilish Mary Devilish Mary (Traditional / Bess Lomax Hawes)
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This song was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The song was committed to tape in May 1961 during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. This song is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Dylan may have learned the tale of ‘Devilish Mary’ from Odetta who spent time in Greenwich Village at the point when Dylan first arrived there. Odetta originally released ‘Devilish Mary’ on her album “At The Gate Of Horn” (Tradition TCD 1063, 1957). At the time of Dylan’s performance the song had been recorded by a number of other artists including Pete Seeger and Burl Ives. The song is about a man’s turbulent and short (six months in most versions) marriage to Devilish Mary. Mary makes it plain from the start that “She’s gonna wear [the] britches” in the relationship and when, after a short time, the man looks “cross-eyed” at Mary, she hits him with a shovel. It’s hardly surprising then that the marriage was a short one.
Diamond Joe [1] (Traditional) Now there’s a man you’ll hear about, Most anywhere you go, And his holdings are in Texas, And his name is Diamond Joe. This song was recorded in the summer of 1992 and released on Dylan’s album “Good As I Been To You”. See Appendix 1:76 for further detail about this recording session. A traditional cowboy song, which can be traced back to the 1880s, two separate recordings of ‘Diamond Joe’ were made by John Lomax in 1926, but neither of these has been made available. Dylan almost certainly learned the song from Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Elliott claims he learned the song from a bronco rider in Brussels but in reality he might have picked the song up from Cisco Houston. The liner notes to Houston’s album states the song is an adaption of ‘The State Of Arkansas’ which John Lomax had included in “Cowboy Songs And Other Frontier Ballads”. The song tells the tale of a cowboy who hires out to Diamond Joe and is mistreated. However, even though he is fed corn dodgers and meat he can’t chew and he tries three times to quit, the cowboy remains in Joe’s employment. In the song’s eighth and final verse the cowboy laments, “...When I’m called up yonder / And it’s my time to go / Give my blankets to my buddies / Give the fleas to Diamond Joe.
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Diamond Joe [2] Dylan played Cisco Houston’s 1952 recording of ‘Diamond Joe’ on show twenty-six of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “Joe”. Also see ‘Diamond Joe’ [2] below.
Diamond Joe [2] (Traditional) Diamond Joe come and get me, My wife done quit me, Diamond Joe, you better come and get me, Diamond Joe. Bob Dylan (aka Jack Fate) and his band recorded this version of ‘Diamond Joe’ for the soundtrack to the movie “Masked And Anonymous”. The recording is available on the soundtrack album released on Columbia Records on July 22, 2003 (Columbia CK 90536). This is a completely different song from the ‘Diamond Joe’ that Dylan released on “Good As I Been To You”. Although the words, the sentiment, and the melody are totally different from ‘Diamond Joe’ [1] (above), the two songs are continually being confused with each other. Of the circa fifty Internet sites that I checked which were claiming to be displaying the lyrics to ‘Diamond Joe’ from “Masked And Anonymous”, none were displaying the correct song! The earliest known recording of this version was made by the Georgia Crackers in 1927. This song has also been performed by the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. Interestingly, Dylan played the Georgia Crackers recording of ‘Diamond Joe’ on show twenty-six of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. Also see ‘Diamond Joe’ [1] above. Diamond Jo Reynolds, founder of the celebrated Diamond Jo Steamboat Line, was one of the most colourful riverboat men on the Mississippi River and it has been suggested that the opening line, “Diamond Joe come and get me”, may be a reference to someone waiting for a steam boat. While this might be a correct The Georgia Crackers, August 1947 assumption, it should be noted that the spelling of the Joe in the song and that of Jo Reynolds are not the same.
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Dink’s Song Dink’s Song (Traditional)
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I had a man, He was long an’ tall, Moved his body like a cannonball, Fare thee well, my honey, fare thee well. Dylan’s first known performance of this song was in Gerdes Folk City, New York in September 1961 (see Appendix 1:12). ‘Dink’s Song’ was also played at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher in December 1961 (see Appendix 1:18). This especially fine performance, which was captured on tape by Dylan’s friend Tony Glover, was released on “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack (The Bootleg Series Vol. 7)” (Columbia /Legacy C2K 93937 USA). Much later, April 25, 1976, Dylan played ‘Dinks Song’ in a one-off performance at the University of Florida Field in Gainesville. At the end of the December 1961 Minneapolis home recording, Tony Glover asks Dylan, “Is that the way the original goes?” Dylan, seemingly only half-listening, replies simply with, “Huh?” Glover repeats the question, “Is that the way the original goes?” Sounding slightly evasive, Dylan now answers, “That’s the way I heard it. I heard it from a lady named Dink. I don’t know who wrote it. Hah!” So, there we have it, Dylan gives us his source for the song, “a lady named Dink”, but to quote a Bob Dylan lyric, “the truth [is] far from that”. In reality, Dylan may have first heard the song via Greenwich Village musician Dave Van Ronk. However, the song also appears on Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s 1958 album “Jack Takes The Floor”. This album, which Dylan heard via Jon Pankake, also contained ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’, ‘Mule Skinner’s Blues’ and ‘Cocaine’, all of which were also covered by Dylan in 1961. However, neither Van Ronk nor Jack Elliott perform all the verses that Dylan sings and, in any event, the date of Dylan’s first known performance rather gives the game away. On the afternoon of September 29, 1961, Bob Dylan was invited to play harmonica on Carolyn Hester’s first Columbia album. Although Dylan only played on three songs, ‘I’ll Fly Away’, ‘Swing And Turn Jubilee’ and ‘Come Back Baby’, he was present for most of the afternoon session and must therefore have heard Hester’s studio performance of ‘Dink’s Song’, which she released on the album. At this time, Dylan was a few days into a twoweek residency at Gerdes Folk City and on the evening of September 29, shortly after leaving the Hester recording session, he made several changes to his set including adding his first known performance of ‘Dink’s Song’.
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Dire Wolf A couple of “asides”: The “Carolyn Hester” album (Columbia CL 1796 / CBS BPG 62033) is commonly known as Hester’s first album. However, she had previously recorded and released two albums, “Scarlet Ribbons” (Coral 57143) and “Carolyn Hester” (Tradition TLP-1043). This release, which has a completely different track-list, should not be confused with the Columbia album that Dylan plays on. Over the years, the Columbia marketing boys have had a field day with Hester’s album. The front cover panel to the original pressing, released in May 1962, makes no reference to Dylan’s involvement with the album. By 1966 however, the Japanese release lists Dylan’s name in significantly large lettering and also includes a small photo of Dylan, complete with harmonica and rack. By 1968, the album cover has been completely redesigned and is now being presented as a joint album entitled “Carolyn Hester With Bob Dylan”. Dylan’s photograph now occupies half of the front cover. The true story of where the song originated has been told by the man who first collected the song, John A. Lomax. The following extract is reprinted from Lomax’s book “Adventures Of a Ballad Hunter” (MacMillan in 1947). The earliest recorded version of the song was made by John Lomax who only sings three of the eight written verses. Lomax: “I found Dink washing her man’s clothes outside their tent on the bank of the Brazos River in Texas … the women [had been] shipped from Memphis along with the mules and the iron scrapers, while the men, all skilful levee-builders, came from Vicksburg. A white foreman volunteered: ‘Without women of their own, these levee Negroes would have been all over the bottoms every night hunting for women. That would mean trouble, serious trouble. Negroes can’t work when sliced up with razors’. But Dink, reputedly the best singer in the camp, would give me no songs. ‘Today ain’t my singin’ day’, she would reply to my urging. Finally, a bottle of gin, bought at a nearby plantation commissary, loosed her muse. The bottle of liquor soon disappeared. She sang, as she scrubbed her man’s dirty clothes, the pathetic story of a woman deserted by her lover when she needs him most … Dink ended the refrain with a subdued cry of despair and longing … the sobbing of a woman deserted by her man”.
Dire Wolf (Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia) Dylan performed this Hunter / Garcia song during a guest appearance at a Grateful Dead concert on February 12, 1989 at the Inglewood Forum in Los Angeles. Although he was on stage for eight songs, Dylan only contributed vocals on two numbers, ‘Stuck Inside Of Mobile…’ and ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’. This concert is in circulation among collectors as an excellent quality line recording. The song was written while Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia were sharing a house in Larkspur, California. The “...please, don’t murder me” line in the song was said to have been inspired by the Northern California serial killer known as the “Zodiac Killer”, who murdered a number of people in the late 1960s. The song, which was recorded on February 16, 1970, can be found on several Grateful Dead albums including “Workingman’s Dead” (Warner Bros: WB 1869, 1970). The following entry is from Robert Hunter’s journal:
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Dixie “…The song ‘Dire Wolf’ was inspired, at least in name, by watching the Hound of the Baskervilles on TV with Garcia. We were speculating on what the ghostly hound might turn out to be, and somehow the idea that maybe it was a Dire Wolf came up. Maybe it was even suggested in the story, I don’t remember. We thought Dire Wolves were great big beasts. Extinct now, it turns out they were quite small and ran in packs. But the idea of a great big wolf named Dire was enough to trigger a lyric. As I remember, I wrote the words quickly the next morning upon waking, in that hypnogogic state where deep rooted associations meld together with no effort. Garcia set it later that afternoon”.
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Dixie (Daniel Decatur Emmett) The composer of ‘Dixie’, Daniel Decatur Emmett, was born of Irish ancestry in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on October 29, 1815. He first performed his song ‘Old Dan Tucker’ at the age of fifteen during a Fourth of July celebration in his home town. He worked in his father’s blacksmith shop and at sixteen he ran away to enlist in the US Army. He was discharged on July 8, 1835 after the Army learned he had falsified his age. He soon joined the Spalding and Rogers circus as a drummer and it was there he learned the technique of Negro impersonation. He worked with the Oscar Brown circus and the Thomas “Daddy” Rice minstrel troupe, in which he played the banjo and also sang his own compositions. Emmett later formed his own troupe, the Virginia Minstrels, the first full black-face minstrel company in the United States. With burnt cork face makeup applied, the company played in white trousers, striped calico shirts and blue swallowtail coats. After successes in Boston and New York, the company went to England, but the show was not a success and the troupe split. Emmett returned to the US only to discover that other minstrel troupes had sprung up and were copying his performance style. In 1858, he joined the Dan Bryant Minstrels, in which he both composed and performed comic songs and Negro “walk-arounds” (songs sung solo at the end of a show as the performer walked around the stage); ‘Dixie’, which was written as a walk-around, became a massive hit with audiences, especially in the South. Much to Emmett’s chagrin, the song became a Southern anthem and was used as a campaign song against Abraham Lincoln’s run for President. Emmett is reported to have said, “If I had known to what use they [Southerners] were going to put my song, I will be damned if I’d have written it”. In 1878, Emmett went into semi-retirement and moved back to his hometown of Mount Vernon where he became a chicken farmer. He died on June 28, 1904, aged eighty-eight years.
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Dizzy Miss Lizzy Emmett was also famous for writing ‘Polly Wolly Doodle’ and ‘The Blue-Tail Fly’ (a.k.a. ‘Jimmy Crack Corn’ and is also sometimes credited with composing ‘Turkey In The Straw’. ‘Dixie’ was performed as an instrumental opener to some of the dates on Bob Dylan’s October / November 1990 US tour. The song was interchanged with several other openers, including another instrumental, ‘Marine Hymn’. The first of six performances of ‘Dixie’ was at the Beacon Theater, New York. The song was then rested until it made a one-off comeback on May 11, 1991 at Western Connecticut State College in Danbury, Connecticut, when it was again employed as an instrumental opener. Bob Dylan and his tour band performed a mean ol’ ‘Dixie’ in the movie “Masked and Anonymous”. The song is also included on the Columbia Records 2003 soundtrack album (Columbia / Legacy CK 90536 and C2K 90618).
Dizzy Miss Lizzy (Larry Williams) ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ was written and recorded in 1958 by Larry Williams for Specialty Records. Williams was groomed by Specialty as the successor to the label’s biggest star, Little Richard, who temporarily left rock’n’roll in July 1957 to pursue a life in the ministry. The song was famously covered by The Beatles and is the closing track on their album “Help!”. Williams, whose records had the same raw, piano-driven intensity as Richard’s, had allegedly been involved in petty crime since his early teens and in the late 1950s he suffered a career setback when he was arrested for dealing narcotics. In 1977, Little Richard narrowly escaped being shot by Williams over a drug debt. In 1980, Williams was found dead at home from a gun-shot wound. Dylan performed ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ on February 19, 1987 at the Palomino in North Hollywood. The song was performed during what turned out to be a an hour and a half jam which featured Taj Mahal’s Grafitti Band, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, and George Harrison. Dylan does not take lead vocals on any of the numbers, contenting himself with playing guitar. Although he appears slightly disinterested, he does, however, manage to provide backing vocals on five songs including ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’.
Dolly Dagger (Jimi Hendrix) For many music lovers, Dylan and Hendrix will forever be inextricably linked because of Hendrix’s propensity to cover Dylan, most famously of course with ‘All Along The Watchtower’. People are less aware, however, that Bob Dylan has covered one of Hendrix’s songs, albeit in concert. Dylan had talked in 1991 with guitar and amp tech César Carrillo Díaz about Hendrix’s sound. He then attempted ‘Dolly Dagger’ at the January 17, 1992 rehearsal for the David Letterman Show. Nevertheless, it was not performed on the programme. The song did, however, make a one-off appearance two months later (March 18, 1992) at Perth Entertainment Centre in Perth, Western Australia. This show is in
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Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On circulation among collectors and, from the audio evidence, Dylan has certainly worked on producing a rather accurate cover of the song.
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Hendrix wrote ‘Dolly Dagger’ about his then girlfriend, Devon Wilson. Apparently, Mick Jagger, – who was at a party with Wilson and Hendrix – cut his finger and Wilson rushed over to Jagger’s side and sucked his finger until the bleeding stopped. The episode took place in full view of Hendrix who later wrote the line, “she drinks her blood from a jagged edge”. Bob Dylan’s performance from Perth (March 18, 1992) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Any Dylan enthusiast would surely have to own this performance of ‘Dolly Dagger’, if only as a curio. However, this performance has far more to recommend it than simple novelty value. Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On (Leonard Cohen) This alluring funk-edged number was released on the Leonard Cohen album “Death Of a Ladies’ Man” (Columbia PC 44286, 1977). Produced and co-written with Phil Spector, “Death Of a Ladies’ Man” is the fifth and most controversial of all of Cohen’s albums. It was contentious because many fans, used to a minimalist folk-oriented Cohen, were not appreciative of Spector’s Wall of Sound production. The two best songs on “Death Of a Ladies’ Man” are probably ‘Memories’, which was the single from the album, and ‘Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On’, which was the B-side. The song is an all-out stomper with horns and a pulsating beat delivered by two drummers playing in perfect synch. The song’s chorus featured backing vocals from Ronee Blakley (Rolling Thunder Revue), Clydie King (one of Dylan’s backing singers), Allen Ginsberg, and, of course, Bob Dylan. The essence of the song is succinctly summed up in the title! Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down (Traditional) One of a multitude of traditional card-game songs, ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down’ was performed six times by Bob Dylan during 1992. The song made its first appearance in April 1992 at the State Theatre in Sydney, Australia and was then played at two shows in Europe and again in North America and Canada. The final performance of the song on this tour was on August 25, 1992 at the Memorial Gardens in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. Dylan’s 1993 tour was known as the “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Tour”. Dylan almost certainly first heard the song through The New Lost City Ramblers, probably from their first Folkways album (FA 2396, 1958). In “Chronicles Vol.1”, Dylan wrote about how he heard the New Lost City Ramblers, probably in 1959, in “Spider” Koerner’s apartment: “I listened to [the albums in Spider Koerner’s apartment] a lot, especially to The New Lost City Ramblers. I took to them immediately. Everything about them appealed to me– their
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Don’t Pity Me style, their singing, their sound. I liked the way they looked, the way they dressed and I especially liked their name. Their songs ran the gamut in styles, everything from mountain ballads to fiddle tunes and railroad blues. All their songs vibrated with some dizzy, portentous truth. I’d stay with The Ramblers for days. At the time, I didn’t know that they were replicating everything they did off of old 78 records, but what would it have mattered anyway? It wouldn’t have mattered at all. For me, they had originality in spades, were men of mystery on all counts. I couldn’t listen to them enough”. The first recording of ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down’ was probably the 1925 record made by Charlie Poole & The North Carolina Ramblers. According to the book, “Rambling Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole”, Poole got the song The ew Lost City Ramblers from a North Carolina musician who, in turn had learned it from a local unnamed black guitarist in 1911. Bob Dylan’s rather nice bouncy country performance, complete with some fine clear vocals, from Gothenburg (June 28, 1992) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
Don’t Pity Me (Unknown) The Carter Brothers, Brownie McGhee, and Peter and Gordon have all released self-penned songs with the title ‘Don’t Pity Me’. There has even been a song with this title released by one Roy Zimmerman. Unfortunately, it has not been possible for me to establish exactly where Dylan’s one-off rendition originates. The vast majority of Dylan scholars attribute the song to producer and songwriter Van McCoy whose version was recorded and released by the little known New York-based disco trio Faith Hope And Charity (20th Century 6162, 1978). Several other commentators however, believe that Dylan’s rendition is a cover of the Dion and The Belmonts’ song of that title (Laurie 3021, 1958). The truth is that, having listened carefully to these songs, I believe Dylan’s performance could have been based on either one of the two songs or, alternatively, neither of them! The repeated phrase “Don’t you pity me / Don’t pity me” appears to be the only thing that all of the songs have in common. This would therefore appear to be more of an adaption than a cover. If anyone has any further information about this song, please contact the author. Dylan’s one-off, laidback, performance was at L’Amphitheatre, Joliette, Quebec, Canada, July 31, 1989. This performance is in circulation among collectors and can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
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Don’t Start Me Talkin’ Don’t Start Me Talkin’ (Sonny Boy Williamson II)
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Dylan rehearsed this Sonny Boy Williamson song in the garage studio at his home in Malibu, California on March 21, 1984. The song was performed the next evening on “Late Night With David Letterman” (NBC Studios, Rockefeller Center, New York). On the night, Dylan was backed by Justin Jesting (guitar), Tony Marisco (bass) and Charlie Quintana (drums). The rehearsal and the performance proper – punk meets the blues – both circulate among collectors. A moody and sometimes distrusting man, Sonny Boy Williamson II wove such a bewildering web of misinformation about himself that he became almost the definitive blues legend. By the time of his death in 1965, he had been around long enough to have begun his journey working with Robert Johnson (who allegedly died in his arms), and ended his career playing with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. In between, he bummed around, drank a lot of whiskey, married Howlin’ Wolf’s half-sister, was a KFFA radio star, toured Europe to great acclaim, and produced, quite simply, some of the finest blues ever. Born Aleck Miller, the youngest of twenty-one children, by his own account he was already working as an itinerant musician before John Lee Williamson (Sonny Boy I) was born. Miller’s year of birth has been variously given as 1897, 1899, 1909 and 1912, but none of these dates can be verified with absolute certainty. However, if the later date of 1912 is correct (and recent research shows this to be most likely), he would have only been two years older than Sonny Boy Williamson I, which would scupper his claims to have been working before John Lee Sonny Boy Williamson I was born. Some of his best known songs are ‘ine Below Zero’, ‘Fattenin’ Frogs For Snakes’, the infamous ‘Little Village’, ‘Don’t Start Me Talkin’’ and ‘Eyesight To The Blind’, which was used in The Who’s rock opera “Tommy”. Of these, ‘Don’t Start Me Talkin’’ (Checker 824) was Williamson’s only major hit. The song was released as a single in 1955 by the Chess Records’ subsidiary Checker. It reached Number Three on the national Billboard R&B Chart. The exact title of this song has long been something of a mystery to me. Most of the contemporary Chess / Checker catalogues and some of the printed charts of the time list the title as ‘Don’t Start Me To Talkin’’. However, I’ve seen several original 1955 copies of Checker 824 and the labels are printed ‘Don’t Start Me Talkin’’. It is possible, however, that first or second pressings of this record did carry a “To” in the title. The lyrics are without question, “Don’t start me to talkin’ / I’ll tell her everything I know”. Dylan included four Sonny Boy Williamson II records on Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme.
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Don’t You Push Me Down Don’t You Push Me Down (Woody Guthrie) This song was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording, see Appendix 1:8. This recording circulates among collectors and can be found on several bootleg CDs including “Songs For Bonnie” and “The Minnesota Tapes”. Written with whimsy and imagination and recorded sometime in 1947, “ursery Days” was the second album of children’s songs by Woody Guthrie. The album, which was written for children between the ages of four and eight, was first released in 1956. A re-mastered recording was issued by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 1991. Several tracks in the collection are instructional, helping children learn to count, while others are songs of love written by Guthrie probably with his own children in mind. ‘Howdido’ and ‘Riding In My Car (Car, Car)’ are also included on this album. Somewhat curiously, the lyrics to ‘Don’t You Push Me Down’ are not included on the official Woody Guthrie website. For further information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’. Doney Gal (Traditional) The first known performance of ‘Doney Gal’ was captured on tape at the St Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twentyseven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the extant tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording, see Appendix 1:3. This traditional cowboy song was collected and arranged by John and Alan Lomax. Alan Lomax believed this to be one of the last genuine cowboy songs. Rain or shine, sleet or snow, Me and my Doney Gal are on the go, We travel down that lonesome trail, Where a man and his horse seldom ever fail. Doney Gal was a term often used by cowboys for their horses and the lyrics in the song describe that bond. However, in the frontier days, the term Doney Gal was also used to signify a cowboy’s sweetheart. The word doney is derived from the Spanish word “doña” meaning “woman”.
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Down On Me
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Dylan wrote in “Chronicles Vol.1”: “[Spider] Koerner had some … key records … he had the Elektra folk songs sampler with a variety of artists. That’s where I first heard Dave Van Ronk and Peggy Seeger, even Alan Lomax himself singing the cowboy song ‘Doney Gal’, which I added to my repertoire”. Down On Me (Traditional) Dylan recorded this song, or at least forty seconds of it, during the so-called “Basement Tapes” sessions. Judging by the sound of this recording and its placement on the tapes, this song may have been recorded in the “Red Room” in Dylan’s Hi Lo Ha home in Byrdcliffe and not at the main Big Pink Basement sessions. See Appendix 1:59 for further information about this recording. ‘Down On Me’ has been released by among others Odetta, on her album “My Eyes Have Seen” and Eric von Schmidt on his album “The Folk Blues Of Eric von Schmidt”. The likelihood is that Dylan’s original source would have been one of these two recordings. Duncan And Brady (Traditional) Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, little star, Up comes Brady in a ’lectric car, Got a mean look all ’round his eye, Gonna shoot somebody jus’ to see them die. A stunning version of this song was recorded by Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place in Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This track was released in October 2008 on the rarities compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006”, (2008) (see Appendix 1:75 for further information). Dylan has performed this song in concert many times, the first instance being November 17, 1999 at University Of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire. The song was played forty-eight times in 2000, twenty-four times in 2001 and nine times in 2002. The last performance of the song thus far was on September 1, 2002, at the Janus Jazz Festival in Aspen, Colorado.
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Duncan And Brady It is difficult to identify exactly where Dylan learned the song. An early printing, entitled ‘Brady’, appeared in Carl Sandburg’s 1927 “American Songbag”. One of the earliest recordings was by Lead Belly, but this version definitely is not Dylan’s source. Likewise, New Riders of the Purple Sage, John Koerner, and the Grateful Dead can also be discounted. The main contenders are therefore Dave Van Ronk, who released the song on “Dave Van Ronk Sings Ballads, Blues And a Spiritual” (1959) and Tom Rush, who included the song on his 1963 album “Got a Mind To Ramble”. These two recordings have almost identical lyrics and are quite similar to the lyrics performed by Dylan in concert. Van Ronk says he learned the song from Paul Clayton whose version is entitled ‘Been On The Job Too Long’. In turn, Clayton says that he learned it from a copy of a Wilmer Watts record that he found while collecting songs in Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky. Although some of the “facts” have been altered, there is no doubt that the song ‘Duncan And Brady’ portrays an actual event. The incident happened on Monday, October 6, 1890 in the Charles Starkes Saloon at 715 North 11th Street in St Louis. A fight broke out in the bar but, when police attended, the brawl turned into a gunfight and police backup was called. One of the officers, Patrolman James Brady, was hit by gunfire and died. Harry Duncan was arrested for the murder but he reportedly claimed his innocence, insisting that the shot was fired by the owner of bar, Charles Starkes. Duncan filed a series of appeals that took his case all the way to the US Supreme Court. Duncan’s appeal was dismissed and he was subsequently hanged on July 27, 1894. Most versions of the song depict Brady as a corrupt officer who, to use Dylan’s phrasing, had “been on the job too looooong”. The opening verse, which has Officer Brady arriving on the scene by ’lectric car, is both intriguing and inaccurate. The first electric vehicle in the USA was designed in 1891. It ran, as a test on the streets of Chicago in late 1892 and production began in 1895. It was around 1900 before the vehicles began appearing on the streets in the form of taxicabs and ambulances. It is a matter of fact that the affray at Charles Starkes’ Saloon occurred on October 6, 1890, a year before the first electric vehicle was invented and a full five years before production began. It would have been impossible therefore for Officer Brady to have attended the incident in his ’lectric car (This might be a remarkable coincidence, but it is interesting that one of the first automobiles to be driven in Manhattan was an electric car purchased by a man named “Diamond” Jim Brady). My research indicates that the song ‘Duncan And Brady’ was probably written at around the time of Brady’s murder (1890) or possibly shortly after Harry Duncan was hung (1894) and that the original song did not include what is now commonly the opening ’lectric car verse. This premise can be supported by the fact that one of the earliest recordings of ‘Duncan And Brady’, that of Lead Belly, does not contain this verse. I have always thought it quite odd that a murder ballad should begin with a reference to the nursery rhyme – ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ – and it is my supposition that this illworded line was used simply to provide a rhyme for the word “car”. Staying with nursery rhymes, Bob Dylan is not averse to beginning a song with “Once Upon A Time”!
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(I Believe I’ll) Dust My Broom Bob Dylan’s performance from Reno (March 17, 2000) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Although Dylan always performs this song extremely well, there are better renditions than the one included here.
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(I Believe I’ll) Dust My Broom (Traditional) The first known incarnation of this song, or at least the phrase “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom”, was recorded in December 1933 by Roosevelt Sykes and Carl Rafferty. The song, ‘Mr Carl’s Blues’, contained the immortal lines, “I do believe, I do believe I’ll dust my broom / And after I dust my broom, anyone may have my room”. A few months later, in 1934, Kokomo Arnold wrote a song entitled, ‘Sagefield Woman Blues’ (Decca 7044), which also contained the phrase “I Believe I’ll dust my broom” and it is from this song, that legendary Mississippi Delta bluesman Robert Johnson got the title for his song. Johnson’s song, which was recorded on November 23, 1936 in San Antonio, Texas, was released under the title ‘I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom’. The song was later recorded and released on Trumpet Records by Elmore James simply as ‘Dust My Broom’. This recording, which featured Sonny Boy Williamson on harmonica, made the R&B Chart in 1952. James’ version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. Several schools of thought exist as to the meaning of “dust my broom”. There is little doubt that the basic meaning is that someone is cleaning their room and is ready to move out. Blues singer Son Thomas said: “It was an old field holler to tell everyone, except the people the hollerer didn’t want to tell (i.e. his white master), that he was running away”. The phrase could also mean that the narrator is preparing to leave his woman. “Jumping the broom” is an African-American phrase and custom relating to wedding ceremonies and it might therefore figure that “dusting the broom” is leaving a woman or making a clean sweep. Dylan seems to confirm that he was thinking along these lines when he wrote: “I’m gettin’ up in the morning–I believe I’ll dust my broom / Keeping away from the women / I’m givin’ ’em lots of room”, in the final stanza to his 2001 song ‘High Water (For Charlie Patton)’. Dylan has only performed this song once in concert– November 12, 1991 at the Fox Theater, Detroit, Michigan. It was, however, a storming rendition worthy of the ghosts of Arnold, James, and Johnson. This recording is in circulation among collectors and can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Seek it out! Bob Dylan played Elmore James’ 1952 recording of ‘Dust My Broom’ on the “Spring Cleaning” episode of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” show. Spring Cleaning was the last programme (show fifty) of Season One.
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Bob Dylan “Rolling Thunder Revue” Tour
Early Morning Rain
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Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot) This Gordon Lightfoot song was recorded on March 4, 1970 at the fifth “Self Portrait” album session (see Appendix 1:66 for further information). The track was released on “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970). Lightfoot wrote ‘Early Morning Rain’ in the summer of 1964 and recorded it, along with an album’s worth of tunes, in December of the same year. The song, which recounts a lonely man’s attempts to make his way back to a faraway home, was lodged with New York music publisher Witmark and was picked up on by several recording artists before it was released by Gordon Lightfoot. The song was released first by Ian and Sylvia as the title track of their fourth album and was also a minor hit for Peter, Paul and Mary in 1965, which was the same year that it appeared on Judy Collins’ “Fifth Album”. ‘Early Morning Rain’ was finally released by Gordon Lightfoot in March 1966, when it was included on his debut album, “Lightfoot!” (UAS 6487). Dylan rehearsed ‘Early Morning Rain’ in May 1989 in readiness for his summer tour of Europe. However, the song had to wait until the tour moved to the United States before it got its live debut. ‘Early Morning Rain’ was played for the first time as the opening number of the July 3, 1989 show in Milwaukee, WS. After six outings during ’89 and ’90 the song vanished for a while only to reappear at two shows on Dylan’s fall ’91 US tour. The final rendition was at South Bend, Indiana on November 6, 1991. Bob Dylan’s first performance of the song from Milwaukee, WS can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This is a pleasing, if slightly tentative version, which features Dylan on harp. Bob Dylan has also performed Lightfoot’s ‘I’m ot Supposed To Care’ in concert.
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Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine) Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine) (Belvin / Williams / Hodge) Young Bobby Zimmerman, along with friends, Howard Rutman and Larry Kegan, cut their own 78rpm record on Christmas Eve 1956. ‘Earth Angel’ was one of the eight songs that was included as part of their eight-minute medley. None of this recording is in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:1 for further information). This classic Doo-Wop song was recorded by The Penguins in September 1954. It had evolved through several Los Angeles groups before The Penguins finally committed it to tape at Ted Brinson’s small garage studio. According to The Penguin’s vocalist Cleve Duncan: “Curtis Williams had a song called ‘Earth Angel’, Jesse Belvin is credited with helping to write it, but Jesse had nothing to do with it after Curtis and I got together”. In 1955, The Penguins’ ‘Earth Angel’ went to Number One on the R&B Chart, where it remained for three weeks, and Number Eight on the Pop Chart. The single would almost certainly have gone even higher on the Pop Chart if it had not been for The Crew-Cuts (who reached Number Three) and Gloria Mann (who reached Number Eighteen) covering it at the same time for Mercury and Sound, respectively. Although Bob Dylan has never played this song in concert, there is a recording of Dylan and Etta James jamming on the song at the Marriott Hotel in Providence Rhode Island, on July 10, 1986. This after-hours session, which was captured on soundboard, is in circulation among collectors. The recording features Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar), Etta James (shared vocal), Jack McDuff (organ), Shuggie Otis (guitar), Richard Reid (bass) and Paul Humphrey (drums).
Easy Loving (Freddie Hart) Dylan performed a raunchy cover of this Freddie Hart song in concert in the Granada Theater, Dallas, Texas on April 18, 2003. By the rather muted audience reaction, it seems that only very few people knew the song. The significance (if indeed there was any) of this one-off performance is not clear to me. Interestingly, however, just seven weeks before Dylan’s performance, the song had been released on John Hammond Jr’s album “Ready For Love” (Back Porch, 2003). Dylan’s performance from the Granada Theater, Dallas is in circulation among collectors. ‘Easy Loving’ was a hit record for Country musician Freddie Hart in the summer of 1971. It went to Number One on the Country Chart, where it remained for three weeks and reached Number Seventeen on the US Pop Chart. The song would ultimately win Hart numerous awards from both the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association. In 1972, his performance of the song won a Grammy for “Best Country Male Vocalist”.
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Eileen Aroon Eileen Aroon (Traditional melody, English words Gerald Griffin, arr. Clancy Brothers)
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Bob Dylan performed this tender love song eleven times in concert during 1988 and 1989. The first performance was on June 15, 1988 at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater in Denver, Colorado. Fittingly, for a song of Irish origins, Dylan’s last performance to date of ‘Eileen Aroon’ was at the RDS, Simmonscourt in Dublin, Ireland (June 3, 1989). Dylan covers this song quite beautifully. It is claimed that this song’s ancestry can be traced back to the 14th century but the first printed evidence of a tune entitled ‘Ellen a Roon’ does not occur until sheet music was made for Charles Coffey’s ballad opera “The Beggars Wedding” (1729). However, apart from the title, this piece is completely unrelated to the folk song ‘Eileen Aroon’. The original Gaelic title was ‘Eibhlin a Rúin’ (Darling Eileen), and in truth there have been so many variations of tunes with similar names that it is not possible to tie it down. The tune we are familiar with today, was probably written by Lady Caroline Keppel as ‘Robin Adair’ and dates from the late 1700s. The English words were probably written by Gerald Griffin (18031840) who, according to one unsubstantiated legend, translated it from the Gaelic words of a 14th Century minstrel harper named Carol O’Daly. Surprisingly, there are very few modern day recordings of this song. Harpist, Mary O’Hara included the song under its Gaelic title on her 1958 album “Songs Of Erin”, otherwise any renascence of the song stems directly from the Clancy Brothers, who released it in 1961 on their LP “Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem” (Tradition TLP 1042). There is no doubting that Dylan learned the song from the Clancy Brothers who took and adapted four of the seven verses from Gerald Griffin’s song. Although he swaps verses two and three around, Dylan sings all four of the Clancy Brothers’ verses with only the slightest of lyric changes. There is a valley fair, Eileen Aroon, There is a cottage there, Eileen Aroon, Far in the valley shade I know a tender maid, Flow’r of the hazel glade, Eileen Aroon.
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El Paso Were she no longer true, Eileen Aroon, What would her lover do, Eileen Aroon, Fly with a broken chain, Far cross the sounding main, Never to love again, Eileen Aroon… Bob Dylan’s performance from Park City, CO (June 15, 1988) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. As stated previously, Dylan always covers this song quite beautifully and this tender performance is no exception. El Paso (Marty Robbins) From the late 1950s onward Marty Robbins was a popular and successful American Country singer whose musical accomplishments include the first Grammy ever awarded for a Country song. The song, ‘El Paso’, which was taken from Robbins’ album “Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs”, was a hit in 1959, after which it became Robbins’ signature song. Dylan cohorts the Grateful Dead regularly performed ‘El Paso’ in concert from 1969 until their disbandment in 1995– a total of 385 performances. Appropriately, Bob Dylan opened and closed his August, 29 1989 show at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico with instrumental renditions of ‘El Paso’. This recording is in circulation among collectors. Dylan also played Marty Robbins’ 1959 recording of the song on show twenty of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “Musical Map”. (The) End Of The Innocence (Don Henley / Bruce Hornsby) Don Henley is an American rock singer, songwriter and drummer, best known as a founding member of the 1970s rock band, the Eagles. Following the breakup of the band, Henley embarked on a successful solo career. ‘The End Of The Innocence’ is the title track to his third album, which was released in 1989. The song, a collaboration with Bruce Hornsby, is a piano-driven tale of discontent, especially with Ronald Reagan’s presidential term. Interestingly, when Bruce Hornsby performed the song in concert after January 20, 1989, he changed the lyrics from, “... this tired old man that we elected king” to, “the tired old man that is no longer king”.
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Every ight When The Sun Goes In There are many who believe the song was written for US farmers who were losing their land and homes because of the loan conditions brought about by the US savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s. The lyrics appear to call out to the then-President, Ronald Reagan, to stop pouring money into defence projects and show compassion for the struggling American farmers.
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Henley’s song may well have taken its inspiration from comments (some would say crass) made by Bob Dylan at Live Aid (July 1985) and from the Farm Aid benefit concerts that followed. Bob Dylan, Live Aid, 1985: “I hope that some of the money ... maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe ... one or two million, maybe ... and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks”. Henley appeared at the first Farm Aid concert (September 22, 1985) and again at “Farm Aid 4”, in 1990, where he performed ‘The End Of The Innocence’ with Bruce Hornsby. Dylan performed the song nine times during his 2002 US tour; the first occasion being on October 8, 2002 in Sacramento, California. Every ight When The Sun Goes In (Traditional) Dylan performed this traditional song in May 1960 at the St. Paul home of Karen Wallace (see Appendix 1:3 for further information). This recording can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Also known as ‘Every ight When The Sun Goes Down’, the first known printing of this song was in the Sharp and Karpeles collection, “English Folk Songs From The Southern Appalachians II”, published by Oxford University in 1918. Notable recordings of the song – prior to Dylan’s performance – are those by Harry Belafonte, who recorded it as ‘Suzanne (Every ight When The Sun Goes Down)’ (“Belafonte”, RCA Victor LPM-1150, 1956), Milt Oken “Traditional American Love Songs”, (Riverside RLP 12-634, 1956), and the Weavers “The Weavers At Home”, (RLP 12-634, 1956). Everybody’s Crying Mercy (Mose Allison) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session.
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Everybody’s Movin’ ‘Everybody’s Crying Mercy’ was released on Mose Allison’s 1968 album “I’ve Been Doin’ Some Thinkin’” (Atlantic, SD 1511). The song gained prominence in 1973 when it was recorded by Bonnie Raitt and released on her third and strongest album “Takin’ My Time” (Warner Brothers, BS 2729). Everybody’s Movin’ (Glen Glenn) Dylan performed this 1958 Glen Glenn Rockabilly song seven times during 1988, ’89 and ’90. The first performance was on June 10, 1988 in the Greek Theatre at the University Of California in Berkeley, CA., with Neil Young on guitar. The last performance of the song so far was again in Glenn’s adopted home state of California, this time playing with Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen at a Petty concert at the Inglewood Forum. Dylan’s performance from Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT., on January 12, 1990 can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Glen Glenn was born Orin Glen Troutman on October 24, 1934 in Joplin, Missouri. He performed under various names including Glen Trout until he was signed to the ERA label in 1958, when he changed his name to Glen Glenn. ‘Everybody’s Movin’’ (ERA 45-1061), recorded in March 1958 was his first single for the label. Before things could progress much further however, Glenn received his draft notice in the mail and although ERA continued to release his singles, with no artist available to promote the records, there was little interest generated. After his discharge from the Army in 1960, Glenn attempted to pick up his career but interest in rockabilly had all but evaporated. ERA moved Glenn to their subsidiary label Dore Records, where they tried to recreate him as a pop crooner. Glenn quickly quit music to raise a family. After many years out of the business, a 1977 compilation of his rockabilly material put Glenn back on the map and he developed a small but ardent following, especially in the U.K. In 1984 Glenn cut a new album for Ace Records and since then he has become a regular performer on the California club scene and has also undertaken several European concert tours. Regardless of his lack of commercial success, Glen Glenn’s classic sides have become the stuff of legend among rockabilly enthusiasts including Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan, all of whom have covered his tunes in concert. Dylan chose him as the opening act for a 1995 concert at the Hollywood Palladium. The two men met backstage and Glenn later enthused that “Dylan hugged me”.
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Fare Thee Well
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Fare Thee Well (Traditional) This song, which is not in circulation among collectors, was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota, apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twentyseven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, this song is not included on the tapes. The complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this tape see Appendix 1:3. In the absence of an available recording, it is a matter of conjecture as to exactly which song was performed. It is quite likely however, that the song in question was the traditional number ‘Fare Thee Well’, sometimes known as ‘Fare Thee Well (10,000 Miles)’. Other than the opening lyric of “Oh it’s fare thee well”, this song has no connection to the Dylan composition ‘Farewell’ which was written in early 1963.
Farewell To The Gold (Paul Metsers) Farewell to the gold that never I found, Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound, For it’s only when dreaming that I see you gleaming, Down in the dark deep underground. When the news circulated that Dylan had played this song in concert, it was immediately obvious that his source was Nic Jones’ magnificent album “Penguin Eggs”. After all, just three months prior to this performance, Dylan had recorded ‘Canadee-i-o’ (for “Good As I Been To You”), which also appears on “Penguin Eggs”. On the album, however, Jones credits authorship of ‘Farewell To The Gold’ to New Zealand resident Paul Metsers. In his book “Song & Dance Man III” (p.705), Dylan-scholar Michael Gray includes a footnote stating “... Nic Jones took this song from New Zealander Paul Metsers, who may have written it (or re-written it from a broadside)…” It is a credit to Metsers’ song-writing skills that ‘Farewell To The Gold’ is so often mistaken for a traditional piece. Paul Metsers gave this information in response to an email: “I’m afraid there is no mystery source for the song. No distant broadside or doggerel from which it gained its inspiration. It’s all out of my head as it happens”.
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Female Rambling Sailor Although Metsers first released ‘Farewell To The Gold’ on his 1981 album “Caution To The Wind” (Highway Records, SHY 7014), it seems he got his inspiration for the number as far back as 1969 when, as a schoolmaster teaching music, he took his students on a field trip to visit some abandoned gold workings on the South Island of New Zealand. He then researched the subject further in a book entitled “The Goldfields Of Central Otago”, which recounted the tragic flash flood of July 1863. Metsers continued: “As far as covers go, Nic Jones’ version on his “Penguin Eggs” album is by far the best known and the only one to have earned me anything. Dylan got his [cover] from Nic’s version but he hasn’t paid much attention to lyrical accuracy … All I’ve ever heard is a garbled live version, probably bootlegged at a concert”. The concert in question, was in Youngstown, Ohio (November 2, 1992), but to these ears Dylan’s vocals on this, a one-off performance, are anything but “garbled”.
Female Rambling Sailor (Traditional) Come all you maids both near and far, And listen to my ditty, ‘Twas near Gravesend there lived a maid, She was both neat and pretty. Her true love he was pressed away, And drowned in some foreign sea, Which caused this fair maid for to say, I’ll be a rambling sailor. In the tradition of ‘Canadee-i-o’, ‘The Wearing Of The Blue’ and ‘Jack-A-Roe’, the song ‘Female Rambling Sailor’ recounts the sad tale of Rebecca Young, whose one true love was “pressed away” (forced to join the Navy by a “press gang”) and who then “drowned in some foreign sea”. The story tells of how Rebecca, masquerading as a man, then joined the Navy herself. Bob Dylan covered the song six times during his 1992 touring exploits. The first five performances were during his March / April 1992 tour of Australia. The sixth and last performance thus far was on August 27, 1992 at Massey Hall, Toronto. Interestingly, Sally Barker, who opened for Dylan in Germany in 1991, performed this song and also released it as ‘The Female Rambling Sailor (Rebecca’s Rig)’ on her third album, “Beating The Drum” (1992). Dylan performed all but two of the eleven verses sung by Barker with lyrics true to her version. Although the origins of this traditional folk song seem to be English, and the lyrics “On the River Thames she’s known so well, No man there could her excel” appear to substantiate this, the song is found most widely in Australia.
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Fever In the booklet notes to a version recorded by Ian Robb on his album “Rose And Crown”, Robb states that he learned the tune from Martyn Wyndham-Read and that Martyn had found the number in Australia. The song appears on Martyn Wyndham-Read’s album “Harry The Hawker Is Dead”. Was it simply a coincidence then that five of Dylan’s six performances were in the song’s adopted home of Australia?
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Bob Dylan’s performance from Sydney (March 24, 1992) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The rendition from Melbourne (April 3, 1992) appears on the bootleg CD “Golden Vanity”. All performances of this song are something quite special and are well worth collecting.
Fever (Davenport / Cooley) ‘Fever’ was originally written by Eddie Cooley and ‘John Davenport’, Davenport being a pseudonym for Otis Blackwell. Blackwell allegedly credited the song to his grandfather, John Davenport, to thwart any attempt by his bandleader, Joe Davis, to pocket any royalties that the song might earn. The song, which was published in 1956, was an R&B hit for Little Willie John who took it to Number One on the R&B Chart. Peggy Lee’s cover version (with some lyric changes) was even more popular. Lee’s version reached Number Two on the Pop Chart in 1958 and went on to become her signature song. Dylan played ‘Fever’ on his “A Musical Retrospective Tour” in the fall of 1980. The song was performed at two shows: the Fox Warfield Theater in San Francisco (November 22) and the Paramount Northwest Theater in Seattle, Washington (November 30). The song made its last appearance at the Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston Michigan on June 12, 1981.
Fishin’ Blues (Henry Thomas) Dylan recorded this song at the May 1, 1970 “ew Morning” album session (see Appendix 1:68 for details about the session). A fragment of this recording is in circulation among collectors and can be found on the bootleg CD “Possum Belly Overalls”. The original recording by Henry Thomas (June 13, 1928) can be found on the Smithsonian Folkways album “Anthology Of American Folk Music”. ‘Fishing Blues’ has been covered by among others Mike Seeger (Vanguard VRS-9150, 1964) and Jim Kweskin (Vanguard VG 9234, 1967).
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Fishin’ Blues Some notes on the “Anthology Of American Folk Music”: Issued by Folkways Records in 1952, the album “American Folk Music”, as it was originally titled, is a six-album collection of eighty-four American folk recordings from 1926 to 1934. The compilation was the brainchild of the avant-garde filmmaker, folklorist and anthropologist, Harry Smith. Smith began building his collection of recordings in the late 1930s by travelling throughout the South and Western United States of America buying records as he went. After World War II, the fragile shellac 78s began to be replaced by discs made from polyvinyl chloride. These 331/3rpm microHarry Smith groove long-playing discs became known as ‘vinyl records’ and later simply as ‘vinyl’. The soon to be obsolete 78s were to be had for very little money and Smith began visiting record pressing plants where he would buy up carloads of outdated 78s for a penny each. Smith went on to amass one of the largest private collections of 78rpm records, and it is from this collection that he compiled the album “American Folk Music”. The Anthology, which for the first time put black and white musicians together on the same album, became legendary, not necessarily with music buyers in general, but with folk revivalists who used the collection as a touchstone for their own music. We know that a young Bob Dylan had access to the Anthology and that he may well have heard it as early as the summer of 1960, possibly in the Minneapolis apartment of Jon Pankake. Dylan regularly visited Pankake in his home at 1410, 6th Street SE and when Pankake left town for a two-week sabbatical, Dylan visited the unlocked apartment and helped himself to about twenty records. The records included a hard to find set by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and possibly the Smith Anthology. Pankake: “It could well have been one of the records because I don’t think there were that many copies of the Anthology circulating in Minneapolis”. In any event, Pankake retrieved his records, seemingly through the threat of physical violence, and it is probably worth noting that the scant details we have about Dylan’s performances at around that time indicate that he was only playing one song from the Anthology, ‘K.C. Moan’. However, eighteen months later, when Dylan reached New York City, he was exposed to the album via Village folkie Dave Van Ronk and during a short four months period (August to November 1961) he was performing at least five songs that were contained on the Anthology.
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Fishin’ Blues The importance of this collection of music to Dylan’s canon – or at least the songs that were contained on it – cannot be overstated. Listed below is a selection of songs that Dylan covered which can be found on this album.
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The Cuckoo (The Coo Coo Bird) (Clarence Ashley) (track 57) Fishing Blues (Henry Thomas) (track 84) Frankie (Mississippi John Hurt) (track 21) House Carpenter (Clarence Ashley) (track 3) James Alley Blues (Richard “Rabbit” Brown) (track 61) K. C. Moan (The Memphis Jug Band) (track 81) King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me O (Chubby Parker) (track 8) Little Moses (Carter Family) (track 53) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson) (track 76) Stackalee (Frank Hutchison) (track 19) The Butcher’s Boy (Railroad Boy) (trad., Buell Kazee) (track 6) Wagoner’s Lad (trad., Buell Kazee) (track 7) Omie Wise (G. B. Grayson) (track 13) Dylan also recorded (but did not use) ‘Kassie Jones’ for his 1992 album “Good As I Been To You”. As well as these covers, over the years Dylan has also borrowed countless lines, phrases and melodies from these recordings. ‘Down On Penny’s Farm’ (The Bently Boys) is the likely source for Dylan’s ‘Hard Times In ew York Town’. Likewise, ‘A Lazy Farm Boy’ (Buster Carter and Preston Young) is the probable inspiration for his ‘Man On The Street’. Dylan has borrowed from, amongst others, Mississippi John Hurt’s ‘Spike Driver Blues’ and Bascom Larmar Lunsford’s ‘I Wish I Was a Mole In The Ground’. Although Dylan’s composition ‘Sugar Baby’ – from “Love And Theft” – is a completely different song, the title is likely borrowed from the Dock Boggs song of the same name. In fact, an in-depth study of Smith’s “American Folk Music” (not within the remit of this entry) would reveal that over his career Dylan has, directly or indirectly, plundered at least thirty of the eightyfour recordings contained in this collection. However, in a 2001 interview with Mikal Gilmore for Rolling Stone magazine, Bob Dylan said: “... Those records were around – that Harry Smith anthology – but that’s not what everybody was listening to. Sure, there were all those songs. You could hear them at people’s houses. I know in my case, I think Dave Van Ronk had that record. But in those days we really didn’t have places to live, or places to have a lot of records. We were sort of living from this place to that– kind of a transient existence. I know I was living that way. You heard records where you could, but mostly you heard other performers. All those people ... you could hear the actual people singing those ballads. You could hear Clarence Ashley, Doc Watson, Dock Boggs, the Memphis Jug Band, Furry Lewis. You could see those people live and in person. They were around ... Performers did know of that record, but it wasn’t, in retrospect, the monumental iconic recordings at the time...
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Five Feet High And Rising It wasn’t like someone discovered this pot of gold somewhere. There were other records out that were on rural labels. Yazoo had records out ... In New York City, there was a place called the Folklore Center that had all the folk-music records. It was like a library, and you could listen to them there. And they had folk-music books there ... It wasn’t the only thing that people had – that “Anthology Of American Folk Music”. ...What I was most interested in twenty-four hours a day was the rural music. But you could only hear it, like, in isolated caves [laughs], like, on a few bohemian streets in America at that time. The idea was to be able to master these songs. It wasn’t about writing your own songs. That didn’t even enter anybody’s mind”. Whilst there is no doubt that the mythical status of the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” has been greatly exaggerated by the likes of Greil Marcus (possibly to suit his own agenda), it is still (and was) an extremely influential work. Dare I say that Dylan might be missing the point a little when he plays down the importance of this collection; because even if Dylan himself did not take tunes directly from the album, he almost certainly learnt the songs from people (“Spider” Koerner, Dave Van Ronk and others) who had done so. In 1997, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings reissued the collection on six Compact discs. The three double CDs were presented with Smith’s original notes, which over time have become almost as legendary as the music itself, and a further large-format 68-page book containing a new set of notes. All these goodies were housed in a red cloth covered LP-size box and for the first time the album, which had long been referred to as the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” was officially titled thus. In 2000, Revenant Records released a fourth collection (compiled by Smith), which included union songs and songs recorded as late as 1940. Harry Smith’s original collection of 78s was eventually divided between the Smithsonian Institution and the New York Public Library. The Harry Smith Anthology, along with Sam Charters’ 1959 compilation album “The Country Blues”, were the two most important folk / country blues records of the 1950s. Charters’ album was released in conjunction with his book – the first book-length study of the blues to be published – also entitled “The Country Blues”.
Five Feet High And Rising (Johnny Cash) Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, which mostly come from Cash’s repertoire, are all performed as duets. This recording was never released and does not circulate among collectors. The song, in which the singer asks “How high’s the water, mama?”, “How high’s the water, papa?”, tells the story of a flood, in which the water gets higher by one foot with every passing verse. Floods, like many other natural disasters, have often provided a heavily mined source of folk and blues lyrics. Likewise, floods have often inspired Bob Dylan to write: ‘Down In The Flood (Crash On The Levee)’, ‘High Water (For Charley Patton)’ and
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Fixin’ To Die ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ are all examples. For further details see entry for ‘Backwater Blues’.
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Johnny Cash originally recorded ‘Five Feet High And Rising’ in 1959. The song went to Number Fourteen on the Country Chart and Number Seventy-Six on the Billboard Pop Chart. “Five Feet High And Rising” is also the title track from a 1974 Columbia Records compilation album of Cash’s 1960s songs.
Fixin’ To Die (Bukka White) Bob Dylan’s first known performance of this song was at the Carnegie Chapter Hall, New York on November 4, 1961 (see Appendix 1:14). Later that same month the song was again captured on tape, this time at the home of the McKenzie family (see Appendix 1:16). Dylan also recorded the song in January 1962 for a radio broadcast on Cynthia Gooding’s WBAI show “Folksinger’s Choice”. The programme was broadcast on March 11, 1962 (see Appendix 1:19). All of these recordings are in circulation among collectors. ‘Fixin’ To Die’ was released by Dylan on his debut album, “Bob Dylan” (CL-1779, 1962) and forty-five years later he played Bukka White’s 1940 recording of the song on the penultimate episode, show forty-nine, of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Death and Taxes”. One of Booker T. Washington White’s claims to fame was that he was responsible for giving his cousin, B. B. King, his first guitar. Born in Houston, Mississippi somewhere between 1906 and 1909, White got the name “Bukka”, as the result of a mistake by a white record-producer who had clearly never heard of his famous namesake, Booker T. Washington. White “hoboed” through the South for much of the 1920s before making his recording debut for Victor in 1930 as Washington White. The opportunity to record did not knock again for White until 1937. Unfortunately, before he made it to the session in Chicago he shot a man. Legend has it that while he was awaiting trial, Bukka decided that he would take care of his unfinished business in Chicago and jumped bail to make his 1937 Vocalion recordings. Big Joe Williams even claimed that a Mississippi sheriff broke into the session and arrested White. At any rate, he was eventually sentenced to a three-year stretch in the infamous Parchman Farm jail. After earning his release in 1940, White again returned to Chicago, this time with twelve newly minted songs which became the backbone of his repertoire. Among the songs he recorded at the session were ‘Parchman Farm Blues’, ‘Good Gin Blues’ and ‘Fixin’ To Die Blues’. White only recorded this last song because some of his other numbers had failed to impress the record producer. White thought little
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Flight Of The Bumble Bee more about the song until it re-emerged twenty-plus years later on Bob Dylan’s first album. Dylan’s recording was quite probably responsible for bringing White to the attention of the “blues mafia”, John Fahey and Ed Denson, who tracked White down by addressing a letter to: “Booker T. Washington White, (Old Blues Singer), C/O General Delivery, Aberdeen, Miss”. The letter was forwarded to Bukka by a relative, Denson became his manager and Bukka White’s career was revived. White continued to play and record until his death in Memphis on February 26, 1977. Flight Of The Bumble Bee (Rimsky-Korsakov / Jam) This tune forms part of an extensive set of recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the town of Woodstock in upper New York State. This extensive set of recordings, most of which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes (see Appendix 1:60 for further information). Although this performance lasts for just over two minutes, it does not appear to be a serious attempt at recording. The piece seems to begin with a Richard Manuel piano doodle which the other musicians decide to run with. Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash) The first outing for this song was in 1967 as part of the Big Pink “basement” recording sessions (see Appendix 1:60 for further details). The song was also recorded (but never released) at the third “Self Portrait” album session on May 3, 1969 (see Appendix 1:64). The song’s first live appearance was on July 10, 1991 at Lake Champlain Fairgrounds in Essex Junction, Vermont. The song was played a further ten times during this leg of the Never Ending Tour and it became one of the highlights of the leg. ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ was played once in 1992, four times in ’93 and twice more in 1999. The song’s most recent outing was as the opener to Dylan’s March 18, 2005 Reno Hilton concert (“I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”). Bob Dylan played Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ on show six of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Jail”. Cash was inspired to write this song after seeing the movie “Inside The Walls Of Folsom Prison” (1951). He first recorded ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ in 1956 for the Sun Records label. His performance of the song during his Folsom State Prison concert was released on his “At Folsom Prison” album (1968).
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A Fool Such As I The single reached Number One on the Country Chart and Number Thirty-Two on the Pop Chart, while the album made it to Number One on the Country Chart and Number Thirteen on the Pop Chart.
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Bob Dylan’s performances from Eindhoven, Netherlands (February 17, 1993) and New Haven CT (November 10, 1999) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The Eindhoven recording is quite poor quality but the New Haven performance is extremely good (great vocals) and certainly well worth collecting.
A Fool Such As I (Bill Trader) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made while he was living in the town of Woodstock in upper New York State and which later became known as the Basement Tapes (1967). This recording sounds a little more primitive than the main body of Basement Tapes songs and was possibly recorded in the “Red Room” in Dylan’s Hi Lo Ha Woodstock home prior to relocating to the basement at Big Pink. The position of this song on the tapes / bootleg CDs also seems to indicate this (see Appendix 1:59 for further details). This song was also recorded by Dylan at the April 26, 1969 “Self Portrait” album session. The track was eventually released by Columbia Records in November 1973 on the “Dylan” album (Columbia PC 32747) (see Appendix 1:63 for further information). Over the years there has been a great deal of confusion at Columbia over the author credits for ‘A Fool Such As I’. The original US release of the “Dylan” album credited the song as being written by B. Abner. By contrast, the UK album credited B. Trader. The confusion seems to have arisen because Buford Abner, songwriter and lead vocalist with the Swanee River Boys, wrote a completely different gospel number with the same title. The song appears on the “Swanee River Boys Finest” album (Zondervan ZLP-635). The confusion over who wrote the song persists to this day with Bob Dylan’s official Columbia website still erroneously listing B. Abner as the songwriter. The song that Dylan covered, which was written by Bill Trader, had previously been a hit in 1952 for both Hank Snow and Jo Stafford. The most successful outing however, was Elvis Presley’s 1959 release, which went to Number One in the UK and Number Two in the USA. I cannot imagine why ‘A Fool Such As I’ was omitted from the “Self Portrait” album as to my ears it is superior to many of the tracks that were included. Dylan is fully engaged with the song and appears to be having great fun with the lyrics. The band has really found the groove on this one. A fine piece of rock’n’roll. Bob Dylan played Hank Snow’s 1952 recording of ‘A Fool Such As I’ on show forty-seven of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Fools”.
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Foreign Window Foreign Window (Van Morrison) ‘Foreign Window’ was released on Van Morrison’s album “o Guru, o Method, o Teacher” (Mercury, 1986). Dylan played some very fine harmonica on Van Morrison’s ‘Foreign Window’ after the two men had got together while in Greece. Morrison was in Athens for the filming of a BBC TV special documentary about him. The first performance involved four songs ‘Crazy Love’, ‘And It Stoned Me’, ‘One Irish Rover’ (all with Dylan on shared vocal and guitar) and ‘Foreign Window’ (with Dylan on harmonica only). These songs were filmed by the BBC on June 27, 1989 at Philopappos (Hill of the Muses), in Athens, Greece. The performances of ‘Crazy Love’, ‘Foreign Window’ and ‘One Irish Rover’ were included in the “Arena: One Irish Rover” documentary broadcast on BBC 2 television (UK) on March 16, 1991. Four Strong Winds (Ian Tyson) In his youth, Ian Tyson lived the romantic cowboy life of a rodeo rider, and it was while he was recovering from injuries sustained from a fall that he set about learning to play the guitar. He eventually started playing in the coffeehouses in Toronto and by 1959 he was making his living playing music. It was while playing in the Toronto clubs and coffeehouses that he met his future wife, Sylvia Fricker, and they started performing together shortly thereafter. By 1962 they had moved to New York, which was where the duo caught the attention of Bob Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman. Grossman secured a contract for them with Vanguard and they released their debut album in September that year. Their second album, entitled “Four Strong Winds”, was released in April 1964 (Vanguard VSD-2149). The album was notable for the inclusion of Dylan’s composition, ‘Tomorrow Is a Long Time’, and the title song ‘Four Strong Winds’, which had been written by Ian Tyson some three years earlier. The song is inspired by the lives of transient farm workers forced to move around the country to find work, but its theme is also about the transitory nature of human relationships. The song, which was later included on the Ian and Sylvia collection “Greatest Hits, Volume I”, quickly became a part of the standard folk and country repertoire and some fifty cover versions were recorded during the next five years. In 2005, CBC Radio One listeners chose ‘Four Strong Winds’ as the best Canadian song of all time. Bob Dylan committed this song to tape in 1967 during his “Basement” recording sessions. It is one of several songs recorded at this time which are connected with Ian and Sylvia (see Appendix 1:60 for further information). This is a great number and with a little more work it would have made a fine recording. This is one of the subterranean songs that got away.
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Frankie & Albert Frankie & Albert (Traditional)
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Frankie was a good girl, everybody know, She paid one hundred dollars for Albert’s suit of clothes, He’s her man, but he did her wrong. This number was recorded in the summer of 1992 and released on Dylan’s album “Good As I Been To You”. See Appendix 1:76 for further detail about this recording session. This song exists under a variety of titles including ‘Frankie And Albert’, ‘Frankie And Johnny’ and ‘Frankie’. The first published version of the music to ‘Frankie And Johnny’ appeared in 1904 when it was copyrighted by Hughie Cannon, the composer of ‘Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey’. What has come to be the traditional version of the melody was published in 1912, as the chorus to the song ‘You’re My Baby’. Although the song is said to have appeared around the time of the American Civil War, the lyrics we know today first appeared as ‘Frankie And Albert’ in Dorothy Scarborough’s book “On The Trail Of Negro Folksongs” (Harvard University, 1925); a related version, but with the names Frankie and Johnny, appeared in 1927 in Carl Sandburg’s book “The American Songbag” (Harcourt Brace). The earliest known recording of the song appears under the title of ‘Frankie’ on the “Anthology Of American Folk Music”. More than 250 different recordings of the song exist, including versions by Lead Belly, Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Patton, Charlie Poole, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Jimmie Rodgers, Fats Waller and Johnny Cash. For further information about the “Anthology Of American Folk Music”, see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’. Freedom For The Stallion (Allen Toussaint) Dylan attempted to record ‘Freedom For The Stallion’ on June 12, 1985 in Cherokee Studios, in Hollywood, California. The musicians present were Gonzalo Quintana, Greg Arreguin and Daniel Schwartz. Seemingly unhappy with the results, Dylan attempted the song again, this time at Oceanway Studios in Los Angeles (June 16, 1985). There were three takes featuring Barry Goldberg, Sterling Smith, Jack Sherman and Jorge Calderon. All three takes from this session are in circulation among collectors. However, the June 12 take from Cherokee does not circulate. Some discographers believed that ‘Freedom For The Stallion’ was recorded in November 1984, which would place the song with the “Empire Burlesque” sessions. However, if the dates of June 12 and 16, 1985 are correct, the song was recorded shortly after the release of the album (June 8, 1985). See Appendix 1:78 for further details. A Renaissance Man of New Orleans R&B, Allen Toussaint’s piano has graced records by such greats as Smiley Lewis and Fats Domino, whilst his skill as a songwriter can be
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Freight Train Blues witnessed on hits like ‘Working In a Coal Mine’. In the early 1960s, Toussaint wrote and produced a string of hits for R&B artists, including Art and Aaron Neville. His song ‘Fortune Teller’ was covered by several ’60s rock groups including the Rolling Stones and The Who. In the 1970s, Toussaint switched to a funkier New Orleans sound, writing and producing for the likes of Dr John (‘Right Place, Wrong Time’) and Patti LaBelle, who enjoyed a Number One disco-funk smash with ‘Lady Marmalade’. In 1971, Toussaint arranged the horn parts on The Band’s “Cahoots” album and also arranged the horn sections for many of their live performances. Toussaint wrote ‘Freedom For The Stallion’ in 1971 and during the 1970s it was covered by among others: Lee Dorsey (1971), Three Dog Night (1972), Boz Scaggs (1972), David “Fathead” Newman (1972), The Hues Corporation (1973), The Oak Ridge Boys (1974), Alvin Lee (1974), Edward Bear (1974) and Gladys Knight (1978).
Freight Train Blues (John Lair) I was born in Dixie in a boomer shack, Just a little shanty by the railroad track, The humming of the drivers was my lullaby, And a freight train whistle taught me how to cry. ‘Freight Train Blues’ was written in 1935 by prolific song-smith John Lair. The song was recorded by amongst others Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, and Doc Watson. Dylan’s first known performance of this song was at the Carnegie Chapter Hall, New York on November 4, 1961. This recording is in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:14). ‘Freight Train Blues’ was released on Bob Dylan’s debut album, (see Appendix 1:15). Also see Appendix 1:37.
The French Girl (Ian Tyson / Sylvia Fricker) Bob Dylan recorded two takes of this song in 1967 during his “Basement Tapes” recording sessions. It is one of several songs recorded at this time which are connected with Ian and Sylvia (see Appendix 1:60 for further information). Dylan calls a halt to the first take and even though the band moves up a gear for the second take, they never find the groove. ‘The French Girl’ was next played during the Dylan / Dead 1987 tour rehearsal. The rehearsal took place in June of that year at the Club Front in San Rafael, California. Unfortunately, the song did not make it to the concert stage.
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Friend Of The Devil Further details about the Dylan / Dead 1987 tour rehearsal can be found in the introduction to this book.
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‘The French Girl’ was released on the Ian and Sylvia album “Play One More” (Vanguard VRS-9215, 1966). For further information regarding Ian and Sylvia, see the entry for ‘Four Strong Winds’.
Friend Of The Devil (Hunter / Garcia / Dewson) This Grateful Dead song was played by Dylan for the first time in 1990, and has been performed sporadically ever since with the most recent performance being in Morrison, CO., on July 19, 2007. If Dylan’s consistently energetic and engaging versions of this song are anything to go by, it appears to be a bit of a personal favourite with Bob. He certainly takes the song beyond anything the Grateful Dead attempted with it. Bob Dylan played the Dead’s recording of ‘Friend Of The Devil’ on show fourteen of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Devil”. The song was originally released on the Grateful Dead’s 1970 album “American Beauty”. Bob Dylan’s performance from Merrillville, IN (August 27, 1990) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The version from Austin, TX (October 25, 1991) is included on the CD “20/20 Vision”. Both renditions are extremely well played.
Froggie Went A-Courtin’ (Traditional) This song was recorded in the summer of 1992 and released on Bob Dylan’s album “Good As I Been To You” (see Appendix 1:76 for further detail about this recording session). Dylan’s faultless performance of this bizarre British folk song is both exquisite and absolutely charming. Bob Dylan would certainly have heard this song as ‘King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O’ on Harry Smith’s “Anthology Of American Folk Music”. The song was recorded in 1928 by old-time banjo player Chubby Parker. The first known appearance of the (Roud 16) lyrics is in “Wedderburn’s Complaynt of Scotland” (1548) under the name ‘The Frog Came To The Myl Dur’. Also, as pointed out by Smith in his wonderful notes to the “Anthology Of American Folk Music”, there is a reference in the London Company of Stationers Register of 1580 to ‘A Moste Strange Weddinge Of The Frogge And The Mouse’. The oldest known version to be accompanied by music appeared in Thomas Ravenscroft’s “Melismata, Mvsicall Phansies” in 1611.
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Froggie Went A-Courtin’ Although this work is often referred to as a children’s song, it is believed by some that the piece might refer to the Duke of Anjou’s wooing of Elizabeth I of England. Queen Elizabeth often gave animal nicknames to her court and those around her. However, the Wedderburn text of 1548 predates the reign of Queen Elizabeth I by nearly ten years. One possible explanation for this would be that the original text may have been satirically altered in 1580 when it was recorded in the London Company of Stationers Register. Woody Guthrie, Spider John Koerner, Pete Seeger and Odetta are just a few of the artists who have recorded this song. For further information about the “Anthology Of American Folk Music”, see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’. Bob Dylan 1974
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Get Out Of Denver
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Get Out Of Denver (Bob Seger) Although Bob Seger began performing during the mid 1960s, it was 1974 before he formed the Silver Bullet Band. The first album he recorded with the band was his seventh release. The album, “Seven”, contained the Detroit-area hard rock song ‘Get Out Of Denver’. Bob Dylan played this song as a surprise second encore on March 16, 2004, at the State Theater in Detroit, Michigan. This scorching version of Seger’s song, which is in circulation among collectors, was performed in honour of the Michigan-born rocker who, the previous day, had been inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame.
Ghost Riders In The Sky (Stan Jones) ‘(Ghost) Riders In The Sky: A Cowboy Legend’ was written on June 5, 1948 by Stan Jones. The tale of the wild hunt in which red-eyed, fire-breathing cattle are chased by the ghosts of damned cowboys, has been recorded by more than fifty different artists including Burl Ives, Vaughn Monroe, Bing Crosby, Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash. Although Burl Ives released the song first (1949), it was Vaughn Monroe’s version, released later the same year, which reached Number One on the Billboard Chart. Dylan recorded this song at the first “ew Morning” album session on May 1, 1970. See Appendix 1:68 for details about this session. Whilst the instrumentation on this take is quite strong, unfortunately Dylan’s tentative vocal is so low in the mix as to be barely audible. This recording circulates among collectors and can be found on various bootleg CDs including “Yesterday” and “Possum Belly Overalls”.
The Girl I Left Behind (Traditional) Bob Dylan performed this song, along with ‘Sally Gal’, on Oscar Brand’s Folk Song Festival show, a weekly programme broadcast on WNYC Radio in New York City. The two songs were broadcast live on October 29, 1961. This is the only known live performance of ‘The Girl I Left Behind’ (although it was reportedly recorded during the “Empire Burlesque” album sessions), which Dylan claims he learned from a farmer in South Dakota: “He played the autoharp. His name is Wilbur. Met him outside of Sioux Falls
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Girl On The Greenbriar Shore when I was there visiting ... I was looking through a book one time, I saw the same song and I remembered the way he did it”. Several musicologists have stated that the book in question might be Alan Lomax’s “The Folk Songs of North America” (Doubleday & Co., 1960), and that the song is a variant of Clarence Ashley’s ‘Maggie Walker Blues’. Although there is no doubting this, only a couple of the six verses that Dylan sings are close to Ashley’s rendition, which does not even mention a farmer in its lyrics. This would indicate therefore that Dylan either saw the song in a different book or that he re-wrote most of the lyrics. A more likely book source is Malcolm G. Law’s “American Balladry From British Broadsides” (The American Folklore Society, 1957, p248), which includes the lyrics to ‘The Girl I Left Behind’. There is, however, little doubt that Dylan knew ‘Maggie Walker Blues’ at some stage in the early 1960s because he seems to have borrowed the lyric “My parents raised me tenderly / They had no child but me” from the song and included them in his own ‘Long Time Gone’ (1963). Other variants of the song are ‘Across The Rocky Mountain’, ‘Lackey Bill’, ‘Come All You Jolly Cowboys’, ‘Wealthy Squire’, ‘I Am a Man Of Honor’ and ‘Rambling Lover’. (See Appendix 1:13 for further details). Dylan’s moving world-weary performance from the Oscar Brand show belies the singer’s tender age of twenty years. Girl On The Greenbriar Shore (Traditional) ’Twas in the year of ’92, In the merry month of June, I left my mother and a home so dear, All for that girl on the greenbriar shore. Dylan played this song twice during the acoustic sections of his 1992 European Summer Festival Tour. The first performance (June 28, 1992) was in Gothenburg, Sweden. At this show Dylan stays faithful to the traditional / Carter Family version, at least for the opening verse (above). However, at the next show (June 30, 1992) in Dunkirk, France, he regresses a decade to the year of ’82. Also, “the merry month of June” is replaced simply by “springtime”. This version was released in October 2008 on the rarities compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006”, (2008). Both of Bob Dylan’s performances (Gothenburg and Dunkirk) can be found on
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Give My Love To Rose the bootleg CDs “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000” and “Golden Vanity” respectively.
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Bob Dylan would have known this song, which was probably the template for his own composition ‘Red River Shore’, from way back and would almost certainly have been familiar with the original 1941 Carter Family recording (Bluebird B-8947, October 1941). Interestingly though, ‘Girl On The Green Briar Shore’ appears alongside both ‘Jackaroe’ and ‘Little Maggie’ on the Tom Paley album “Folksongs From The Southern Appalachian Mountains” (Elektra EKL 12, 1953). In view of the fact that Dylan introduced all three of these songs into his act between 1991 and 1993, it seems likely that he was reintroduced to ‘Girl On The Green Briar Shore’ via Paley’s album.
Give My Love To Rose (Johnny Cash) Dylan first performed this song on his US “Interstate 88 Tour”. The song was played acoustically on June 28, 1988, at Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center in Canandaigua, New York. The other two performances of the song at the University Of South Carolina (September 16, 1988) and the Christinehofs Slottspark in Sweden (May 27, 1989) began acoustically and ended on electric instruments. The song was rehearsed for the May / June summer tour of Europe (rehearsals took place in mid-May 1989 at Montana Studios, New York City) and a recording of the rehearsal is available on the CD bootleg, “The ever Ending Tour Rehearsals” (Moonlight Records). ‘Give My Love To Rose’ was written by Johnny Cash, who recorded it in 1957 for Sun records (Sun 279). It was released for the first time on his 1960 album “Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams” (SUN SLP-1245). Collectors are advised to seek out any of Dylan’s three live performances, all of which were strong and sincere covers of this ballad about life – or perhaps that should read death – after serving time in prison. Bob Dylan’s performance from Canandaigua, New York (June 28, 1988) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Go Bring Me Back My Blue-Eyed Boy (Traditional, arranged Carl Sandburg) This recording was made at the home of Bob and Sidsel “Sid” Gleason in early 1961 (See Appendix 1:6 for further details). The Gleasons had befriended a young Bob Dylan when he attended weekend get-togethers at their home in East Orange, New Jersey, which they organized to entertain the ailing Woody Guthrie. Later, Dylan began staying over at the Gleasons’ home for days at a time and it was on one such visit that Dylan and the Gleasons’ son Kevin made a tape of ten songs, including the traditional ‘Bring Me Back My Blue-Eyed Boy’. Only a fragment of this song is in circulation among collectors. This recording can be found on the bootleg CD “The Dylan’s Root”.
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Go Down, Moses Due to the brevity of this performance, identification is difficult. However, the song Dylan starts is almost certainly ‘Bring Me Back My Blue-Eyed Boy’ from Carl Sandburg’s book “The American Songbag” (originally published 1927). Go Down, Moses (Traditional) When Israel was in Egypt’s land, Let My people go, Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let My people go, Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land, Tell old Pharaoh: Let My people go. Bob Dylan has performed this song only twice– as the final encore at the first and last shows on his 1987 “Temples In Flames” tour. The first performance was at Dylan’s first-ever concert in Israel (September 5, 1987, Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv). The other performance was at London’s Wembley Arena (October 17, 1987). Both of these concerts circulate among collectors. The Tel Aviv show is available on the bootleg CD “Visit To Islael” (sic). However, ‘Go Down, Moses’ is missing from this rather mediocre CD. The London, England performance of ‘Go Down, Moses’ can be found in good quality on the bootleg CD “Final ight And More”.
Ticket for Tel Aviv Concert
Also known as ‘Let My People Go’, ‘Go Down, Moses’ is an African-American spiritual which describes events in the Old Testament, specifically Exodus 8:1. “And the Lord spake unto Moses, go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me”. The message of Passover has been interpreted by many groups of people throughout history and has become a major source of inspiration for freedom. During the time of slavery in the southern United States of America, biblical songs about becoming physically free with lyrics alluding to Moses leading the Hebrew people out of Egypt were sung by those in bondage in the hope that one day soon they too would be free from their forced labour. The spiritual song ‘Go Down, Moses’ was, like many African-American slavery songs, encrypted in a coded language so as to avoid confrontation with the white slave masters. The song asserts that slavery is contrary to the will of God and that just as the Pharaoh was punished for holding the Hebrews in bondage so will the white slave masters. This spiritual is said by some to refer to Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave, who returned time after time into the South to lead bands of slaves to freedom via the “underground” railroad. The song, which was made famous by Paul Robeson, was recorded by many black artists including Louis Armstrong.
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Go Down, You Murderers Go Down, You Murderers (Ewan MacColl)
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Tim Evans was a prisoner, Fast in his prison cell, And those who read about his crime, They damned his soul to hell, Saying “Go down you murderer, go down! The first known performance of ‘Go Down, You Murderers’ was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the full tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan. For further details regarding this recording, see Appendix 1:3. This (extract) recording can be found on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Dylan is also believed to have performed the song at either the Bastille or The Purple Onion in St. Paul, Minnesota in the summer of 1960 but no tape of this performance is in circulation. Because there is not a complete recording of this song in circulation, we may never know how much of this lengthy twelveverse story-number Dylan was singing at this time. Timothy John Evans was hanged in the United Kingdom in 1950 for the murder of his infant daughter. It was believed by many that he had also murdered his wife. However, Evans stated from the dock, that his neighbour John Christie of 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, had committed both murders. The accusations were swept aside, but when Christie was later tried for the murder of his own wife he confessed to the murder of Mrs Evans. The case made a profound impression on the British public and it eventually went some way towards the abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom. On November 19, 2004, a request to reopen the case was refused, with the judges stating the cost could not be justified. Nevertheless, they did accept that Evans did not murder his wife or baby daughter. The writer of the song, ‘Go Down, You Murderers’, Ewan MacColl, was one of the foremost architects of the 1950s British folk revival. Whether as a performer of ancient ballads or as a writer of new and original folk songs, MacColl influenced almost everyone involved in folk music during the 1950s through to the 1970s. Ewan MacColl was born in January 1915 in Salford and named James by his parents, Betsy and William Miller, both of whom were active left-wing socialists. MacColl left school in 1929 and with The Great Depression in full swing he went straight into the army of the British unemployed. He soon joined the Young Communist League and the socialist amateur theatre troupe, the Clarion Players. In 1932, the British intelligence service, MI5, opened a dossier on MacColl and for a time Special Branch kept a watch on his Manchester home. MI5 was also instrumental in some of MacColl’s songs being banned by the BBC. In 1940, he joined the Army, but after just six months he allegedly deserted. The reason for his desertion, and why he was not prosecuted when he re-surfaced after the war, remain a mystery.
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Go Tell It On The Mountain In 1950, MacColl married the dancer Jean Newlove, with whom he had two children, Hamish and Kirsty. At around this time he became involved with traditional music and began to record with Topic Records. In London, he co-founded the Ballads and Blues Club, later to become the renowned Singers Club. The club, which was started in 1953 and at which Dylan appeared, remained open until 1991. Like his friend and colleague Alan Lomax, MacColl became a collector of traditional folk ballads and over the years he recorded more than a hundred albums, many with the English folk singer A.L. Lloyd. MacColl also made several records with the Irish singer-songwriter, Dominic Behan. In 1956, and whilst still married, MacColl began a relationship with Peggy Seeger, who was more than twenty years his junior. It was for Seeger that Ewan MacColl wrote his classic song ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’. In 1979, he suffered the first of the many heart attacks which he had to endure over the subsequent ten years. On October 22, 1989, Ewan MacColl died of complications following a heart operation. MacColl wrote over 300 songs including ‘Dirty Old Town’, written about his home town of Salford in Lancashire, and ‘The Ballad Of Tim Evans’, aka ‘Go Down, You Murderers’ or ‘Go Down, Ye Murderer’. Go Tell It On The Mountain (Traditional) Go tell it on the mountain, Over the hills and far away, Go tell it on the mountain, That Jesus Christ is born. This song, which is not in circulation among collectors, was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twentyseven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, this song is not included on the circulating tapes. The complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this tape, see Appendix 1:3. This traditional African-American spiritual dates back to at least 1865. The song has been sung and recorded by many gospel and secular performers. It is considered a Christmas carol because its original lyric: “Go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born”, celebrates the Nativity. John W. Work, Jr. is sometimes credited with writing this celebrated spiritual. The song was, however, almost certainly written at least five years before Work was born. John Work was a noted collector of African-American spirituals and the probability is that he collected the song as opposed to actually writing it. The verses to ‘Go Tell It On The Mountain’ are also found in the spirituals ‘Go Down Moses’, ‘Let My People Go’ and ‘Wade In The Water’. The phrase is associated with the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. See the entry for ‘Go Down Moses’ for further details.
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Go Way From My Window In 1963, Peter Yarrow, Noel Stookey, and Mary Travers, along with their musical director, Milt Okun, rewrote the lyrics replacing “Go tell it on the mountain, That Jesus Christ is born”, with “Go tell it on the mountain, Let my people go”, to fit the Civil Rights struggle of the early 1960s.
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Go Way From My Window (John Jacob Niles) The first known performance of ‘Go Way From My Window’ was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording, see Appendix 1:3. This song can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Composer, collector and balladeer, John Jacob Niles, was born in Louisville, Kentucky on April 28, 1892. Known as the “Dean of American Balladeers”, Niles was an important influence on the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, with Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary and Burl Ives, amongst others, recording his songs. In the 1920s, Niles began publishing music. He made four lengthy trips into the southern Appalachians as an assistant to photographer Doris Ulmann. During these field trips Niles transcribed many traditional songs from oral sources, including the folk ballads ‘Pretty Polly’ and ‘Barbara Allen’. Starting in 1938, Niles recorded a number of his own compositions along with the traditional songs that he had collected. Niles accompanied himself on the Appalachian dulcimer, lute, and other stringed instruments. His performances, which were deeply intense, often included his trademark high falsetto voice which he used to portray the female characters in his songs. Niles wrote his first song, ‘Go ‘Way From My Window’, when he was just sixteen years old. Niles: “In 1908 my father had in his employ a Negro ditch-digger known as Objerall Jacket. As he dug, he sang, ‘Go way from my window, go way from my door’– just those words, over and over again, on two notes. Working beside Jacket all day, I decided that something had to be done. The results were a four-verse song dedicated to a blue-eyed, blonde girl, who didn’t think much of my efforts. The song lay fallow from 1908 to 1929, when I arranged it and transposed it to a higher key”. The song appears on the album “An Evening With John Jacob iles” (Tradition Records, 1959). Marlene Dietrich recorded the song and also regularly performed it on stage, and Bob Dylan used the title as the first line of his song ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’.
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Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad John Jacob Niles was showcased in the Martin Scorsese documentary film about Bob Dylan, “No Direction Home”, where he was cited as being an important influence on Dylan.
Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad (Woody Guthrie / Lee Hays) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. Dylan also performed this song on August 2, 2003 when he joined the Grateful Dead on stage during their set at the Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Illinois. This song was played by the Dead in concert from 1970 through to the 1990s. Jerry Garcia apparently learnt it from Delaney Bramlett in 1970. ‘Going Down The Road Feeling Bad’ was often recorded in the 1920s and 1930s by hillbilly artists such as Henry Whitter, Ernest Stoneman, and Fiddlin’ John Carson. The earliest known recording was made in 1923 by Henry Whitter. Whitter, who is often credited with writing the song, recorded it under the title ‘Lonseome Road Blues’. Although Dylan would probably have been familiar with the recordings made by Big Bill Broonzy and Elizabeth Cotton, he has almost certainly taken his version from the adaptation made by Woody Guthrie and Lee Hays. Dylan used the title of this song in his own 1997 composition, ‘Tryin’ To Get To Heaven’. “I’m just going down the road feeling bad / Trying to get to heaven before they close the door”.
Going To ew Orleans (Traditional) Bob Dylan recorded this song at the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album sessions (April 24, 1962). One of the two takes from this session is in circulation among collectors. The only known live performance of the song was recorded at the Town Hall in New York City on April 12, 1963. See Appendices 1:21 and 1:46. The New York Town Hall concert is available on the superb quality bootleg CD “Stolen Moments”.
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Golden Vanity At around this time, some of the lyrics to ‘Going To ew Orleans’ seem to have been partly interchangeable with the song ‘Corrina, Corrina’. Both songs contained motifs of Robert Johnson and both feature Dylan’s wonderful adaption of Johnson’s lyric from ‘32/20 Blues’, which Dylan had changed to “You got a 32 Special built on a cross of wood”. See the entry for Robert Johnson’s ‘32/20 Blues’. It seems therefore that Dylan had this lyric but wasn’t certain as to which song he was going to use it in.
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Golden Vanity (Traditional) O there was a lofty ship and a lofty ship was she, And the name of that ship it was the Golden Vanity. This beautiful traditional sea ballad, also known as ‘The Sweet Trinity’ and ‘The Golden Willow Tree’, is Child Ballad 286, the oldest surviving version of which dates back to around 1635. According to Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy in the notes to volume two of “Classic Ballads Of Britain And Ireland”, this ballad “par excellence”, a classic portrayal of the “underdog”, was collected in 1682 by Samuel Pepys who named Sir Walter Raleigh as the treacherous captain. This account refers to Raleigh sailing in The Lowlands in a ship called the Sweet Trinity and how a “sea-boy” managed to sink an enemy galley. In reality, the song we know today is almost certainly an amalgam of several different sea stories. Our traditional tale of treachery and deceit involves a “little cabin boy” who, in return for rewards from his captain, agrees to try to sabotage the “Turkish Enemy”. The captain tells the boy: O I will give you silver and I will give you gold, And the hand of my daughter your bonnie bride will be, If you’ll sneak alongside of the Turkish Enemy. The boy slips into the water and, with “a little drilling tool”, bores three holes in the side of the Turkish ship and, in so doing, “He sank her in the lowland sea”. However, when the task was completed and the little cabin boy returned to the Golden Vanity to claim his reward, the captain refused to allow him back on board, leaving him to drown. Eventually, the boy is pulled out of the sea by his shipmates but he soon dies on the ship’s deck. In the versions sung mostly in America – including Dylan’s – the opposing ship is called the “Turkish Revelee” and not the “Turkish Enemy”. Dylan performed this song at several concerts in 1991 during his fall US tour and again in 1992 while on tour in Australia. His performances of this traditional number, possibly learned in 1959 from John Koerner, were all quite wonderful and are well worth tracking
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Good Morning Little Schoolgirl down. They are all in circulation among collectors and can be found on various bootleg CDs including the aptly titled “Golden Vanity” and “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. There is anecdotal evidence that ‘Golden Vanity’ was part of Dylan’s early repertoire when he performed at a Minneapolis coffeehouse called the Ten o’Clock Scholar. Bob Dylan’s first paid solo public performance may have been at this coffeehouse and it is believed that he adopted the name Dylan before his first gig there.
Good Morning Little Schoolgirl (Sonny Boy Williamson) Dylan played this song on August 5, 2003, at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Noblesville, Indiana. This performance, which sees Dylan sitting in during a Grateful Dead set, is in circulation among collectors. Bob Dylan played Sonny Boy Williamson’s 1937 recording of this song on show twenty-one of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “School”.
Good Rockin’ Mama (John Lee Hooker) Bob Dylan performed this song as a one-off on his 1986 “True Confessions Tour”. The song was played at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, on August 5, 1986 and has guest John Lee Hooker on guitar and vocals. This performance is in circulation among collectors.
Gospel Plow (Hold On) (Traditional) The first known performance of this song was at the Carnegie Chapter Hall, New York City on November 4, 1961. (See Appendix 1:14 for further details about this recording). Dylan released a blistering harmonica-driven rendition of this song on his debut album (see Appendix 1:15) and also performed it on December 22, 1961 at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher (see Appendix 1:18). Although ‘Hold On’ possibly began life as a black spiritual, it has been noted by folklorist and song-collector Cecil Sharp that it was being sung in the fundamentalist “Holiness Churches” by white church-goers in Kentucky in 1917. See the entry for ‘Keep Your Eyes On The Prize’ for further information regarding variants of this song.
Got Love If You Want It (Slim Harpo) Real name James Moore, Slim Harpo got his stage name from producer Jay Miller who worked with Moore on his solo debut recording which coupled ‘I’m a King Bee’ with ‘I’ve
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Gotta Do My Time Got Love If You Want It’ (Excello, 1957). The name Slim Harpo was supposedly a humorous take on slim “harp”, harp being a popular nickname for the harmonica in blues circles. In any event, Dylan recorded a riotous version of the song – complete with harp – for inclusion on his “Down In The Grove” album.
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Three different versions of the album were pressed to acetate. The first configuration included two songs, ‘Got Love If You Want It’ and ‘Important Words’, which failed to make the final album. By the time of the second pressing, ‘Important Words’ had been dropped in favour of the John Hiatt cover ‘The Usual’, but ‘Got Love If You Want It’ remained. The third and final pressing substituted the Dylan original ‘Death Is ot The End’ for ‘Got Love If You Want It’. However, when “Down In The Groove” was released in Argentina, it had been mistakenly pressed from the second acetate version and therefore contained the deleted ‘Got Love If You Want It’. This fault occurred on the first issues of the vinyl record and the cassette version of the album (Columbia 120.017, 1980). Slim Harpo was a big influence on 1960s British bands such as the Rolling Stones. The Yardbirds and the Kinks both covered ‘Got Love If You Want It’. Dylan’s rocking interpretation of Slim’s song only utilizes three of the song’s original five verses but in any event it should have remained on the final release, though not at the expense of ‘Death Is ot The End’. It should be noted however that Dylan’s version of ‘Got Love If You Want It’ owes much more to Warren Smith’s 1957 cover of the song than it does to the original Slim Harpo recording. For further information about the Dylan / Warren Smith connection, see the entry for ‘Rock ‘Em Dead’.
Gotta Do My Time (Unknown) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. This song could be one of several tunes but in the absence of a circulating tape, identification is not possible.
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They Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dog Aroun’ They Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dog Aroun’ (Traditional) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. The roots of this cowboy song possibly go back as far as the 1880s. The song was published in Alan Lomax’s book “The Folk Songs Of North America” (Doubleday 1960), where it is listed as ‘The Hound Dawg Song’. Lomax: “Some say ‘The Hound Dawg Song’, a favourite Ozark mountain song, originated before the Civil War, when a country boy named Zeke Parish had a tussle with a townie, who had kicked his dog. Some of his neighbours laugh at old Zeke and say that ‘The Hound Dawg Song’ is a recently composed piece, while others swear that Daniel Boone brought the song to Missouri. It became universally popular at the time when Arkansas’ favourite son, Champ Clark, who was candidate for the presidency of the United States, used it as his campaign song. Since that time civic organizations and booster clubs in both Arkansas and Missouri have claimed it for their State. The tune is the old fiddler’s favourite, ‘Sandy Land’ or ‘Sally Anne’.” By contrast, Stratton Hammon of the UCLA Folklore and Mythology Department states that the song was copyrighted by the African-American songwriter James Bland (October 12, 1854 – May 6, 1911). Bland was a prolific songwriter who often wrote under assumed names. ‘Oh Dem Golden Slippers’ was written by him. ‘They Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dog Aroun’’ certainly formed part of Bland’s act for many years. Regardless, Dylan probably knew the song from Gid Tanner & the Skillet Lickers. This version, which was recorded in 1927, is probably the oldest known recording of the song. the Skillet Lickers’ recording was released, along with ‘Turkey In The Straw’, on a 78rpm disc (Columbia 15084-D). The song also appears on “The Skillet Lickers Vol 1, 1926 – 1927” (Document DOCD-8056). Bob Dylan played Rufus Thomas’ ‘Stop Kickin’ My Dog Around’ on show sixteen of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Dogs”. Although the Rufus Thomas single is quite different from the Gid Tanner song, it does contain the lyric “Every time I go to town, you’re always kicking my dog around” and his song was probably derived from the original. Like many of Dylan’s Basement performances you are left with the impression that if worked on just a little longer this could be a great track. Gotta Travel On (Clayton / Lazar / Ehrlich / Six) The first known performance of ‘Got To Travel On’ was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-
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Grand Coulee Dam seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording, see Appendix 1:3. This recording can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”.
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A rather weak rendition of this song was also recorded by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions and was released on the album (see Appendix 1:66 for further information). ‘Got To Travel On’ was also performed regularly during the 1976 leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue. Exactly where and when Dylan first learned this Paul Clayton song is not clear, but he would have had the opportunity of hearing it from two sources at around the same time. Billy Grammer’s single release of the song made it into the Top Ten of the Country Chart in 1958 and received radio airplay when it dented the lower levels of the Billboard Pop Chart. We also know that on January 31, 1959, two days prior to Buddy Holly’s final show, that seventeen-year-old Bobby Zimmerman attended “The Winter Dance Party” concert at the Armory in Duluth, Minnesota and that ‘Got To Travel On’ was almost certainly in Holly’s set at that time.
Grand Coulee Dam (Woody Guthrie) Dylan performed three Woody Guthrie songs – ‘I Ain’t Got o Home’, ‘Dear Mrs Roosevelt’ and ‘Grand Coulee Dam’ – at the two Woody Guthrie Memorial Concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York. (January 20, 1968). At the afternoon concert Dylan participated in a fourth song, ‘This Land Is Your Land’. At the evening concert the additional song was ‘This Train Is Bound For Glory’. See the entry for ‘Dear Mrs. Roosevelt’ for further details regarding these concerts and the official releases. ‘Grand Coulee Dam’, written in 1944 as a commission from the Bonneville Power Administration, tells that the biggest of the world’s wonders is to be found in “Uncle Sam’s fair land”. The Grand Coulee Dam, the largest producer of electricity in the US, is on the Columbia River in Washington State. The Bonneville promotional film was cancelled but the song can now be found on several albums including the “Columbia River Collection” and the Smithsonian / Folkways CD “This Land Is Your Land – Asch Recordings, Vol. 1”. For information about the Bonneville Power Administration project, see entry for ‘Pastures Of Plenty’. For information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
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The Great Divide The Great Divide (Sara Carter Bayes) See the entry for ‘Railroading On The Great Divide’. Great Historical Bum (Woody Guthrie) ‘Great Historical Bum’ was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording, see Appendix 1:3. This recording can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. See the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’ for a biography of Woody Guthrie. Guess Things Happen That Way (Jack Clement) Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire, are all performed as duets. This recording was never released but one of the five takes is in circulation among collectors. This recording can be found on various bootleg CDs including “ashville 1969”, “Dylan / Cash Sessions”, “A Fool Such As I” and “Aces & Diamonds”. See Appendix 2 for further details regarding these bootlegs. The song’s writer, “Cowboy” Jack Clement, began his music career in 1953 playing steel guitar with a local Memphis band. Later, he went to work as a producer and engineer for Sun Records working with future stars such as Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. He discovered and recorded Jerry Lee Lewis while Sam Phillips was away on a trip to Florida. Clement wrote many hit songs, including several for Johnny Cash for whom ‘Guess Things Happen That Way’ topped the Country Chart and reached Number Eleven on the Pop Chart in 1958. Gypsy Blood (Steve Ripley) Steve Ripley worked as a session musician on Bob Dylan’s “Shot Of Love” album (1980) and was guitarist on the 1981 North American fall tour. Dylan performed this song with Ripley taking lead vocals on October 16, 1981, at the University Of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Gypsy Davey (Traditional) This song was recorded at the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961. The tape was made by the Gleasons’ son, Kevin. See Appendix 1:6 for further information about this recording. This track can be found on the bootleg CD “The Dylan’s Root”. See the entry for ‘Black Jack Davey’ for further details about this song.
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Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen) Bob Dylan first performed Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ on July 8, 1988 at the Forum de Montréal in Canada. Montréal is Cohen’s home town and it is possible that he attended the show. Dylan’s second and final performance, on his “Interstate 88” tour, was on August 4, 1988, at the final night of a three show residency at the Greek Theatre, Hollywood. Dylan and Leonard Cohen first met sometime in the late ’60s and have remained friends ever since, meeting whenever the opportunity arises. One such occasion was after a concert in Paris, probably Dylan’s October 7, 1987 show at P.O.P.B. Bercy. The two songwriters spent some considerable time talking shop, over coffee, in a café somewhere in the 14th Arrondissment of Paris. Dylan told Cohen that he especially liked the ending to his then new song ‘Hallelujah’. “And even though it all went wrong / I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah!” During the conversation, Cohen told Dylan that ‘Hallelujah’ had taken the best part of two years to write. This startled Dylan, who later informed Cohen that his song, ‘I And I’, took just fifteen minutes to write. First released on Cohen’s 1984 album “Various Positions”, ‘Hallelujah’ has been covered numerous times and has featured in the soundtracks of several movies and television shows. As explained by John Cale in an interview with The Observer, there are several different versions of the song. Cale: “After I saw [Cohen] perform at the Beacon, I asked if I could have the lyrics to ‘Hallelujah’. When I got home one night there were fax paper rolls everywhere because Leonard had insisted on supplying all fifteen verses”.
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Hallelujah, I’m Ready (To Go) In 1994, Cohen released a significantly different version of the song on the album “Cohen Live” (recorded in Austin, TX., October 31, 1988), retaining only the final verse (the one he was complimented on by Dylan!) from the “Various Positions” album. The most famous cover of the song is Jeff Buckley’s rather lush rendition which, in 2004, was ranked number 259 on Rolling Stone magazine’s “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. Bob Dylan’s Greek Theatre performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
Hallelujah, I’m Ready (To Go) (Traditional) I can hear the voices singing soft and low, I’m ready Hallelujah, Hallelujah I’m ready to go. Dark was the night not a star was in sight, On a highway heading down below, I let my Savior in and he saved my soul from sin, Hallelujah I’m ready to go. Bob Dylan began performing ‘Hallelujah, I’m Ready (To Go)’ in the summer of 1999. The song was premiered as the opening number of his June 11 show at the General Motors Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia and was then played sporadically, always as the opening song, through until April 28, 2002. ‘Hallelujah, I’m Ready’ jockeyed with several other spiritually uplifting cover songs for the opening slot (see entries for ‘I Am The Man, Thomas’ and ‘Wait For The Light To Shine’) and in total there were thirty-eight performances. The song, which is a real attention-grabber, was a perfect opening number for these Dylan shows. It featured lots of harmonies and multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell played some very fine cittern. For those who are uncertain exactly where Dylan was spiritually at this time, this jaunty celebratory number raises the suggestion that Bob Dylan believes his soul has been “saved” and that when the time comes he is “ready to go”. This old traditional bluegrass number has been sung by the likes of Bill Monroe, Ricky Skaggs, and the Stanley Brothers. Dylan’s cover of the song from Mountain View, CA (June 19, 1999) is included on the bootleg CD “Genuine .E.T. Covers Collection 19882000”.
Handsome Molly (Traditional) Oh, I wish I was in London, hmm, hmm, Or some other seaport town, Get myself a steamboat, To sail the ocean ‘round.
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(I Don’t Want To) Hang Up My Rock ‘n’ Roll Shoes This traditional number is known to have been performed by Dylan in July 1961 at the Riverside Church, New York and in October 1962 at the Gaslight Café, New York. See Appendix 1:9 and 1:31 for further information. Both of these performances are in circulation among collectors.
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The recording from the Gaslight Café was officially released on the 2001 Japanese album “Bob Dylan Live: Thirty ine Years Of Great Performances” (SRCS 2438). This live compilation album, exclusive to Japan, was released to coincide with Bob Dylan’s 2001 tour there. The song was also released on the Starbucks’ “Live At The Gaslight 1962” CD. For further information about this release see Appendix 1:31. Like many traditional songs, the origins of ‘Handsome Molly’ are lost in the mists of time. Some musicologists regard the song as a version of the ‘Farewell Ballymoney’ / ‘Loving Hannah’ family of songs (with which it shares several verses and the whole plot, as well as some melodic similarities). This family of songs includes ‘Dark-Eyed Molly’, ‘Lovely Molly’, ‘Loving Hannah’, ‘Irish Girl’, and ‘Going To Mass Last Sunday’. There are others, however, who believe the song has it origins in Scottish traditions. ‘Handsome Molly’ is a courting ballad, a tale of love, deception and desertion, in which Molly pledges her fickle heart only to turn her roving eye toward a new love interest. After witnessing Molly’s unfaithful ways, the song’s narrator yearns to get away from his current life by sailing the oceans. This popular ballad has been recorded by numerous artists and Dylan could have learned the song first hand from one of the many Greenwich Village folkies. The first known recording is by G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter who released the song on a 78rpm record (Victor 21189, 1927). Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton’s recording of ‘Handsome Molly’ can be found on the album “Old Time Music At Clarence Ashley’s” (Folkways, FA 2355, 1961). The Country Gentlemen included the song on their album “The Country Gentlemen Sing And Play Folk Songs And Bluegrass” (Smithsonian / Folkways, 1961). The song was also included on the Stanley Brothers album “Folk Song Festival” (King 791, 1962) and Mike Seeger’s album “Old Time Country Music” (Folkways FA 2325, 1962). All of these recordings were available before Dylan began to perform the song. Hang Me, Oh Hang Me (Traditional) See entry for ‘I’ve Been All Around This World’.
(I Don’t Want To) Hang Up My Rock ‘n’ Roll Shoes (Chuck Willis) Dylan performed this song on January 17, 1993 at “The Absolutely Unofficial Blue Jeans Bash (For Arkansas)”. To the surprise of many, Dylan took part in the celebrations surrounding Bill Clinton’s inauguration as president of the United States of America. During the afternoon, he performed a single song at the Lincoln Memorial. The song, a rather dire attempt at ‘Chimes Of Freedom’, was broadcast later the same day on HBO
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Hangknot, Slipknot
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TV. In the evening, Dylan appeared at a celebratory event organized for campaign workers. “The Absolutely Unofficial Blue Jeans Bash” was staged at the National Building Museum in Washington DC and Dylan was present for four songs: ‘To Be Alone With You’, ‘Key To The Highway’, ‘I Shall Be Released’, and ‘(I Don’t Want To) Hang Up My Rock ‘n’ Roll Shoes’. He took the lead vocal on ‘To Be Alone With You’ and played guitar only on the following three songs. The band consisted of Stephen Stills, Jimmy Weider, Ronnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, Don Johnson, Richard Bell, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm and the Cate Brothers. Hangknot, Slipknot (Woody Guthrie) ‘Hangknot, Slipknot’ was one of three Woody Guthrie songs that Dylan performed on May 6, 1961, at the Indian Neck Folk Festival, in Branford, Connecticut. The fact that Dylan’s first “real” public performance comprised only of Woody Guthrie songs clearly illustrates how deeply Dylan was influenced by Guthrie at this time. A poor quality recording of Dylan’s Indian Neck performance circulates among collectors. For further information about this performance see Appendix 1:7. For details about Woody Guthrie see entry for ‘1913 Massacre’. Hard Times (Come Again o More) (Stephen Collins Foster) An extremely sincere rendition of this song was recorded in the summer of 1992 and released on Dylan’s album “Good As I Been To You” (see Appendix 1:76 for further detail about this recording session). Dylan premiered the song in concert on April 12, 1993 in the Robert S. Whitney Hall in Louisville, Kentucky. The song, which was always employed as a show opener, was an almost constant feature throughout Dylan’s 1993 summer tours, until it was suddenly dropped, mid tour, on August 21, 1993, never (as yet) to return. It was replaced by another song from the “Good As I Been To You” album, ‘You’re Gonna Quit Me’. Bob Dylan’s first performance of the song (Louisville, April 12, 1993) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This worldweary song, which seems to me to improve with the passing of time, features some nice acoustic guitar and wonderful vocal delivery. Although Emmylou Harris released a rather nice version of this song on her 1992 Grammy Award winning album “Live At The Ryman”, Dylan’s version is much closer to Jennifer Warnes’ recording, which was released on her 1979 Arista album, “Shot Through The Heart”. Interestingly, Warnes’ album also contained her cover of Dylan’s ‘Sign On The Window’.
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Hard Traveling Descriptions such as “father of American music” or “king of the early ballad” are often used in with reference to Stephen Collins Foster, and with strong justification. Compositions such as ‘Oh! Susanna’, ‘Camptown Races’, ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ and ‘Swanee River’ remain popular more than 150 years after they were written”.
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Foster was working as a bookkeeper when he wrote his first few songs; among them ‘Oh! Susanna’. In 1849 he had a book of his songs – “Foster’s Ethiopian Melodies” – published, which led to him being “discovered” by the Christy Minstrels, with whom he signed a contract. As a lover of the blackface minstrel tradition, Dylan would have been quite familiar with Foster’s work. (Dylan’s fascination with this genre persists; his 2001 album, “Love and Theft”, took its name from Eric Lott’s book about blackface minstrelsy). Foster endeavoured to make a living as a professional songwriter, but at the time song publishing was in its infancy and poor provisions for music copyright and royalties meant he earned very little money from his chosen profession. Foster went to live in New York City in 1860 but continued “hard times” prompted his wife to leave him and return with their daughter to Pittsburgh. By this time, Foster had written his best songs ‘Camptown Races’ (1850), ‘elly Bly’ (1850), ‘Swanee River’ (1851), ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ (1853), ‘Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair’ (1854), and ‘Hard Times Come Again o More’ (1854). Foster was now living in the seedy “North American Hotel” at 30 Bowery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Suffering from alcoholism and a raging fever, Foster collapsed, hitting his head against the washbasin next to his bed. He was taken to hospital where he passed away after three days. One of the finest American songwriters ever, Stephen Collins Foster had died age thirtyseven. His pockets were said to have contained thirty-eight cents and the manuscript of a new song, ‘Beautiful Dreamer’.
Hard Travelin’ (Woody Guthrie) Bob Dylan’s only known performance of this Woody Guthrie song was on January 13, 1962 for Cynthia Gooding’s WBAI radio show.
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The Harder They Come Guthrie wrote ‘Hard Travelin’’ in 1940, very much from his own experiences. He made some changes to the lyrics when he submitted the song for inclusion on his “Columbia River Collection” album (1941). In the Alan Lomax book “The Folk Songs Of North America” (Doubleday, 1960), Lomax quotes Guthrie as saying: “It’s a song about the hard travelling of the working people, not the moonstruck travelling of the professional vacationers”. For details about Woody Guthrie see entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff) Bob Dylan performed this Jimmy Cliff song four times during August and September 1989. The first performance of the song was on August 19, 1989 at the Illinois State Fair, in Springfield, Illinois. The song got its last outing so far just fifteen days later on September 3, 1989, at Greek Theatre, University Of California, Berkeley, CA. It’s a pity the song did not remain longer in the sets, because all four performances were extremely powerful. “But I’d rather be a free man in my grave / Than living as a puppet or a slave”. ‘The Harder They Come’ is the title song to the 1972 soundtrack album in which reggae singer Jimmy Cliff starred and provided the music. Although the album only made it to Number 140 on the Billboard Albums Chart the music, especially the title track, played a major role in popularizing reggae in the United States. The album went on to be ranked Number 119 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time”. Bob Dylan’s performance from Bonner Springs (August 22, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The performance from the Greek Theatre is included on CD “20/20 Vision”. Both of these fine performances are well worth seeking out.
Hava egeilah (Traditional) This lively traditional Hebrew folk song, the title of which means “Let us rejoice”, is a song of celebration, especially popular amongst Jewish and Roma communities. It is a staple at Jewish celebrations and festivals and is probably the most universally known Hebrew song. ‘Hava egeilah’ (also spelt ‘Hava agila’) has been covered by artists as diverse as Harry Belafonte, Matt Monroe and Ben Folds. The song is sometimes credited as being written by Abraham Z. Idelsohn and Moshe Nathanson. On September 24, 1989, Dylan made his second appearance on the Chabad Telethon. He performed in a trio that consisted of Harry Dean Stanton (vocals and guitar), Bob Dylan’s son-in-law, Peter Himmelman (vocals and guitar), and Dylan on recorder and harmonica). The trio, all wearing yarmulkes, was introduced as “Chopped Liver”. The performance of
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Hazy Shade Of Winter three songs – ‘Einsleipt Mein Kind Dein Elgalach’, ‘Adelita’, and ‘Hava egeilah’ – was broadcast live on the Chabad Telethon on the programme L ‘Chaim-To Life!.
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The Chabad Telethon is a Jewish organized televised event with an estimated thirty million viewers. Donations made during the event are used to provide food, clothing, shelter, and hope to thousands of people of all faiths. Starting with the introduction: “Here’s a foreign song I learned in Utah”, Bob Dylan recorded ‘Talkin’ Hava egeilah Blues’, all fifty-two seconds of it, during the April 25, 1962 “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album session (see Appendix 1:22). The recording was officially issued in 1991 on the album, “Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3, The (Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991)”. The “song”, under the title ‘Talkin’ Hava egeilah Blues’, was copyrighted to Bob Dylan in 1963. The copyright was renewed in 1991, presumably to coincide with the release of “Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3”, by Dylan’s music publishing company Special Rider Music.
Hazy Shade Of Winter (Paul Simon) Dylan opened two successive shows with this Paul Simon song– July 1, 1992, Parc des Expositions, Reims, France, and July 2, 1992, Les Eurockènnes de Belfort, Base Nautique du Malsaucy, Belfort, France. Bob Dylan’s performance from Reims can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This is a great version which features some blazing guitar at the close of the song. ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ was recorded by Simon & Garfunkel in 1967 and released on their 1968 album, “Bookends”. The song also appeared on the Simon & Garfunkel album “Live From ew York City”, which appeared in 1967, shortly before the release of the studio album.
He Was a Friend Of Mine (Traditional) This song was performed at the Gaslight Café, New York (September 1961), Gerdes Folk City, New York (September 1961) and at the Finjan Club, Montreal, Canada (July 1962). ‘He Was a Friend Of Mine’ was also recorded at the November 20 / 22, 1961 sessions for Bob Dylan’s eponymous Album. The song was not included on the final release. A
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The Heart That You Own recording from these sessions was, however, officially released on the compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991). The song was also performed at Dylan’s Carnegie Chapter Hall concert but this track is not included on any of the tapes which circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:10, 1:12, 1:14, 1:15 & 1:24 for further information. On February 24, 1990, Dylan made a surprise appearance at the Roy Orbison Tribute Concert at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, CA, joining three members of original Byrds, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Chris Hillman, on stage for their performance of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. Dylan remained on stage for performances of ‘He Was a Friend Of Mine’ and Orbison’s ‘Only The Lonely’. Unfortunately Dylan’s joint vocal on ‘He Was a Friend Of Mine’ is inaudible.
The Heart That You Own (Dwight Yoakam) This Dwight Yoakam song was played on September 2, 1999 at the Coral Sky Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida. Over the years Dylan’s interest in country music has mainly been rooted in the past. However, this one-off performance sees him attempting a cover of one of the modern day country stars, Dwight Yoakam. Although Yoakam has been a fixture on the country music scene since circa 1990, and is on his way to becoming a country legend, his music has always been an eclectic mix of genres. Although deeply influenced by Buck Owens, Yoakam has covered a number of contemporary songs including Elvis Presley’s ‘Suspicious Minds’, Queen’s ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and the Clash’s ‘Train In Vain’. Earlier live performances had seen him playing rock‘n’roll numbers and sharing the stage with a diverse array of musicians including Hardcore Punk bands. In recent years however, Yoakam has tended to focus on a more traditional style of country music. ‘The Heart That You Own’ comes from Dwight Yoakam’s 1990 album “If There Was a Way”. Containing no fewer than six chart hits, “If There Was a Way” was Yoakam’s fourth, and some would say, finest album. Dylan’s one-off performance of this pleasant country song can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. It features nice instrumentation, but Dylan’s vocal is difficult to hear. A noisy audience and very poor recording quality does not make for a good listening experience.
Hello Stranger (A.P. Carter) Dylan recorded this song in May 1993 at the “World Gone Wrong” album sessions. See Appendix 1:77 for further detail about this recording session. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Bob Dylan played the Carter Family’s original 1939 recording of ‘Hello Stranger’ on show one of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Hello”.
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Help Me Make It Through The ight After the conclusion of an eight-year association with Victor Records, the Carter Family joined Decca for whom they recorded sixty sides between 1936 and 1938. Fifteen of these recordings were re-released in May 1991 by MCA records on the album “Carter Family Country Music Hall Of Fame”. Emmylou Harris famously covered this song on what many consider to be her finest album, “Luxury Liner” (Warner Bros, 1977). Although Dylan would surely have been very familiar with the Carter Family’s original recording, hearing either of these two covers could have prompted his 1993 attempt at recording the song. Harris’ “Luxury Liner” album also The Carter Family contained her cover of the Townes Van Zandt classic ‘Pancho & Lefty’, which Dylan performed in concert in 1989 and 1991.
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Help Me Make It Through The ight (Kris Kristofferson) Dylan’s only performance of this song was on January 12, 1990, during the second of his four legendary sets at Toad’s Place, New Haven CT. However, Dylan did make a vague attempt at this song at a 1985 session whilst working on the album “Empire Burlesque”. Written by Kris Kristofferson and released on his first album, “Kristofferson” (Monument Records, 1970), the song was a Number One country hit in 1971 for country singer Sammi Smith, whose recording ranks as one of the most successful country singles of all time.
Here Comes The Sun (George Harrison) This song was played (at least in part) during Dylan’s July 1, 1981 Earls Court concert. Bob Dylan played six shows at London’s Earls Court, spending a total of nine nights in the capital. It seems that the inspiration to play this Beatles song may have come from nothing more than the fact that Dylan and George Harrison hung out together during Dylan’s stay in London. Much to the amazement of those present, Dylan attempts to play the song but abandons it when he realizes that he doesn’t actually know the words! Regardless of the quality of this particular performance, the concert as a whole must rank as one of Dylan’s finest from this period.
Hey Good Lookin’ (Hank Williams) Dylan opened his October 26, 1990, Tuscaloosa, Alabama show with a token one-off outing for Hank Williams’ ‘Hey Good Lookin’’. The song was presumably played at this show due
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Hey Joe to the venue’s location, which is close to Williams’ birthplace of Montgomery, Alabama. This one-off performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The song was originally recorded by Williams at Castle Studio, Nashville, TN, on March 16, 1951. For information about Hank Williams, see entry for ‘Honky Tonk Blues’. Hey Joe (William U. Roberts) This song, made famous by Jimi Hendrix, was recorded by Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions, which took place in Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992. The majority of the recordings, including ‘Hey Joe’, are not in circulation among collectors. It appears that this song might have been a warm up number before the session proper (see Appendix 1:75 for further information about this recording session). Shortly after these sessions, Dylan gave the song a one-off outing on his summer tour of Europe. The show was on July 12, 1992 at the Pinède de Juan-les-Pins in Antibes, France. ‘Hey Joe’ was one of several unusual, some might even say bizarre, show openers played at this time. Dylan had talked in 1991 with guitar and amp tech César Díaz about Hendrix’s sound. He then attempted ‘Dolly Dagger’ at the January 17, 1992 rehearsal for the David Letterman Show and the song made a one-off appearance two months later (March 18, 1992) at Entertainment Centre in Perth, Western Australia. There is, therefore, a definite chain of events leading up to the July ’92 performance of ‘Hey Joe’. This one-off performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The song has clearly been rehearsed and instrumentation is good. Bob, however, doesn’t quite nail the vocals. Hey La La (Price / McRight) Performed three times in concerts between May and July 1989 in Europe and Canada and also rehearsed for, but not played on, the 1990 Late Summer Tour of North America, ‘Hey La La’ is listed by Dundas as being written by “McBride” and by Heylin, simply as “Sounding like a Swiss folk song”. The song in question, a sad lament for a deceased lover, was written by Ray Price and Leonard McRight and released as a single in 1951 by Ernest Tubb (Decca 46338). The song is currently available on the excellent five-CD boxed set “Let’s Say Goodbye Like We Said Hello” (Bear Family BCD 15498). The song is also available on the Country Gentleman’s album, “Classic Country Gents Reunion” (Sugar Hill Records SH-3772, 1989).
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Highway 51 Bob Dylan’s rather pedestrian performance – complete with hideous metronomic drumming – from Stockholm, Sweden (May 28, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This song is just about saved by some fine harmonica at the close.
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Highway 51 (McClennan, arranged Dylan) ‘Highway 51’ was released on Bob Dylan’s debut album. Recordings of this song were also made in the New York home of Eve and Mac McKenzie (December 1961), Carnegie Hall Hoot, NYC (September 22, 1962) and at Dylan’s April 12, 1963 New York Town Hall concert (see Appendix 1:15, 1:17, 1:28 & 1:46 for further details). Despite being officially credited on the “Bob Dylan” album to C. Jones (Curtis Jones) and on the official Columbia / bobdylan.com website to C. White, whoever he might be, Bob Dylan’s recording appears to be an amalgam of songs. Dylan has taken verse one wholesale from Tommy McClennan’s 1940 blues, ‘ew Highway 51’ and has used this as the first and last verses of his four stanza song. Verse three of Dylan’s song is an adaption of verse two of McClennan’s song, while verse two of Dylan’s song appears to be original. A major American road artery, Route 51, or Highway 51, runs 1,286 miles from the western suburbs of New Orleans up to Wisconsin. The road was one of the primary routes for southern blacks migrating north to find work and as such it is the subject of a numerous blues songs.
Hills Of Mexico (Traditional) See entry for ‘Trail Of The Buffalo’ (‘Buffalo Skinners’).
Hiram Hubbard (Traditional) The first known performance of this song was on July 2, 1962 in the Finjan Club, Montreal, Canada (see Appendix 1:24 for further information). ‘Hiram Hubbard’ (pronounced H’arm Hubbard) was one of several extremely obscure songs that Dylan was performing around this period. An earlier example of another obscure Dylan performance, which is possibly also about a real person, is the ballad of ‘Abner Young’. Some commentators have opined that the origins of these songs are lost in the
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Homeward Bound mists of time. It is far more likely however, that both ‘Abner Young’ and ‘Hiram Hubbard’ were localized American ballads that were simply never popularized or widely collected. ‘Hiram Hubbard’ is the tale of the vigilante killing of a supposedly innocent man. Hubbard was taken by “rebels”, placed in chains, and taken to a place of execution, though the tale fails to inform the listener of the nature of the crime. The term rebel seems to indicate that the song has its origins in the American Civil War and Dylan confirmed this in a 1985 interview. Dylan: “Paul [Clayton] was just an incredible songwriter and singer. He must have known a thousand songs. I learned ‘Pay Day At Coal Creek’ and a bunch of other songs from him. We played on the same circuit and I travelled with him part of the time. When you’re listening to songs night after night, some of them rub off on you. Something I might have written might have been a take off on ‘Hiram Hubbard’, a Civil War song he used to sing, but I don’t know”. Dylan is referring here to his borrowing of the gorgeous melody that Paul Clayton used for ‘Hiram Hubbard’ and which Dylan employed in his own, ‘Percy’s Song’. The song appears to have originated in Kentucky and was handed down to folksong collector Jean Richie by her father. In her book “Singing Family of the Cumberlands” (Oxford University Press, 1955), Richie writes that, “The killing took place a few miles from home (the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky), and the song travelled abroad and was popular for many years”. Richie’s definition of popular seems somewhat at odds with my own, especially as later in the same piece she says, “Within my lifetime, I have not heard anyone else sing it but him [her father]”. Richie’s father told her that he had gathered the song from three or four people who remembered bits of it.
Homeward Bound (Paul Simon) Bob Dylan played this Paul Simon song three times during the summer of 1991. The first two performances were in Rome, Italy (June 6), and Innsbruck, Austria (June 14). The song made its third and final (thus far) appearance on July 6, 1991 at a concert in Holman Field, Nashua, New Hampshire. Dylan has a habit of murdering Paul Simon songs (‘The Boxer’ on “Self Portrait” being one such example) and these three performances certainly do not break that mould. Although I’m certainly not alone in my dislike for most of Dylan’s covers of Paul Simon’s songs, there are those who think that the gentle acoustic approach taken by Dylan to ‘Homeward Bound’ adds to the isolation and loneliness of the song and that Dylan’s general abandonment of Simon’s brilliantly catchy tune gives the lyrics more poignancy. If you would like to listen for yourself, the performances from Rome and Nashua can be found on the bootleg CDs “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000” and ‘20/20 Vision’.
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Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Henry Thomas, adapted Dylan)
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This Henry Thomas song, adapted by Dylan, was recorded at the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album sessions and at the May 1, 1970 first “ew Morning” recording session. See Appendix 1:23, 1:25, 1:49 & 1:68 for further information regarding performances. Item 1:25 was released on “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (CL 1986, CS 8786, 1963). Although this song is said to have been “adapted” from the Henry Thomas song of the same name, in reality, Dylan’s version is virtually a complete rewrite. As far as the lyrics are concerned, almost nothing remains from Thomas’ long song other than the title and the final lines: “Just-a one kind favour I ask of you / Allow me just-a one more chance”. Many of the lyrics appear to be Dylan originals while others are well used “stock” phrases taken from a variety of blues sources, including ‘Take a Whiff On Me’ / ‘Cocaine Blues’, a variant of which was a regular inclusion in Dylan’s early live sets. Although the tune is certainly borrowed from Thomas’ ‘Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance’, even this has been modified in Dylan’s up-tempo version, which also displays some rather fine harmonica playing. On the album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, the song provides some light relief after the previous two song’s ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’ and ‘Corrina, Corrina’. Henry Thomas was a blues singer who recorded twenty-three songs between 1927 and 1929. In 1962, the specialist blues re-release label Origin Jazz Library, released an album entitled “Henry Thomas Sing The Texas Blues” (Origin OJL-3), which contained fourteen of Thomas’ songs, including ‘Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance’. The scarcity of Thomas’ original recording, coupled with the proximity of the Origin re-release to Dylan’s recording of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, points to this album as being Dylan’s source.
Honky Tonk Blues (Hank Williams) Dylan played this Hank Williams song for the first time on February 1, 1999, at the Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center in Tallahassee, Florida. The song was played eight times (all wonderful) during the month of February, with the most recent performance being on February 23, at Marine Midland Arena in Buffalo, NY. The rendition from Grand Rapids, MI (February 15, 1999) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Hank Williams’ professional recording career lasted only six years, but during that time he recorded a body of work teeming with what would later be regarded as country music standards. The man once described as the Shakespeare of country music became one of Bob Dylan’s favourite country artists. Williams first attempted to record his self penned song ‘Honky
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(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man Tonk Blues’ in 1946 and he regularly tried to perfect the song in the studio until 1951. At least five separate recordings exist. When Hank Williams took the stage at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for his Grand Ole Opry debut in June, 1949 he was anything but an overnight sensation. It had taken him nearly a decade of toil to get this far but in a few short years he would be gone, not only from the stage, but from the world at large. At age sixteen, Williams quit school to begin a career in music. He made his first radio appearance on WSFA in late 1936 and soon became one of the station’s most popular performers. By the early 1940s he was one of the hottest draws in the region, and had come to the attention of several Nashville music people. Unfortunately, however, his status as a singer was matched only by his reputation for hard drinking and unreliability. His idol, Roy Acuff, warned him in no uncertain terms about the perils of alcohol when he informed Williams that he had “a million-dollar voice, but a ten-cent brain”. Despite Acuff’s advice, Williams persisted in turning up for his radio show at WSFA intoxicated and in August 1942 he was fired due to his “habitual drunkenness”. Audrey Mae Shepard began acting as Williams’ manager shortly after the couple married in December 1944. In March 1947 Williams signed with MGM, and in August 1948 he joined The Louisiana Hayride, broadcasting from Shreveport, Louisiana. His music was now in living rooms all over the southeast. In 1950 he began recording under the pseudonym of Luke the Drifter, an alter ego which allowed Williams to sing his religiousthemed songs of remorse, mortality and the futility of human relationships. By mid 1952, his now self-destructive lifestyle was coming apart at the seams, and he and Shepard were separated. In the October of 1952, Williams was fired from the Grand Ole Opry, and told in no uncertain terms not to return until he was sober. His dependency on alcohol, morphine and other painkillers was, in part, an attempt to ease his severe back pain. Shortly after midnight on New Year’s morning 1953, sleeping in the back seat of his Cadillac en route to a show, Hank Williams fulfilled the prophecy of his own ominously titled final single, ‘I’ll ever Get Out Of This World Alive’. Completely worn out at age just twenty-nine, Hank Williams was gone. The legend, however, lives on. (I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man (Willie Dixon) Bob Dylan played this Willie Dixon classic three times in 1999, the first performance being on November 11, at the Civic Center in Augusta, Maine. The song received its third, and thus far final, outing on March 15, 2000. The performance from East Rutherford (November 13, 1999) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. ‘I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man’ was written by Willie Dixon in January 1954 and first recorded by Muddy Waters that same month. The song reached Number Eight on the Billboard “Race Chart” and was included at number 225 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
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(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man ‘I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man’ is one of many songs written by Willie Dixon and made famous by Muddy Waters. In fact, all three of Waters’ 1954 single releases ‘I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man’ (Chess 1560), ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’ (Chess 1571) and ‘I’m Ready’ (Chess 1579), were written by Dixon.
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Although Bob Dylan has covered numerous songs that originated with post-World War II Chicago bluesmen such as Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, his deep love of the blues is rooted more with pre-war and country blues performers like Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Son House, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Lead Belly, Tampa Red, Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. Nevertheless, the huge influence that Dixon and Waters had over Dylan and blues music in general is utterly irrefutable. As one of the furthermost American songwriters of all time, Willie Dixon has been called both “the poet laureate of the blues” and “the father of modern Chicago blues”. Along with the great Muddy Waters, with whom he regularly worked, Willie Dixon was the most influential of all the post-World War II Chicago bluesmen. He was without doubt the preeminent blues songwriter of his era and is credited with writing more than 500 songs, including ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, ‘The Little Red Rooster’, ‘Evil’, ‘Spoonful’, ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’, ‘I Ain’t Superstitious’, ‘Wang Dang Doodle’, ‘Bring It On Home’ and ‘Back Door Man’. His songs were performed by amongst others, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Little Walter. As a producer and performer he worked with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Milton, Eddie Boyd, Jimmy Witherspoon, Lowell Fulson, Memphis Slim, Otis Rush and Jimmy Rogers. Willie Dixon was of course a performer in his own right and played upright bass at a very high standard. He appeared on many of Chuck Berry’s early recordings, which were instrumental in providing a link between the blues and the birth of rock‘n’roll. Born on July 1, 1915, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Willie Dixon was the seventh of fourteen children. He was deeply influenced by his mother, Daisy, who often spoke in rhyme to her children. In his early teens he sang with the Union Jubilee singers, a gospel quartet with its own radio programme. Dixon left Vicksburg and headed north for the bright lights and busy streets of Chicago in 1936. Standing at six-and-a-half-feet in height and weighing over 250 pounds, he decided to try his hand at boxing. However, a dispute over money with his manager ended his short pugilistic career, and he then formed his first band. The Five Breezes combined blues, jazz, and vocal harmonies. They recorded eight tracks for the Bluebird label before Dixon’s music career was halted by a spell in prison. He was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II, but refused to go to war on the grounds of being a conscientious objector.
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(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man In 1943 Dixon formed The Big Three Trio. The band played for mainly white audiences, but would also join Muddy Waters in more racy late night jam sessions. While performing with the Big Three, Dixon met Phil and Leonard Chess, who hired him on a part-time basis. However, by 1951, he had become a full-time employee at Chess Records, where he worked as a talent scout, producer, session musician and of course staff songwriter. Dixon remained with Chess until 1957 when he decided to switch to Cobra Records. However, due to financial complications, Cobra only lasted two years and Dixon returned to Chess, which is where he remained for most of the 1960s. In addition to writing and producing some of the finest blues of the ’50s and ’60s, Dixon also recorded as a duet with Memphis Slim. His first album as a solo artist, “Willie’s Blues” was released in 1960 on the Bluesville label. His next solo album, “I Am The Blues”, didn’t arrive until 1970, after which albums came at more regular intervals.
Willie Dixon
A tireless ambassador of the blues, Dixon started the Blues Heaven Foundation, an organization that works to preserve the blues’ legacy and to secure royalties for blues musicians who had previously been exploited. Unfortunately, in the 1970s and ’80s his health deteriorated due to long-term diabetes and eventually he had to have a leg amputated. On January 29, 1992, Willie Dixon died of heart failure in Burbank, CA, and was buried in the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.
Muddy Waters, popularly known for his driving electric Chicago blues and his slide guitar playing, didn’t arrive in the Windy City until 1943, and his career therefore, has one foot in rural blues and the other in post-World War II urban blues. McKinley Morganfield was born on April 4, 1913 in Issaquena County, Mississippi. His grandmother Della Grant raised him after his mother died in 1918 and it was from her that he got the nickname “Muddy”, which quite simply came from his fondness for playing in the mud. Folklorist Alan Lomax recorded Waters in the summer of 1941 when he visited Stovall, Mississippi, on a field trip to record blues musicians on behalf of the American Library of Congress. Two years later, buoyed by Lomax’s visit, Waters headed north to Chicago in the hope of becoming a professional musician. After building a reputation as a live performer, he managed to persuade Leonard and Phil Chess of Aristocrat (later Chess Records), a small, newly formed, independent Chicago label, to record him. Initially, the Chess brothers would not allow Waters to use his own musicians, but by 1952, Muddy was recording with arguably the best blues band ever: Little Walter (harp); Jimmy Rogers (guitar); Otis Spann (piano); Big Crawford (bass) and Elga Edmonds (drums). The legendary Willie Dixon was often present for recording sessions, and if that wasn’t enough, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist, the great Hubert Sumlin, also worked for a while with Muddy.
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House Carpenter
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Sumlin’s short tenure with Waters was intriguing, if only because there was a fierce rivalry between Waters and Wolf, who also boasted an all-star band of top-draw musicians. This rivalry extended much further than the quest to be the best amplified band in Chicago. By 1953, both musicians were signed to Chess and both were competing to record songs by Chess staff writer Willie Dixon. With the help of other Chicago musicians, Waters reshaped the course of the blues and continued performing almost constantly until he died quietly in his sleep on April 30, 1983, in his home in suburban Westmont Illinois. Muddy Waters
House Carpenter (Traditional) Well met, well met, my own true love, Well met, well met, cried he, I’ve just returned from the salt, salt sea, And it’s all for the love of thee. Bob Dylan first recorded this traditional tour de force at the second of the two recording sessions (November 20 and 22, 1961) that made up his eponymous debut LP. To my ears this cut, which was the final recording at the second session, is one of the strongest of Dylan’s early recordings. Clinton Heylin wrote that it was “the most extraordinary performance of the sessions, as demonically driven as anything Robert Johnson put out in his name”. Nevertheless, ‘House Carpenter’ was one of four songs recorded at these sessions that failed to make the final album. Fortunately, the track was granted official release in 1991, when it was included on the box-set “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3”. The notes that accompany this release erroneously state that ‘House Carpenter’ was recorded in March 1962 for Dylan’s second album. This song was recorded again by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions. Again the song was not included on the final release and unfortunately the recording does not circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:66 for further information. Where to start? Author Clinton Heylin has written an entire 188-page book about the history of this song (“Dylan’s Demon Lover: The Tangled Tale Of a 450-Year Old Pop Ballad”, Helter Skelter, 1999). Trying to pin down from whom Dylan learned ‘House Carpenter’ is like trying to catch water in a net. The recordings by Joan Baez (1963) and Dave van Ronk (1963) both came after Dylan’s version so they are clearly out of the frame.
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House Carpenter Dylan’s source for several traditional numbers, Paul Clayton released ‘House Carpenter’ on his 1957 Folkways album “Cumberland Mountain Folksongs”. This version, however, is different enough to be discounted. The same applies to Pete Seeger’s 1953 recording. It has become standard practice in recent years for researchers, including myself, to go straight to the Harry Smith Anthology (see entry for ‘Fishing Blues’) to unearth Dylan’s source for almost every traditional number, and whilst the earliest known recording of ‘House Carpenter’ can be found on Smith’s “Anthology Of American Folk Music”, Clarence Ashley’s 1930 recording, with its major lyrical variations, is so dissimilar to Dylan’s song as to be a non starter. After much deliberation in the pages of “Dylan’s Daemon Lover”, Clinton Heylin plumps for a recording by Almeda Riddle made in October 1959 and issued in 1960 on a collection of field recordings compiled by Alan Lomax. In the notes which accompany the 1997 CD reissue of this album, Andrew Kaye states that, “with some local adaptations, [Riddle’s recording] resembles several of Cecil Sharp’s finds in North Carolina in 1916 and 1918”. If indeed Dylan did take his version from Riddle, he has made considerable changes both to the lyrics and to the framework of the song, because Riddle’s recording contains fifteen five-line stanzas, as opposed to the more common ten or eleven four-line stanzas. Dylan’s version consists of ten verses of four lines each In trying to discover Dylan’s source there are two important points of identification: the first is the supernatural overtones in Dylan’s version, which are often absent from American variants; the second is the “hill of heaven” and “the hills of hell-fire” in the eight and ninth stanzas of Dylan’s version. Also of some interest is the “shores of sunny Italy” lyric which closes Dylan’s fourth verse. Although this lyric is certainly not unique, there are other versions which employ the lyric “the banks of the salt, salt sea”, or even the rather odd lyric “the banks of the sweet Willie”. Having listened to countless versions of ‘House Carpenter’ I have to conclude that the closest version to Dylan’s rendition seems to be Dave Van Ronk’s recording. However, as stated earlier, Van Ronk’s recording wasn’t released until 1963, some eighteen months after Dylan’s recording was made. Nevertheless, as Heylin points out, Dylan could have learnt the song first hand from Van Ronk in 1961. This is quite possible, because although Van Ronk’s album (“Inside Dave Van Ronk”) was not released until 1963, he was performing ‘House Carpenter’ in mid / late ’61 and he recorded the album in April 1962. Let us not forget that Dylan recorded Van Ronk’s arrangement of ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ for his debut LP. Both Dylan and Van Ronk have confirmed that Dylan took his
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House Carpenter version of that song from hearing Van Ronk play live and ‘House Carpenter’ was a regular inclusion in Van Ronk’s sets at about the same time.
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It is very possible therefore that Dylan took two of Van Ronk’s songs (‘House Of The Rising Sun’ and ‘House Carpenter’) into the studio with him. Although this might be a leap too far, we know that only a matter of hours after the album session had ended Dylan told Van Ronk that he had recorded his arrangement of ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. We also know that Van Ronk, who had intended to record the song himself, was absolutely livid at the news. Could Van Ronk’s fit of pique over ‘Rising Sun’ have influenced Dylan’s decision to leave ‘House Carpenter’ off the LP? If so, this would explain what otherwise seems like poor judgment on Dylan’s part. See entry for ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ for further details. Having said all of that, I think that Dylan’s version of ‘House Carpenter’ is sufficiently different to that of Van Ronk for me to conclude that Dylan’s reading of the song comes from more than one version. Roud 14, Child Ballad 243, of which there are eight variants, numbered from A to H, is entitled ‘James Harris, (The Daemon Lover)’. The song tells the tale of a “fair maid of worthy birth” named Jane Reynolds who lived “near Plimouth”. She agreed to marry a “comely proper youth” by the name of James Harris. However, shortly before the wedding Harris was “prest to sea”. Jane “kept herself a maid” for three years until news came that her husband to be had died in some foreign land. Jane then allowed herself to be wooed by a carpenter and they “married with speed”. The couple were married for four years and had three children together. However, when the carpenter went away on a three-day journey, Jane was visited by a “spirit in the night” who claimed to be James Harris. The sprit said he had been searching for his love “these seven years” and now that they were reunited they should marry as planned. Jane revealed that she was already married to a carpenter and that she had three small children. Harris replied that he could have married a king’s daughter but had “forsook her golden crown” to be with his Jane. The spirit tells Reynolds that he has seven ships and promises her fine things if only she will go with him. When the house carpenter returns home and discovers Jane has gone, he hangs himself from a tree. The song closes with “The children now are fatherless / And left without a guide / But yet no doubt the heavenly powers / will for them well provide” (Child 243A – thirty-two verses). Child 243A makes no reference as to what happens to Jane Reynolds. However, in Child 243B, C, D, E, F & G the ship which is carrying Reynolds and Harris away from the house carpenter sinks, killing Reynolds. A.L. Lloyd, with Ewan MacColl, released the song under the title of ‘The Demon Lover’ on their 1964 Topic Records album “English And Scottish Folk Ballads” (Topic, 12T103). The song also appears on several compilations. In the album’s notes Lloyd writes:
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House Of Gold “In the 17th century a very popular ballad was printed by several broadside publishers, entitled: ‘A Warning For Married Women’, being an example of Mrs Jane Reynolds (a West-country woman), born near Plymouth, who, having plighted her troth to a Seaman, was afterwards married to a Carpenter, and at last carried away by a Spirit ... [the song is sung] to a West-country tune called ‘The Fair Maid Of Bristol’, ‘Bateman’, or ‘John True’. Samuel Pepys had this one in his collection also. It was a longish ballad (thirty-two verses) but a very poor composition made by some hack poet. Perhaps the doggerel writer made his version on the basis of a fine ballad already current among folk singers. Or perhaps the folk singers took the printed song and in the course of passing it from mouth to mouth over the years and across the shires they re-shaped it into something of pride, dignity and terror. Whatever the case, the ballad has come down to us in far more handsome form than Pepys had it. Though very rarely met with nowadays, it was formerly well-known in Scotland as well as in England. For instance, Walter Scott included a good version in his “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border” (1812 edn.). Generally the Scottish texts are better than the English ones, none of which tell the full story (we have filled out our version by borrowing some stanzas from Scottish sets of the ballad), but none of the Scottish tunes for it are as good those found in the South and West of England. Our present tune was noted by H. E. D. Hammond from Mrs Russell of Upway, near Dorchester, Dorset, in 1907. Cecil Sharp considered it ‘one of the finest Dorian airs’ he had seen. Dr Vaughan Williams made a splendid choral setting of the opening verses of this ballad, which he called ‘The Lover’s Ghost’”. Although the song is usually traced back as far as he 17th century, Heylin connects the piece with two even older Scottish ballads, ‘Thomas The Rhymer’ and ‘Tam Lin’. Dylan’s recorded version, which he introduces with, “Here’s a story about a ghost come back from out the sea, come to take his bride away from the house carpenter”, was copyrighted by his music publishing company, Special Rider Music, in 1991, presumably to coincide with the songs release on “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3”.
House Of Gold (Hank Williams) Dylan played this Hank Williams song a couple of times in 1989. The first performance was on June 15, at Palacio De Los Deportes, in Madrid, Spain. The song was then rehearsed for the 1990 Summer Tour of North America but was not played on the tour. The performance from Madrid, a nice outing with lots of harmonica, can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The tune utilized on ‘House Of Gold’ is an obvious variant of Williams’ own ‘Lost Highway’. Williams’ original recording was made in 1949 as a demo and released, with overdubs, in April 1951 (Polydor 833-752). It is currently available on the “Complete Hank Williams” box set (Mercury Records, 2000). See entry for ‘Honky Tonk Blues’ for a biography of Hank Williams.
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House Of The Risin’ Sun House Of The Risin’ Sun (Traditional)
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‘House Of The Risin’ Sun’ was released on Bob Dylan’s debut album. Early live performances are known to have taken place at a number of venues (see Appendix 1:4, 1:11, 1:14, 1:15, 1:16 & 1:47). An electric version of ‘House Of The Risin’ Sun’ was made available on the officially released CD-ROM “Highway 61 Interactive”. This recording has been the subject of much controversy. In December 1964, during a session at which Dylan was not present, four of his earlier recordings were given an electric “folk-rock” backing by producer Tom Wilson. Wilson gave this same treatment to the original Simon and Garfunkel acoustic recording of ‘The Sounds Of Silence’. Again, this was done without the artists’ knowledge! Although collectors soon realised that Dylan was not responsible for this 1964 recording of ‘House Of The Risin’ Sun’, it was thought that the acoustic track, which received Wilson’s attentions, had originally been recorded by Dylan in 1962. This was a logical assumption because the other three songs – ‘Mixed Up Confusion’, ‘Rocks And Gravel’, and ‘Corrina, Corrina’ – had all been recorded in 1962, and all four songs had consecutive CO numbers on the Columbia recording sheet. However, further investigation has revealed that the electric instruments were in fact dubbed onto the original recording made on November 20, 1961 for Dylan’s debut album. The song was again recorded during the “Planet Waves” album session on November 2, 1973, at the Village Recorder Studios in Los Angeles, CA. There were two takes of the song, both incomplete. The longer of the two takes is in circulation among collectors. The next incarnation of the song was on November 28, 1975, in a hotel room in Quebec City, Canada. This recording was used in the film “Renaldo & Clara”. After a rather long rest, the song was played three times in 1986 and once in 1987. It appeared again in the summer of 2000 (George Amphitheatre, Gorge, Washington) and made its only other latter-day appearance on April 12, 2007, in Newcastle, England. This performance was presumably an acknowledgement of the Newcastle group, The Animals, who had a Number One hit with an electric cover of the song in both the United Kingdom and the United States of America. However, it might be the case that there is something funny in the water in Newcastle, because Dylan has played other “unexpected” songs there, including a one-off rendition of ‘Delia’ in 2000. Bob Dylan’s tender and extremely sincere electric performance from George, WA (June 18, 2000) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Although ‘House Of The Risin’ Sun’is believed to have taken its melody from a 17th century British folk song, the lyrics are profoundly rooted in the deep south of the United States.
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House Of The Risin’ Sun The oldest known recording of the song, made in 1933, is by Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster. Ashley may have recorded it in the 1920s, and the Library of Congress cites (but does not appear have) a couple of 78rpm records that apparently date from before his 1933 recording. Ashley stated he had learned the song from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley. Black bluesman Texas Alexander’s ‘The Risin’ Sun’, which was recorded in 1928, is sometimes cited as being the first recording, but this is a completely different song. The second known recording, entitled ‘Rounder’s Luck’, was made in 1934 by The Callahan Brothers. Roy Acuff, who recorded the song in 1938, has stated that he learnt it from Clarence Ashley. During the 1940s and ’50s, the song went through numerous incarnations by such notables as Led Belly, Josh White, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and the Weavers. Dylan said of the song: “I’d always known ‘…Risin’ Sun’ but never really knew it until I heard Dave [Van Ronk] sing it”. In his memoir “The Mayor of MacDougal Street”, Van Ronk said: “I had learned it sometime in the 1950s, from a recording by Hally Wood, the Texas singer and collector, who had got it from an Alan Lomax field recording by a Kentucky woman named Georgia Turner”. Georgia Turner (who recorded the song under the title of ‘Rising Sun Blues’) was not a recording artist or even a professional performer. However, on September 15, 1937, she did sing the song into Alan Lomax’s Presto “reproducer”. Ed Hunter, who played harmonica on the recording and who still lives 200 yards from where her family’s home once stood, told Ted Anthony of “Blues News”: “Georgie, she’s the first one I ever heard sing it. Where she got it, I don’t know. There weren’t many visitors, and she didn’t go nowhere”. Van Ronk: “I put a different spin on it by altering the chords and using a bass line that descended in half step – a common enough progression in jazz, but unusual among folksingers. By the sixties the song had become my signature piece, and I could hardly get off the stage without playing it. Then, one evening in 1962, I was sitting at my usual table in the back of the Kettle of Fish, and Dylan came slouching in. He had been up to Columbia studio with John Hammond, doing his first album. He was being very mysterioso about the whole thing … [then he said] ‘Hey, would it be okay for me to record your arrangement of ‘House Of The Rising Sun’? Oh, shit. ‘Jeez, Bobby, I’m going into the studio to do that myself in a few weeks. Can’t it wait until your next album?’ A long pause. ‘Uh-oh’ … ‘Well’, he said sheepishly, ‘I’ve already recorded it’”. Van Ronk says he flew into a “Donald Duck rage … The feud was on … The MacDougal Street gossips were all a witter with the news … Bobby’s album came out … ‘Rising Sun’
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House Of The Risin’ Sun was on it, sure enough, and it was essentially my arrangement, but Bobby’s reading had all the nuance and subtlety of a Neanderthal with a stone axe, and I took comfort thereby. Then events took a turn I would never have predicted. People started asking me to do ‘that Dylan song – the one about New Orleans’”.
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Although Dylan’s version, as released on his debut album, is unquestionably taken from Van Ronk’s live performances, Dylan was performing the song well before he came to live in New York and therefore must previously have heard one of the recordings mentioned earlier. As Dylan said “I’d always known ‘…Risin’ Sun’ but never really knew it until I heard Dave [Van Ronk] sing it”. It is highly probable that the original version of the Rising Sun lament spoke not of a boy’s experience, but of a girl corrupted into a life of ruin. Predictably, Georgia Turner’s song is about the plight of a young girl. However, most early (or otherwise) recordings made by male singers – Led Belly, Clarence Ashley, etc. – change the gender so the song appears to come from a male perspective (“it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy” etc). However, Dylan has always sung the song from the female perspective. That his versions do not sound absurd as a result, but rather are steeped in humanity, regret and empathy, is evidence of his powers as an interpreter of others’ songs. In the history of New Orleans, several businesses have borne the name Rising Sun, but whether any of these were really the model for the house in the song remains a mystery. There is a possibility that “House of the Rising Sun” was simply a euphemism used to describe a house conducting illicit business such as gambling or prostitution. It has been claimed that a house located at number 826-830, St Louis Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans was once called the House of the Rising Sun Brothel, and that it was originally run from 1862 through 1874 by a Madame named Marianne LeSoliel Levant (whose surname translates from French into ‘Rising Sun’). There is, however, no solid proof to back this claim. Newspaper advertisements in 1838 also mention a Rising Sun Coffee House on Decatur Street in New Orleans, but this business never had a claim to fame as a brothel or gambling hall. Another candidate is a Rising Sun Hall, which in the 1890s was located on the riverfront of the uptown Carrollton neighbourhood. The building, also known as the ‘benevolent association’ hall, seems to have been owned and used for meetings of a Social Aid & Pleasure Club. The rooms, which were commonly rented out to musicians for dances and functions, appear to be linked to the beginnings of jazz and it is quite conceivable that prostitution and gambling occurred there. Although no documented evidence of these activities exists, open advertising is not likely to have been employed. Nevertheless, some earlier advertising does exist. Sometime around 1820, there was an establishment called The Rising Sun Hotel, on Conti Street in the heart of the French Quarter. During its time of operation, the hotel was sold,
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Howdido and in January 1821, an advertisement was placed in the Louisiana Gazette stating the new owners would “maintain the character of giving the best entertainment, which this house has enjoyed for twenty years past. Gentlemen may here rely upon finding attentive Servants. The bar will be supplied with genuine good Liquors; and the Table, and the fare will be of the best the market or the season will afford”. Although the advert does not prove that there were illicit goings-on in The Rising Sun, there are certain euphemisms in the advert that might suggest this. In 1822, the hotel burned to the ground, and was never rebuilt. It is of course quite possible that the song was not based on an actual establishment and that as previously stated, “House of the Risin’ Sun” is simply a metaphor for the seedier things in life.
Howdido (Woody Guthrie) This song was recorded by Tony Glover in the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. This performance can be found on the bootleg CDs “Songs For Bonnie” and “The Minnesota Tapes”. ‘Howdido’ is one of many children’s written by Woody Guthrie and included on the album “ursery Days”. Written with whimsy and imagination and recorded sometime in 1947, “ursery Days” was the second album of children’s songs by Woody Guthrie. The album, which was written for children between the ages of four and eight, was first released in 1956. A re-mastered recording was issued by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 1991. Several tracks in the collection are instructional, helping children learn to count, while others are songs of love, written by Guthrie probably with his own children in mind. ‘Riding In My Car (Car, Car)’ and ‘Don’t You Push Me Down’ are also included on this album. For information regarding “Songs To Grow On For Mother And Child”, Woody Guthrie’s first album of children’s songs, See entry for ‘I Want My Milk (I Want It ow)’. For further information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
Humming Bird (Johnnie Wright / Jim Anglin / Jack Anglin) Yet another acoustic show-opening cover song, ‘Humming Bird’ was played for the first time on June 28, 2001 in Langesund, Norway. The song was played twenty-three times, making its final appearance so far on August 4, 2002 in Augusta, Maine. ‘Humming Bird’ was regularly performed by Johnnie and Jack and they recorded the song in 1951 (RCA 20-4251, 78rpm and RCA 47-4251, 45rpm).
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Humming Bird Heavily influenced by both the Delmore Brothers and the Monroe Brothers, Johnnie & Jack were one of the many singing duos of brothers to emerge in the late 1940s and ’50s. There was, however, a catch; as the names Anglin and Wright suggests, Johnnie and Jack were not blood brothers, merely brothers-in-law.
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Johnnie and Jack began playing together in 1938, forming a loose-knit country string band featuring Johnnie’s new wife Muriel Deason, who would later change her name to Kitty Wells. Johnnie and Jack’s distinctive blend of gospel-country, vocal harmonies and a Latin beat, went some way to setting them apart from some of the other country acts around at the time. The duo’s twenty-five-year partnership came to an abrupt halt in 1963 when Jack Anglin lost control of his car which crashed, killing him instantly. Following Anglin’s death, Wright continued performing and making records. Starting in November 1999, Dylan began introducing several Johnnie and Jack numbers into his live performances, including ‘Humming Bird’, ‘This World Can’t Stand Long’ and ‘Searching For a Soldiers Grave’. A further link with Johnnie and Jack can be found on Dylan’s album “Love And Theft”. Musically (tune, arrangement and even the guitar breaks), Dylan’s song ‘Tweedle Dum & Tweedle Dee’ is based on Johnnie and Jack’s song ‘Uncle John’s Bongos’, which they recorded in 1961.
ote: Bob Dylan’s concert posters are designed in a 1950s style with the words “In Person”, “And His Band” being used.
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I Ain’t Got o Home
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I Ain’t Got o Home (Woody Guthrie) This Woody Guthrie song is known to have been performed by Dylan at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher in December 1961. See Appendix 1:18 for further details. The song was played again at the afternoon show for The Woody Guthrie Memorial Concert on January 20, 1968 at Carnegie Hall, New York City. See the entry for ‘Dear Mrs. Roosevelt’ for further details regarding these concerts and the official releases. In his 1981 biography of Woody Guthrie, “Woody Guthrie: A Life”, Joe Klein wrote: “On his visits to the migrant camps that autumn [1938], Woody found that one of the more popular songs was a bouncy, jolly Baptist hymn called ‘This World Is ot My Home’, which had been made popular by the Carter Family … There was something about the song that bothered Woody. It was a mild annoyance at first, but it developed into a grating, pulsing anger as the weeks passed … He was beginning to understand that the effect of this song was to tell the migrants to wait, and be meek, and be rewarded in the next life ... It was telling them not to strike, and not to fight back. He was outraged by the idea that such an innocent-sounding song could be so insidious. An alternative set of words exploded out of him, and stood the song on its head...” Woody Guthrie recorded ‘I Ain’t Got o Home’ in April 1940 for RCA Victor. The record, a 78rpm album of his “Dust Bowl Ballads”, was Guthrie’s first “commercial” recording. For further information about Woody Guthrie, see ‘1913 Massacre’.
I Am The Man, Thomas (Ralph Stanley / Larry Sparks) Oh, I am the Man, Thomas, I am the Man, Look at these nail scars here in my hands.
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I Am The Man, Thomas This gospel-sounding song was premiered by Bob Dylan on September 4, 1999 in Atlanta, Georgia, after which it was regularly employed as a show-opener throughout 1999 and 2000. In 2001, the song fell from favour, making just two appearances, only to re-emerge in 2002, when it again became a regular in the opening slot. The song, which was played a total of fifty-nine times, was the first number for almost twenty years in which Dylan speaks in the first person as Jesus. The most recent performance of ‘I Am The Man, Thomas’ was on August 30, 2002 in Utah. Bob Dylan’s performance from East Rutherford, New Jersey (November, 13, 1999) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
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The song was written by Ralph Stanley and Larry Sparks, and was performed and recorded by both the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys. Dylan, who has a huge respect for Ralph Stanley and the Stanley Brothers’ music, appears on the 1998 two-CD set “Clinch Mountain Country” (Rebel Records CD 5001). The album features many artists, mostly from the genre of country music, performing duets with country legend, Ralph Stanley. Bob Dylan contributes lead vocals to ‘The Lonesome River’, a song written by Ralph Stanley with his older brother, Carter. Dylan has been quoted as saying the experience of performing with Ralph Stanley was “the highlight of [his] career”. Very much loved and extremely influential, the legendary Stanley Brothers embody the quintessential “mountain sound” of bluegrass music. Born in Dickenson County, Virginia, in the Clinch Mountains, Carter and Ralph Stanley had a singing father and an old-time banjo-picking mother. As teenagers, the brothers began performing around their hometown, but after graduating from high school any hopes of a career in music were interrupted by World War II. Carter, who was discharged from the army before Ralph, joined the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys, but as soon as Ralph returned home in October of 1946, they formed their own band, the Clinch Mountain Boys. The band was one of the first to adopt the new 1940s musical style created by Bill Monroe, which later became known as Stanley Brothers “bluegrass”. Carter played guitar and sang breathtaking lead vocals, whilst Ralph played banjo and sang with a strong high tenor voice that would become his trademark. Often drawing from the singing they heard in the Primitive Baptist Church, the brothers wrote a lot of their own material and many of their songs had deceptively simple lyrics that nevertheless portrayed strong emotions. A decline in the popularity of bluegrass in the late 1950s saw the Stanley Brothers move to Live Oak, Florida where they headlined the weekly “Suwannee River Jamboree” radio show on WNER. The brothers continued performing together until Carter Stanley’s untimely death in 1966 from cirrhosis of the liver. He was just forty-one years of age, but had suffered from chronic alcoholism for a lengthy period.
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I Can’t Be Satisfied After Carter’s death, Ralph revived the Clinch Mountain Boys and he is still performing in 2008, at the age of eighty-one. Although Dr. Ralph Stanley has performed on more than 170 albums, it was his role on the astonishingly successful 2000 soundtrack album of the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” that helped to bring him back to prominence.
(I Believe I’ll) Dust My Broom (Traditional) See the entry for ‘Dust My Broom’. I Can’t Be Satisfied (McKinley Morganfield) Bob Dylan played this Muddy Waters song in concert for the first time on October 25, 1992 at the Performing Arts Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Dylan opened the concert with this song, which also featured other numbers seemingly intended to keep the tour fresh. In any event ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’ was played a further eight times during the 1992 US fall tour. The performance from Youngstown, Ohio (November 2, 1992) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The song was of course made famous by Muddy Waters, who recorded it many times over his long and illustrious career. His first recording, made in April 1948, was for Aristocrat, the forerunner of the Chess label. The song seems to be a combination of ‘I Be’s Troubled’ and ‘I Be Bound To Write To You’, which Waters played for Alan Lomax in 1941 on the Stovall plantation and which Lomax recorded for the Library of Congress. ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’, with ‘I Feel Like Going Home’ on the flip-side, was an instant hit, and the three thousand 78s pressed by the label (Aristocrat 1305) sold out in little over a day. Legend has it that the morning after the record was released even Muddy Waters found it difficult to buy a copy, and he ended up having to pay thirty-one cents over the odds for one. The single had been “rationed” to one per customer and Waters had to send his wife to the shop to buy a second copy. Although the single was clearly extremely popular, in reality the shortage was caused by a rather small first pressing. The single, which was Muddy’s first success, reached Number Eleven on the R&B Chart. For details about the life of Muddy Waters, see the entry for ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’. I Can’t Get You Off My Mind (Hank Williams) Originally recorded by Hank Williams in November 1947, ‘I Can’t Get You Off My Mind’ was released as the B-side of ‘A Mansion On The Hill’ (MGM 10328). Bob Dylan chose
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I Can’t Turn You Loose to record the song for the Hank Williams tribute CD “Timeless”. This various artists’ album was released on Lost Highway Records in September 2001. It featured a star-studded lineup which included Johnny Cash, Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams, Mark Knopfler, Tom Petty, Keith Richards and Hank Williams III.
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In spite of the wealth of talent on the album, it did not really spark. However, Dylan’s heartfelt performance is something quite special and he almost seems to be spitting venom as he growls out the words. His new time-weathered voice suits the song perfectly and his contribution is one of the few high points on an otherwise disappointing album. For details about Hank Williams’ life, see the entry for ‘Honky Tonk Blues’. I Can’t Turn You Loose (Otis Redding) Dylan played guitar on this Otis Redding song with an ensemble at the Guitar Legends festival in Seville, Spain (October 17, 1991). Otis Redding’s release of ‘I Can’t Turn You Loose’ combined with ‘Just One More Day’ reached Number Eleven on the US R&B Chart in 1965. I Don’t Hurt Anymore (Don Robertson / Jack Rollins) Dylan recorded this song during the so-called “Basement Tapes” sessions. Judging by the sound of this recording and its placement on the tapes, this song may have been recorded in the “Red Room” in Dylan’s Hi Lo Ha home in Byrdcliffe and not at the main Big Pink sessions. See Appendix 1:59 for further information about this recording. After a brief false start, a slightly discordant sounding ‘I Don’t Hurt Anymore’ is committed to tape and now circulates among collectors. The song appears to have stayed with Dylan who sound-checked it before his show at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania on October 13, 1988. However, the song was not performed in concert there, or during any of the other shows on the “Interstate 88” tour. Hank Snow (The Singing Ranger) and His Rainbow Ranch Boys had a huge hit with ‘I Don’t Hurt Anymore’ in the summer of 1954. The song spent forty-one weeks on the Country Chart, twenty of those at the Number One spot.
(I Don’t Want To) Hang Up My Rock‘n’Roll Shoes (Chuck Willis) See the entry for ‘Hang Up My Rock‘n’Roll Shoes’.
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I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know (Cecil Null) Dylan’s first recorded performance of this song appears in the film “Dont Look Back”. The scene was filmed in early May 1965 in a room at the Savoy Hotel in London, England. This song was then recorded by Dylan at the April 26, 1969 “Self Portrait” album session (see Appendix 1:63 for further information). After a very long break from active service, ‘I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know’ reemerged in 1986 for the “True Confessions Tour”. The first performance of the song on that tour was on February 5, 1986 at Athletic Park in Wellington, New Zealand. The song was performed as a duet with new band-mate, Tom Petty. This song grew in stature as the tour continued and remained in the set for more than fifty performances. The last outing was on August 6, 1986 at the Mid-State Fairground in Paso Robles, California. Cecil Null wrote the rather beautiful ‘I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know’ in 1947, but the song was turned down by countless labels until RCA released The Davis Sisters’ recording in 1953. The single went to Number One on the Country Chart and remained there for eight weeks. Tragically, Betty Jack Davis was killed in a motorcar accident in the same week that the record was released. In an interview reprinted in Dorothy Horstman’s essential country music book “Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy” (E.P. Dutton, 1975), Cecil Null said of ‘I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know’: “This song was not written from true life. If every songwriter wrote true things about himself, most wives would have left long ago”.
I Forgot To Remember To Forget (Stan Kesler / Charlie Feathers) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the in upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. This song was also recorded by Dylan at the August 12, 1970 “ew Morning” album session (see Appendix 1:74 for further details about this session). Elvis Presley was not overly keen to record ‘I Forgot To Remember To Forget’ and only did so at the request of Sam Phillips. The song, which had been written by fellow Sun artists Charlie Feathers and Stan Kesler, was recorded by Presley in July 1955 and released on August 20 along with ‘Mystery Train’ (Sun 223). The RCA release (RCA Victor 47-
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I Still Miss Someone 6357, December, 1955) went to Number One on the Country Chart, where it remained for thirty-nine weeks.
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Dylan’s wistful cover of the song takes it full circle, from Kesler and Feathers’ country composition, via Presley’s up-tempo rockabilly single, and back again.
(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle (Hank Williams / Jimmie Davis) See the entry for ‘Lonesome Whistle’.
I Still Miss Someone (Johnny Cash / Roy Cash Jr.) The first known performance by Dylan of this song was when Cash and Dylan sang it backstage at the Capitol Theatre in Cardiff, Wales (May 11, 1966). Dylan revisited the song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire, are all performed as duets. This recording was never released but Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan 1966 one of the four attempts does circulate among collectors. The song then made a one-off appearance on July 1, 1986, at Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan. At this show it replaced ‘I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know’ in the mid-set slot. Johnny Cash wrote the song with his cousin Roy in 1958, and it was released on his first album for Columbia Records, “The Fabulous Johnny Cash” (Columbia CS-8122, 1959). The song reappeared a decade later when it was recorded at Folsom State Prison and released on a live Columbia album of the concert. Bob Dylan played Johnny Cash’s original 1958 recording of ‘I Still Miss Someone’ on show fifteen of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Eyes”. This inclusion appears to be one of Dylan’s “I”–“Eye”, and “Sun– Son” plays on words. I Walk The Line (Johnny Cash) Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire,
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I Want My Milk (I Want It ow) are all performed as duets. This recording was never released but it does circulate among collectors. Bob Dylan revisited the song during his 1999 double-header concerts with Paul Simon. ‘I Walk The Line’ got its first outing at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, Colorado on the opening night of the US tour (June 5, 1999). The song was performed as a duet with Simon joining Dylan, or Dylan joining Simon, on stage during the last four songs of the concert, depending on who was closing the show. The song was played twenty-six times with the final performance of the tour being on September 11, 1999 at The Pyramid in Memphis, Tennessee. ‘I Walk The Line’ was written and recorded by Johnny Cash in 1956. Cash wrote the song in only twenty minutes after a backstage conversation with Carl Perkins. Cash said that he wanted to write a song with real “consequence and meaning” and the lyrics, set against a “freight train” rhythm, gave Cash his first Number One hit single. The song was originally recorded at Sun Studio on April 2, 1956, and was released on May 1. It reached the top spot on the US Country Chart where it remained for six weeks. The song also made it to Number Nineteen on the US Pop Music Chart. Cash recorded the song four times during his career. The first recording was as the title track for his 1964 album “I Walk The Line”. The second recording, made five years later, was for the live “At San Quentin” album. The song was then re-cut in 1971 for the “I Walk The Line” soundtrack, and finally in 1988 for the Mercury Records’ “Classic Cash” album. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song at Number Thirty on their list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
I Want My Milk (I Want It ow) (Woody Guthrie) This song was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. ‘I Want My Milk (I Want It ow)’ is one of many songs that Woody Guthrie wrote for children. The song was recorded by Woody in 1947, but not released until 1956, when it appeared on his first album of children’s songs, “Songs To Grow On For Mother And Child” (Folkways). The album, which was re-mastered and re-released by Smithsonian Folkways in 1991 (SF 45035), contained eighteen songs written for “citizens from four to six”. However, as Guthrie stated, as far as the target age is concerned: “I spilled over a little on every side”. Several songs in the collection are instructional, whilst others are songs of adoration, written by Guthrie with his own children in mind. For example, the last song on the album, ‘Goodnight Little Arlo (Goodnight Little Darlin’)’, was written by Woody for his son Arlo,
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I Will Sing who would have been newly born at the time the song was written. For information regarding “ursery Days”, Woody Guthrie’s second album of children’s songs, see the entry for ‘Don’t You Push Me Down’. For information about Woody Guthrie, see the biography, which is included with the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
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I Will Sing (Max Dyer) Max Dyer’s modern hymn ‘I Will Sing’ was played as a one-off performance at the second of two nights at the Civic Theater in Akron, Ohio on May 18, 1980. The song, which closed the show, had been sound-checked before several concerts on this tour, and the two runthroughs at Le Theatre Saint-Denis in Montreal, Canada (April 22, 1980) circulate among collectors, as does the Akron performance. The song’s author, Max Dyer, is a classically trained cellist who performs in many forms of music from Opera and Chamber Music to Folk and improvised Jazz. During the 1970s Dyer was a member of a Christian folk group, and it was while working with the group in 1972 that he wrote ‘I Will Sing’. The song was completely improvised, and others who were in the house at the time soon joined in, adding lines and verses. Although the song has never been recorded, it became popular in churches around the world. Bob Dylan presumably came across the song in late 1979 or early 1980, either through the Vineyard Church, or via contacts he made there. Dyer only became aware that Bob Dylan had performed his song (twenty years after the event) when he talked with long-time ISIS Magazine contributor Scott Marshall. Marshall was at the time conducting research and interviews for his book “Restless Pilgrim: The Spiritual Journey Of Bob Dylan” (Relevant Books, 2002). If You eed Me (Bateman / Pickett / Sanders) This song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, in March / April 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:80. ‘If You eed Me’ was co-written and released by Wilson Pickett in 1962 (Double L 713). The song has been covered by a number of artists, including the Rolling Stones and Solomon Burke. Iko Iko (James Crawford) Bob Dylan performed this song, contributing guitar only, during a guest spot at a Grateful Dead concert at The Forum, Inglewood, California (February 12, 1989). The song, which is very often listed by discographers as traditional, was actually written in 1954 by James “Sugar Boy” Crawford. The song was popularised by The Dixie Cups
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I’ll ot Be a Stranger in 1965 and received further attention it was when released by Dr. John in 1972. Below is an extract from the liner notes to Dr. John’s excellent 1972 album “Dr. John’s Gumbo”: “The song was written and recorded back in the early 1950s by a New Orleans singer named James Crawford who worked under the name of Sugar Boy & the Cane Cutters. It was recorded in the 1960s by the Dixie Cups for Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller’s Red Bird Records, but the format we’re following here is Sugar Boy’s original … The song was originally called ‘Jockamo’, and it has a lot of Creole patois in it. Jockamo means ‘jester’ in the old myth. It is Mardi Gras music, and the Shaweez was one of many Mardi Gras groups who dressed up in far out Indian costumes and came on as Indian tribes. The tribes used to hang out on Claiborne Avenue and used to get juiced up there getting ready to perform and ‘second line’ in their own special style during Mardi Gras ... The tribes were like social clubs who lived all year for Mardi Gras, getting their costumes together. Many of them were musicians, gamblers, hustlers and pimps”. In 2002 James Crawford told “OffBeat Magazine”: “It came from two Indian chants that I put music to. “Iko Iko” was like a victory chant that the Indians would shout. “Jock-A-Mo” was a chant that was called when the Indians went into battle. I just put them together and made a song out of them”.
I’ll ot Be a Stranger (Traditional) Bob Dylan’s first performance of this rather beautiful song was November 7, 1997 at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Columbus, Ohio. The second and only other performance so far was nine shows later (December 5, 1997) at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D. C. Although this song is almost certainly a traditional number, it was copyrighted in the United States in 1956 by James B. Singleton, Stamps Quartet Music Co., Inc. Regardless of this, there is little doubt that Dylan came to the song via The Stanley Brothers’ 1960 recording which was released on their album “For The Good People” (King 698). This album also contains the song ‘Pass Me ot’, which Dylan performed at five concerts in 1999 and 2000. For further biographical information about the Stanley Brothers, see the entry for ‘I Am The Man, Thomas’. Bob Dylan’s performance from Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Columbus (November 7, 1997) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection
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I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man 1988-2000”. Typical of this period of the Never Ending Tour, ‘I’ll ot Be a Stranger’ is another song about the glories of being received into paradise. This wonderfully powerful performance, with spot-on Dylan vocals, is an essential inclusion in any Dylan collection.
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I’m a Rambler, I’m a Gambler (Traditional) See entry for ‘Rambler, Gambler.
I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man (Robert Johnson) Dylan’s only concert performance of this song was at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne, Australia on March 22, 1978. Bob Dylan and his band certainly do justice to this Robert Johnson tour de force. The song is performed here as a powerful rolling rocker and Dylan’s vocal is both hard-edged and potent. Blues shouter indeed. Although this recording is in circulation among collectors, the audio quality is quite poor. For biographical information about Robert Johnson, see the entry for ‘32.20 Blues’.
I’m Glad I Got To See You Once Again (Don Gibson) Often erroneously catalogued by discographers as ‘I’ll Be Around’, Don Gibson’s ‘I’m Glad I Got To See You Once Again’ was performed as a one-off on the final night of a three show residency at the Greek Theatre in Hollywood, California. The show, which took place on August 4, 1988, was near the end of the first leg of Dylan’s lengthy “Interstate 88” tour. This performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”, where it is incorrectly listed as ‘I’ll Be Around’. This was an interesting and eventful concert which saw Dylan play several cover songs including ‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’ and ‘Barbara Allen’. Tonight’s audience was also treated to the second of only two outings for Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’. Dylan broke two strings on his acoustic guitar before ploughing into ‘I’m Glad I Got To See You Once Again’. At this time Dylan’s set-up on his guitar was far too light for his late ’80s heavy percussive playing style, a problem that was rectified only after César Díaz took over as Dylan’s stage technician and tried out heavier gauge strings. ‘I’m Glad I Got To See You Once Again’ was a 1955 single release by Hank Snow (RCA Victor 20-6154) and it is Snow’s version that Dylan draws from. The song also appears on Snow’s album “Travelin’ Blues” (RCA Victor / Camden, 1966). Two months later, while on the third leg of the “Interstate 88” tour, Dylan played Hank Snow’s ‘I’m Moving On’.
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I’m In The Mood I’m In The Mood (John Lee Hooker) John Lee Hooker’s ‘I’m In The Mood’, much later retitled ‘I’m In The Mood For Love’ for a video release, forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the “Basement Tapes”. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. Hooker recorded ‘I’m In The Mood’ in Detroit on August 7, 1951. The song was released as a single by Modern Records (Modern 1636). It reached Number One on the R&B Chart.
I’m In The Mood For Love (Jimmy McHugh / Dorothy Fields) Bob Dylan played this song in concert for the first time at the Greek Theatre, Hollywood on August 3, 1988. In his book “A Life In Stolen Moments”, Clinton Heylin suggests that Dylan may have intended the song for his then girlfriend, Carole Childs, who was in the audience that night. One year later the song received three consecutive outings (August 8, 9 & 10, 1989). At the August 8 concert in Toledo, Ohio, the song is played during the acoustic set, whilst on the following two nights it gets electric workouts. The electric performance from St. Louis, Missouri, (August 9, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”, where a lovely harmonica intro leads us into a fine relaxed version. With lyrics by Dorothy Fields and music by Jimmy McHugh, ‘I’m In The Mood For Love’ was written for the 1935 movie “Every Night At Eight”. That same year the song was released by Little Jack Little, Louis Armstrong, Frances Langford, Leo Reisman and Vera Lynn.
I’m Movin’ On (Hank Snow) Dylan performed this Hank Snow song for the first time on February 5, 1986, at the Athletic Park in Wellington, New Zealand. This was the opening concert of Dylan’s “True Confessions Tour”, during which he was backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The song was played sixteen times during this tour. The next occurrence of ‘I’m Moving On’ was during a sound-check before a concert at The Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania (October 13, 1988). Although the song was not played at any of the “Interstate 88” concerts, a recording of the Upper Darby sound-check is in circulation among collectors.
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I’m ot Supposed To Care ‘I’m Movin’ On’ reappeared at three concerts during the short 1993 winter tour of northern Europe. The song made its last appearance (so far) at the final show of the tour (Mansfield Leisure Centre, Belfast, February 25, 1993). ‘I’m Movin’ On’ is also known to have been rehearsed on February 2, 1996 at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, but no recordings are in circulation. Bob Dylan’s performance from Utrecht, Netherlands (February 16, 1993) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000”.
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Recorded by Hank Snow in 1950 and released the same year by RCA records (RCA Victor 0328), ‘I’m Movin’ On’ spent forty-four weeks on the Top Ten Country Singles Chart, twenty-one of them at Number One. Snow worked for more than a year on the song and several years elapsed before he was able to record it. Snow ran through the song at his first RCA recording session (1949), but it was turned down by producer Steve Sholes. Sholes was again the producer for Snow’s spring 1950 recording session, but fortunately for all concerned, he had forgotten he did not like the song and allowed it to be recorded. It was the first of seven Number One hits for Snow. I’m ot Supposed To Care (Gordon Lightfoot) Before embarking on his lengthy 1989 summer tour, Dylan spent time rehearsing the band at Montana Studios in New York City (May, 1989). Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘I’m ot Supposed To Care’ was run through once at this session but did not appear on the tour. A recording of this extensive session does however circulate among collectors. The song next appeared during Dylan’s recording sessions at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The session ran from May 9 to May 11, 1994, but we only have documentation of five songs being recorded. All the songs are covers and over the years some have been released, the first being ‘Boogie Woogie Country Girl’, which was included on the March 1995 “A Tribute To Doc Pomus” album. An extract from ‘My Blue Eyed Jane’ appeared on the CD-ROM “Highway 61 Interactive”, which was also released in 1995. The complete song, with new vocals overdubbed onto the backing track, was included on the album “The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers” (August 1997). The remaining tracks, ‘Easy Rider (Don’t Deny My ame)’, ‘One ight Of Sin’, and ‘I’m ot Supposed To Care’, remain unreleased and are not in circulation among collectors. The original purpose of these sessions is not entirely clear. ‘I’m ot Supposed To Care’ eventually got its live concert debut on May 13, 1998 at The Rage in Vancouver, Canada. Presumably the performance was in homage to Lightfoot, who was born in Canada. The song was performed again ten
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I’m Ready days later in Anaheim, California, and it received its third and final outing of the 1998 tour on October 29, in Lightfoot’s home province of Ontario. All of these wonderful renditions feature precise vocals from Dylan and are a must in any Dylan collection. All of these live performances circulate among collectors and the Anaheim performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. See Appendix 2 for further details. ‘I’m ot Supposed To Care’ was released on Gordon Lightfoot’s twelfth album “Summertime Dream” (Reprise, 1976). The song is not dissimilar to Lightfoot’s earlier song, ‘Early Morning Rain’, which Dylan recorded for his album “Self Portrait”.
I’m Ready (Willie Dixon) Dylan performed this blues classic as the opening number at two dozen of his September / October 1978 US shows. The song got its first outing on September 15, at the Civic Center in Augusta, Maine. The final performance of the tour was on October 20, 1978 at the Richfield Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio. ‘I’m Ready’ is one of many songs written by Willie Dixon and made famous by Muddy Waters. In fact, all three of Waters’ 1954 single releases (‘I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man’, Chess 1560, ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’, Chess 1571 and ‘I’m Ready’, Chess 1579) were written by Dixon. For further details about Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters see the entry for ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’.
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams) Although this Hank Williams song has never actually been performed by Bob Dylan, it is included here on the strength of several “almost” performances. The song made its first brief appearance in the film “Dont Look Back”. The short clip was filmed in 1965 in a room in the Savoy Hotel, London. Dylan also rehearsed the song with the Grateful Dead in June 1987, and although it was not performed on the tour that followed, a recording of the rehearsal is in circulation among collectors. Finally, Bob Dylan played Hank Williams’ 1949 recording of ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ on show thirty-nine of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Tears”. Written in 1949, and released on MGM (MGM 10560-B), this poignant song about loneliness was largely inspired by Williams’ troubled relationship with wife, Audrey
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Important Words Sheppard. The song went to Number One on the Country Chart. For biographical information about Hank Williams, see the entry for ‘Honky Tonk Blues’.
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Important Words (Gene Vincent / Bill Davis) This Gene Vincent song was recorded by Dylan at Sunset Sound Studios, Hollywood during the Spring 1987 “Down In The Groove” album sessions. See Appendix 1:80. Three different versions of the album were pressed to acetate. The first configuration of the album included two songs, ‘Got Love If You Want It’ and ‘Important Words’, both of which failed to make the final cut. By the time of the second pressing, ‘Important Words’ had been dropped in favour of the John Hiatt cover ‘The Usual’ but ‘Got Love If You Want It’ remained. Vincent originally recorded the song in October 1956 and The Jordanaires were brought in to add backing vocals. Coupled with ‘Crazy Legs’, the song was released in 1957 (Capitol F3617). Exactly two years later (October 1958) Vincent recorded it again but this recording was not released until 1963 in Europe and 1969 in the USA. In a 1960 interview, Vincent said ‘Important Words’ was his “favourite song to date”. However, to my ears it isn’t really that special.
In My Time Of Dying (Traditional, arranged Blind Willie Johnson) Bob Dylan released this song under the slightly amended title of ‘In My Time Of Dyin’’ on his 1962 eponymous debut album. According to Stacey Williams (aka Robert Shelton) in the liner notes for the “Bob Dylan” album: “Dylan had never sung ‘In My Time of Dyin’’ prior to this recording session. He does not recall where he first heard it. The guitar is fretted with the lipstick holder he borrowed from his girl, Susie Rotolo, who sat devotedly and wide-eyed through the recording session”. Although this song is almost certainly a “traditional” number, in that it cannot be traced back to its original composer, it is most often associated with Blind Willie Johnson and Josh White. The first known recording of the song was on December 3, 1927 when Blind Willie Johnson laid down his gospel interpretation at Columbia studios. Johnson, the man with a voice to die for, recorded the song under the title of ‘Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed’. The next recording of note was made in 1929 by Charley Patton, who recorded the song as ‘Jesus Is a Dying-Bed Maker’. Using the pseudonym “The Singing Christian”, Josh White recorded this number in 1933 under the title ‘In My Time Of Dying’. The song is also known under other titles including, ‘Jesus Is Making Up My Dying Bed’, ‘In My Dying Room’, and ‘Well, Well’. Although Josh White was probably the most popular blues singer of his era, there is no evidence that Bob Dylan was in any way influenced by him, yet for reasons that are not
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In Search Of Little Sadie clear to me, many music historians believe that White’s slightly syrupy 1933 recording is the most likely source for Dylan’s version. However, other than the title and some of the first verse, the two recordings have little in common and to these ears Dylan’s version, which is both forceful and slightly uneven, sounds much closer to that of Willie Johnson. It should also be noted that both Johnson and Dylan perform the song on slide guitar. The plain truth is that Dylan’s version contains many lyrics that are different from anything that had gone before, and as such he practically makes the song his own. For his part, Josh White was the artist most responsible for introducing black folk, blues and spiritual music to white America and in turn to the rest of the world. Tales about his boyhood and how he guided more than sixty blind, black street-singers around America, including Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake, are fascinating. They recount hideous acts by the Ku Klux Klan such as tarring and featherings, lynchings, and the burning at the stake of an elderly black man. For information about Blind Willie Johnson see the entry for ‘Motherless Children’. In Search Of Little Sadie (Traditional, arranged Dylan) This song was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” sessions and released on the album. See Appendix 1:65 for further information. Quite why Dylan included this version of ‘Little Sadie’ on “Self Portrait”, especially when the other version, recorded at the same session, is so much better, is one of life’s mysteries. The ‘Little Sadie’ /‘Bad Lee Brown’ family of songs contains many varied titles for this North Carolina murder ballad. The title ‘In Search Of Little Sadie’, however, is clearly Dylan’s creation. ‘In Search Of Little Sadie’ is one of several songs associated with Bob Dylan that have for many years had confusing and contradictory copyright notices. Although Dylan’s version is clearly taken from Clarence Ashley’s 1962 recording of this traditional song, it is credited on the “Self Portrait” album as being a Dylan composition. However, the “Self Portrait” songbook is more correct in stating “arranged Bob Dylan”. Neither of the two official “Lyrics” books lists ‘In Search Of Little Sadie’, which by default infers the song was not written by Bob Dylan. However, the official Dylan website bobdylan.com gives the copyright details as “1970 Big Sky Music” (one of Bob Dylan’s music publishing companies). Presumably the details on the website are simply taken from the information printed on original albums. Full details can be found in the entry for ‘Little Sadie’.
In The Evening (When The Sun Goes Down) (Leroy Carr) Dylan played this most haunting of blues tunes at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher on December 22, 1961 (see Appendix 1:18 for further information). A tape of this home recording circulates among collectors and ‘In The Evening When The Sun Goes Down’ can be found on several bootleg CDs including “The Minnesota Tapes” (Wanted Man 033). See Appendix 2 for further information.
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In The Pines (Black Girl) This song was written by blues crooner Leroy Carr, who recorded it in February 1935 with Scrapper Blackwell on guitar. The recording was released as ‘In The Evening’ by Bluebird Records (Bluebird B-5877-A). This recording session, which produced eight sides, was Carr’s last. The singer, who was suffering from alcoholism, died suddenly one month after the Bluebird session. He was aged thirty.
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Also known as ‘In The Evening (When The Sun Goes Down)’ or ‘When The Sun Goes Down’, the song has been recorded many times, most notably by Brownie McGhee and by Big Bill Broonzy.
In The Pines (Black Girl) (Traditional, arranged Huddie Ledbetter) Bob Dylan’s first known performance of this song was played at the Carnegie Chapter Hall, New York on November 4, 1961 (see Appendix 1:14 for further details about this recording). Also see Appendices 1:11 and 1:12. Dylan introduced a slightly unusual version of this song into his live show on July 3, 1989 at the Marcus Amphitheatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. An absolutely fabulous electric version with plenty of slide guitar was also tried out on January 12, 1990 at Toad’s Place in New Haven, Connecticut. This stunning rendition is an absolute must for all Dylan collectors. The acoustic version from Milwaukee can be found on the bootleg CD “20/20 Vision” whilst the electric outing appears on the “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. At the Carnegie Chapter Hall in 1961, Dylan sets the scene with a spoken intro:
Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly)
“This is the story about a little girl, runnin’ all over, findin’ out all about life. She’s goin’ out at night, comin’ home, keepin’ late hours, findin’ out all about just what makes up life. Eleven years old”.
This rendition, which at this stage is perhaps not fully perfected, contains a rather gruesome verse in which the narrator tells of the death of their daddy, a railroad man, who was killed a-mile-and-a-half from town. The head of this unfortunate person was found beneath the train’s driving wheel, but the body was never found. This verse is not included in Dylan’s later performances. The song is a traditional number which is quite often credited to Lead Belly, who first recorded it for Musicraft Records in February 1944. It has since been performed and
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In The Still Of The ight (I’ll Remember) recorded by many artists, including Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, who released the song as a single in 1952. Prior to Dylan’s Carnegie Chapter Hall performance there were other notable recordings by Paul Clayton (1956), Pete Seeger (1958), Dave Van Ronk (1959) and Joan Baez (1961). The song, which has its roots in the Southern Appalachians, occurs with different titles such as ‘Where Did You Sleep Last ight?’, ‘Black Girl’ and ‘The Longest Train’. According to W. K. McNeil’s book “Southern Mountain Folksongs” there is a six hundred and fifty-page unpublished study of ‘In The Pines’ by Judith McCulloh. This work looks at the lyrics and music of 160 variations of the song. According to music historian and folk music collator Alan Lomax, Lead Belly learned the song as ‘Where Did You Sleep Last ight?’. He took it from a 1917 printed version and also from a recording that had been committed to a phonograph cylinder in 1925 by a folk music collector. The 1917 printed version was compiled by Cecil Sharp and comprised just four lines and a melody: “Black girl, black girl, don’t lie to me, Where did you stay last night? I stayed in the pines where the sun never shines, And shivered when the cold wind blows”. The 1925 cylinder recording is the earliest documentation of ‘The Longest Train’ variant of the song. The line “the longest train I ever saw” began as a separate song that was later merged into ‘Where Did You Sleep Last ight?’. Lead Belly recorded over half-a-dozen versions between 1944 and 1948, most frequently under the title ‘Black Girl’. In later years the song, under the name of ‘Where Did You Sleep Last ight’, was made famous once more by American rock band Nirvana. Nirvana’s version, which featured piercing, harrowing vocals from lead singer Kurt Cobain, was released on their 1994 album “MTV Unplugged In ew York” (Geffen DGCD-24727).
In The Still Of The ight (I’ll Remember) (Fred Parris) Young Bobby Zimmerman along with friends, Howard Rutman and Larry Kegan, cut their own 78rpm record on Christmas Eve 1956. ‘In The Still Of The ight’ was one of the eight songs that was included as part of their eight-minute medley. None of this recording is in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:1 for further information). Fifty years after making their schoolboy record, Bob Dylan would revisit the song utilizing its title, “In the still of the night”, for the opening lines of his “Modern Times” song ‘When The Deal Goes Down’.
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In The Summertime ‘In The Still Of The ight’ was written by Fred Parris, the leader of the doo-wop group the Five Satins. The song was originally released in 1955 as the B-side to the single ‘The Jones Girl’. The record was re-released in 1956, with ‘In The Still Of The ight’ as the A-side, and this time the song rose to Number Three on the R&B Chart and Number Twenty-Four on the National Pop Chart. Although the song’s initial success was only moderate, its reputation grew and in 1987-’88 over ten million copies were sold as part of the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack album. The song is ranked at Number Ninety on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of “the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
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In The Summertime (Ray Dorset) This song, written by Ray Dorset, should not be confused with Dylan’s own ‘In The Summertime’ as released on his 1981 album “Shot Of Love”. Ray Dorset was the founder, lead singer and guitarist with the British group Mungo Jerry. The band’s name comes from the poem ‘Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer’, from T. S. Eliot’s 1939 book “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”. The skiffle-style blues ‘In The Summertime’ was the band’s first record. The single sold more than thirty million copies and reached the top spot on most charts worldwide. It went to Number One on the UK Pop Chart in the summer of 1970 where it remained for seven weeks. The group’s follow-up single, ‘Baby Jump’, also topped the UK chart in March 1971. Both songs were contained on the album “Electronically Tested”. Bob Dylan probably recorded ‘In The Summertime’ on June 16, 1985 at Oceanway Studios in Hollywood, California. There were four takes featuring Barry Goldberg, Sterling Smith, Jack Sherman and Jorge Calderon. All four takes from this session are in circulation among collectors. It was originally believed that ‘In The Summertime’ was recorded by Dylan in November 1984, which placed it as an “Empire Burlesque” outtake. However, if the date of June 16, 1985 is correct, the song was recorded in the weeks after the release of the album (June 8, 1985). See Appendix 1:78 for further details. It Hurts Me Too (Tampa Red) This song was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions. See Appendix 1:65 for further information. Although Dylan’s rendition of the song is below par it made the final cut and is included on the album.
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It’s All In The Game Even though this song is often attributed to Elmore James, the earliest known recording is Tampa Red’s 1940 release, which credits him as the composer. It is possible however that the song goes back even further than Tampa’s recording. In reality, Bob Dylan’s version, which is sometimes known as ‘When Things Go Wrong With You (It Hurts Me Too)’, is quite different from both Tampa Red’s 1940 release and Elmore James’ more celebrated 1958 cover version, though it does have one verse which is very close to Tampa Red’s recording. “I love you baby, you know it’s true, So why put up, mama, with the way you do, When things go wrong, so wrong with you, It hurts me too”. For further information about Tampa Red, see the entry for ‘Love Her With a Feeling’.
It’s All In The Game (Carl Sigman / Charles Dawes) Bob Dylan performed this song, sharing lead vocals with backing singer Clydie King, at ten concerts during 1981. The song got its first outing on October 17, at the Mecca Auditorium, University of Wisconsin. Written as ‘Melody In A Major’ in 1912 by the then future US Vice-President, Charles G. Dawes, with lyrics added in 1951 by Carl Sigman, Tommy Edwards took ‘It’s All In The Game’ to Number Eighteen on the Billboard Chart that same year. Seven years later, in 1958, Edwards re-recorded the song for the same label (MGM). He was backed by the same orchestra, but with an arrangement more suited to the rock’n’roll era. This time the song went all the way to Number One making Dawes the only US Vice President ever to top the Pop Chart. The song has been recorded by a number of artists, the most notable being The Four Tops, who took the song to Number Five in the UK and a Number Twenty-Four in the US. However, Dylan may well have been reminded of the song when Van Morrison released it on his 1979 album “Into The Music”.
It’s Hard To Be Blind (Traditional) This song was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then
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It’s Too Late home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. This song was performed again by Dylan at the apartment of Bonnie Beecher during a December 1961 visit to Minneapolis. See Appendix 1:8 and 1:18 for information about these recordings. Both of these renditions, which differ lyrically in parts, can be found on several bootleg CDs including “The Minnesota Tapes” (Wanted Man 033). See Appendix 2 for further information.
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Bob Dylan appears to have adapted this song from Reverend Gary Davis’ ‘There Was a Time That I Went Blind’. It should be noted however that Dylan’s song does contain a considerable amount of what appear to be self-penned lyrics. Dylan introduced his December ’61 rendition by saying: “I wrote my own new song to it, it’s called ‘It’s hard’ … ‘It’s hard to be poor’, but I’ll sing it Gary’s way”. ‘There Was a Time That I Went Blind’ was one of seven songs recorded in 1956 by Reverend Gary Davis for Riverside that redefined his standing in blues music.
It’s Too Late (Chuck Willis) Bob Dylan’s first performance of this Chuck Willis number was in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 10, 1991. Four years passed before the song was reintroduced at two shows on the “Fall Classics Tour”. Those concerts were at The Edge, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, September, 23 1995 and The Joint, Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, November 11, 1995. The song was played during a sound-check before a concert in Bournemouth, England (October 1, 1997) but it was not played at the show or indeed at any time on 1997 the tour. Dylan’s rendition from The Edge, Fort Lauderdale can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”, where it is incorrectly titled as ‘Tell Me It’s ot Too Late’. In any event this rather funky laidback version is extremely well sung. In 1956, Chuck Willis moved to Atlantic Records and immediately repeated his earlier successes with three singles ‘Juanita’, ‘Love Me Cherry’ and ‘It’s Too Late’. Willis, who had suffered from stomach ulcers for many years, died suddenly while at the peak of his career. Ironically, his last single release was entitled ‘What Am I Living For?’. Dylan performed Chuck Willis’ ‘Hang Up My Rock‘n’Roll Shoes’ in January 1993 at “The Absolutely Unofficial Blue Jeans Bash (For Arkansas)”. See the entry for (‘I’m Going To) Hang Up My Rock‘n’Roll Shoes’.
I’ve Been All Around This World (Traditional) Up on the Blue Ridge mountain, there I’ll take my stand, Up on the Blue Ridge mountain, there I’ll take my stand,
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I’ve Been All Around This World A rifle on my shoulder, six-shooter in my hand, Lord, Lord, I’ve been all around this world. Although this traditional song has been covered by a number of people, including Dave Van Ronk as ‘Hang Me, Oh Hang Me’ (1962), the most likely source for Dylan’s version is Jerry Garcia. The song was performed live by Garcia and the Grateful Dead, and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band version was made available in 1987 on the album “Almost Acoustic”. The earliest known and most often cited version of the song was recorded by Justus Begley for the Library of Congress in 1937. This ten-stanza version is however far enough removed from Dylan’s rendition to be discounted as a possible root source. It is far more likely that Garcia took his version from Grandpa Jones, who recorded his adaption in 1943 for the King label. Jones’ song is almost identical to the lyrics sung by Garcia. In turn, Dylan sings the same four verses as sung by Garcia, but amends the name “Lulu” to “Hattie”. Bob Dylan performed the song at Toad’s Place in New Haven, Connecticut, on January 12, 1990. The song was played during the first and fourth sets in an evening which saw Dylan play no fewer than fifty songs in preparation for his forthcoming “Fastbreak” tour. The song was played seven times during that tour and re-emerged in 1992 for two further outings. Dylan had previously sung a version of the song in the 1962 BBC television play “Madhouse On Castle Street”. This early version seems to be based on Dave Van Ronk’s interpretation. One of the two performances from Toad’s Place and a rendition from Toronto (June 6, 1990) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Both these versions are extremely powerful and sung with passion, but, as one might expect, the more practiced semi-acoustic version from Toronto is the better of the two. Also, as stated in some of my other reviews of songs performed at Toad’s, the somewhat overenthusiastic audience does not help the overall listening experience.
1920s record companiies often usedthe devil theme to illustrate the dangers of listening to blues music. Robert Johnson is reputed to have sold his soul to the devil in order to gain his ability as a guitar player.
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Jack-A-Roe
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Jack-A-Roe (Traditional) There was a wealthy merchant, in London he did dwell, He had a beautiful daughter, the truth to you I’ll tell, Oh the truth to you I’ll tell. She had sweethearts a-plenty and men of high degree, But none but Jack the sailor her true love e’er could be, Oh her true love e’er could be. This song was recorded in May 1993 and released on Bob Dylan’s album, “World Gone Wrong”. See Appendix 1:77 for further details about this recording session. Dylan also performed the song twice at The Supper Club, New York, during the late shows on November 16 and 17, 1993. Dylan states in his self-penned sleeve notes to the “World Gone Wrong” album that he got this song from Tom Paley. Interestingly, ‘Girl On The Green Briar Shore’ and ‘Little Maggie’ both appear alongside ‘Jack-A-Row’ on the Tom Paley album “Folksongs From The Southern Appalachian Mountains” (Elektra EKL 12, 1953). Dylan introduced all three of these songs into his act between 1991 and 1993 and I would therefore suggest that he may well have got all three of these numbers from Paley’s album. Dylan would of course have been familiar with numerous other recordings of ‘Jack-A-Row’, including Joan Baez’s rendition released on her 1963 album “In Concert, Pt. 2”. Also known by the titles ‘Jack Monroe’, ‘Jackaroo’, ‘Jack The Sailor’ and ‘Jack Went ASailing’, the ballad ‘Jack-A-Roe’ (sometimes written as ‘Jackaroe’) tells the story of a young woman forbidden by her father to see her lover. As is common with a number of other traditional sea ballads, the woman dresses as a sailor and follows her lover who has been called to sea to fight. Unlike most of the other ballads, however, this song ends happily when the couple marry, but only after she finds him wounded and he is healed by a doctor. A beautiful traditional ballad of uncertain (though presumably English) origin, ‘Jack-ARoe’ – under the title of ‘Jack Munro’ – can be traced back to between 1774 and 1825 through the Bodleian Library ballad collection. The most common early American version, ‘Jack The Sailor’, was popular in the Southern Appalachians, which is where the song was collected for Cecil Sharp’s “English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians”.
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Jamaica Farewell Bob Dylan’s Supper Club performance from November 17, 1993 can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Jamaica Farewell (Burgess) This song was recorded by Dylan at the June 3, 1970 “ew Morning” album session. This recording does not circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:71 for further details. As the title suggests, ‘Jamaica Farewell’ is about the heartache of leaving behind the splendours of Jamaica, not to mention “a little girl in Kingston town”. The lyrics to this popular calypso were written by Brooklyn-born Irving Burgie who assumed the name Lord Burgess whilst performing in the early 1950s in Greenwich Village clubs like the Village Vanguard. Burgess, whose mother was from Barbados, based many of his songs on the Jamaican folk tradition, and the tune he used for ‘Jamaica Farewell’ is taken from another calypso, entitled ‘Iron Bar’. It is also quite probable that Burgess incorporated a selection of lyrics from older West Indies folk songs into his composition. Burgess met New York-born Jamaican Harry Belafonte in 1955 and provided him with ‘Day-O’ and a number of other songs for his performance on the television programme “Holiday in Trinidad”. After his successful performance on the programme, Belafonte released an album of calypso songs simply entitled “Calypso”. The album (RCA Victor LPM-1248, 1956), which featured ‘Day-O (Banana Boat Song)’ and ‘Jamaica Farewell’, was astonishingly successful and went on to become the first full-length LP to sell over one million copies. Burgess continued to write for Belafonte, providing him with ‘Island In The Sun’, which was the title song for the 1957 movie starring Harry Belafonte. Later, Burgess would write the lyrics to ‘In Plenty And In Time Of eed’, which was adopted as the national anthem for Barbados when the island gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1966. Bob Dylan would almost certainly have been aware of Burgess’ ‘Jamaica Farewell’ from Harry Belafonte’s “Calypso” album. Dylan of course played harmonica on the title track of Belafonte’s 1962 album “Midnight Special”. James Alley Blues (Rabbit Brown) The first known Dylan performance of this song was recorded in May 1961 by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twentyfive-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. This song was also played at the New York home of Eve and Mac McKenzie in September 1962. This recording is also in circulation. See Appendix 1:27 for further information. In March 1927, Richard (Rabbit) Brown waxed six sides – excellent performances that only hint at his talent – for the recording pioneer Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking Machine
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Jenny, Jenny Company. This brief catalogue represents virtually all that is known for certain about Brown. Where he was born, where he died and how he learned to play all remain a mystery. ‘James Alley Blues’ is a semi-autobiographical excursion into his life. Jane Alley (not James Alley), where Louis Armstrong was born and where Rabbit Brown lived, lay in the heart of an area in New Orleans that was known as “The Battlefield”, a neighbourhood reputedly so tough that even when there were disturbances there the police stayed away.
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In his notes to ‘James Alley Blues’ on the album “Anthology Of American Folk Music” (Folkways FA 2951-2954, 1952) Harry Smith wrote: “Richard Brown, one of the earliest musicians to learn the twelve bar “blues” chord pattern, was the first and most important New Orleans folk singer to record. Three ten-inch sides ‘James-Alley-Blues’, ‘I’m ot Jealous’ (Victor 20578), ‘ever Let The Same Bee Sting You Twice’ (Victor 20578) and two twelve-inch ones (Victor 35840) ‘Mystery Of The Dunbar Child’, ‘Sinking Of The Titanic’, were cut in a New Orleans garage the same day that tuba player Joe Howard... recorded with Louis Dumaine. Brown was famous for his dramatic guitar playing which, on recordings, closely resembles that of Willie Johnson”. Dylan learned about Rabbit Brown from his friend, Harvey Abrams, while living in Dinkytown, Minnesota. However, he could well have learned the song itself from the “Anthology Of American Folk Music”. For further information about this seminal box-set see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’. Brown’s influence on Bob Dylan is stated in the notes to Dylan’s debut LP and he almost certainly borrowed and adapted the line “Sugar for sugar, salt for salt” for his own song ‘Down In The Flood’ from Brown’s song.
Jenny, Jenny (Penniman / Johnson) Young Robert Zimmerman was a huge Little Richard fan and by the spring of 1957 he was learning as many of Richard’s songs as he possibly could. In March 1957, Specialty Records released an EP containing ‘Tutti Frutti’, ‘True Fine Mama’, ‘Rip It Up’ and ‘Jenny Jenny’ (Specialty Records 402). Bobby was obviously quick to get hold of this EP because by April 5, 1957 Zimmerman and his band had not only learned the songs ‘True Fine Mama’ and ‘Jenny Jenny’, but were performing them at Hibbing High’s Junior High Student Council Variety Show. It is believed that the set, which probably contained two other songs, was repeated at the Junior College Capers. At this time Bobby Zimmerman wore his hair combed back in a Little Richard pompadour and his hammerings on the piano and shouted lyrics were based on Richard’s performing style.
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Jesse James Legend has it the performance was so loud that Zimmerman’s High School principal pulled the plug on his microphone (Dylan would have to get used to this sort of thing. Eight years later Pete Seeger would take exception to a certain Dylan electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival. Legend has it he grabbed an axe and tried to cut the cable...). Information printed elsewhere stating this performance was at Hibbing High’s 1956 Jacket Jamboree is incorrect. As stated above, Richard’s EP containing ‘Jenny Jenny’ (Specialty Records 402) was not released until March 1957 and the single of the song (Specialty Records 606) was not released until the following May. Although the High School performance of ‘Jenny, Jenny’ was not captured on tape, Bobby’s teenage friend John Bucklen did make a home-recording containing the song at around this time. The six-song tape, extracts of which were featured in the BBC television documentary “Highway 61 Revisited” (see Appendix 1:2), contains songs and dialogue between Zimmerman and Bucklen about the music which they were playing. ‘Jenny Jenny’, along with blockbusters like ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ and ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’, was recorded during Richard’s final New Orleans recording sessions (October 15-16, 1956). One of five Little Richard singles to break into the US top Sixty during 1957, ‘Jenny, Jenny’ reached Number Two on the R&B Chart and Number Ten on the US national Pop Chart.
Jesse James (Traditional, c B. Gashade) Dylan’s rendition of this traditional song, which was copyrighted in 1882 to Billy Gashade, was recorded at the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961. The tape, which was made by the Gleasons’ son Kevin, is in circulation among collectors. See Appendix 1:6 for further information about this recording. The outlaw Jesse James became a hero in folklore even before he died in 1882. This notoriety was spread by a wide body of music that celebrated or simply alluded to James and his deeds. The most famous of all of the songs about Jesse James however is the American folk song simply entitled ‘Jesse James’. The song was first recorded in 1924 by Bascom Lamar Lunsford and subsequently by many other artists including Woody Guthrie (1939), Pete Seeger (1957) and Eddy Arnold (1959). Guthrie, who celebrated other outlaw folk heroes such as Pretty Boy Floyd in song, had this to say about James in his “Woody Sez” column (“People’s World”, San Francisco, CA, 1939): “Jesse James is a good picture – ‘Course I have to wait till it gets down to the dime shows, but it’s a good picture anyhow – (After all, I reckon a dime is worth 40c to me ... they must
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Jesus Christ be awful scarce. I see where the Finance outfits are charging four bits for a dime). The Railroad Racketeers hired Hoodlums & Thugs to beat and cheat the farmers out of their farms – and make em sell ‘em for $1 an acre. Frank & Jesse robbed the train to get even. They robbed it so often that the engineer was disappointed on days they couldn’t get there. The Railroad President offered $25.00 for one of Jesse’s own men to shoot him in the back. Robert Ford, a dirty coward, done the job ... Jesse’s Tombstone read: Here Lies Jesse James, shot down by a dirty coward whose name is not worthy to appear here ... No wonder folks likes to hear songs about the Outlaws – they’re wrong allright, but not as 1/2 as dirty and sneakin’ as some of our so-called ‘higher-ups’...”
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These sentiments, which illustrate some outlaws in a Robin Hood persona – defending poor people against the injustices committed by business and government – are echoed in the lyrics to Guthrie’s own song, ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’. Written in 1940, shortly after he first recorded ‘Jesse James’, Guthrie’s lyrics to ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ tell that whilst some people will rob you with a gun, others will do the same with a fountain pen. Guthrie would later reuse the melody and some lyrics from ‘Jesse James’ in his song ‘Jesus Christ’. For further information about Woody Guthrie see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
Jesus Christ (Woody Guthrie) This song was recorded in September 1960 at a Minneapolis apartment shared by Hugh Brown and Bob Dylan. See Appendix 1:5 for further information. This recording is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. In a wonderfully clever move, Guthrie put his self-penned lyrics to the tune of the traditional ballad ‘Jesse James’– a song which Guthrie performed regularly (see the entry for the song ‘Jesse James’). This approach meant that Guthrie portrayed Christ as someone who was so forthright and so radical that he was seen by those in authority as an outlaw. “If Jesus Christ preached today what he preached in Galilee / They would lay Jesus Christ in his grave”. I’m sure this smart ploy would have delighted Dylan and I can imagine him learning this song whilst displaying a rather large grin. For further information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
Jesus Met The Woman At The Well (Traditional, arranged Rev Gary Davis) Bob Dylan’s first known performance of this song was recorded at the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961. The tape was made by the Gleasons’ son Kevin. See Appendix 1:6. This recording is in circulation among collectors and can be found on the bootleg CD “The Dylan Root” (see Appendix 2). Dylan also recorded this song at the April 19, 1983 “Infidels” album session, but the recording is not in circulation among collectors. Although Dylan might have learned the song directly from Reverend Gary Davis, he is more likely to have heard it from Greenwich Village musician Dave Van Ronk, who was
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Jim Jones performing the song in 1960 - ’61. Van Ronk also recorded ‘Jesus Met The Woman At The Well’ on April 5, 1983 for his Paris Records’ album “St. James Infirmary” (Paris DKB 3359). The story of Jesus meeting and talking to the woman at the well comes from John 4:5 – 4:42
Jim Jones (Traditional, arranged Mick Slocum) Come gather round and listen lads, and hear me tell m’ tale, How across the sea from England I was condemned to sail, The jury found me guilty, and then says the judge, says he, Oh for life, Jim Jones, I’m sending you across the stormy sea. This song was recorded in the summer of 1992 and released on Dylan’s album “Good As I Been To You”. See Appendix 1:76 for further details about this recording session. Dylan’s first concert performance of this truly wonderful song was at The Point Depot in Dublin, Ireland (February 5, 1993). This number was played more than thirty times during 1993 and it grew in stature as the year progressed. The song’s final outing for 1993 was on November 17, at one of Dylan’s intimate New York Supper Club gigs. This rendition can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Also known as ‘Jim Jones At Botany Bay’, this traditional Australian transportation ballad probably dates back to around 1907, although some historians believe it may date back as far as 1830, which is when bushranger Jack Donahue was shot and killed. The song’s narrator, the convict Jim Jones, is arrested for poaching, tried, and sentenced to transportation to Australia. En route, the convict ship is attacked by pirates but the soldiers fight off the boarders and the ship arrives safely in Botany Bay where Jones is put to work in irons. He vows to escape, join Jack Donahue’s bushrangers, and get his revenge. In later years, ‘Jim Jones’ has been most often sung to a tune composed by Australian singer and member of The Bushwackers Band, Mick Slocum. The Bushwackers Band (originally The Bushwackers and Bullockies Band) was an Australian folk and country music group that performed and recorded from the early 1970s through to 1984. Mick Slocum, accordion and vocals, left the group in the late 1970s but one of his final albums with the band, “The Shearer’s Dream”, contained his 1975 arrangement of ‘Jim Jones’ which Dylan used, unaccredited, for his recording. Dylan faced legal action and his music publishers had to concede their error.
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Johnny B. Goode Johnny B. Goode (Berry)
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This song is included here on the strength of two guest performances. The first performance, which has Dylan on rhythm guitar only, was at The Palomino Club in Hollywood (February 19, 1987). The occasion was an all-star jam in which Bob Dylan, George Harrison and John Fogerty joined Taj Mahal and his “Graffiti Band” (featuring Jesse Ed Davis) on stage. A fragment of this song was broadcast by WBZ-TV in January 1988 in the Boston, Massachusetts area. The second occasion was in Somerset, Wisconsin (August 3, 2003) when Dylan joined the Grateful Dead for three songs during their set on the summer 2003 Dylan and the Dead double header tour. Dylan, and the Dead’s Bob Weir, shared the vocal duties on this performance. Chess single 1691 is one of the most widely covered rock’n’roll songs ever– especially in concert. In fact, the iconic high twang opening guitar riff to ‘Johnny B. Goode’ (which in essence is almost an exact copy of the opening single-note solo on Louis Jordan’s 1946 hit ‘Ain’t That Just Like a Woman’) may be the most famous single riff in rock’n’roll history. Written by Chuck Berry in 1955, ‘Johnny B Goode’ was recorded by Chess in 1958 with a band that included the legendary bassist Willie Dixon. The song, said to be in part about Berry, was probably the first rock’n’roll record to point to the possibility that a poor “country boy” (the original lyric of “colour[ed] boy” was changed due to fears that the song wouldn’t get any radio play) could earn money and even attain star status by simply paying guitar in a rock’n’roll band. However, Berry strayed from a straight autobiographical narrative on several counts. First, Johnny came from “deep down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans”, whereas Berry was born in St. Louis, Missouri. In actual fact, he was born at 2520 Goode Avenue in St. Louis, which is almost certainly where Chuck took the name ‘Johnny B Goode’ from. Unfortunately, the street name has since been changed to Annie Malone Drive. Another major departure from the autobiographical is that, whilst Johnny “never ever learned to read or write so well”, Berry had actually graduated from beauty school with a degree in hairdressing and cosmetology. But hey, this is rock’n’roll so a bit of poetic licence is quite in order!
Johnny I Hardly Knew You (Traditional) Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, Ye’re an armless, boneless, chickenless egg, Ye’ll have to be put with a bowl to beg, Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye. Dylan recorded this well-known anti-war lament in September 1960 at a Minneapolis apartment he shared with Hugh Brown. See Appendix 1:5 for further information. This recording is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”.
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Johnny Todd This traditional Irish anti-recruiting song – a variant of which may have its origins in Scotland – is believed to have been written around 1860. Also known as ‘Oh Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye’, the song shares its tune with the American number ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ and debate continues as to which came first. At any rate, the tunes are only separated by a few years. The British Library has a song sheet by Joseph B Geoghegan, printed around 1867, titled ‘Johnny I Hardly Know You’. However, the music is not the now familiar tune used in ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’. It seems, therefore, that ‘Johnny I Hardly Know You’ began life with a different tune, but this still does not confirm who wrote the now familiar tune or which song came first. ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ was copyrighted in 1863 by a Union Army bandmaster named Patrick Gilmore (using the pseudonym “Louis Lambert”). Nevertheless, Gilmore maintained that he only wrote the words and that the tune was something he heard hummed by a black boy in New Orleans. However, in another text, again supposedly a direct account from Patrick Gilmore, he states that he took the tune for his ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ from ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye’. Although ‘Johnny I Hardly Know You’ was a popular folk song in the 1950s, it is not clear to me exactly where Bob Dylan learned this number. The most obvious choice would be The Clancy Brothers, but to my knowledge their earliest recording of the song was not released until 1961, when it was included on the album “The Clancy Brothers And Tommy Makem” (Tradition Records). Dylan would not have known the Clancys in person by September ’61 so it seems extremely unlikely that he got the song directly from them. In any event, he adopts an Irish accent and sings the song with a confidence and deep passion that belies his own tender years. Dylan almost certainly took the idea of someone returning home from war so disfigured that his parents could hardly recognise him and used it as the template for his own song ‘John Brown’.
Johnny Todd (Traditional, collected by Frank Kidson) Johnny Todd he took a notion, For to cross the ocean wide, There he left his true love a-weeping, Waiting by the Liverpool tide.
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Joshua Gone Barbados This most English of songs forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes. See Appendix 1:60 for further information.
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This song was collected by Frank Kidson in Liverpool, England. It first appeared in Kidson’s book “Traditional Tunes: A Collection Of Ballad Airs” (S.R. Publishers, 1891). In the United States the song was published in 1959 in “Sing Out! Reprints”. ‘Johnny Todd’ is often used in children’s play as a skipping song, mainly in Liverpool, England. The words to the song appear to be quite old but when it was recited to song collector, Frank Kidson, there were a number of “blanks” which he himself filled before publication. In recent times the first verse is popularly sung as: “Johnny Todd he took a notion For to cross the raging tide, And he left his true love behind him Weeping on the Liverpool side”. The lyric “Liverpool side” is a reference to the Liverpool side of the river Mersey as opposed to the opposite side of the river which is in Birkenhead. Although it is quite difficult to decipher exactly what Dylan sings (tide and side being very similar sounding words) he appears to sing the original Kidson collected version. Fritz Spiegel and his ex-wife, Bridget Fry, later rearranged the melody as the signature tune to the long-running popular British television series “Z-Cars”. Performed by John Keating and his Orchestra, the single reached Number Five on the UK Pop Singles Chart in April 1962. The tune was also adopted by fans of the Liverpool-based football club Everton FC and the club still plays the tune at all home matches as the team runs out onto the pitch. With great instrumental backing and precise vocals, Dylan’s Big Pink performance, which is in circulation among collectors, is no throwaway.
Joshua Gone Barbados (Eric von Schmidt) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes. Although this take seems promising, Dylan halts the proceedings before the song is finished. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. By the time of the Basement recordings Dylan had known folksinger and painter Eric von Schmidt for a number of years. Sometime in early 1964, he had visited von Schmidt at his home in Sarasota, Florida. While there, the two musicians jammed together and part of
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Joshua Gone Barbados the session, about seventy-five minutes, was captured on a reel-to-reel tape recorder by von Schmidt’s wife, Kay. The uncirculated tape was first reported by Dylan journal “The Telegraph” (issue number 44, Winter 1992). The tape contains two takes of ‘Joshua Gone Barbados’. The first take is only a fragment but the final song on the tape is a complete take on which Dylan provides backing vocals and harmonica. A key figure on the Cambridge, Massachusetts music scene in the late 1950s and the ’60s, Eric von Schmidt had a vast knowledge of traditional folk-blues. Bob Dylan wrote of him “Here is a man who could sing the bird off the wire and the rubber off the tire ... He can separate the men from the boys and the note from the noise ... The why of the sky and the commotion from the ocean” (notes to von Schmidt’s 1972 Poppy album “2nd Right 3rd Row”). Dylan was obviously a fan of the man and Von Schmidt’s album “The Folk Blues Of Eric von Schmidt” can been seen on top of a pile of records on the cover to Bob Dylan’s album, “Bringing It All Back Home”. The story behind Eric von Schmidt’s ‘Joshua Gone Barbados’ was for a long time something of a mystery. However, in June 1967 the song appeared in the 50th Anniversary issue of “Sing Out!” magazine and von Schmidt wrote a piece to accompany the song: “Joshua is his last name. He was swept into office in 1960 when England’s move to dump some of her poor small islands coincided with the wave of Caribbean nationalism following Castro’s move in Cuba ... Joshua, slightly poor and very black, had his followers in his pocket. He became Prime Minister of St. Vincent. In the year following his inauguration land taxes rose astronomically. These new levies merely reduced the comfortable profits of the plantation owners but were ruinous to the poor whose property was seized daily. The revenue Ebenezer Theodore Joshua was used for such projects as sending Joshua and his ministers (they prudently exempted themselves from all taxes) on jolly world-wide Goodwill junkets... Joshua’s biggest campaign pitch had been to back a strike by the island’s biggest labour and voting force – the miserably paid cane cutters. When the showdown came, in the spring of 1962, he simply got out on his yacht, and split for Barbados… Strikebreakers were recruited in the tough Sion Hill section above Kingston and brought up to Georgetown in wooden-sided buses … Fights broke out, sometimes brother against brother or son against father. Police were brought in to protect the strikebreakers, who could cut only in guarded fields.
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Jugband Song Every man carried his razor-sharp machete … Sonny Childs, the head overseer and a very unpopular white man with more courage than brains, walked into one of the unprotected fields and came out feet first. The leaders of the strike were quickly arrested, the others dispersed, and word came from the hospital that Sonny had sworn to shoot the men who had beaten him. Their strike failed.
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I had been away from St. Vincent for a few weeks and returned just at the end of it. The song is based on the events as told me by Norma Duncan of Calliqua ... Norma is a fine singer and a wonderful person. I would like to dedicate this song to her.” Although most of the details in von Schmidt’s song are accurate there are many Vincentians who would disagree with his attitude toward Joshua, and von Schmidt has been accused of taking a rather leftwing stance. Chief Minister Ebenezer Theodore Joshua was much loved by many of the poorer people of his native land and he is regarded by many as a defender of the working class and something of a hero. Unlike many Caribbean politicians, Ebenezer Joshua died poor. Eric von Schmidt recorded ‘Joshua Gone Barbados’ in 1964 with Geoff Muldaur and Mel Lyman (Prestige 7384). He recorded the song again in 1971 for Poppy Records but due to the demise of Poppy, the LP, “Living On The Trail” (PP-LA080-F), was not released. The album was however eventually issued by Tomato in 2002 (Tomato 2053). A third version of the song, recorded with Linda Clifford, was issued on von Schmidt’s album “Baby, Let Me Lay It On You” (Gazell GPCD2013). Jugband Song (David Bromberg) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. It seems that Dylan was eager to record various David Bromberg songs and is reported to have repeatedly asked the question of Bromberg, “What about that one of yours . . ?” This song had been recorded by David Bromberg on his second album “Demon In Diguise” (Columbia KC 31753, 1972) where it is credited to David Bromberg. Just a Closer Walk With Thee (Traditional) Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire,
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Just a Little Bit are all performed as duets. This recording was never released, but it does circulate among collectors and can be found on the bootleg CD the “Dylan / Cash Sessions”. It has been reported by Wavy Gravy that Dylan, along with Tom Paxton and Dave Van Ronk, sang this Southern gospel hymn at his wedding, the ceremony for which was performed in Greenwich Village by bluesman Reverend Gary Davis. This gospel song became known across the United States in the 1930s through AfricanAmerican churches and a little later through gospel-singing rallies. The first known recording is by the Selah Jubilee Singers (Decca 7872, October 1941). A couple of months later, however, a wonderful version was also recorded by Dylan favourite Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Decca 8594, December 1941). Although Johnny Cash didn’t record this number himself, he was probably the instigator of the song at this session. Just a Little Bit (Thornton / Bass / Brown / Washington) Dylan played this song as a one-off at the University Of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (October 17, 1981). Originally made famous by Roscoe Gordon, Dylan appears to have performed the number as an audience request! The song, which is often attributed to Roscoe Gordon, was released by him in 1959 on the Vee-Jay label (Vee-Jay 332). The reason this number is sometimes credited to Gordon is because he wrote it! The story is that Gordon took the song, which he had written around a riff taught to him by Jimmy McCracklin, to King Records who passed on it. Gordon immediately offered the song to Vee Jay Records who duly recorded it at Universal Studios, Chicago on April 21, 1959. However, when Gordon went to register his rights to the composition he discovered that it had already been registered for copyright by King Records’ producer Ralph Bass! Roscoe Gordon’s single rose to Number Two on the R&B Chart and the song went on to be covered by hundreds of artists including Little Milton, Etta James, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix. Shortly before his death in 1997, Ralph Bass surrendered the composer rights back to Gordon who claimed that in the preceding fifteen plus years he had lost two million dollars in royalties. Just Because (J Shelton / S. Robin / B Shelton) ‘Just Because’ was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors.
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Just When I eeded You Most Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session.
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Whilst we can’t know for certain, this recording is most likely to be the song ‘Just Because’, as written and recorded by the Shelton Brothers in 1942 and covered by, amongst others, Elvis Presley in 1956 and Brenda Lee, 1959.
Just When I eeded You Most (VanWarmer / Wilson) This Randy VanWarmer song was recorded by Dylan during the April 1987 “Down In The Groove” album sessions. See Appendix 1:80 for further details. The recording did not make the album but it does circulate among collectors. This song, which was American songwriter and guitarist Randy VanWarmer’s biggest success, made it into the Top Ten Pop singles Charts on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching Number Four in the United States and Number Eight in the UK in 1979.
Justine (Don Harris / Dewey Terry) Dylan regularly played this great little Don & Dewey number on the first leg of his 1986 “True Confessions Tour”. It got its first outing in Sydney, Australia on February 10 and fell from grace in Tokyo a month later (March 10, 1986). Although Don and Dewey did not have any hits of their own, as performers they are one of the long-lost treasures of early rock‘n’roll music. Furthermore, a number of other artists had successes with Don and Dewey’s songs. ‘I’m Leaving It Up To You’ was a Number One hit for Dale & Grace in 1963 whilst ‘Justine’ and ‘Big Boy Pete’ were staples for The Righteous Brothers. Don and Dewey’s original recording of ‘Justine’ was released in 1958 by Specialty Records (Specialty SP 631).
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K. C. Moan (Will Shade) Dylan’s only known cover of this classic pre-war Memphis blues was recorded in September 1960 at a Minneapolis apartment he shared with his friend, Hugh Brown. See Appendix 1:5 for further information. This recording is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. The irrepressible Will Shade, often known as Son Brimmer, was a Memphis blues musician best known for his time as leader of the celebrated Memphis Jug Band, with whom he played guitar and harmonica, and took lead vocal duties. Between 1927 and 1934, the Memphis Jug Band recorded around 100 sides for Victor and Okeh but were dropped when trends changed and their music fell out of favour with the record-buying public. Undaunted, Shade continued to put together new line ups and these loose-knit groups recorded under a variety of names including the Picaninny Jug Band, Dallas Will Shade Jug Band, Jolly Jug Band, Carolina Peanut Boys, Memphis Sanctified Singers and the Memphis Sheiks. At one point, the great Memphis Minnie was a member of the Memphis Jug Band and for a while she was married to band member and slide guitarist, Casey Bill Weldon. Well-known singles by the band include ‘K.C. Moan’, ‘On The Road Again’, and ‘Stealin’, Stealin’’. ‘K.C. Moan’ was recorded in Memphis, Tennessee on October 4, 1929 and released on Victor Records (V 38558A). Bob Dylan would have heard the track on the “Anthology Of American Folk Music”. For further information about this Anthology, see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’. Note: The new (1997) booklet of notes which accompanies this superb box-set contains a typo that gives the catalogue number for ‘K.C. Moan’ as being V 38553. Kaatskill Serenade (David Bromberg) This David Bromberg song was recorded by Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June
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Kansas City 1992 (see Appendix 1:75 for further information). The song had been previously released by Bromberg on his 1976 Fantasy Records album, “How Late’ll Ya Play ‘Til?” (Fantasy 79007). Dylan’s recording circulates among collectors and can be found on the bootleg CD “Fourth Time Around – GBS-4”.
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Probably one of the best songs (of those which circulate) from the rejected Bromberg sessions, ‘Kaatskill Serenade’ tells the story of the legendary enchantment of Rip Van Winkle in Washington Irving’s Kaatskill Mountains. David Bromberg tells his tale from the first-person perspective and in doing so retains Irving’s spelling of “Kaatskill”. Below is Washington Irving’s description of his enchanted mountains: “Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains...” The exact reason for Washington Irving’s curious spelling is not known to me but the Catskill Mountains, better known simply as the “Catskills”, have, over the years, undergone various spelling corruptions. The Catskills are well known for being the site of the so-called “Borscht Belt”, a Jewish resort area where many Jewish stand-up comedians got their start. Many Borscht Belt performers, such as Mickey Katz, referred to the area as the Katzkills and Katz even recorded a piece entitled ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Katzkills’. Interestingly, at the time of writing his short story, American author Washington Irving was living in Birmingham, England and had never been to the Catskills.
Kansas City (Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller) Bob Dylan performed this song on the second leg of his US “True Confessions Tour” with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Dylan usually seems to be aware of the next stop on his hectic tour schedule and he occasionally performs songs (usually as a show opener) that have a connection with the city in which he is playing. One such night was July 24, 1986 at the Sandstone Amphitheater in Bonner Springs, Kansas. The best known and most successful recording of ‘Kansas City’ was released in 1959 by Wilbert Harrison (Fury Records 1023). The record made it to Number One on the Billboard Chart and has since been recorded by countless artists including Little Richard, Joe Williams, Little Milton, Bill Haley & His Comets, Peggy Lee, James Brown and the
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Keep Your Eyes On The Prize Beatles. Ten versions of the song are featured on a 1994 CD album entitled “The Best Of Kansas City”. However, none of the other recordings can match Wilbert Harrison’s version which features a magnificent guitar solo by the great Wild Jimmy Spruill. There has been some controversy over the authorship of this song, which was originally released by Little Willie Littlefield in 1952 on King Records as ‘K.C. Loving’. It seems that Willie Littlefield wrote the song, which he entitled ‘Kansas City’, but his record label, Federal Records, thought that ‘K.C. Loving’ was a better title. Littlefield apparently sold the song to the then new song-writing team of Leiber and Stoller who changed some of the lyrics and reinstated the original title. To this day the British-based royalty organization MCPS-PRS Alliance lists various recordings of this song as being written by “Leiber and Stoller” (the majority of instances), “Littlefield, Leiber and Stoller” (in several cases), and in at least one instance the song is credited simply to “Littlefield”. Bob Dylan played Wilbert Harrison’s gorgeous 1959 recording of ‘Kansas City’ on show twenty of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “Musical Map”. Also see entry for ‘Let’s Stick Together’.
Keep Your Eyes On The Prize (Adapted, Alice Wine) Bob Dylan and Joan Baez accompany Len Chandler during Chandler’s performance of this song at the “March on Washington” Rights March (Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC, August, 28 1963). The folk song ‘Keep Your Eyes On The Prize’ (aka ‘Eyes On The Prize’) became influential during the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Originally written prior to World War I as a hymn, the song has numerous variants including ‘Gospel Plow’, ‘Keep Your Hand On The Plow’, ‘Hold On’, and ‘Paul And Silas’. Dylan recorded ‘Gospel Plow’ on his 1962 debut album but without any of the “Movement’s” lyrics. The lyrics to the contemporary version, ‘Keep Your Eyes On The Prize’, were written by civil rights activist Alice Wine in 1956. Notable recordings have been made by Odetta, Pete Seeger and Mavis Staples. The song has also been recorded by Mahalia Jackson as ‘Keep Your Hand On The Plow’.
Keep Your Hands Off Her (Huddie Ledbetter) Dylan played this song in the basement of Gerdes Folk City in New York on February 8, 1963. This collection of performances, long since known as the “Banjo Tape”, is in circulation among collectors. See Appendix 1:41 for further information. This Lead Belly song was originally recorded in November 1943 and released on VerveFolkways (FV 9021). For those who are interested, Lead Belly’s complete Library of Congress recordings were issued in 1990 across twelve albums.
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Key To The Highway Key To The Highway (Big Bill Broonzy)
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Dylan has performed this Big Bill Broonzy song twice, with almost six years between the two performances. The song got its first outing on January 12, 1990 during Dylan’s final set at Toad’s Place in New Haven, Connecticut. This glorious four-set, fifty-song concert was used as a public rehearsal for Dylan’s 1990 “Fastbreak Tour” (see Appendix 3). The 1995 performance at The Edge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (September 23, 1995) was at the opening concert on the lengthy US “Fall Classics Tour”. Dylan was, however, involved in an interim performance of the song with Stephen Stills taking lead vocal duties and Dylan on guitar at “The Absolutely Unofficial Blue Jeans Bash” (January 17, 1993). See the entry for ‘Hang Up My Rock ‘n’ Roll Shoes’ for further details. The writer of ‘Key To The Highway’, William Lee Conley Broonzy, was one of seventeen children born to Frank Broonzy and Mittie Belcher in Scott County, Mississippi. Broonzy always maintained he was born in 1893 but, after his death in August 1958, his twin sister produced a birth certificate which gave the date as 1898. Black blues singers often portrayed themselves as being older than their years and this may have been the case with Broonzy. In any event, Big Bill recorded more than 350 songs during his lifetime, of which more than 300 were copyrighted to him. During his long and varied career he recorded adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues, but of all his compositions he is eternally linked with the masterwork that is ‘Key To The Highway’.
Big Bill Broonzy
Bob Dylan’s stunning Toad’s Place performance (January 12, 1993) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Dylan played Little Walter’s 1958 recording of ‘Key To The Highway’ on show sixteen of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Lock and Key”.
Kind Hearted Woman Blues (Robert Johnson) Dylan’s only known outing of this Robert Johnson song was recorded in October 1962 during his performance at the Gaslight Café, New York. This recording is in circulation among collectors. See Appendix 1:31 for further information. ‘Kind Hearted Woman Blues’ was laid down during Robert Johnson’s first recording session (November 23, 1936) and was released as his first 78rpm single (Vocalion 03416). For information about Robert Johnson’s life see the entry for ‘32-20 Blues’.
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Bob Dylan 1987
L’Air De La Louisiane
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L’Air De La Louisiane (Jesse Winchester) This was one of several instrumental numbers that Dylan used to open eight shows at the end of August and the beginning of September 1989. This Jesse Winchester song was performed at the Greek Theatre, Berkeley, California, September 3, 1989. This number is incorrectly listed on some Internet sites as “‘Lonely Is a Man Without Love’ by Jesse Winchester”. This is despite the fact that ‘Lonely Is a Man Without Love’ is not a Jesse Winchester song. Winchester cut his debut eponymous album for Albert Grossman’s Bearsville label. The acclaimed album was produced by Robbie Robertson and, with Grossman installed as his manager, Winchester subsequently toured in Canada as the opening act for The Band. ‘L’Air De La Louisiane’ (The Louisiana Air), complete with French lyrics, was released on Winchester’s third album “Learn To Love It” (Bearsville BR 6953, 1974). The song gained a far wider audience, however, when it was released in June 1988 by Jimmy Buffett on his album “Hot Water” (MCA 42093). The release date of Buffett’s cover, which is also sung in French, would seem to suggest that this recording is Dylan’s source.
The Lady Came From Baltimore (Tim Hardin) This song was recorded by Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. Although the song did not make the album and does not circulate among collectors, it did get three outings during the spring and summer 1994 tours of the US and Europe. Bob Dylan’s performance from Peoria,
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The Lady Of Carlisle Illinois (April 13, 1994) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This is a gorgeous semi-acoustic rendition complete with harmonica. Unfortunately the circulating recording is marred by a little too much crowd noise. The writer of the song, Tim Hardin, will be remembered as the author of ‘Reason To Believe’, ‘If I Were a Carpenter’ and ‘Hang On To a Dream’, all songs made famous by other artists. ‘If I Were a Carpenter’ and ‘The Lady Came From Baltimore’ were both released by Hardin on his 1967 Verve album “Tim Hardin 2”. Both songs were also released by Joan Baez on her 1967 Vanguard album “Joan”. A wonderfully crafted work, ‘The Lady Came From Baltimore’ is sometimes mistakenly thought to be a traditional song. From the late 1960s Hardin had a heroin addiction and also suffered from stage fright, which made his live performances somewhat erratic. He died of a heroin / morphine overdose on December 29, 1980, having just turned thirty-nine.
The Lady Of Carlisle (Traditional) Although this traditional number can be found on one of Dylan’s early (summer 1961) set lists, the only version ever to be captured on tape was when the song was performed at the State Theatre in Sydney, Australia, on April 14, 1992. This superb word-perfect performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The song is about a lady who challenges her two admirers, a soldier and a sailor, to prove their love for her by retrieving her fan, which she has cast into a lions’ den. One of the suitors wisely decides to decline the offer whilst the other takes on the challenge, succeeds, and thus wins the heart of the lady. The song appears in several guises under various titles including ‘In Castyle There Lived a Lady’, ‘The Distressed Lady’, ‘The Glove’, ‘Faithful Lover’, ‘Ballad Of The Den Of Lions’, ‘Bold Lieutenant’ and ‘The Bold Lieutenant In The Lions’ Den’. In some versions of the song, the tale is set in London. For example, ‘The Bold Lieutenant In The Lion’s Den’ contains the words, “In London city there lived a lady...” In other versions the lady simply “goes up to Town”, although here the use of a capital ‘T’ could indicate London Town. Interestingly, animals, including lions, were kept at the Tower of London for many hundreds of years. This tradition began in the 13th century, when Emperor Frederic II sent three leopards as a gift for King Henry III. In subsequent years, elephants, lions, and even a polar bear, which was trained to catch fish in the River Thames, were added to the collection. By the time of Elizabeth I, the Tower housed three lionesses and one lion, which was said to be “of great size”. The menagerie, which became one of the most popular visitor attractions in London, remained in place until 1834 when the animals were transferred to the Garden of the Zoological Society (London Zoo).
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Lakes Of Pontchartrain The presence of lions at the Tower may mean the tale has some basis in fact, but even if the tale is not true, the very fact that these lions were such a well known visitor destination goes some way to placing the setting of the song.
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It has been written that Dylan’s model for ‘The Lady Of Carlisle’ is Ian and Sylvia’s recording which was included on their 1963 album “Four Strong Winds”. However, this ignores the fact that the song appeared on Dylan’s “written” set lists as early as 1961, a full two years before the release of Ian and Sylvia’s version. The earliest recording of the song that I know dates back to 1937 when it was recorded by Kentuckian Basil May. This version was released in 1942 by the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song on the album “Anglo-American Ballads Volume 1”. This was the first release in a series of field recordings selected for the Library by Alan Lomax and it was this recording of the song that formed the basis for most of the renditions that followed, especially those sung during the late 1950s folk revival. This is not to say that Dylan’s version came directly from May’s recording. It is far more like that he learned the song from recordings by the Seegers – Peggy Seeger included the song on her 1957 Topic Records album “Eleven American Ballads And Songs” – or the New Lost City Ramblers, whose version is even more contemporary with Dylan’s first performances. This recording was released on “ew Lost City Ramblers, Vol. 3” (Folkways FA 2398, 1961).
Lakes Of Pontchartrain (Traditional) Twas on one bright March morning I bid New Orleans adieu, And I took the road to Jackson town, my fortune to renew, I cursed all foreign money, no credit could I gain, Which filled my heart with longing for the lakes of Pontchartrain. Dylan performed this gorgeous traditional song on the opening night of what would become known as the Never Ending Tour. The venue was Concord Pavilion, Concord, California and the date was June 7, 1988. The song was played eighteen times over the next three years, mostly during 1988 and ’89. ‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’ was last performed in Nashua, New Hampshire on July 6, 1991. Bob Dylan’s performances from The Muny, St. Louis, Missouri (June 17, 1988) and Madrid, Spain (June 15, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CDs “Golden Vanity” and the “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000”. As is the case with most of Dylan’s renditions of this song, both of these versions are excellent. However, the Spanish performance, which features some nice harmonica, is a better recording with far less audience noise. This song rates as one of Bob Dylan’s finest interpretations of a traditional ballad.
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Lakes Of Pontchartrain ‘The Lakes of Pontchartrain’ is considered by many musicologists to be a traditional Creole love ballad. However, due to recordings by Planxty, Christy Moore, and Paul Brady, the song is frequently mistaken as being of Irish origin. The truth is that the genesis of this ballad is well and truly lost in the mists of time. There are some who argue that the song may have been brought to the UK by British soldiers who had been fighting in Louisiana and Canada in the War of 1812, whilst others believe the song was written at around the time of the American Civil War, 1861–1865. It has been pointed out by others that the song cannot date from very much earlier than the American Civil War because of the line “I took the train from Jackson, my fortune to renew”, and whilst it is true that the railway reference in Dylan’s rendition would place the song after 1840, this red herring of a line should not be allowed to confuse the issue. The fact is that many of the older printed variants of this song, plus some more recent versions, including the one by Paul Brady, do not mention railways at all and in these cases the second line of the song is sung as “And I took the road to Jackson town, my fortune to renew”. See the opening paragraph to this entry. The real clue to the song’s date is not in the railway reference but in the town of Jackson itself. The town, which was originally settled as Parker’ville, was not named Jackson – after the seventh President of the United States, Andrew Jackson – until 1821, which rather scuppers the notion, put forward by Planxty and by others, that the song was brought to the UK by British soldiers after the 1812 - 1815 war. What we do know first-hand is that Dylan asked Irish folksinger Paul Brady to show him how he played the guitar accompaniment to the song. We must assume therefore that it was from Brady’s version that Dylan got his lyrics, although there are as previously mentioned slight variations between the two. In the notes to his 1978 album “Welcome Here Kind Stranger”, itself a key phrase in the song ‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’, Paul Brady states that he learned the song from Christy Moore’s singing on the Planxty album “Cold Blow And The Rainy ight” (1974). However, Brady’s lyrics do differ from Planxty’s version, especially in verse two. One interpretation of the song has the narrator, an Irish deserter from the Confederate army, on the wrong side of the lines trying to get away. The lyric “I cursed all foreign money, No credit could I gain” sung by Moore, Brady and Dylan, could help to place the song at the time of American Civil War. This line may be a reference to the currency issued by the Confederate States of America during the war. In the final year of the conflict this money became practically worthless and by the end of the war had no value at all. However, this interpretation is muddied by a text from 1890, published in a book by Gardner & Chickering (“Ballads and Songs of Michigan”) (1939), which quotes the line as being “Of course it was for money, and of no credit gained / But it’s left me here to wander on the lake of Pontchartrain”. This line highlights a further mystery, i.e. why does almost every printing and recording of this song have “Lakes” in the plural. Geographically, there is only one Lake
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Lawdy, Miss Clawdy Pontchartrain, the south shore of which forms the northern boundary of the city of New Orleans and its two largest suburbs, Metairie and Kenner. It is the second largest salt-water lake in the United States of America, after the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Lake Pontchartrain is forty miles wide, twenty miles long and covers an area of 630 square miles.
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One theory is that ‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’ is associated with the traditional song ‘On The Banks Of The Pontchartrain’, which has been recorded by, among others, Hank Williams, and that “Lakes” is somehow derived from the plural “Banks”. This seems a rather flimsy argument and to these ears the two songs do not seem connected; the only lyrical similarity being the word “Pontchartrain”. For information about Paul Brady, see entry for ‘Mary And Solider’.
Lawdy, Miss Clawdy (Lloyd Price) Young Bobby Zimmerman, along with friends Howard Rutman and Larry Kegan, cut their own 78rpm record on Christmas Eve 1956. ‘Lawdy, Miss Clawdy’ was one of the eight songs that was included as part of their eight-minute medley. None of this recording is in circulation among collectors. (See Appendix 1:1 for further information). Dylan’s only other known rendition of ‘Lawdy, Miss Clawdy’ came about almost thirty years later when he recorded the song for an intended tribute album to Elvis Presley. The recording session took place at Sony’s New York studios on September 30, 1994. There were several takes of the song but the album remains unreleased. However, one of the takes emerged in 2008 when it was released on the bootleg CD “GBS 4 – Fourth Time Around”. This version, a must for collectors, is beautifully paced and wonderfully sung. It is just a pity, therefore, that the song seems to break down before the end. ‘Lawdy, Miss Clawdy’ was first recorded by Lloyd Price for Specialty Records (Specialty 428) in March 1952. The song went to Number One on the Billboard rhythm and blues Chart. It stayed at Number One for seven weeks and remained on the Chart for six months. The single, which crossed over to the white recordbuying market, went on to sell more than one million copies. Elvis Presley recorded his cover of ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’ at RCA’s New York City studios on February 3, 1956. The song, which was released with ‘Shake Rattle And Roll’ (RCA 47-6642), failed to make the US Chart, although it did reach Number Fifteen in the UK.
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Lawyers, Guns And Money Lawyers, Guns And Money (Warren Zevon) A few weeks after Warren Zevon announced that he was terminally ill with cancer, Dylan began his 2002 Fall tour in the USA. At the opening concert in Seattle, Washington (October 4), Dylan surprised his audience by playing a song that left many people guessing. The song, ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’, a Warren Zevon number, was a tribute to its writer. Six songs later Dylan played another of Zevon’s songs, ‘Boom, Boom Mancini’, and before the concert ended, he paid a further tribute by performing a third Zevon song, the gorgeous ‘Mutineer’. The following evening (Eugene, Oregon, October 5, 2002) Dylan again played ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’ and ‘Mutineer’, but on this occasion ‘Boom, Boom Mancini’ was replaced by yet another Zevon number, ‘Lawyers, Guns And Money’. The song got its final outing on this tour twelve days later at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles (October 17, 2002). A long-standing friendship between Bob Dylan’s son Jakob and Warren Zevon’s son Jordan ensured that Jakob, along with his band The Wallflowers, recorded a version of ‘Lawyers, Guns And Money’ for the Artemis Records tribute album to Warren Zevon, “Enjoy Every Sandwich” (Artemis Records RCD17304, 2004). Bob Dylan also contributed a song to the Artemis Records album (see entry for ‘Mutineer’ for further information). For further details about Warren Zevon see the entry for ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’. Warren Zevon
(I’d Be) A Legend In My Time (Don Gibson) Dylan gave three rather splendid performances of this Don Gibson number in the space of a week in July 1989. The performances from Atlantic City, New Jersey (July 20, 1989) and Saratoga Springs (July 26, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CDs “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000” and “20/20 Vision”. Recording for RCA Records, Don Gibson was a popular and influential singer and songwriter in the late 1950s and early ’60s. He wrote the ironic lyrics to ‘(I’d Be) A Legend In My Time’ in 1960, and the song was recorded by a number of artists including Hank Snow, the Everly Brothers, Paul Anka, Rick Nelson and Johnny Cash. However, the song’s great success came in 1975 when Ronnie Milsap took his cover to Number One on the Country Chart. Unfortunately, by the mid 1960s Gibson had lost his way, mainly through alcohol and drug dependency. He continued to record, having some successful duets with both Dottie West
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Let It Be Me and Sue Thompson, but his glory days as a solo performer were well and truly behind him. Gibson’s most popular song, first recorded in December 1957, was ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’. Ray Charles’ cover of this song reached Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Chart in 1962 and the song went on to be recorded by more than 700 artists.
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Let It Be Me (M. Curtis / G. Becaud / P. Delanoe) This song was recorded by Dylan at the April 26, 1969 “Self Portrait” album session and was released on the album (Columbia K2X 3005, 1970). See Appendix 1:63 for further information. Dylan recorded the song again during the “Shot Of Love” sessions, but it was not released on the resulting album. The four takes recorded at Studio A in United Western Studio, Los Angeles (April 2, 1981) – two of which were incomplete – are not in circulation among collectors. However, a later “Shot Of Love” recording, made at Clover Recorders, Los Angeles, California (May 1, 1981) was released in Europe and Australasia as the B-side of the single ‘Heart Of Mine’ (CBS 1406 Europe / CBS 222856 (Australia and New Zealand). Dylan performed ‘Let It Be Me’ in concert at Stade de Colombes in France on June 23, 1981. The song was performed as a duet with backing singer Clydie King. It was performed on two further occasions, October 29 and 30, 1981, in Toronto and Montreal, Canada, both times with Clydie King. Originally written in French (hence the French connections for the three concerts), ‘Let It Be Me’ was performed with English lyrics by Jill Corey on the US TV series Climax! In 1957, Corey released her version as a single with orchestration by Jimmy Carroll. It reached Number Fifty-Seven on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1957. The song was made popular three years later when The Everly Brothers took their single to Number Seven on the Billboard Pop Chart. Betty Everett and Jerry Butler had a huge hit with their version which reached Number Five on the Billboard Pop Chart and Number One on the R&B chart. Dylan’s decision to record ‘Let It Be Me’ at the April 1969 “Self Portrait” session may, however, have been triggered by the Glen Campbell / Bobbie Gentry single which made it to Number Thirty-Six on the Billboard Pop Chart and Number Fourteen on the Country Chart in January ’69. Let The Good Times Roll (Goodman / Lee) Young Bobby Zimmerman, along with friends Howard Rutman and Larry Kegan, cut their own 78rpm record on Christmas Eve 1956. ‘Let The Good Times Roll’ was one of the eight songs that was included as part of their eight-minute medley. None of this recording is in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:1 for further information).
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Let’s Begin This Leonard Lee song was resurrected thirty years later when it was played five times on the second leg of Dylan’s “True Confessions Tour” with Tom Petty. The song was originally a massive crossover hit for Shirley Goodman and Leonard Lee in 1956 (Aladdin 3325).
Let’s Begin (Jimmy Webb) Dylan sound-checked this song twice in the USA in June 1981 but it was not played in concert until the tour reached London, England. The first outing for this Jimmy Webb song was at Earls Court, London, on June 27, 1981. The song, which was performed as a duet with backing singer Clydie King, became a regular inclusion during the rest of this lengthy tour. Leah Kunkel (Mama Cass Elliot’s sister) released two Jimmy Webb-penned songs, ‘ever Gonna Lose My Dream Of Love Again’ and ‘Let’s Begin’, on her second Columbia album “I Run With Trouble” (1980). Jimmy Webb has not recorded the song himself, so Dylan’s version could only have come to him via Kunkel’s album or possibly through guitarist Fred Tackett, who had recently joined Dylan’s band and who had previously worked on a number of sessions with Jimmy Webb.
Let’s Learn To Live And Love Again (Jack Scott) Written by Jimmy Rule and David Briggs, ‘Let’s Learn To Live And Love Again’ (RCA Victor 47-8724) was released as a single in 1966 by Canadian / American singer and songwriter Jack Scott. This song was performed for the first time in Berlin, Germany, on July 5, 1990. This fine arrangement can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The song was played again, six weeks later, at the State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa (August 26, 1990), but was then dropped from the tour. There were several run-throughs of this number during rehearsals for the 1991 summer tour of Europe but it was not played in concert.
Let’s Stick Together (Wilbert Harrison) Dylan recorded this Wilbert Harrison number at Sunset Sound Studios, Hollywood on May 1, 1987. The song was released on the “Down In The Groove” album (1988). See Appendix 1:80 for further details. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Wilbert Harrison had taken ‘Kansas City’ (a song also covered by Dylan) to the Number One spot on the Billboard Chart
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Lily Of The West in 1959. It would however be 1962 before he charted again, this time with the self-penned ‘Let’s Stick Together’ (Fury 1059). Canned Heat’s 1970 version, entitled ‘Let’s Work Together’, reached Number Eleven on the US Chart but went all the way to Number One in the UK. The song was also a big hit for Bryan Ferry in 1976.
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Wilbert Harrison died in 1994 in a Spencer, North Carolina nursing home. He was aged sixty-five. Also see the entry for ‘Kansas City’.
Lily Of The West (Traditional) When first I came to Louisville some pleasure there to find, A damsel there from Lexington was pleasing to my mind, Her rosy cheeks, her ruby lips like arrows pierced my breast, And the name she bore was Flora, the Lily of the West. This song was recorded by Bob Dylan at the June 3 and August 12, 1970 “ew Morning” album sessions. See Appendices 1:71 & 1:74 for details about these sessions. The song failed to make it on to the “ew Morning” LP but was later released by Columbia on the album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973). Originally a British / Irish broadside ballad, the popular English version, ‘Flora The Lily Of The West’ (printed around 1880 - 1900), began with the lyric, “It’s when I came to England some pleasure for to find / Where I espied a damsel most pleasing to my mind / Her rosy cheeks and rolling eyes like arrows pierced my breast / And they called her lovely Flora, the lily of the west”. The song was extremely popular across Britain and Ireland. The broadside that I have was printed in Dundee, Scotland, but many other broadsides of this song were printed in London and even more still in Dublin. The Irish version, which can be traced back to at least 1839, has exactly the same opening verse as the English printing, except that Ireland replaces England and the lily of the west is not named Flora but “Molly’o” . Although broadside sheets are invaluable historical documents, they only assist us with the words and not the tunes to these wonderful ancient songs. ‘Lily Of The West’, therefore, may have been sung to different tunes in Ireland and England.
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Listen To Me Although the tune which Dylan uses reminds me a little of ‘Buffalo Skinners’, it is quite probably based on the tune most often used for ‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’. In his notes to The Chieftains’ “The Long Black Veil”, Paddy Moloney writes: “I first heard this song back in the 1960s ... The original air can be found in “Sing Out! – The Folk Song Magazine, Volume 7” and Colm O’Louchlann’s “Irish Street Ballads”. This air is very similar to another ballad, ‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’, as recorded by Paul Brady...” A number of American songsheets exist for ‘The Lily Of The West’ at The Library of Congress, most of which prescribe ‘Caroline Of Edinburgh Town’ as the suggested melody. It may be, therefore, that one of the ‘Caroline’ tunes would be a more “authentic” choice than the ‘Pontchartrain’ melody for the American versions of the song. Regardless of whether ‘The Lily Of The West’ originated in England or Ireland, it probably came to America via Irish immigrants. The Chieftains’ version, like a number of others, is interpreted as a metaphor for the Irish experience in America, and includes a final verse which sees the narrator gain his liberty to go “a-roaming” through “old Ireland” and to travel to “Scotland o’er”. However, despite leaving America, the narrator finds that he is still in love with “Flora”. The song has been recorded by, among others, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Joan Baez, Josh Andrews, Peter, Paul and Mary and The Chieftains. Prior to his recording of the song, Dylan would have doubtless been aware of numerous versions of ‘The Lily Of The West’, including Joan Baez’s recording. Exactly where Dylan took his version from, however, is not clear. The official Bob Dylan Columbia website (www.bobdylan.com) rather oddly credits the song to E. Davies and J. Peterson. Most chroniclers, Internet or otherwise, simply quote this information verbatim with no mention of whom E. Davies and J. Peterson might be. Several chroniclers, knowing that the song is in fact traditional, make a half-hearted attempt to rectify matters by quoting “trad., arranged by E. Davies and J. Peterson”. However, this is purely an invention on their part because the copyright lodged by Columbia makes no mention of “trad”. My search of the MCPS copyright files revealed that the people in question are Eileen Davies and James Peterson. This however is not a great deal of help because I have no idea who these two people are and an extensive search of the Internet turned up nothing. The MCPS listing for Dylan’s recording is the only entry for this song that mentions Eileen Davies and James Peterson; all other entries either state “trad”, or traditional and the performer’s name, i.e. “trad., arr. Baez”. Listen To Me (Buddy Holly, Norman Petty) This song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, in May 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:80).
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Little Maggie ‘Listen To Me’ was a 1957 single by Buddy Holly. Failing to chart in America, the record was one of Holly’s less successful singles. The song did, however, reach Number Sixteen on the UK Pop Chart.
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Little Maggie (Traditional) This song was recorded in the summer of 1992 and released on Dylan’s album “Good As I Been To You”. See Appendix 1:76 for further detail about this recording session. The song was also played live on March 18, 1992, at Perth Entertainment Centre in Western Australia. This rather bouncy version, complete with some fine pedal-steel from Bucky Baxter, can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. An extremely popular bluegrass standard, ‘Little Maggie’ has been recorded by innumerable artists including The Stanley Brothers, Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson, Kingston Trio, New Lost City Ramblers and Tom Paley. Interestingly, ‘Little Maggie’ appeared alongside both ‘Girl On The Green Briar Shore’ and ‘Jack-A-Row’ on Tom Paley’s album “Folksongs From The Southern Appalachian Mountains” (Elektra EKL 12, 1953). Dylan introduced all three of these songs into his act between 1991 and 1993. Nevertheless, as is often the case with Bob Dylan, none of the versions of ‘Little Maggie’ that I know, including Paley’s, matches his recording, which seems to be an amalgam of several versions with what appear to be some of his own lyrics thrown in for good measure. In Dylan’s version the “standard” traditional opening verse of “Yonder stands Little Maggie / With a dram glass in her hand / She’s drinkin’ away her troubles, oh lord / And courtin’ another man”. becomes “Oh, where is little Maggie? / Over yonder she stands / Rifle on her shoulder / Six-shooter in her hand”. Bob Dylan played The Stanley Brothers’ 1948 recording of ‘Little Maggie’ on show thirtyfive of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Women’s Names”.
Little Moses (Traditional) This song was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 during the final “Self Portrait” album sessions. The song was not included on the final album release and does not circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:66 for further information.
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Little Moses The next occurrence of ‘Little Moses’ was in 1975. This recording is often stated by chroniclers as being part of the rehearsals for the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour and is therefore dated as October 1975, just prior to the start of the tour. However, as pointed out by Clinton Heylin in his book “A Life In Stolen Moments”, these ‘piano’ songs were almost certainly recorded specifically for use in Dylan’s film “Renaldo & Clara” which was being filmed during the tour. The fact that these songs were not played on the tour but were included in the film would seem to confirm this. If we agree that the songs from these sessions were not rehearsals for the tour then there is no necessity to place the recordings prior to the tour, i.e. October. The date for the recording of ‘Little Moses’ is far more likely to be mid-November 1975. A fragment of Dylan’s piano performance of this song forms part of the “Renaldo & Clara” soundtrack. The first concert performance of ‘Little Moses’ was in Adelaide, South Australia, on March 21, 1992. The song was then played at every show and always in the number nine slot until June 28, 1992, thereafter making sporadic appearances until the concert at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, on September 11, 1993. The performances from Melbourne, Australia (April 5, 1992) and San Jose (May 9, 1992) can be found on the bootleg CDs “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000” and “Golden Vanity”. Dylan’s performances of this song are generally superb, and these two are no exceptions. There is no question that Dylan was treating the early 1990s cover songs (of which there are many) with a great deal of respect. Dylan would have known this song from his early days in Greenwich Village and even before. By the time he came to record it at the “Self Portrait” session he would almost certainly have been familiar with the recordings of The New Lost City Ramblers, Joan Baez, Roy Acuff and Ralph Stanley. His most likely source, however, is The Carter Family’s February 1929 recording which is included on Harry Smith’s famed “Anthology Of American Folk Music”. For further information about this Anthology see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’. ‘Little Moses’, a traditional song collected by A.P. Carter, is variously credited as either “trad.” or “trad., arr. Carter”. The Carter Family’s recordings from 1929 and 1941 are both listed with MCPS as “Carter”, which is a slight bending of the truth. However, most Dylan Internet sites credit Dylan’s version to Bert A. Williams and Earle C. Jones. This credit is
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Little Queen Of Spades a mystery to me because to my knowledge Dylan’s office has never listed this song for copyright. Dylan’s live performance of ‘Little Moses’ from the Historic Orpheum Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2, 1992 was made available as an official Internet download so that is possibly where the credit came from.
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Bert A. Williams (Egbert Austin Williams) was a black vaudevillian, popular comedian, recording artist and songwriter who worked, very successfully, between 1893 and 1922. Earle C. Jones was a popular lyricist who worked at the same time as Bert Williams and they may even have worked together. However there is no record that I can find of either of them having a hand in the writing of ‘Little Moses’. Little Queen Of Spades (Robert Johnson) Dylan played this Robert Johnson number during rehearsals for his 1989 summer European Tour. Rehearsals took place at The Power Station studios. Unfortunately, the song was not performed on the tour, but the rehearsal does circulate among collectors. ‘Little Queen Of Spades’ with ‘Me And The Devil Blues’ was released on Vocalion 04108 in 1937. For information about Robert Johnson, see the entry for ‘32-20 Blues’.
Little Red Rooster (Willie Dixon) Dylan joined the Grateful Dead for this song during the encores of their opening set at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio, on July 2, 1986. Dylan was on guitar only. For further details about Willie Dixon see the entry for ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’. Dixon’s song was originally released in 1962 by Howlin’ Wolf as a single entitled ‘The Red Rooster’ (Chess Records 1804). The recording was also included on his second album, “Howlin’ Wolf: The Rockin’ Chair Album”. Wolf’s recording was covered by the Rolling Stones and their single went to Number One on the UK Pop Chart in December 1964. The song has also been covered by artists including Canned Heat, Sam Cooke, The Yardbirds, the Grateful Dead, the Doors and Otis Rush.
Little Sadie (Traditional, arranged Dylan) This North Carolina Appalachians murder ballad was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions and was released on the finished album. See Appendix 1:65 for further information. Unlike Dylan’s variant of this song, ‘In Search Of Little Sadie’, this rendition is performed with precision and aplomb. The earliest written evidence of this song is a fragmentary lyric dating from 1922. The song was then entitled ‘Bad Lee Brown’.
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Little Sadie “Last night I was a-makin’ my rounds, Met my old woman an’ I blowed her down, I went on home to go to bed, Put my old cannon right under my head. Jury says murder in the first degree, I says oh Lord, have mercy on me! Old Judge White picks up his pen, Says you’ll never kill no woman ag’in”. The earliest known recording of ‘Bad Lee Brown’ was made by John “Dilly” Dilleshaw in 1929. However, this recording was not released at the time. The earliest released version of the song is therefore Clarence Ashley’s 1930 recording entitled ‘Little Sadie’, and it is from this version that that most subsequent recordings draw. Some notable releases prior to Dylan’s recording are: ‘Little Sadie’, Clarence Ashley (1930); ‘Cocaine Blues’, Red Arnall (1947); ‘Bad Lee Brown’, Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston (1944); ‘Badman Ballad’, Cisco Houston (1959); ‘Transfusion Blues’, Johnny Cash (1960); ‘Bad Man’s Blunder’, The Kingston Trio (1960) and ‘Little Sadie’, Clarence Ashley (1963). The song has also been recorded under several other titles including ‘Penitentiary Blues’ and ‘Chain Gang’. Whilst the above list contains some of the more prominent versions from the ‘Bad Lee Brown’ / ‘Little Sadie’ family, there are in fact several distinct variants of the song. Basically, the song tells the story of a man who commits murder and goes on the run only to be overtaken “down in Jericho” where he is apprehended by a sheriff from “Thomasville”. One variant has the perpetrator committing the murder whilst under the influence of either cocaine or alcohol. Johnny Cash’s ‘Transfusion Blues’ substitutes the line “took a shot of cocaine” for “took a transfusion”. Cash, like others, also has the murderer overtaken “down in Juarez, Mexico”. The other variants, including Clarence Ashley’s 1930 recording, mention pimps and gamblers, possibly inferring that Little Sadie was a prostitute. Ashley’s 1962 recording, which makes no reference to drugs, alcohol or pimps and gamblers, would seem to be Dylan’s source. This version was recorded by Clarence ‘Tom’ Ashley (vocal and banjo) with Doc Watson (guitar) in Chicago, Illinois, during February 1962 and released on “Old Time Music At Clarence Ashley’s, Vol. 2” (Folkways FA 2359, 1963). ‘Little Sadie’ is one of several songs associated with Bob Dylan that have for many years had confusing and contradictory copyright notices. Although Dylan’s version is almost certainly taken from Clarence Ashley’s 1962 recording of this traditional song it is credited on the “Self Portrait” album as being a Dylan composition. However, the “Self Portrait” songbook is more correct in stating “arranged Bob Dylan”. Neither of the two official “Lyrics” books list ‘Little Sadie’, which by default might infer the song was not written by
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London Calling Bob Dylan. However the official Dylan Internet website, www.bobdylan.com, gives the copyright details as “1970 Big Sky Music” (one of Bob Dylan’s publishing companies). Presumably the details on the website are simply taken from the information printed on original albums.
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Also see the entry for ‘In Search Of Little Sadie’.
London Calling (Strummer / Jones) Much to the amazement of those present, Dylan played this legendary Clash number as the first encore at the second and final concerts of his five-night residency at London’s Brixton Academy (November 21 & 24, 2005). As the familiar opening chords rang out, the audience, almost unable to believe their ears, especially on the night of November 21, turned to each other in either shock or disbelief. That first night Dylan only spat out one verse of the song before launching into ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. On the night of November 24, the performance was a little longer. ‘London Calling’ is the opening track to the double album of the same name. Written by Clash members Joe Strummer and Mick Jones the title conjures up the tag “This is London calling” as used during World War II by the BBC World Service. For this song and album, the Clash broke free of their rigid punk straightjacket to produce a more complex and varied sound– a sort of punk rock knocking on reggae’s door. ‘London Calling’ was personal and political, an anthem of an era, a battle hymn, a rant, a song for desperate times. It spoke of world events and social concerns such as rising unemployment, racial conflict, violence and drug use in Britain, but also international matters like the meltdown incident at Three Mile Island, which had occurred earlier in 1979. On a personal level the song spotlights the band’s difficult situation in dealing with life after punk, mounting debt, loss of management, and a fractious debate with their record label. Much to the chagrin of CBS Records, the band brought in ex-Island Records man Guy Stevens to produce the album. Stevens was suffering from alcohol dependency and drug problems and his production methods were, to say the least, unconventional. Nevertheless, Jones, a massive fan of the 1970s rock band Mott the Hoople, whom Stevens had both mentored and produced, insisted he was the right man for the job. He was right. Released in December 1979, ‘London Calling’ (S CBS 8087) reached Number Eleven on the
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Lone Pilgrim British Pop Chart. Bob Dylan may have heard that song through his son Jakob who has stated in interview that “London Calling” was the most influential album in his life. The album also features the song ‘The Guns Of Brixton’. The track, which has a strong reggae influence, was written by Clash bassist Paul Simonon, who grew up in Brixton. Lone Pilgrim (B. F. White / A. M. Pace) I came to the place where the lone pilgrim lay, And pensively stood by his tomb, When in a low whisper I heard something say, How sweetly I sleep here alone. Dylan released an especially beautiful and haunting version of this song on his album “World Gone Wrong”. See Appendix 1:77 for further detail about this recording session. In the liner notes to “The Doc Watson Family” album (Folkways FA 2366, 1963), D. K. Wilgus writes: “Legends of its origin and claims to its authorship are many. The ‘White Pilgrim’ form has been attributed to B. F. White (The Sacred Harp, 1911); the ‘Lone Pilgrim’ to William Walker (Southern Harmony, 1847; Christian Harmony, 1866) ... In some Northern hymn books, including those edited by Elder Ellis, the text is set to ‘Lily Dale’, but the more popular tune is the one Doc sings, a set of ‘The Braes of Balquhidder’…” We do not need to ponder over Dylan’s source for this song. The man himself informs us of this in his self-penned liner notes to “World Gone Wrong”. “‘Lone Pilgrim’ is from an old Doc Watson record”, Dylan tells us. And indeed his lyrics are identical to those sung by Watson. “What attracts me to the song”, Dylan continues, “is how the lunacy of trying to fool the self is set aside at some given point. salvation & the needs of mankind are prominent & hegemony takes a breathing spell”. ‘Lone Pilgrim’ was first published in 1847 in William Walker’s Southern Harmony where it was credited to Walker. Numerous historians, however, are of the opinion that ‘Lone Pilgrim’ is a variant of ‘White Pilgrim’– a poem written about Joseph Thomas. Born in North Carolina on March 7, 1791, Joseph Thomas was a ‘New Light Christian’ evangelist who, at the age of sixteen, was inspired to become a minister by a camp meeting in 1806. An itinerant preacher who never stayed more than a few days in one place, he forsook the customary long black frock coat and instead dressed in white, including his horse and his saddlebags. In 1817, after thousands of miles of travel, the White Pilgrim, as he had become known, wrote a brief but fascinating account of his life which recounts the infighting among the revivalist preachers of the different evangelical churches that were struggling to convert souls and build congregations.
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Lonely Avenue In 1835 he preached at the Anglican mission in Johnsonburg, New Jersey, where he died suddenly of smallpox. In 1838, a fellow preacher, Elder John Ellis, came upon Thomas’ grave and wrote a mawkish poem, ‘White Pilgrim’, that later appeared in various hymnals and broadsides.
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The ‘White Pilgrim’ became such a popular hymn that over time several people claimed authorship, mainly because of changes they had made to the original text. One such claim was made by composer and traditional folk song collector Benjamin Franklyn White who may well have carried out a substantial rewrite of the hymn. The other composer credit that appears on “World Gone Wrong” is A. M. Pace. Adger M. Pace, a teacher of gospel music and prolific composer, was seemingly responsible for rearranging ‘Lone Pilgrim’.
Lonely Avenue (Doc Pomus) Bob Dylan recorded this superb Doc Pomus number at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California on April 30, 1986. The song was recorded for possible inclusion on the “Knocked Out Loaded” album but was not released on the final product. The song does however circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:79). The legendary Doc Pomus (June 27, 1925 - March 14, 1991) was born Jerome Solon Felder in Brooklyn, New York of Jewish heritage. Crippled by polio in his childhood, Pomus became a fan of the blues after hearing Big Joe Turner on record. He found some success as a white blues singer in the 1940s, but by the mid-fifties had joined forces with a young piano player named Mort Shuman to form a song writing team. Together, Pomus and Shuman wrote hits such as ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’, ‘Can’t Get Used to Losing You’, ‘A Teenager In Love’, ‘Sweets for My Sweet’, ‘Surrender’, ‘Little Sister’ and ‘Viva Las Vegas’. Presley alone went on to record more than twenty of their songs. During the late 1950s and early ’60s Pomus also wrote several songs with other writers Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus including Phil Spector (‘Here Comes The ight’) and Leiber and Stoller (‘Young Blood’). He also wrote alone, ‘Lonely Avenue’, being just one example. After many years of working together, Pomus and Shuman parted company. Pomus spent the next ten years earning his living as a professional poker player until two masked gunmen (mobsters) burst into a game and demaned their cut of the action. Pomus decided that song writing was the safer option and returned to his previous career. Although these
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Lonesome Bedroom Blues later songs were less successful commercially, many consider them to be some of his best works. Doc Pomus died in 1991 from lung cancer. He was aged sixty-five. Dylan may have taken his version of ‘Lonely Avenue’ from Ray Charles’ cover of the song (Atlantic 8025, 1956).
Lonesome Bedroom Blues (Curtis Jones) Dylan performed this old blues number at four Japanese concerts in 1978. The first performance was at the Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo, on February 20, 1978. The song’s last outing on the tour was just five nights later in Hirakata City in Osaka-fu, Japan, on February 25, 1978. Curtis Jones began his music career playing guitar but switched to piano after a move to Dallas. In 1936 he relocated to the Windy City where he recorded between 1937 and 1941 for Vocalion, Bluebird and Okeh. Jones enjoyed considerable pre-war success in Chicago with his recordings of ‘Lonesome Bedroom Blues’ and the tune ‘Tin Pan Alley’. ‘Lonesome Bedroom Blues’, a song inspired by Jones’ break-up with his wife, was released on Vocalion in 1937.
The Lonesome River (Carter Stanley & Ralph Stanley) A long-time fan of the Stanley Brothers’ music, Bob Dylan was the first artist to sign on for the their tribute album “Clinch Mountain Country”. Dylan recorded his tribute, a duet with Dr. Ralph Stanley, at Masterlink Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, November 30, 1997. The performance was released in 1998 on Ralph Stanley & Friends “Clinch Mountain Country” (Rebel REB-5001). The song was made available again in October 2008 on the rarities compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006”, (2008). “That’s the first time it has ever been done as a duet”, said Ralph Stanley of his recording of ‘The Lonesome River’ with Bob Dylan. The song, which was originally recorded by the Stanley Brothers for Columbia Records in 1950, had always been performed by the Clinch Mountain Boys as a trio. ‘The Lonesome River’, along with ‘White Dove’ and ‘The Fields Have Turned Brown’ – three wonderful examples of the group’s ‘high lonesome sound’ – can be found on the Stanley Brothers three-CD set “The Definitive Collection (1947 - 1966)”. ‘The Lonesome River’ can also be found on the Stanley Brothers “The Complete Columbia Recordings” (1996) and Ralph Stanley’s “Bound To Ride” (1991). For further biographical information about the Stanley Brothers, see the entry for ‘I Am The Man, Thomas’.
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Lonesome Town Lonesome Town (Baker Knight Jr.)
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This song was played throughout Dylan’s 1986 “True Confessions Tour” with Tom Petty. The song got its first outing on February 5, 1986 in Wellington, New Zealand and continued as a regular until Paso Robles, California, August 1986 (fifty-four performances in total). ‘Lonesome Town’ reappeared for three summer shows in 1989 (one in England and two in the USA). Bob Dylan’s performance from Doswell, Virginia (August 12, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. In 1986 Dylan introduced the song with the words: “Ricky Nelson, he did a lot of my songs, I’m gonna do one of his. This is called ‘Lonesome Town’”. Dylan began performing this tribute to Ricky Nelson at the opening concert of his 1986 tour, which commenced just five weeks after Nelson’s death on December 31, 1985. Ricky Nelson died in a plane crash on his way to a New Year’s Eve concert in Dallas, Texas. The plane came down in De Kalb, Texas. Nelson was buried in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. Ricky Nelson’s recording of ‘Lonesome Town’ (Imperial 5545, 1958) reached Number Seven on the Billboard Chart. The song had been written for Nelson by songwriter and failed recording artist Baker Knight Jr. Knight formed his rockabilly group The Knightmares in 1956 but his real forte was as a composer. His first success, ‘Lonesome Town’, was written in response to his disillusionment with trying to sell his songs in his adopted town of Los Angeles. By the time Ricky Nelson recorded ‘Lonesome Town’ Knight was down to his last thirty-six cents. The song was a great success for Nelson who went on to record twenty of Knight’s compositions, many of which became hits. Knight also wrote for other artists. ‘The Wonder of You’, originally written for Perry Como was a hit for Ray Peterson and later an even bigger hit for Elvis Presley. Knight continued with his own recording career making records for RCA, Chess, Reprise and Challenger, but success always eluded him. In 1966, Dean Martin recorded ‘Somewhere There’s a Someone’, one of eleven of Knight’s songs he would cover. Frank Sinatra also recorded several of Knight’s compositions, including ‘Anytime At All’. In the 1970s Knight began writing country numbers for, amongst others, Hank Williams, Jr. and Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1985, Knight was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome which resulted in his output being drastically cut. Knight died on October 12, 2005.
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(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle (Hank Williams / Jimmie Davis) This Hank Williams song was recorded by Bob Dylan at the first “Freewheelin’” album session. The song can also be found on recordings from the McKenzie Home Tape (November 1961) and from Cynthia Gooding’s WBAI radio show (January 1962). See Appendices 1:16, 19 & 21 for further details. This song was rehearsed for Bob Dylan’s 1989 summer tour of Europe but it was not played on the tour. The song was however played twice in concert during 1990. The first outing was on January 12 when Dylan played ‘Lonesome Whistle’ during the second of his four sets at Toad’s Place, Connecticut (see Appendix 3). This “show” was a warm-up for the US “Fastbreak” tour and the song was duly performed two days later at the first concert of the tour. The song, which was played as the opening number at Penn State College, was then dropped. It was, however, tried out during a rehearsal at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona on February 2, 1996. Bob Dylan’s performances from Toad’s Place (January 12, 1990) and Penn State College, Pennsylvania (January 14, 1990) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Both driving renditions of this song are well worth seeking out. Hank Williams recorded ‘Lonesome Whistle’ several times and these recordings can now be found on numerous compilations. See the entry for ‘Honky Tonk Blues’ for biographical information about Hank Williams. Long Black Veil (Danny Dill / Marijohn Wilkin) This song was recorded by Dylan at the June 3, 1970 “ew Morning” album session. The recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:71 for details about this session. After a twenty-seven-year gap Dylan pulled this one out of the bag at his concert at the Capitol Music Hall, Wheeling, West Virginia (April 28, 1997). The song was then performed four times over nine days in 2000. The first performance was in George, Washington (June 17, 2000). The final performance was in Wantagh, New York (July 26, 2000). Bob Dylan’s excellent rendition from Wheeling, West Virginia (April 28, 1997) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The vocal and instrumentation (guitar, pedal steel, bass and drums) on this superb quality recording are all exemplary.
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Long John ‘Long Black Veil’ is a ballad about a man accused of a murder he did not commit. His only alibi however is that he was with his best friend’s wife. He decides that he wishes to be executed rather than reveal his lover’s infidelity and takes their secret with him to the grave. The chorus describes his lover’s mourning as she visits his gravesite in a long black veil. The song is narrated by the executed man.
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‘Long Black Veil’ was composed by Nashville legend, singer-songwriter Danny Dill, with the help of country songster Marijohn Wilkin. In an interview reprinted in Dorothy Horstman’s book “Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy”, (E.P. Dutton, 1975), Dill tells how he got his inspiration for the song. Dill: “I got on a kick with Burl Ives songs ... So I said, ‘I’ll write me a folksong’ – an instant folksong, if you will. So I worked on it for months, and then it all came to me. There’s three incidents I’ve read about in my life that really please me. There was a Catholic priest killed in New Jersey many years ago under a town hall light, and there was no less than fifty witnesses. They never found a motive. They never found the man ... That always intrigued me, so that’s ‘under the town hall light’. Then the Rudolf Valentino story has always impressed me – about the woman that always used to visit his grave. She always wore a long black veil – now there’s the title for the song. And the third component was Red Foley’s ‘God Walks These Hills With Me’. I always thought that was a great song, so I got that in there, too. I just scrambled it all up, and that’s what came out.” After getting these basic elements down on paper, Dill took the partly completed lyric to Marijohn Wilkin who helped him to finish the song, which was then given to Lefty Frizzell to record. The song, a massive departure from Frizzell’s earlier honky tonk style, was extremely successful, reaching Number Six on the Billboard Country Chart in 1959. ‘Long Black Veil’ has since been recorded by a plethora of artists including The Country Gentlemen (1960), The Kingston Trio (1962), Burl Ives (1962), Joan Baez (1963), Johnny Cash (1965), The Band (1968) and Bill Monroe (1970). Several of these recordings appeared on landmark albums including, “Joan Baez In Concert Pt. 2”, “Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison” and The Band’s “Music From Big Pink”. Bob Dylan played Lefty Frizzell’s 1959 recording of ‘Long Black Veil’ on show fortythree of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Colours”. Dylan has also covered Danny Dill’s song ‘Detroit City’ in concert. For information regarding this song see the entry for ‘Detroit City (I Wanna Go Home)’. For information about Lefty Frizzell see entry for ‘You’re Too Late’. Long John (Traditional) Dylan’s only known performance of this song was in December 1961 at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher. See Appendix 1:18 for further details. This fabulous harmonicadriven version, which circulates among collectors, can be found on the bootleg CD “The Minnesota Tapes”.
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Long Johnny Coo-Coo There are many variants of this traditional Negro work song; ‘Long John’, ‘Long John (From Bowling Green)’ and ‘Lost John’ being only a few. Regardless of title, the tale, a prison escape, is much the same. In his pioneering book “Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs” (1926) W.C. Handy provides an outline to the tale of Long John. “[This] is a story about the escape of a Negro Prisoner, one Long John Green. It seems that the county had recently acquired a pack of bloodhounds and the sheriff wanted to try them out. Long John Green, in jail at the time, was chosen to make the trail, since he was famous for the way he could get over ground. They gave John a halfway round the courthouse for a start and then unleashed the pack. On his first lap John crawled through a barrel, got the hounds off his scent and then was ‘long gone’”. Another version of the song, ‘Long Gone’, with its lyric “Did you ever hear the story of Long John Dean / A bold bank robber from Bowling Green”, is sung about a bank robber who also escaped from prison. The Long John / Lost John variant was recorded by John and Alan Lomax in Darrington State Prison Farm in Texas in 1934. The song was sung by a man identified only as “Lightning” and a group of his fellow black convicts. A transcript can be found in the J. A. & A. Lomax book “American Ballads and Folk Songs” (MacMillan, 1934). This recording is included on the album “Afro-American Spirituals, Work Songs, And Ballads” (Rounder). Dylan’s performance, complete with its syncopated chugga-chugga train rhythm, is quite close in feel to this recording. Interestingly, Dylan sings about “Lost John” in the opening lines to his recent composition ‘ettie Moore’. (“Modern Times” Columbia 82867 88306, 2006) “Lost John’s sittin’ on a railroad track / Something’s out of whack”.
Long Johnny Coo-Coo (Traditional) Bob Dylan visited folksinger and painter Eric von Schmidt at his home in Sarasota, Florida sometime in early 1964. While there the two musicians jammed together and part of the session, about seventy-five minutes, was captured on a reel-to-reel tape recorder by von Schmidt’s wife, Kay. The uncirculated tape was first reported by Dylan journal “The Telegraph” (issue number 44, Winter 1992). The tape contains two takes of ‘Long Johnny Coo-Coo’ with Dylan on lead vocal and harmonica. The absence of a circulating tape from this session means that I am unable to identify this song. For further information about this session see the entry for ‘Joshua Gone Barbados’.
A Long Time A-Growin’ (Traditional) Often known as ‘Young But Daily Growin’, this song was sung by Dylan and recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961. The song was
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Look On Yonder Wall committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his new home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8.
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A recording of this song from the Carnegie Chapter Hall, New York, November 4, 1961 also circulates among collectors. See Appendix 1:14 for further details about this recording. This song made its final appearance so far (albeit in a much altered state) during the 1967 Basement sessions (see Appendix 1:59). This tune, a British, or possibly Irish folk song (Roud 31), is known by several titles including ‘A Long Time A-Growing’, ‘Long A-Growing’, ‘Young But Daily Growing’, ‘Daily Growing’, ‘Bonny Boy Is Young (But Growing)’, and ‘Still Growing (The Trees They Do Grow So High)’. The song first appeared in print in 1792 as ‘Lady Mary Ann’ and was later printed on various broadsides. There are numerous versions of both the tune and lyrics but the words may have been based upon the 17th century marriage of Lord Craigston to Elizabeth Innes, which might also indicate the song has Scottish origins. The version which Dylan sings at the Basement sessions is probably a variant of ‘Still Growing (The Trees They Do Grow So High)’ and ‘Bonny Boy Is Young (But Growing)’.
Long Time Man Feel Bad (Traditional) See the entry for ‘Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad’.
Look On Yonder Wall (Clark) Look on yonder’d wall, Hand me down my walkin’ cane, Look on yonder’d wall, Hand me down my walkin’ cane, I got me another woman, baby, yon’ come your man. This song was recorded at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California on April 28, 1986, during the “Knocked Out Loaded” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:79). ‘Look Over Yonder Wall’ has been released by numerous artists including Elmore James and Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. One of the earliest and best known versions of the song is Bill “Jazz” Gillum’s recording from February 18, 1946. Gillum’s release was credited to James Clark, who recorded it as ‘Get Ready To Meet Your Man’ some four months earlier. The song regained popularity in 1961 when it was released by Elmore James (Fire 504).
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Louie, Louie The single was paired with ‘Shake Your Moneymaker’, which Dylan also recorded at the “Down In The Groove” sessions. It is likely therefore that it was James’ version of the song that Dylan was covering. Interestingly, Bob Dylan used the line “Hand me down my walkin’ cane” to great effect in his 2006 “Modern Times” composition ‘Ain’t Talkin’’. Louie, Louie (Richard Berry) This song probably should not qualify for inclusion here as it was performed only as part of a rehearsal for the Farm Aid fund raising event. It is however possible that this song was being seriously considered for the performance proper. The rehearsal, which was held on Soundstage 41 in Universal Studios, Los Angeles, took place on September 19, 1985. Richard Berry wrote ‘Louie, Louie’ in 1955 after hearing The Rhythm Rockers’ version of the Rene Touzet song ‘El Loco Cha Cha’ from which he borrowed part of the melody. ‘Louie Louie’ was originally released in 1957 on Flip Records as the B-side of ‘You Are My Sunshine’. The song, featuring Berry’s backing group The Pharaohs, was a West Coast regional hit, predominantly in San Francisco. However, the single failed to make it on to Billboard’s national R&B or Pop Charts and in 1959, in need of money for his forthcoming marriage, Berry sold his portion of song-writing and publishing rights to the owner of Flip Records for a reported $750. Four years later, The Kingsmen’s god-awful multi-million selling version reached Number Two on the Billboard national Pop Chart and the song has now been covered more than a thousand times. After the Beatles’ song ‘Yesterday’, ‘Louie Louie’ is the most covered pop song of all time. In 1986, Berry regained partial rights to this grand-daddy of three chord pop / rock and further monies followed in 1993. Unfortunately, his health declined and four years later, at the age of sixty-one, he died of heart disease. Love Henry (Traditional) This song was recorded in May 1993 and released on Dylan’s album “World Gone Wrong”. See Appendix 1:77 for further detail about this recording session. In his liner notes to the album, Dylan writes that “‘Love Henry’ is a ‘traditionalist’ ballad. Tom Paley used to do it. a perverse tale”. The song appears on the album “Who’s Going To Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot?” (Elektra EKL 295, 1964), which is also known as “Tom Paley & Peggy Seeger With Claudia Paley”.
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Love Her With a Feeling There are many versions of this song but Paley’s source can be traced to the set of variants printed in Byron Arnold’s, “Folksongs Of Alabama” (1950) and reproduced in Bertrand Harris Bronson’s book “The Traditional Tunes Of The Child Ballads Volume II” (example 68.19). This variant was sung by Lena Hill in Lexington, Alabama, in 1945.
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The song is a murder ballad that originates in Britain, probably Scotland, and tells the tale of a woman who is told in no uncertain terms by her man that he loves “Some pretty little girl in Cornersville … far better than thee”. She takes her revenge by stabbing the man with a “penny knife”. The only witness to the killing is the woman’s parrot. She attempts to bribe the bird by offering to deck the creature’s cage with gold but the parrot does not trust his mistress. After all, “A girl who would murder her own true love / Would kill a little bird like me”.
Love Her With a Feeling (Tampa Red) This was the first song I saw Bob Dylan perform in concert. After years of waiting for Dylan to return to Britain – discounting his appearance on the Isle of Wight, he had not played in Britain since 1966 – the master wordsmith confirmed his perversity by opening the concert (June 20, 1978) with a number by an old bluesman by the name of Tampa Red. Dylan had been alternating this song as a show opener with, amongst others, another Tampa Red number, ‘She’s Love Crazy’, since the first week of his mammoth 1978 world tour. Dylan played ‘Love Her With a Feeling’ for the first time in Osaka-fu, Japan (February 26, 1978). The song was played for the last time on the tour on July 15, 1978 at the Blackbushe festival extravaganza, although by the end of June ‘Love Her With a Feeling’ had almost entirely given way to ‘She’s Love Crazy’. Tampa Red was born Hudson Woodbridge in Smithville, Georgia. His parents died when he was a small child and he moved to Tampa, Florida, where he was raised by his aunt and grandmother, adopting the name Whittaker. In the 1920s, having mastered the art of slide guitar, he moved to Chicago to begin a career as a musician. He took the name Tampa Red from his childhood home and his red hair. He was performing as a street musician when he met pianist and composer Thomas Dorsey (aka Georgia Tom). Their first recording ‘Through Train Blues’ (1928) did nothing but their next release, the sexually suggestive ‘It’s Tight Like That’, went on to sell nearly one million copies and the two men shared some $4,000 in royalties, some of which probably went toward Tampa’s acquisition of a “gold-plated” National steel tricone resonator guitar, one of the first National resonators to be manufactured. There is some debate as to whether Tampa’s National was actually goldplated or not, but at any rate he acquired the name “The Man with the Gold Guitar”.
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Love Her With a Feeling In 1932 Georgia Tom abandoned blues for gospel music and it looked like Tampa Red’s career might be at an end. After a hectic recording schedule between 1928 and 1932, Tampa Red now spent the next two years without a studio session. In 1934 Tampa was signed to RCA Victor’s budget label Bluebird. At only 35 cents each, Bluebird’s 78s were half the price of most other labels, which made the records very much more affordable for black music buyers. Tampa Red’s music began to sell well again and he became an important figure at Bluebird. Twenty years after ‘It’s Tight Like That’, Tampa had another massive hit with ‘When Things Go Wrong With You (It Hurts Me Too)’, a song which Dylan released on his “Self Portrait” album (see Appendix 1:65). Devastated by the loss of his wife in 1954, Tampa began drinking heavily and, except for a very brief period of rediscovery, he spent the remainder of his life in seclusion on Chicago’s South Side. This much underrated bluesman, supposedly the first black man to play a National steel resonator and one of the best slide players around, spent his final days in Chicago’s Central Nursing Home which is where he died on March 19, 1981. Tampa Red was buried without a headstone in Mt. Glenwood Cemetery in Glenwood, Illinois. Also see ‘She’s Love Crazy’. Bob Dylan 1966
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(The) Main Street Moan
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(The) Main Street Moan (David Bromberg) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. It seems that Dylan was eager to record various David Bromberg songs and is reported to have repeatedly asked the question of Bromberg, “What about that one of yours ...” This song had been recorded by David Bromberg on his 1974 album “Wanted Dead Or Alive” (Columbia 32717). For information about David Bromberg, see entry for ‘Sloppy Drunk’. Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad (Traditional) ...she won’t write to po’ me, Alberta, she won’t write to po’ me, She won’t write me no letter, She won’t send me no word, It makes a long, oh, long-a time man, Oh Lawdy, feel bad. The first known performance of this song by Bob Dylan was at the home of Eve and Mac McKenzie on November 23, 1961. ‘A Long Time Man’ was also performed by Dylan on the Cynthia Gooding radio show (WBAI Studios, New York, January 13, 1962). See Appendices 1:16, 19 and 20 for further information. Dylan’s performances of this song seemed very much to belie his young age. ‘Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad’ began life as an unaccompanied African-American work song. It was collected first by Alan Lomax who recorded it in the wood-yard of Cummins State Farm Prison in Gould, Arkansas on October 5, 1934. The song was performed by a “Group of Negro Convicts” who are believed to be Kelly Pace (leader), Charlie Porter, L.T. Edwards, Willie Hubbard, Luther Williams, Napoleon Cooper, Albert Pate and Willie Lee Jones.
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The song was recorded for a second time – perhaps demonstrating its popularity among prison inmates – by John A. and Ruby T. Lomax at the infamous Parchman Farm State Penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi in May 1939. The song was listed as having been sung by Johnny Smith and group. This recording can be heard on the album “Prison Songs (Historical Recordings From Parchman Farm 1947-48), Vol. 1”. Lomax’s recording equipment
Perhaps, somewhat surprisingly, this song entered the repertoires of Bobby Darrin and Harry Belafonte. Darrin performed the song live as a folk duo with Roger McGuinn in 1962 but did not record it until later. The versions recorded by Belafonte and by Ian and Sylvia, which are both very close to Dylan’s rendition, were not released until 1962, which is after Dylan began performing the song. Whilst it is possible that Dylan had knowledge of the Lomax-collected versions, his performances differ from these, especially in the “Alberta” verse reprinted at the beginning of this entry. Making Believe (Jimmy Work) Bob Dylan recorded this song at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California in early April 1987. The song was recorded for possible inclusion on the “Down In The Groove” album but was not released on the final product. This recording does not circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:80 for further details. Dylan’s only known performance of this song occurred during his first ever concert in Turkey. The lengthy twenty-one-song set contained a few surprises, including a one-off outing for ‘Making Believe’. This rather nice performance from Istanbul (June 24, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000”. As is so often the case, this good quality recording is marred by an overly talkative audience. In May 1989, Dylan rehearsed this song at Montana Studios, New York City, for his forthcoming summer tour of Europe. However, it was not performed on the tour. This session is in circulation among collectors and can be found on the bootleg CD “The ever Ending Tour Rehearsals” (Moonlight Records, 1996). The song’s writer, Jimmy Work, is not a familiar name even to many country music fans. He was, however, responsible for writing ‘Tennessee Border’, ‘Making Believe’ and ‘That’s What Makes The Jukebox Play’. Work cut ‘Tennessee Border’ for the tiny Alben label, and although his release sold poorly it was picked up on by Red Foley, Bob Atcher, Jimmie Skinner, Tennessee Ernie Ford and Hank Williams.
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Man Of Constant Sorrow Work cut ‘Making Believe’ and ‘That’s What Makes The Jukebox Play’ for the Dot label. ‘Making Believe’, which was issued in 1955, made it to Number Eleven on the Country Chart and Kitty Wells rival version did even better, rising to Number Two on the Chart. Work’s lack of success, coupled with the decline of the honky tonk style of country that he played, forced him to retire from music at the end of the 1950s. In 1986, Bear Family Records issued the first album of Jimmy Work’s songs. This was followed by a second LP and later by a two-CD set entitled “Making Believe”.
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Man Of Constant Sorrow (Traditional) I am a man of constant sorrow, I’ve seen trouble all of my days, I’ll bid farewell to old Kentucky, The place where I was born and raised. Dylan’s first known recording of this song was made by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. It is quite possible, however, that he had learned this song before he went to live in New York. The twenty-fivesong recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. This song appears to have been a regular inclusion on Dylan’s setlists around this time and it is believed to have been played at a club in St. Paul, Minnesota as early as the summer of 1960 (see Appendix 1:4). Other instances of this song, including its release on Dylan’s debut LP, can be found in Appendices 1:8, 1:15, 1:18 and 1:43. The song re-emerged in concert on the opening night of what has become known as the “Never Ending Tour”– Concord Pavilion, Concord, California (June 7, 1988). ‘Man Of Constant Sorrow’ then made sporadic appearances through until October 1990. Bob Dylan’s stunning acoustic performance from Mountain View, California (June 11, 1988) can be found on the bootleg CDs “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000” and “Golden Vanity”. Authorship of the song has been claimed by Emry Arthur, who first recorded it, along with his brother Henry and a third musician, in 1928 for Vocalion (VO 5208) (Arthur recorded the song again in 1931). It seems, however, that Arthur learned the song from a less well known musician by the name of Dick Burnett. Emry and Henry Arthur, who were prolific recording artists in the 1920s and 1930s, were raised “just up the road” from Burnett who lived in Monticello, Kentucky. We know that
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Marines’ Hymn Burnett’s association with the song came before Arthur’s recording because Burnett’s version, published under the title ‘Farewell’, was included in a 1913 pocket book entitled “Songs Sung By R. D. Burnett, The Blind Man”. It should be noted, however, that in a 1973 interview with Charles K. Wolfe (“Old Time Music, No. 10”), Burnett (then aged ninety) answered the question “What about this ‘Farewell Song’ – ‘I Am a Man Of Constant Sorrow’ – did you write it?” with “No, I think I got the ballet [sic] from somebody – I dunno. It may be my song...” Some scholars believe that even Burnett’s song is a reworking of an earlier hymn and as such it should probably be classified as traditional. One of the first true variants, learned directly from Emry Arthur’s recording of the song, was Sarah Ogan Gunning’s ‘I’m a Girl Of Constant Sorrow’, which she composed around 1936 when her husband, Andrew Ogan, became terminally ill. Gunning first recorded the song in 1937 for Alan Lomax (Library of Congress Archive of American Folk-Song, AFS 1945A). It was printed in “People’s Songs Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 3” (April 1946). The song became popular with female folk artists in the early 1960s. Peggy Seeger recalls learning – or at least hearing – this version from Bonnie Dobson at a Canadian folk club in 1960, after which she appears to have referred back to John Greenway’s “American Folksongs of Protest” (1953). Dobson and Seeger both released recordings of the song, as did Judy Collins who released it in 1961 under the title of ‘A Maid Of Constant Sorrow’. The Stanley Brothers and The Clinch Mountain Boys recorded a variant in 1950, which they may have taken from an earlier version by Lee and Juanita Moore. Inevitably, Dylan does not limit himself to any one of these variants; instead he borrows his six verses from the Arthur and Stanley Brothers recordings, but then employs them in an altered sequence. Not content with these changes, Dylan moves the central character’s birthplace from Kentucky to Oklahoma, probably to fit his Woody Guthrie persona. He also opens his second stanza with the line “Your mother says I’m a stranger”, which might well have been aimed at the problems he was experiencing with his then girlfriend’s mother, Mary Rotolo. After more than seventy years, ‘Man Of Constant Sorrow’ gained new-found popularity via its inclusion in the acclaimed 2000 film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”.
Marines’ Hymn (Traditional) This piece was performed by Dylan as an instrumental opener at seventeen concerts in 1990. The first outing was at the Minnesota State Fair (August 29, 1990). The final performance was at the Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio (November 17, 1990). The official hymn of the United States Marine Corps, the ‘Marines’ Hymn’ is a tribute to the warrior and battle history of the Corps. It is also the oldest official song in the United States military.
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Mary And The Soldier Following the American war with the Barbary pirates in 1805, Marines inscribed the words “To the Shores of Tripoli” on to Corps Colours. Later, after the Marines had contributed to the capture of Mexico City and the Castle of Chapultepec, also known as the “Halls of Montezuma”, the words on the Colours were altered to read: “From the Shores of Tripoli to the Halls of Montezuma”.
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The song has obscure origins that are now lost with the passing of time. The music is thought to have originated in the comic opera Geneviève de Brabant, written by the GermanFrench composer Jacques Offenbach. The twoact opera, which debuted in Paris in 1859, was expanded to three acts in 1867. This revised version included the song ‘Couplets des Deux Hommes d’Armes’ and it is this piece which is believed to be the musical source of the ‘Marines’ Hymn’. The author of the words to the ‘Marines’ Hymn’ is not known. Some musicologists have suggested that they were written in 1847 by an unidentified Marine. There are others, however, who do not subscribe to this theory, on the Jacques Offenbach slightly tenuous basis that this would place the origination of the words twenty years before the music was written by Offenbach. Whilst this is a valid point, it ignores the possibility that the words might have originally been sung to a different tune. The Corps secured a copyright on the song on August 19, 1919, but the hymn is now in the public domain. Mary And The Soldier (Traditional) Come all you lads of high renown, That would hear of a fair young maiden, And she roved out on a summer’s day, For to view the soldiers parading, They marched so bold and they looked so gay, Their colours flying and the bands did play, And it caused young Mary for to say, ‘I’ll wed you me my gallant soldier’. Dylan recorded this traditional Irish number for his “World Gone Wrong” album. The song, which was recorded in 1993 in Dylan’s Garage Studio, at his home in Malibu, California, was not included on the final release. The first take of ‘Mary And The Soldier’ was, however, released in October 2008 on the rarities compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006”. However, after such a long wait for its release, the performance is somewhat disappointing.
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Mary And The Soldier As the title suggests, this romantic ballad tells of the love between a maid by the name Mary, and a soldier. The soldier is about to go off to war when Mary declares her undying love for him, saying she will go to war with him. The soldier is so overwhelmed by Mary’s loyalty he agrees to marry her. This is one of the countless romantic love ballads between a soldier or sailor and a maid where the soldier / sailor goes to war leaving the girl behind. In these ballads, the girl follows the soldier / sailor, which necessitates her dressing in men’s clothing. One such song is ‘Canadee-i-o’ (‘The Wearing Of The Blue’) which Dylan did release on “Good As I Been To You”. Some variants of ‘Mary And The Soldier’ are ‘Peggy And The Soldier’, ‘The Gallant Soldier’ and in the Scottish tradition, ‘The Hieland Sodger’. Born May 19, 1947 in Strabane, Northern Ireland, on the border with the Irish Republic, Paul Brady began to play guitar at the age of eleven and by the mid-sixties he had played in a succession of R&B and Soul outfits. Brady joined The Johnstons in 1969, moving to London and later to New York City. He returned to Dublin in 1974 to join one of Ireland’s foremost folk bands, Planxty, with whom he toured but did not record. In 1976, Brady recorded an album as a duo with Andy Irvine. The album, “Andy Irvine And Paul Brady” (Mulligan LUN 007), which many still regard as his finest achievement, contains Brady’s first recording of ‘Mary And The Soldier’. This version of the song, with its weaving countermelody, is sung by Brady with Irvine providing some extremely fine mandolin / bouzouki. The album also features another song covered by Bob Dylan, the exceptional Irish folk ballad ‘Arthur McBride’.
Paul Brady
Brady’s first solo album, the highly praised “Welcome Here Kind Stranger”, which derives its title from the album’s fourth track ‘The Lakes of Pontchartrain’, was released in 1978. In 2001, Paul Brady formed his own record label, PeeBee Music. The first release on the label was a nostalgic live album entitled “The (Missing) Liberty Tapes”. This flawless performance from a 1978 concert in Dublin, which had been lost for twenty-three years, features material from Brady’s first two studio ventures, “Andy Irvine And Paul Brady” and “Welcome Here Kind Stranger”, including a stunning live rendition of ‘Mary And The Soldier’. In October 2001, Brady undertook a record-breaking run of twenty-three sold-out concerts at Dublin’s premier music venue, Vicar Street.
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Mary Ann A wonderful interpreter of traditional songs, Brady is greatly admired by Bob Dylan and his versions of ‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’ and ‘Arthur McBride’ are viewed by many people as being definitive.
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Mary Ann (Traditional) Oh, fare thee well, my own true love, Fare thee well but for a while, The ship is waiting and the wind blows high, And I am bound away for the sea, Mary Ann. The first known performance of ‘Mary Ann’ was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twentyseven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. This recording can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. This early version sounds unfinished. This song was also recorded by Dylan at the June 1, 1970 second “ew Morning” album session. This recording is not in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:69 for details). The song was attempted several more times during the next day’s session (see Appendix 1:70) and in total the tape reels were set in motion some fifteen times. Nevertheless, the song was not released on the subsequent album. One of the takes did, however, see the light of day when it was released on the ill-conceived, and unauthorized by the artist, album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973). This rendition is both uninspired and poorly sung. Popular among steel bands, though not widely covered by others, ‘Mary Ann’tells the story of someone (a sailor?) who is “Ten thousand miles away from home”. He goes on to tell his love that “The sea may freeze and the earth may burn / If I never no more return to you, Mary Ann”.
Mary Of The Wild Moor (Traditional) ‘Twas one cold night when the wind, It blew bitter across the wild moor, When poor Mary she came with her child, Wandering home to her own father’s door. She cry’d, father, oh pray let me in, Do come down and open your door, Or the child at my bosom will die, With the wind that blows ‘cross the wild moor.
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Mary Of The Wild Moor This rather nice traditional number was debuted by Dylan at the Fox Warfield Theater in San Francisco, California, on November 12, 1980. The song was performed with Regina Havis playing the autoharp and singing harmony. ‘Mary Of The Wild Moor’ was played fourteen times in 1980 and a further twice in 1981. The last outing (so far) was at Earls Court, London, England, June 28, 1981. Dylan introduced this song, sometimes at length, at his 1980s concerts. What follows is an extract from his introduction to the song when it was performed in San Diego (November 26, 1980): “People are always asking me about old songs and new songs. Anyway, this is a real old song. I used to sing this before I even wrote any songs. One of them old Southern Mountain ballads, I guess everybody used to do them...” There is evidence, in the form of manuscripts left by Bob Dylan at the home of Eve and Mac McKenzie, that Dylan did indeed know this song very early on in his career. These manuscripts, first transcribed by Chris Cooper in ISIS magazine (issue 45, OctoberNovember 1992), contain a hand-written eight verse version of ‘Mary Of The Wild Moor’ that can be dated to the summer of 1961. This song tells the heart-rending tale of wandering Mary who returns to her father’s house to seek refuge for her child and herself from the howling wind and freezing cold. “Why did I leave this fair spot / Where once I was happy and free”, Mary asks, “But her father was deaf to her cries” and Mary dies on the doorstep of her former home. The child survives the night, but “to its mother went soon” and “In grief the old man pined away”. Another product of the oral English tradition, the earliest known printing of ‘Mary Of The Wild Moor’ can be found on a twelve-song broadside long sheet captioned ‘The St. James Looking Glass’. On this printing, from around 1829, the song is known simply as ‘Mary’. By around 1835 however, a Durham printing company by the name of Walker had produced a version entitled ‘Mary Of The Wild Moor’. At around the same time, William Pitts was printing the song under the title of ‘Poor Mary Of The Moor’. Although broadside printings usually contain words only, the sheets do occasionally give the name of a tune to which the lyrics can be sung. One such sheet (unfortunately undated) which exists for ‘Mary Of The Moor’ gives the tune as ‘The Robin’s Petition’.
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Matchbox According to Bill Malone in “Singing Cowboys And Musical Mountaineers – Southern Culture And The Roots Of Country Music” (1993), ‘Mary Of The Wild Moor’ arrived in the United States via professional British entertainers who toured America. In any event, the song soon became popular and widespread in the US and Canada. Although the song is clearly traditional it was credited in 1845 to Joseph W. Turner.
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While earlier recordings exist, it was the Blue Sky Boys’ 1940 release that popularized the song which came to the fore again in 1956 with the Louvin Brothers’ release.
Matchbox (Carl Perkins) Dylan first recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the sessions for his “ashville Skyline” album. (See Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire, are performed as duets. This recording was never released, but it does appear on various bootleg CDs including “Dylan / Cash Sessions” (Spank SP 106). Dylan also attempted this song during the May 1, 1970 “ew Morning” album sessions. See Appendix 1:68 for details about this session. This recording can be found on the bootleg CD “Possum Belly Overalls” (Gold Standard NASH105). See Appendix 2 for further information. ‘Matchbox’ made its next appearance during Dylan’s guest performance at the Palomino club in Hollywood, California (February 19, 1987), when he joined Taj Mahal on guitar for an all-star jam. The song emerged again at the Oman Auditorium in Jackson, Tennessee on November 10, 1994 when Dylan was joined on stage by hometown boy, Carl Perkins. It was played as a final encore with Perkins on vocals. Dylan is known to have rehearsed ‘Matchbox’ in February 1996 and to have played it during a sound check in Bournemouth, England in October 1997. However, it was August 24, 1998, seven months after Perkins’ death, before we got to hear a version with Dylan on lead vocals. This performance from Adelaide, Australia, can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Carl Perkins recorded ‘Matchbox’ at Sun Studios on December 4, 1956. Exactly how the song came about is a matter of some conjecture. One theory is that Sam Phillips brought Perkins in specifically to record the number, while others argue that the song was arrived at during the session when Perkins’ father, Buck, suggested Carl tried a song he knew called ‘Matchbox Blues’. ‘Matchbox Blues’ is a 1927 recording by Blind Lemon Jefferson and although Perkins’ recording only uses two lines from Jefferson’s song, they are the repeating hook lines and therefore the most important in the song. It is also true that most of the other lyrics in this
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Mean Old Southern Railroad very short composition can be found in earlier blues songs and that only two lines appear to be Perkins’ own work. It should also be stated that although Jefferson was first to record ‘Matchbox Blues’, Ma Rainey had previously used the lyric “I’m sitting here wondering, will a matchbox hold my clothes” in her 1923 recording of ‘Lost Wandering Blues’. It is quite possible, therefore, that the lyric already existed as a blues idiom. In any event, Perkins’ release (Sun 261, 1957), which featured Jerry Lee Lewis (still unknown outside of Memphis) on piano, reached the Number One slot on the R&B Chart. The day that Perkins recorded ‘Matchbox’, Elvis Presley (by then an RCA recording artist) dropped into the studio. Coincidentally, Johnny Cash was also visiting Sun, and after the Perkins’ session Presley and Cash joined Jerry Lee Lewis and Perkins for a jam session. The casual recording, which lasted for over an hour, was dubbed “The Million Dollar Quartet” by a local newspaper (Memphis Press-Scimitar). This session was eventually released on a disc in 1990.
Mean Old Southern Railroad (Traditional) (Danny Kalb) Oh, that mean old Southern Railroad, Yes, it took my babe away, Oh, that mean old railroad, Took my babe away, I’m gonna find her, yes, I’ll find her, Gonna bring her back some day. Dylan played this song during his short five-song set at a “Hootenanny Special” at the Riverside Church, New York City, July 29, 1961. He introduced the song with the words, “This is a friend of mine, Danny Kalb. He plays the guitar, sings, all that. I’m gonna play the harmonica. Stand aside”. Although this song is most often associated with Danny Kalb, its origins are in the blues tradition. Even though Kalb was performing this song in the early 1960s, it did not see the light of day until the release of the album “The Blues Project Live At Town Hall” (Verve / Folkways FTS-3025, 1967).
Milk Cow Blues (Kokomo Arnold) Dylan performed this song at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, Maryland on August 12, 2004. This performance, which is quite different from Dylan’s 1962 studio recordings of the song, is a pleasing bluesy jam involving Dylan and band with Willie Nelson and his son
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Milk Cow’s Calf’s Blues Lucas. This rendition is based around Willie Nelson’s version of the song which he released as the title track of his 2000 album– a project that saw Nelson turn his attention from country music to the blues. The song begins and ends with verses from Kokomo Arnold’s ‘Milk Cow Blues’ (Decca 7027, 1934), but in between veers in other directions. In this rendition, Nelson sings the opening verses and Dylan closes the song. The performance was marred by a sound problem that appeared to emanate from the pedal steel guitar. Also see the entry for ‘Milk Cow’s Calf’s Blues’.
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Milk Cow’s Calf’s Blues (Robert Johnson) According to Michael Krogsgaard’s research published in the Dylan magazine The Telegraph (issue 52, summer 1995), the studio sheets for Bob Dylan’s second “Freewheelin’” album session list this song as ‘Milk Cow Blues’. The truth is that Bob Dylan’s recordings of this song in Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City (April 25, 1962), were works in progress and an amalgam of several blues numbers. Dylan made four attempts at recording this song which borrows from Kokomo Arnold’s ‘Milk Cow Blues’ (Decca 7027, 1934), Robert Johnson’s ‘Milk Cow’s Calf ’s Blues’ (Vocalion 3665, 1937), and Elvis Presley’s third Sun single ‘Milkcow Blues Boogie’ (Sun 215, 1955). For whatever reason, Presley’s recording is credited to Kokomo Arnold. It is however a completely different song. As Dylan works through his takes, two of which circulate among collectors, he can be heard adding new lines including one from Lead Belly’s ‘Good Morning Blues’. Also see the entry for ‘Milk Cows Blues’. Miss The Mississippi And You (Bill Halley) Written by Bill Halley and first recorded by Jimmie Rodgers, ‘Miss The Mississippi And You’ was recorded by Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place with David Bromberg producing at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992. This gentle, well sung number, with its lengthy harmonica intro, first appeared in 2008 on the bootleg CD “Fourth Time Around – GBS-4”, but has since been officially released (October 2008) on the rarities compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006” (See Appendix 1:75 for further information). For information about David Bromberg, see entry for ‘Sloppy Drunk’. ‘Miss The Mississippi And You’ was originally released by Meridian, Mississippi native, Jimmie Rodgers (Victor 23736, 1932). Although Dylan’s recording differs slightly from that of Jimmie Rodgers this is his most likely source.
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(The) Mobile Line (The) Mobile Line (Hull / Reed) Did you ever take a trip, Baby, on the Mobile Line?, I say, hey Lordy Mama, hey Lordy Papa, Hollerin’ ’bout the Mobile Line, That’s the road to ride, To ease your troubled mind. ‘Mobile Line’ was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. For information about David Bromberg, see entry for ‘Sloppy Drunk’. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. ‘Mobile Line’ was recorded by Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band on the album “Unblushing Brassiness” (Vanguard VRS-9193, 1963). The song was originally recorded by Papa Harvey Hull and Long Cleve Reed on April 8, 1927 in Chicago, Illinois (Gennett 6106). This number goes under several title variants including ‘France Blues’ and ‘Hey Lawdy Mama - France Blues’. Money Honey (Jesse Stone) Dylan granted this R&B gem a one-off public outing in Ithaca, New York, November 15, 1999. This performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Although almost eight months had passed, Dylan’s Ithaca performance was probably connected to Jesse Stone’s death. Stone, who began performing at the age of five, touring with his family’s minstrel show, passed away on April 1, 1999 after a long illness. He was ninety-seven. The only other known rendition of ‘Money Honey’ is a recording which Dylan made for an intended tribute to Elvis Presley. This recording session took place at Sony’s New York studios on September 30, 1994. There were several takes of the song, but the album remains unreleased. However, two of these takes came into circulation in 2008 on the bootleg CD “GBS 4 – Fourth Time Around”. The first of these takes is measured and a little hesitant, while the second, longer take, is rockier and very confident. Released in September 1953, Stone’s ‘Money Honey’ was an immediate hit for Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters. The song spent eleven weeks at Number One and remained
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Monkey And The Engineer on the Billboard R&B Chart for a total of twenty-three weeks. The song became even more widely known when Elvis Presley released it in 1956. His rendition spent five weeks on the Billboard Top 100 Chart.
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Monkey And The Engineer (Jesse Fuller) Dylan’s performance of this Jesse Fuller song came during his surprise guest spot at a Grateful Dead concert at The Forum in Los Angeles, California on February 12, 1989. Dylan’s contribution is guitar only. The song, about a reckless engineer who leaves his pet monkey in charge of a locomotive, was released on the album “Jesse Fuller: The Lone Cat – Sings And Plays Jazz, Folk Songs, Spirituals & Blues” (Good Time Jazz M-12039, 1961) and on a single (Good Time Jazz GV2427, 1961).
Moon River (Johnny Mercer / Henry Mancini) Bob Dylan performed this classic croon in concert on August 27, 1990 at the Holliday Star Music Theater in Merrillville, Indiana. The song was dedicated to Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had died the previous night when his helicopter crashed in appalling weather. Dylan introduced the song with: “Everybody here knows about Stevie so ... So this one’s for Stevie ... Wherever you are Stevie”. Although this has been written about by others as an “off-the-wall performance”, the truth is, the song had been played during rehearsals for the summer leg of the 1990 tour. This tender one-off performance can be found on the bootleg CDs “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Dylan also played Henry Mancini’s original recording of ‘Moon River’ on show thirty-two of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Moon”. Composed by Johnny Mercer (lyrics) and Henry Mancini (music) in 1961, ‘Moon River’ won that year’s Academy Award for Best Original Song. The number was sung by Audrey Hepburn in the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and became a theme song for Andy Williams, who also recorded it in 1961. The success of the song was responsible for relaunching Mercer’s career.
Moondance (Van Morrison) Dylan played this song as a one-off on November 19, 1991 at the Warner Theater in Erie, Pennsylvania. This lacklustre performance, which can be found on the bootleg CD
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Moonshine Blues “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”, is made worse by a low-inthe-mix vocal that at times is barely audible. ‘Moondance’ was originally released by Van Morrison as the title song on his 1970 album. It was released as a single by him seven years later.
Moonshine Blues (Traditional, arranged Dylan) I’ve been a moonshiner for seventeen long years, I’ve spent all my money on whiskey an’ beer, I go to some hollow and set up my still, If whiskey don’t kill me then I don’t know what will. Dylan performed this song at the Gaslight Café, New York City in October 1962. After many years of being available on bootleg recordings, part of the Gaslight Café performance was released on the limited distribution 2005 CD “Live At The Gaslight 1962” (Columbia/Legacy A 96016, USA). For further information see Appendix 1:31. Although this is the only live performance we have of this song it seems extremely likely that Dylan was playing this number regularly in concert in the early 1960s, especially as it was in contention for inclusion on the “Times They Are A-Changin’” album in the summer of 1963. One of the two versions recorded at Columbia Studios, New York on August 12, 1963 was released on the official album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991). Dylan’s set from the Gaslight Café (October 1962) is without doubt one of his best early (pre-1964) concerts and ‘Moonshine Blues’ is one of the best performances within that set. Having said that, Dylan’s studio recording from ten months later – as released on “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” – is an even better rendition. Here Dylan shows his command and understanding of traditional themes by taking the song and adding to it in a way that complements the song. This rendition is perfect in every way: delivery, expression, pathos; this performance has it all and the song should never have been left off the finished “Times...” album. The song borrows some of its lyrics from ‘I’m a Rambler, I’m a Gambler’ / ‘Rambler, Gambler’.
More And More (Webb Pierce / Merle Kilgore) Although this song pops up in the 1965 film “Dont Look Back”, Dylan’s one true concert performance was a fine country blues rendition played at The Summit in Houston, Texas on August 26, 1989. This performance can be found on the bootleg CDs “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000. Dylan also played this song on January 18, 1998 at Madison Square Garden. This performance was however as a duet with Van Morrison. The song, which was played during Morrison’s set, saw Dylan and Van backed by Morrison’s band.
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Morning Blues Born August 9, 1934 in Chickasha, Oklahoma, Merle Kilgore was a country music artist and manager who was perhaps best known for his song-writing. He wrote his first Number One hit, ‘More And More’, at the age of eighteen. The song, which is jointly copyrighted Kilgore / Pierce, was a million-selling Number One country hit when released by Webb Pierce in 1954. Kilgore’s biggest hit, co-written with June Carter Cash, was Johnny Cash’s recording of ‘Ring Of Fire’.
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Van Morrison eventually released his cover of ‘More And More’ on his 2006 album “Pay The Devil”.
Morning Blues (Unknown) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. This song could be one of several tunes, but in the absence of a circulating tape identification is not possible. For information about David Bromberg, see entry for ‘Sloppy Drunk’.
Motherless Children (Blind Willie Johnson) Dylan played this song on August 11, 1962 at the Minneapolis home of Dave Whitaker. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. The only other known performance was in October 1962 when Dylan played the song at the Gaslight Café, New York. See Appendices 1:26 and 1:31 for further information. The influential gospel-blues performer Blind Willie Johnson is regarded by many, including Bob Dylan, as one of the finest slide guitarists of his era. Johnson recorded thirty sides between 1927 and 1930 and then regrettably never recorded again. Anyone who has not heard these Blind Willie Johnson songs should do so without delay. Columbia engineers misunderstood the title of Johnson’s 1927 recording ‘Motherless Children Have a Hard Time’ as ‘Mother's Children Have a Hard Time’, which is how it appeared on the label.
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Mountain Dew According to Dylan he is, or was, related by way of marriage to Blind Willie Johnson. Talking about Carolyn Dennis – whom Dylan had married in 1986 – Dylan told Christopher Farley (Time magazine, September 8, 2001) “she [Dennis] is a fantastic singer. She’s a gospel singer mainly. One of her uncles was Blind Willie Johnson. What more do you need to know about somebody?” Willie Johnson walked the perilous tightrope that crossed the deep divide between spirituals and blues. Whilst the lyrics of most of his songs were religious, his music drew from both sacred and blues traditions. When Willie was a boy, his father would often leave him on street corners to sing for coins and he remained poor until the end. Johnson’s death is the stuff of blues legends. His home burned down in 1945 and he is reputed to have lived in the ruins until he contracted pneumonia and died on September 18, 1945. Johnson’s death certificate, however, states the cause of death as “malarial fever, with syphilis as a contributing factor...”. In 1977 Johnson’s stunning ‘Dark Was The ight – Cold Was The Ground’, a forceful fusion of guitar and humming and moaning, was included in the “Sounds Of Earth” compilation sent into space aboard Voyager One. Dylan also played Blind Willie Johnson’s exceptional rendition of ‘John The Revelator’ on his Theme Time Radio Hour programme. Also see the entry for ‘obody’s Fault But Mine’.
Mountain Dew (Lunsford / Myrtle / Wiseman) Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for his “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire, are all performed as duets. This recording was never released. Although this song is very often credited as traditional, the correct copyright, as used for registration by the Stanley Brothers and others, is Lunsford / Myrtle / Wiseman. The original version of ‘Mountain Dew’ (or ‘Good Ol’Mountain Dew’) was written by Bascom Lunsford. Scott Wiseman, a major country musician during the 1930s and 1940s, heard Lunsford’s rendition of the song when he performed it at a folk festival in Asheville, North Carolina. Wiseman memorized the melody and later wrote a new set of lyrics. Wiseman and his wife Lulu Belle, real name Myrtle Eleanor Cooper, recorded their version of ‘Mountain Dew’ for Vocalion records in 1939. Wiseman informed interviewer Dorothy Horstman: “Roy Acuff and other Nashville singers learned it from our record and started singing it”. Wiseman continued: “Mr Lunsford came to Chicago after our version of the song became well-known and was elated with what we had done with it. He, John Lair of Renfro Valley and I sat in a Chicago hotel one evening discussing old songs. Mr Lunsford said, ‘I believe I know how to pay my bus fare back to Asheville; I’ll just sell Scotty my interest in ‘Mountain Dew’ for $25’. I wrote a brief agreement on hotel stationery and closed the deal. After we retired, he came to visit us. I called the publisher and BMI and
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(The) Mountains Of Mourne gave them instructions to pay him 50 per cent of all royalties on the song during his lifetime”. Bascom Lunsford lived to be ninety-one. Over the years the song was recorded by many artists including notable versions by Grandpa Jones, The Stanley Brothers and Roy Acuff.
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(The) Mountains Of Mourne (Percy French) This song was played by Dylan as an instrumental opener at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, Glasgow on February 3, 1991. I’m not sure where Dylan plucked this one-off from. He had been playing several instrumental openers, ‘Marine Hymn’, ‘Dixie’ and even ‘Old McDonald Had a Farm’ during 1990, but this was the only example of this type of opener during 1991. Dylan should really have saved this one for three days until he got to the song’s home, Northern Ireland, where he played Belfast’s Dundonald Ice Bowl (February 6, 1991). The lyrics to the song ‘The Mountains Of Mourne’ were written in 1896 by Irish musician William Percy French. The song is quite representative of French’s many works, most of which deal with Northern Irish people and places, and are often comedic. After his wife’s death in 1891, French began to tour widely in England and North America. He became ill while performing in Glasgow (could Dylan have known this?) and died some days later (January 24, 1921) from pneumonia. He was aged sixty-five. The truth is that Dylan’s opening number in Glasgow probably should not even be listed as ‘The Mountains of Mourne’. Dylan’s performance was instrumental only and the title ‘The Mountains Of Mourne’ only truly applies to the lyrics, which French had set to a tune that he borrowed from a Thomas Moore composition entitled ‘Bendemeer’s Stream’. Moore had in turn taken the tune, which is actually traditional, from a much older song. Moving forward sixty years, ‘The Mountains Of Mourne’, under the title ‘Mountains Of Morn’, was published in “Sing Out! Reprints” (1959) and released a year later by The Kingston Trio on their album “Sold Out” (1960). Mr. Bojangles (Jerry Jeff Walker) Dylan attempted this song six times during his June 2, 1970 “ew Morning” album session. The song didn’t make the final cut but was later released by Columbia records on the album “Dylan” (1973). Although this rendition has been cited by some as being little more than passable, it gives me a great deal of pleasure. For further details see Appendix 1:70.
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Mr. Bojangles Although this song sounds vaguely traditional, it was actually written in the mid 1960s by country music artist, Jerry Jeff Walker. Walker was born Ronald Clyde Crosby in Oneonta, New York on March 16, 1942. After high school, and a stint in the National Guard, from which he went AWOL, Crosby travelled the USA, busking in New Orleans and throughout Texas, Florida, and New York. He adopted his stage name in the mid 1960s and began playing the Greenwich Village folk clubs. Walker then made two albums with psychedelic band Circus Maximus. After the band split he resumed his solo career, releasing his first single and album, both entitled “Mr. Bojangles”, in 1968. David Bromberg, who played on the album, takes up the story: “This is really a true story, you know, a lot of people have heard the song, and ... Well, at least, Jerry Jeff tells me it’s true ... I played guitar with Jerry Jeff Walker and ... we did this song every night for two years. He ... this guy, Bojangles, was ... a street dancer in New Orleans, and what he’d do, he’d go from bar to bar and ... he’d put money in the juke box … And then he’d either dance or pantomime the tune. And for that, people would buy him drinks and get him pretty drunk, and then he’d go on to the next bar, and the next one, until it was closing time ... After a few nights of this, he’d end up on the corner, and the cops would pick him up and then take him to the drunk tank – this is where Jerry Jeff met him. … I may have [it] wrong, but the way I got that is that he propositioned the right woman at the right time and the wrong place – and her husband, the bartender... called the cops, and they took Jerry to the ... Parish jail. And he and this guy [Bojangles] just talked for three days in the cell…” (Introduction to “Mr. Bojangles” from the David Bromberg album “Demon In Disguise”, 1972, transcribed by Manfred Helfert). Walker goes some way to confirming Bromberg’s story in his autobiography “Gypsy Songman” (Woodford Press, 1999): “At the time I was reading a lot of Dylan Thomas and I was really into the concept of internal rhyme. One night, all alone with my guitar and a big yellow tablet, I started to write and the memories of guys I’d met in drunk tanks and on the street – one gentle old man in particular. The rest of the country was listening to the Beatles, and I was writing a six-eight waltz about an old man and hope. It was a love song”. It has often been stated that ‘Mr. Bojangles’ was written about Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the well-known stage and movie dancer, but this is a false assumption. It is quite possible that David Bromberg, who contributed guitar and dobro to the “ew Morning” album and who had previously played on Walker’s debut album, was instrumental in Dylan recording “Mr. Bojangles”. For information about David Bromberg, see entry for ‘Sloppy Drunk’. Jerry Jeff Walker’s original single was released on Atco 6594. The album was Atco 33-259. Both releases are 1968. The song was popularized by Bob Fass who played it regularly on his Radio Unmentionable show.
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Mutineer Mutineer (Warren Zevon)
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A few weeks after Warren Zevon announced that he was terminally ill with cancer, Dylan began his 2002 Fall tour in the USA. At the opening concert in Seattle, Washington (October 4), Dylan surprised his audience by playing Zevon’s ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’. Six songs later Dylan played another of Zevon’s songs, ‘Boom, Boom Mancini’, and before the concert ended, he paid a further tribute by performing a third Zevon song, the gorgeous ‘Mutineer’. The song was played for the final time on this tour at Fairfax, Virginia on November 22, 2002. After Warren Zevon’s death on September 7, 2003, Artemis Records put together a tribute album (Artemis Records RCD17304, 2004) to Zevon which featured contributions – in the form of artists’ covers of Zevon songs – from, amongst others, Don Henley, Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen, The Wallflowers and Bob Dylan. Dylan’s contribution was a live performance of ‘Mutineer’ from his 2002 US Fall tour. The song is from his concert in Red Bluff, California (October 7, 2002) and is not an audience recording from Australia as stated in the Artemis Records’ CD booklet. ‘Mutineer’ was originally released as the title track on Warren Zevon’s 1995 album of that name. For more information about Warren Zevon and Bob Dylan’s connection to him, see the entry for ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’.
My Blue-Eyed Jane (Lulu Belie White / Jimmie Rodgers) Dylan had a couple of stabs at recording this Jimmie Rodgers song at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, between May 9 and 11, 1994. This session was Dylan’s first with his tour band (John Jackson, Tony Garnier, Bucky Baxter and Winston Watson). The exact purpose of the session(s) is not clear to me. The same session did however produce ‘Boogie Woogie Country Girl’, which was released on the tribute album “Till The ight Is Gone: A Tribute To Doc Pomus”. One of the two takes of ‘My Blue-Eyed Jane’ contains backing vocals by Emmylou Harris. An excerpt from this version appears on the interactive CD-ROM “Highway 61” (Graphix Zone, 1995). A decision was later made that this version of the song would be included on the Dylan-conceived Jimmie Rodgers tribute album and, accordingly, this version was circulated on the 1996 pre-release tape of the album. During the recording of the “Time Out Of Mind” album (January 1997) however, a decision was made to re-mix the track, adding a new Dylan vocal. Dylan had been searching for a new vocal sound for “Time Out Of Mind” that was closer to the way he used to hear music when he was younger– a warmer and less digitized sound. The album’s engineer, Malcolm Burn, used vintage ribbon microphones and other devices to capture a “traditional” vocal sound and the probability is that Dylan decided this sound would be preferable for the Jimmie Rodgers tribute track. Accordingly, a new Dylan vocal for ‘My Blue-Eyed Jane’ was recorded during the “Time Out Of Mind” album sessions (Criterion Sound Studio, Miami, Florida). At the same time that the new Dylan vocal was added, Emmylou Harris’ vocal was removed. The resulting
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My Head’s In Mississippi track, “The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute”, was released on Dylan’s own label, Egyptian Records (485 189-2, August 1997). Dylan performed this song live for the first time at Fort Myers, Florida on January 26, 1999. The song received three outings during this tour. The last performance, which was in Birmingham, Alabama (February 7, 1999), can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This nice quality recording, complete with beautiful pedal steel guitar, is spoilt by an audience who are seemingly more interested in talking about the previous evening’s baseball game than listening to the show! Bob Dylan played Jimmie Rodgers’ 1930 recording of ‘My Blue-Eyed Jane’ (Victor 23549) on show fifteen of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The show was themed “Eyes”. For further information about Jimmie Rodgers and the album “The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute” see the entry for ‘Blue Yodel’. My Head’s In Mississippi (Hill / Gibbons / Beard) Bob Dylan performed this ZZ Top song three times during his 1990 US Fall tour and on each occasion he employed the duelling beards’ number as an opener. Dylan’s straight ahead rocking performance (is there any other way to perform this song?) from Oxford, Mississippi (October 25, 1990) can be found on the bootleg CDs “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Formed from rival bands in Houston, Texas in late 1969, ZZ Top is Billy Gibbons (guitars and lead vocals), Dusty Hill (bass), and Frank Beard (drums). Known for their dark glasses and trademark chest-length beards (ironically, the only beardless member is the mustachioed Frank Beard), the band reached the zenith of their commercial success during the 1970s and ’80s, charting eleven Top Fifty singles during that period. The band’s sexy promo videos and hard-rock label perhaps diminishes their undoubted talent, especially that of lead guitarist Billy Gibbons who is a very fine exponent of the blues. Gibbons’ admiration for the blues prompted him to collect a cypress beam from Muddy Waters’ broken-down childhood home, a cabin on the Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi. Gibbons had the beam made into a guitar which he christened “Muddywood”. He donated it to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, where it was unveiled in 1988. ZZ Top remain together today and are still touring and releasing albums. ‘My Head’s In Mississippi’, which appears on ZZ Top’s “Recycler” album, was also released as a single. Bob Dylan played the song on show twenty of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The show was themed “Musical Map”.
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My Prayer
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My Prayer (Kennedy / Boulanger) This song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, in March 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors. See Appendix 1:80. ‘My Prayer’ was written by salon violinist Georges Boulanger (music, 1926) and Jimmy Kennedy (lyrics, 1939). Glenn Miller’s 1939 recording went to Number Two on the Chart and The Ink Spots’ reached Number Three. The song has been recorded many times since by Chet Atkins, Glen Campbell, Jimmy Dorsey, Roy Orbison, The Righteous Brothers, Bobby Vee, to name only a few, but the biggest hit was The Platters’ 1956 cover which went all the way to Number One on the Chart.
Mystery Train (Herman Parker Jr.) Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire, are all performed as duets. This recording exists only as a fragment and does not circulate among collectors. Dylan also recorded this song during two of his 1981 “Shot Of Love” album sessions at Clover Recorders in Los Angeles, California. The recording from April 23, 1981 is in circulation among collectors but the take from the May 15 1981, remains under wraps. Junior Parker, also known as Little Junior Parker, began his career working with the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin’ Wolf before joining Memphis band the Beale Streeters, with Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and B.B. King. Parker formed his own band, the Blue Flames, in 1951 and was spotted a year later by Ike Turner who signed him to Modern Records. He moved to Sun in 1953, releasing ‘Mystery Train’ (Sun 192) the same year. The song was later covered by Elvis Presley (Sun 223). Parker died on November 18, 1971, during surgery for a brain tumour. He was aged just thirty-nine. Little Junior Parker
Bob Dylan played Little Junior Parker’s original 1953 recording of ‘Mystery Train’ on show forty-five of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The show was themed “Trains”.
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Bob Dylan 2002
adine (Is That You?)
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adine (Is That You?) (Chuck Berry) Bob Dylan performed this Chuck Berry song, supposedly as a request, when he played in Berry’s hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. This recording, from The Muny in Forest Park (June 17, 1988), can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Under-rehearsed, if indeed it was rehearsed at all, this rough tough rendition certainly cannot be accused of lacking spontaneity. Dylan had played the song just two weeks earlier while sitting in with his old cohort Levon Helm at New York’s Lone Star Café (May 29, 1988), so the song would have been fresh in his mind. Berry released ‘adine’ (Chess 1883) in February 1964. The single, his first hit following his release from prison after being arrested under the “Mann Act” (for transporting a fourteen year old Apache waitress, whom he met in Juarez, Mexico, across state lines for immoral purposes), reached Number Seven on the R&B Chart and Number Twenty-Three on the Billboard Pop Chart.
aomi Wise (Traditional) See the entry for ‘Omie Wise’.
ever Let Me Go (Joseph C. Scott) Dylan’s first performance of this song was at War Memorial Auditorium in Plymouth, Massachusetts on October 30, 1975. The song was played regularly throughout the first leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour, with the last performance being at the “Night of The Hurricane 1” concert at Madison Square Garden, New York City (December 8, 1975). A recording from December 4, 1975 (Quebec, Canada) was released on the promo EP “4 Songs From Renaldo & Clara”. Although the number was written by little-known songwriter Joe Scott, Dylan credited this song (in concert) to the American R&B artist Johnny Ace.
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(The) ew Lee Highway Blues John Marshall Alexander, Jr. adopted the name “Johnny Ace” when he signed to Duke Records in 1952. Ace had a string of hits during 1954 and he toured extensively, often with Big Mama Thornton, to promote his burgeoning career. During a break between sets at a show in Houston, Texas on Christmas Day 1954, Ace, allegedly under the influence of angel dust (PCP), was shot and killed. One account states that Ace shot himself during a game of Russian Roulette. However, Big Mama Thornton, a witness to the shooting, said in a written statement that Ace was simply messing about with the gun. In any event, it seems that Ace pointed the gun at the side of his own head and the gun went off. ‘ever Let Me Go’ backed with ‘Burley Cutie’ (Duke 132, 1954) was Ace’s final single. ‘Pledging My Love’ (Duke 136, 1955) released shortly after his death, went to Number One on the R&B Chart and Number Seventeen on the Billboard Pop Chart. (The) ew Lee Highway Blues (David Bromberg) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. It seems that Dylan was eager to record various David Bromberg songs and is reported to have repeatedly asked the question of Bromberg, “What about that one of yours? . . .” This song had been recorded by David Bromberg on his 1974 album “Wanted Dead Or Alive” (Columbia 32717). For information about David Bromberg, see entry for ‘Sloppy Drunk’. ew Minglewood Blues (Tune adapted from ‘Minglewood Blues’ Noah Lewis) Dylan played this “electric” song twice during his 1996 summer European tour. The first outing was when he chose to play the number as the opener for his set at the Århus Festival in Denmark on June 15, 1996. The second occurrence (Luxembourg, June 24) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The tangled tale of ‘Minglewood Blues’ is relatively complex. The original ‘Minglewood Blues’ was written by Noah Lewis and recorded on January 30, 1928 by Cannon’s Jug
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ew Minglewood Blues Stompers. The group featured Gus Cannon (Banjo & Jug), Ashley Thomson (Guitar & Vocal) and Noah Lewis (Harmonica). This version is available on several albums including “Cannon’s Jug Stompers – The Complete Works 1927-1930” (Yazoo 1082/3, 1990). This CD release also contains another Lewis song, ‘Viola Lee Blues’ (more about that later). However, apart from the title and certain elements of the tune, ‘Minglewood Blues’ is a completely different song from ‘ew Minglewood Blues’.
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On November 26, 1930, the Noah Lewis Jug Band recorded ‘ew Minglewood Blues’. This song was again written by Noah Lewis who added “New” to the title to indicate that this was indeed a new song. This recording includes Noah Lewis on harmonica, “Sleepy” John Estes on guitar, Yank Rachel on mandolin and an unknown jug player. This recording was re-released in the early 1960s, at which time it was picked up by the Grateful Dead who released it, along with ‘Viola Lee Blues’, on their 1967 eponymous debut album (Warner Bros. W 1689). In keeping with the tradition begun by Noah Lewis, the Dead entitled their version ‘ew, ew Minglewood Blues’. This recording is very similar to Lewis’ ‘ew Minglewood Blues’ both in tune and lyrics. Although it is fairly obvious that Bob Dylan picked up on this song via the Grateful Dead (he also performed ‘Viola Lee Blues’ in concert in 1997), he would almost certainly have also known the original Noah Lewis Jug Band recording. Although ‘ew Minglewood Blues’ is registered as a Noah Lewis song, it should be noted that he borrowed all of the lyrics from other songs of the time. Lewis’ first and last verses were taken from ‘Water Bound Blues’ by Texas Alexander (recorded June 15, 1929): “I was raised in the desert, born in a lion’s den, I was raised in the desert, born in a lion’s den, Says, my chief occupation takin’ monkey men’s women”. became “I was born in the desert, raised in a lion’s den, I was born in the desert, raised in a lion’s den, My number one occupation, stealin’ women from their monkey men”. Lewis’ middle verse (of his three verse song) was taken from ‘It Won’t Be Long’ by Charley Patton (recorded June 14, 1929): “If you ever go down Memphis, stop by Menglewood, If you ever go down Memphis, stop by Menglewood, You Memphis women don’t mean no man no good”. became
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(The) ight They Drove Old Dixie Down “If you’re ever in Memphis, better stop by Minglewood, If you’re ever in Memphis, better stop by Minglewood, The women down there, they don’t mean a man no good”. For many years it was believed that Noah Lewis was murdered in 1937, but Swedish musicologist Professor Bent Olsson discovered that Lewis had simply retired to Ripley, Tennessee sometime in the 1930s. He died in poverty in 1961 of gangrene, after both his legs had been amputated because of frostbite. Noah Lewis is buried in a cemetery near Nutbush, Tennessee.
ewlyn Town (Traditional) See the entry for ‘Roving Blade’.
ewry Highwayman (Traditional) See the entry for ‘Roving Blade’.
(The) ight They Drove Old Dixie Down (Robbie Robertson) Dylan performed this song on the opening night of his 1974 Tour of America with The Band. The concert was at Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois (January 3, 1974). Dylan only contributed guitar to the performance. The lyrics to this moving dirge, written by Robbie Robertson, vividly depict the last days of the American Civil War when Virgil Caine, a Confederate soldier, “serves on the Danville train”, the main supply line into the Confederate city of Richmond, Virginia, which, along with Petersburg, is being held at siege by Union Army forces under the command of General George Stoneman who, to stifle supplies to the Confederacy, tears up the track again. The song is an accurate portrayal of events: “I remember taking [Robertson] to the library so he could research the history and geography”, said Levon Helm, who supplies the gritty and plaintive vocals for this one. The song was released on The Band’s 1969 eponymous second album (also widely known as “The Brown Album”) (Capitol STAO-132). The album caused quite a stir when it was released in the latter part of 1969 and although the single ‘Up On Cripple Creek’ / ‘The ight They Drove Old Dixie Down’ (Capitol 2635) received strong FM airplay, it only reached Number Twenty-Five on the US Chart. The most notable cover was of course Joan Baez’s single, which reached Number Three on the US Chart in 1971. Baez makes some slight lyric changes to the song, and a result
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inety Miles An Hour (Down a Dead End Street) of an apparent mis-hearing of the second line, “Till Stoneman’s cavalry came”, she sings “Till so much cavalry came”. I have to admit to also mis-hearing this line. On the first few occasions that I heard the song I thought the lyric was “When Stonewall’s cavalry came” (as in Stonewall Jackson). However, when you consider that Stonewall Jackson was Confederate general, it wouldn’t have made much sense for him to be tearing up his own rail tracks! Of course, Levon Helm is to blame. Let’s have some better diction young fellow!
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inety Miles An Hour (Down a Dead End Street) (Hal Blair / Don Robertson) This song, which was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios, Hollywood on April 3 & 11, 1988, was the only successful recording from these sessions. The song, which is one of the better tracks on the album, was released on May 19, 1988 on “Down In The Groove”. See Appendix 1:78 for further information. Bob Dylan would almost certainly have learned this song from the recordings of country musician Hank Snow. The song, which Snow released in 1963 (RCA 47-8239), was the last in a long run of country hits for the Grand Ole Opry star. By the second half of the 1960s Snow was finding it increasingly difficult to keep pace with the Bakersfield (California) sound but he was also unable, or unwilling, to follow the slickly-produced, orchestra-laden country / pop Nashville Sound, and apart from a brief return to form during 1974 his recording career stalled. Despite his diminishing record sales, Snow’s profile remained high through his concert Hank Snow performances and he went on to receive several lifetime-achievement awards. However, in 1991 Snow’s recording career came to an abrupt ending when, after forty-five years with the same record label, RCA dropped him. Snow recovered from a serious respiratory illness and returned to the Grand Ole Opry in 1996. He died on December 20, 1999, at the age of 85.
o Money Down (Chuck Berry) Bob Dylan played this song for the first time at the Holiday Star Music Theater in Merrillville, Indiana on October 19, 1981, with a repeat performance at the next show at
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o More Auction Block The Orpheum Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts. The song was performed as the final number at both of these concerts and featured Dylan’s wheelchair-bound friend Larry Kegan on lead vocal and Bob Dylan on saxophone. ‘o Money Down’, a song about trading in a “broken-down, ragged Ford” for a fully loaded, souped-up “yellow convertible, four-door de Ville”, was released by Chuck Berry in December 1955 (Chess 1626). The single reached Number Eight on the R&B Chart but failed to make it on to the Billboard Pop Chart. Dylan played Chuck Berry’s original recording of the song on show twelve of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The show was themed “Cars”. o More Auction Block (Traditional) This song was recorded in October 1962 at the Gaslight Café, New York City. This recording was released on “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3”. See Appendix 1:31 for further information. Dylan may have known this song from Odetta’s live album “Odetta At Carnegie Hall” (Vanguard VRS-9076, 1961). Regardless of this, it was the regular live performances of the song by the New World Singers that inspired Dylan to learn the number. At the time, the New World Singers consisted of Gil Turner, Delores Dixon and Happy Traum. Delores Dixon was a black New York City school teacher who had a gorgeous deep alto voice. This is what Gil Turner had to say about ‘o More Auction Block’: “In our set at Gerdes Folk City, Delores would step forward in the middle of the set and sing solo ‘o More Auction Block For Me’– a very moving song of freedom written during slavery times, insisting “no more, no more” and sadly reflecting on the “many thousands gone”. She sang it with spirit and determination ... During our sets ... Dylan would sit at the bar drinking wine that we often bought for him ... He listened to us night after night” (taken from an article by Bob Cohen). In his memoir “Chronicles Volume One” Dylan writes about his “sort of part-time girlfriend, Delores Dixon, the girl singer from The New World Singers, a group I was pretty close with”. In his book “Folksongs of North America” (Doubleday, 1960), Alan Lomax writes about ‘Many Thousands Gone’: “This is one of the spirituals of resistance … whose ante-bellum origin has been authenticated. Runaway slaves who fled as far north as Nova Scotia, after Britain abolished slavery in 1833, transmitted it to their descendents, and it is still in circulation there. At the time of the Civil War an abolitionist took it down from Negro Union soldiers”. Also known as ‘o More Auction Block For Me’, ‘o More Auction Block For Me (Many Thousands Gone)’ and ‘Many Thousands Gone’, this spiritual was first published in The
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o More One More Time Atlantic Monthly in June 1867. However, the melody has been traced all the way back to the West African Ashanti tribe! The “auction block” is where African slaves were made to stand while the white planters bid on them.
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Soon after learning this song from The New World Singers Dylan took the melody and utilized it for his new masterpiece ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’.
o More One More Time (Troy Seal / Dave Kirby) Between May and August 1990 Dylan gave four extremely powerful performances of this number. The first outing from Montreal, Canada (May 29, 1990) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Written by Troy Seal and Dave Kirby, ‘o More One More Time’ was released by the Louisiana-born Cajun accordionist Jo-El Sonnier in 1988 on RCA Records. The single, which reached Number Seven on the Country Chart, was taken from the album “Come On Joe”. Dylan, who appears to be a bit of a fan of Jo-El Sonnier, was seen hugging the king of Cajun after his set at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (April 25, 2003). Sonnier then came back onstage for an extra encore stating that Bob Dylan had requested that he play ‘Jambalaya’. Dylan also played Sonnier’s ‘Tear Stained Letter’ on his Theme Time Radio Hour show.
obody Knows You When You’re Down And Out (Jimmie Cox) The first known performance of ‘obody Knows You When You’re Down And Out’ was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording see Appendix 1:3. This recording can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Across the years this song has been erroneously credited to Ida Cox, Bessie Smith, Count Basie, and on occasions even as ‘Traditional’. The song is however officially copyrighted to Jimmie Cox in the USA, and it is assumed therefore that Cox actually wrote it. Even the date of the song is a subject of some speculation. In the United States it is listed variously as 1922, 1923 and 1929 (the later date of 1929 is also listed in the UK by MCPS). However, this date is almost certainly connected to the Bessie Smith release and not the date that the song was written. The 1929 dating is highly improbable because my research points to the fact that Jimmie Cox died in 1925. The confusion which surrounds this 1920s standard is made worse because the identity of the writer, Jimmie Cox, remains something of a mystery. What we do know is that his
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obody’s Fault But Mine name is spelt Jimmie and not Jimmy (as it appears on some releases) and that he was a black composer who worked in relative obscurity in vaudeville for twenty-five of his fortythree years. Sometimes described as “America’s coloured Charlie Chaplin”, Cox wrote several wellknown songs including another number associated with Bessie Smith– ‘I’m Going Back To My Used To Be’. It is not known from whom Dylan learned ‘obody Knows You When You’re Down And Out’ but it seems likely that he heard Bessie Smith’s poignant 1929 recording of the song.
obody’s Fault But Mine (Blind Willie Johnson) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This is one of two tracks that featured a Chicago black gospel choir, The Annettes. This recording is not in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:75 for further information). It seems that Dylan was eager to record various David Bromberg songs and he is reported to have repeatedly asked the question of Bromberg, “What about that one of yours?...” This Willie Johnson song had been recorded by David Bromberg on his 1977 album “Reckless Abandon” (Fantasy 9540). ‘obody’s Fault But Mine’ had previously been sung by Maria Muldaur during Dylan’s Fox Warfield concert on November 19, 1980. Seminal gospel-blues artist Blind Willie Johnson was recorded for the first time on December 3, 1927 by Columbia Records. This session captured six of his most enduring recordings including ‘obody’s Fault But Mine’. The other numbers recorded that day were a song about Samson and Delilah entitled ‘If I Had My Way’, ‘Mother’s (sic) Children Have a Hard Time’ (more commonly known as ‘Motherless Children’), ‘I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole’, ‘Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed’, and Johnson’s single mostacclaimed song, the bone-chilling ‘Dark Was The ight – Cold Was The Ground’, which is about the crucifixion of Christ. Dylan has performed several songs associated with Blind Willie Johnson, including releasing ‘In My Time of Dyin’’ on his 1962 eponymous debut album. For further information about Blind Willie Johnson see the entry for ‘Motherless Children’.
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ortheast Texas Women ortheast Texas Women (Willis Alan Ramsey)
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This song was recorded by Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992. This recording does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:75 for further information). These recording sessions featured a number of songs written by, or associated with, David Bromberg. Written by Willis Alan Ramsey, ‘ortheast Texas Women’ was released on Bromberg’s 1978 album “Bandit In a Bathing Suit” (Fantasy 9555). This song has also been covered by Jerry Jeff Walker and Jimmy Buffett. ot Fade Away (Charles Hardin / Norman Petty) The first known performance of this Buddy Holly number by Dylan was during a jam session at a hotel bar in the Park Royal Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand on February 6, 1986. A recording of this jam circulates among collectors. Dylan’s exact involvement is not known (probably guitar), but the vocals appear to be sung by Stevie Nicks. The second known performance was at The Forum, Inglewood, on February 12, 1989, when Dylan made a guest appearance at a Grateful Dead concert. On this occasion Dylan played guitar and contributed backing vocals. With this “almost” performance fresh in his mind, Dylan then ran through the song during rehearsals for his 1989 summer tour of Europe. This rehearsal, which was held at Montana Studios in New York City in mid-May 1989, circulates among collectors. The song received its first proper outing in Hartford, Connecticut, when it was played as the opening number at the show there on April 19, 1997. After an absence of a year, the song was again employed as an opener, this time at The Rage, in Vancouver (May 13, 1998). When Dylan re-commenced touring for 1999 in Fort Myers, Florida (January 26, 1999), he began playing ‘ot Fade Away’ as an encore. The song remained an encore, usually the final one, for the whole of 1999 (a total of eighty-four shows). The song continued to be played regularly until June 17, 2000 when, with more than 120 performances under its belt, it got a well deserved rest. It then received a surprise one-off outing in Australia in 2001 before making a real comeback on the spring tour of Europe. The last performance (for now?) was in San Diego on October 19, 2002.
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othin’ But You Bob Dylan’s performance from Atlantic City, NJ (November 19, 1999) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Buddy Holly (real name Charles Hardin Holley) and his band The Crickets recorded ‘ot Fade Away’ in Clovis, New Mexico, in May 1957. The song was originally released as the B-side to Holly’s hit single ‘Oh, Boy!’. Although the song has now become a classic, Holly’s recording never charted. It was however a huge hit in Britain in 1964 for the Rolling Stones. ‘ot Fade Away’ was the last song Holly ever played; it was the final number at the concert on the night before his fatal plane crash.
othin’ But You (Steve Earle) Dylan played this rocking Steve Earle number three times during the summer of 1989. The debut performance of the song from Old Orchard Beach, Portland (July 15, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. ‘othin’ But You’ was released in 1982 on Steve Earle and The Dukes’ first record– an EP entitled “Pink and Black”. The EP was released on a small independent label called LSI and only around three thousand copies were ever pressed. In any event the release of this EP led to Earle being signed by Epic Records who then released ‘othin’ But You’ as a single, which unfortunately disappeared without trace. This rather obscure song was also included on an originally unreleased Epic album entitled “Cadillac”. The album was eventually released, but only after MCA Records’ had success with Earle’s ‘Guitar Town’ LP. Epic changed the album’s intended title from “Cadillac” to “Early Tracks” (Epic EK 39226, 1987).
owhere Man (Lennon / McCartney) This Lennon and McCartney song was played at the opening show of Dylan’s summer 1990 North American tour. The show was at the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton, Alberta (August 12, 1990). This one-off electric performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The song was originally released by The Beatles in the UK on their 1965 LP “Rubber Soul”. The album was released in the US in 1966 under the title “Yesterday And Today”.
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Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie
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Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie (Elizabeth Cotten) This song was first tried out at the “live rehearsal” at Toad’s Place (January 12, 1990). This slightly disorganized version did not really work and the song was not included on the “Fastbreak” tour which followed. This great little number disappeared from Dylan’s radar until he performed it in Tokyo on February 9, 1997. The song became a regular inclusion throughout February and March, during which it was played in what seemed to me to be the “Grateful Dead slot”. For a period, song seven in Dylan’s sets alternated between ‘Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie’ and ‘Friend Of The Devil’ with one rendition of ‘Viola Lee Blues’ thrown in for good measure. The preceding song at all of these shows was ‘Silvio’. Dylan only played ‘Oh Babe...’ a couple of times in 1998 but the song returned for a dozen shows in 1999, this time as the opening number. ‘Oh Babe...’ was only played once during 2000 but reappeared for a dozen shows in 2001, again as a show opener. The forty-ninth and most recent performance of the song was in Little Rock, Arkansas on August 14, 2001. Bob Dylan’s performances from Toad’s Place (January 12, 1990) and Tokyo, Japan (February 11, 1997) can both be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The performance from Tokyo, which contains some rather nice acoustic guitar, is well worth seeking out. ‘Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie’ was a particular favourite of Jerry Garcia. He performed the song with the Grateful Dead during their fall 1980 acoustic sets and a rendition from this tour can be found on the live acoustic album “Reckoning” (Arista A2L8604). The song was also performed a number of times in concert by the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, and their version appears on the 1987 live album “Almost Acoustic” (Concensus Reality GDM 4005).
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Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie Whilst there is little doubt that it was Jerry Garcia’s performances of ‘Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie’ that rekindled Dylan’s enthusiasm for this number, he had undoubtedly heard the song long before this. It appears on Elizabeth Cotten’s debut LP, which Dylan allegedly took from Jon Pankake’s Minneapolis apartment in 1959 (for further details about this infamous deed, see the entry for ‘Fishing Blues’). Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten loved music from a young age. She began by playing her brother’s banjo, but, when he left home, selfishly taking his banjo with him, she began learning to play a borrowed guitar. By the age of eleven Elizabeth had scraped together enough money to buy her own instrument, a Stella Demonstrator. Being completely selftaught and having no previous knowledge of conventional guitar techniques, the youngster created her unique approach to the instrument. Cotten, who was left-handed, played her right-handed guitar upside down but without restringing it. This method required her to play the bass strings with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. This curious bass style later became known as “Cotten picking”. Cotten, née Nevills, was born near to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1895. By her early teens she was working as a domestic servant along with her mother, and it was around this time that she began writing her own songs, one of which, ‘Freight Train’, would become a standard of the 1950s British Skiffle explosion and a world-wide hit for Charles McDevitt and Nancy Whiskey. ‘Freight Train’ was also famously covered by Peter, Paul and Mary. Peggy Seeger, who had learned the song from Cotten, rather foolishly played it for two British men, James and Williams, who then took credit for the song before it was recorded by McDevitt and Whiskey. With the help of Pete Seeger, and after numerous court cases, Cotten was granted one-third of the credit for the song in 1957. ‘Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie’ came about when an elderly lady, Miss Marry, who lived across the street, was asked to kept an eye on the Nevills children while their mother was at work. One day Miss Marry falsely accused young Elizabeth of doing something wrong for which she was punished by her mother, both for the wrongdoing and for supposedly lying about the fact that she had done nothing wrong. To comfort herself and to right this injustice, the child went to her bedroom and wrote the song ‘Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie’, which opens with the lines, “One old woman Lord in this town / Keeps a-telling her lies on me”. In the weeks that followed, much to the enjoyment of her neighbours, Elizabeth sang her song while sitting on the front porch of her house. Everyone loved the song, including Miss Marry, who had absolutely no idea it was about her. The story of Cotten’s first album, which was not released until she was in her sixties, began with a chance fairytale meeting. After finding a lost little girl named Peggy Seeger, Cotten returned the child to her mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, who showed her gratitude by offering Cotten a job as a domestic help.
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Oh Boy! Cotten often borrowed young Peggy Seeger’s guitar, but it wasn’t until the early 1950s that her talent became known to Mike Seeger, who encouraged her to play and produced her first album in 1957.
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The album “Elizabeth Cotten – Folksongs And Instrumentals With Guitar” a.k.a. “egro Folk Songs And Tunes” (Folkways FG 3526) now reissued and re-titled “Freight Train And Other orth Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes” (Folkways CD SF40009, 1989) contains both “Freight Train” and ‘Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie’. Possibly in response to the fact that she had been ripped off over the rights to “Freight Train”, the Grateful Dead insisted that all royalties from their recording of ‘Oh Babe, It Ain’t o Lie’ went directly to Elizabeth Cotten. Cotten played the Carnegie Hall at the age of seventy-six and continued to perform, tour, and release records well into her eighties. In 1984 she won the Grammy Award for “Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording” for her excellent Arhoolie Records’ album “Elizabeth Cotten Live”. Cotten died in Syracuse, New York at the age of ninety-two. Also see the entry for ‘Shake, Sugaree’.
Oh Boy! (Sonny West / Bill Tilghman / Norman Petty) Bob Dylan played on this song during his June 1987 San Rafael, California rehearsals with the Grateful Dead. However, Dylan did not perform the song with the Dead until August 5, 2003, when he sat in on their set in Noblesville, Indiana. Both of these performances are in circulation among collectors. ‘Oh Boy!’ was written for Buddy Holly by Sonny West and Bill Tilghman. Holly’s manager Norman Petty also takes writing credits. West and Tilghman also wrote ‘Rave On’ for Holly. ‘Oh Boy!’ was recorded in 1957 at Norman Petty Studios in Clovis, New Mexico. The flip side of the single was ‘ot Fade Away’. The record peaked at Number Ten on the US Chart and Number Three on the UK Chart in early 1958. Also see the entry for ‘ot Fade Away’.
Oh Lonesome Me (Don Gibson) This song was recorded by Dylan at the June 1, 1970 second “ew Morning” album session. The song was not released on the album and unfortunately none of the three takes are in circulation among collectors. See Appendix 1:69 for details about this session.
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Old MacDonald Had a Farm Released early in 1958, the Chet Atkins produced ‘Oh Lonesome Me’ was the first RCA single from “The Sad Poet”, Don Gibson. The single spent eight weeks at the top of the Country Chart and crossed over into the Pop Top Ten. The record’s B-side, ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, became a model for unrequited love.
Old MacDonald Had a Farm (Traditional) This rather odd choice of song was performed as an instrumental at five of Dylan’s 1990 concerts. The first occurrence was at the Civic Center in Oklahoma City on September 5, 1990. This number was played for the last time at the Brayden Auditorium in Normal, Illinois on November 14, 1990. This children’s song, about a farmer and his various animals, can be traced back to “Tommy’s Tunes”, a 1917 book of World War I era songs by F. T. Nettleingham. The song, entitled “Ohio (Old Macdougal Had a Farm)” has very similar lyrics to the present day version but with a slightly different farmer’s name. The lyric being “Old Macdougal had a farm in Ohio-i-o”. Oct 23, 1990 setlist
The Traditional Ballad Index considers the including Ol’ Mc Donald “Tommy’s Tunes” song to be the earliest known version of “Old Macdonald Had a Farm”, though it cites a number of distant variants, some of them much older. However, the 1917 “Tommy’s Tunes” printing appears to be the first time these words had been published with the now familiar tune. Also, to my mind, none of the older variants is close enough to be truly considered part of the same family.
Old Man (Neil Young) On the October / November 2002 leg of his US tour Dylan began to wheel out an assortment of curious covers. The surfeit of Warren Zevon songs were perhaps understandable because Warren had recently announced that he was terminally ill with cancer, but other numbers like the Stones’ ‘Brown Sugar’ and Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’ were less so. Also, these were not simply one-off performances but multiple outings with many, including ‘Old Man’, being played more than thirty times each. The first performance of ‘Old Man’ was in Sacramento, California on October 8, 2002. The last performance on the tour was in Fairfax, Virginia on November 22.
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Old Rock ‘n’ Roller The songs was performed as a semi-acoustic number with vocal harmonies from band members Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton.
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Bob Dylan played Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’ on show two of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The show was themed “Young and Old” (Neil Young / Old Man, get it?). Written by Young about the ageing caretaker of the Broken Arrow Ranch, a property that the singer bought in Lahonda, northern California in 1970, ‘Old Man’ appeared on Young’s 1972 classic album “Harvest” and was also released as a single.
Old Rock ‘n’ Roller (Daniels / Gavin / Hayward / DiGregorio) Although Dylan rehearsed this song for his 1991 summer tour of Europe, its only concert outing occurred the previous year when it was played as an extremely well sung (maybe shouldn’t have held onto that last note so long) semi-acoustic performance in Hamburg, Germany (July 3, 1990). This great quality recording can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. ‘Old Rock ‘n’ Roller’ is a song about a has-been rocker who refuses to accept the fact that he will never repeat his one-off Top Ten success of the 1960s and that he is never going to be a star. In the song, his third wife has left him and he is now playing his music in a backstreet bar. Dylan somewhat ironically introduced his Hamburg performance of the song as being about “people like me”. ‘Old Rock ‘n’ Roller’ was released on the Charlie Daniels’ album “Simple Man” (Epic FE-45316, 1989).
Old Rosin The Beau (Traditional) See entry for ‘Rosin The Beau’.
Omie Wise (Traditional) I’ll tell you all a story about Omie Wise, And how she was deluded by John Lewis’ lies. There are two known Dylan performances of this song, both from the second half of 1961. The first performance was at the July ’61 Hootenanny Special at the Riverside Church, New York (see Appendix 1:9). The second available recording of ‘Omie Wise’ was made at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher in December 1961 (see Appendix 1:18). It is likely, however, that Dylan performed this song regularly from as early as 1959.
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One Irish Rover This popular murder ballad may have roots that stretch all the way back to the British Isles and the ‘Oxford Girl’ family of songs. However, although the stories follow similar plots, the lyrics are quite different. ‘Omie Wise’ appears to utilize the ‘Oxford Girl’ model, which is then adapted to fit a specific incident– the murder of Omie Wise. The song is based on the real-life murder, in 1808, of orphan Naomi Wise, in Deep River, Randolph County, North Carolina. Wise had become pregnant by her lover Jonathan Lewis, but when Lewis was given the news he drowned Wise and fled from the scene. Lewis was later arrested but managed to escape. He was re-arrested six years after Wise’s death but despite evidence (some reports state there were even witnesses!), he was acquitted of the murder. Five years later however, Lewis was said to have confessed to the killing while on his deathbed. The lyrics to ‘Omie Wise’ appear to have been written shortly after the murder took place. The first recorded version of the song was a fiddle-driven rendition performed by G. B. Grayson, who recorded it in 1927 in Atlanta, Georgia, and it is often suggested that this recording is the source for Dylan’s cover. This supposition is doubtless based on the fact that Grayson’s recording appears on the Harry Smith edited “Anthology Of American Folk Music”, from which Dylan seems to have borrowed extensively. However, although the two songs clearly tell the same story, the lyrics to Dylan’s version(s) are far enough removed from Grayson’s recording to make it highly improbable that this was his source. Doc Watson notably recorded the song as ‘Little Omie Wise’, but this performance is again close to the “standard” version and quite different from Dylan’s. Clarence “Tom” Ashley performed the song as ‘aomi Wise’, solo and also with Doc Watson, but again these are different from the version that Dylan sings. Roscoe Holcomb’s rendition also differs greatly from Dylan’s, and it is probable that he has used an amalgam of versions with the possible addition of some of his own lyrics. Although ‘Omie Wise’ and ‘aomi Wise’ are frequently referred to as being the same song, they are not. Both of these songs tell exactly the same story but do so using quite different lyrics. For further information about the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’. One Irish Rover (Van Morrison) Dylan sang backing vocals on Van Morrison’s ‘One Irish Rover’ after the two men had got together while in Greece. Morrison was in Athens for the filming of a BBC TV special documentary about him. The first performance involved four songs ‘Crazy Love’, ‘And It Stoned Me’, ‘Foreign Window’ and ‘One Irish Rover’. These songs were filmed by the BBC
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Only The Lonely on June 27, 1989 at Philopappos (Hill of the Muses), in Athens, Greece. The performances of ‘Crazy Love’, ‘Foreign Window’ and ‘One Irish Rover’ were included in the “Arena: One Irish Rover” documentary broadcast on BBC 2 television (UK) on March 16, 1991.
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When Dylan recommenced touring in July 1989, ‘One Irish Rover’ became a regular inclusion in his sets. The song was played again in 1991 (three times), and finally at the Fleadh Festival in Finsbury Park, London on June 12, 1993. With the notable exception of the Fleadh Festival version, the majority of the above outings of this song are very good. Those familiar with the Van Morrison original might take a little time to adjust to Dylan’s arrangement, but it is nonetheless a great version, usually with very strong vocals. Dylan’s superb vocal performance from Peoria, Illinois (July 1, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Bob Dylan played this Van Morrison song on show thirty-three of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The show was themed “Countdown”. ‘One Irish Rover’ was originally released on Van Morrison’s 1986 album “o Guru, o Method, o Teacher” (Mercury 830 077-1).
One Single River (Ian Tyson / Sylvia Fricker) See the entry for ‘Song For Canada’.
Only The Lonely (Roy Orbison / Joe Matson) On February 24, 1990, Dylan made a surprise appearance at the Roy Orbison Tribute Concert at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, California, joining three members of original Byrds, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Chris Hillman, on stage for their performance of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. Dylan remained on stage for performances of ‘He Was a Friend Of Mine’ and Orbison’s ‘Only The Lonely’, which featured a mass ensemble of amongst others, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Booker T, Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam, Levon Helm, John Hiatt, John Fogerty, Al Kooper, Michael McDonald, Bonnie Raitt and Iggy Pop. This performance was released on the album ‘The Byrds’ (Columbia / Legacy CK 46773, 1990). Roy Orbison’s original single was released in 1960 on Monument Records 421. The record just missed the top spot on the Billboard Chart, stalling at Number Two. The single did however go all the way to the top of the UK Pop Chart.
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Paid The Price
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Paid The Price (Moon Martin) Dylan performed a rather nice laidback version of this song during the second of his four sets at Toad’s Place, New Haven, Connecticut on January 12, 1990. Unfortunately, the song was not included on the tour that followed. This one-off performance can, however, be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Although many people will not be familiar with the name Moon Martin, everyone will know his songs as recorded by others. Stateside, ‘Cadillac Walk’ gained recognition in 1977 when it was recorded by Willy DeVille (Mink DeVille), and in the UK just about everybody will be able to sing along to the chorus of ‘Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)’, which was made famous in 1978 by the English singer Robert Palmer. Originally a rockabilly artist, John David Martin (born Oklahoma, October 31, 1950) was given the nickname “Moon” because so many of his song lyrics contained the word. His song ‘Paid The Price’, a 1950’s style of love ballad, was recorded by ex-Mamas and Papas member Michelle Phillips for her only solo album “Victim Of Romance” (1977). Moon played guitar and provided backing vocals on Phillips’ album, which continued three of his songs. Moon Martin released ‘Paid The Price’ on his 1982 Robert Palmer-produced album, “Mystery Ticket”. Pancho & Lefty (Townes Van Zandt) Bob Dylan played this wonderful Townes Van Zandt tune a couple of times in 1989, with the debut performance being in Italy on June 21. The song was then played three times during the summer and fall of 1991, and was also performed on April 28, 1993 at the Willie Nelson “Big Six-0” concert, broadcast on CBS-TV on May 22, 1993. After a considerable gap, ‘Pancho & Lefty’ re-emerged during Dylan’s cover-laden set at the Bonnaroo Music Festival on June 11, 2004. Bob Dylan’s performance from Cava Dei Terreni, Italy (June 21, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The quality of this recording could be better and my copy does a couple of hops, skips and jumps. Townes Van Zandt, ranked by Steve Earle as the finest songwriter who ever lived, originally recorded ‘Pancho & Lefty’ for his 1972 album “The Late Great Townes Van
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Pancho & Lefty Zandt” (Tomato 7011). The title was not a statement that Townes had passed away. Emmylou Harris recorded the first cover of Van Zandt’s classic tale of two desperadoes on what many consider to be her finest album, “Luxury Liner” (Warner Bros, 1977). The song, which was also a 1983 Number One Country hit single for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, was released as the title track of their album, which also made it to the top spot on the Country Albums Chart. It is quite likely that Dylan took his version from the Haggard / Nelson cover but even so he would surely have been familiar with the Van Zandt original.
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Van Zandt informed Paul Zollo (published in his book “Songwriters On Songwriting”, Da Capo Press) that ‘Pancho & Lefty’ was written “from not having anything to do and sitting down with the express purpose of writing a song”. Van Zandt continued: “It took one day and I played what I had that night at a gig. And a songwriter told me, ‘Man, that’s a great song. But I don’t think it’s done yet’. So I went back to the hotel the next day and wrote the last verse. The only thing I remember thinking about while I was writing it was consciously thinking that this was not about Pancho Villa”.
Townes Van Zandt
Van Zandt’s unique lyrical style makes his songs difficult to classify and the A&R men were often bewildered as to how his music should be marketed. Record executives prefer artists they can pigeonhole and Van Zandt’s approach to music made them nervous. Eventually he would be slotted into the sub-genre referred to as “outlaw country”, which supposedly came into being as a backlash to the Nashville sound developed by record producers like Chet Atkins. In any event, Van Zandt was marginalized and became a songwriters’ songwriter.
His situation was not helped by alcoholism and an addiction to heroin that remained with him through most of his adult life. At times he would arrive drunk for his concerts– so much so that he would forget the lyrics to his songs. Ironically, he enjoyed a long period of sobriety in the 1990s, but tragically died on New Years Day 1997 from a blood clot following hip surgery. Although his name is not mentioned in the song, Steve Earle paid homage to his great friend Townes Van Zandt when he wrote ‘Fort Worth Blues’, which was released on his outstanding album “El Corazón”.
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Pass Me ot, O Gentle Savior Pass Me ot, O Gentle Savior (Frances J. Crosby / William H. Doane) Bob Dylan performed this tender acoustic number twice in 1999 and three times in 2000. The performance from Amherst, Maine (February 24, 1999) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Bob Dylan came to this song via The Stanley Brothers’ 1960 recording which was released on their album “For The Good People” (King 698). This album also contains the song ‘I’ll ot Be a Stranger’, which Dylan performed at two concerts in 1997. This rather beautiful hymn was written by the blind poet and gospel hymn writer Frances J. Crosby (who wrote the words in 1868) and William H. Doane (who contributed the music in 1870). Dylan only sings the first two of the hymn’s four verses and makes a slight lyric alteration in the second verse. His performance of the song, complete with harmonies from the boys in the band, is quite beautiful and is a must for all Dylan collectors. Lifelong Methodist Fanny Crosby took both her inspiration and the title of the piece from Genesis 18:3: “My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant” (American Standard Version Bible). Crosby, one of America’s most fertile writers of hymns and poetry, was also a celebrated humanitarian who worked tirelessly for the New York Institution for the Blind. She began writing poetry from the age of eight. Her first published work was “A Blind Girl and Other Poems” (1844), followed by “Monterey and Other Poems” (1853) and “A Wreath of Columbia’s Flowers” (1858). She wrote her first hymn, ‘There’s a Cry From Macedonia’, in 1863. By the time of her death on February 12, 1915 (a month shy of her ninety-fifth birthday) she had written upwards of eight thousand hymns using more than a dozen pennames. Although Dr. William H. Doane is less well known than Crosby, he was involved with the composition of several thousands of hymns. His first Sunday-school hymn book, “Sabbath Gems”, was published in 1861. This was followed by “Little Sunbeams” (1864), “Silver Spray” (1867), and “Songs of Devotion” (1868). Doane subsequently published a plethora of books, some in connection with Rev. Robert Lowry, including “Pure Gold”, “Royal Diadem”, “Temple Anthem”, “Tidal Wave”, “Brightest And Best”, “Welcome Tidings”, “Fountain Of Song”, “Good As Gold”, “Glad Hosanna” and “Glad Refrain”. For further information about Ralph Stanley and The Stanley Brothers see the entry for ‘I Am The Man Thomas’. Pastures Of Plenty (Woody Guthrie) Dylan’s first known performance of ‘Pastures of Plenty’ was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-
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Pay Day At Coal Creek seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the full tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording see Appendix 1:3.
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This song was also played and captured on tape at the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961 (see Appendix 1:6 for further information about this recording). The final known recording of this song, which circulates among collectors, was recorded in May 1961 at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher (see Appendix 1:8 for information about this recording). In May 1941, Woody Guthrie was commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration, a federally funded power corporation, to write music for a promotional film designed to celebrate the coming of electricity to rural America. Although only employed by the BPA for one month, Guthrie wrote twenty-six songs (at the rate of one song per day– one of which was ‘Pastures Of Plenty’) describing the toil and dignity of migrant workers. Unfortunately, the documentary never came to fruition.
Bonneville Power Administration
This assortment of work songs, anthems, ballads, and Guthrie’s trademark talking blues, are rich with an evocative poetic imagery reminiscent of Walt Whitman and also of a world described in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath”. Seventeen of the twenty-six songs, which became the “Columbia River Collection”, can now be found on a number of Guthrie compilations. ‘Pastures Of Plenty’ is available on “Columbia River Collection”, “The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie In Performance 1949” and “This Land Is Your Land – Asch Recordings, Vol. 1”. The song has been recorded by many artists including Will Geer, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Harry Belafonte, the Kingston Trio, Odetta and Flatt and Scruggs. For information about Woody Guthrie see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
Pay Day At Coal Creek (Traditional) The first known performance of ‘Pay Day At Coal Creek’ was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twentyseven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details
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Peace In The Valley regarding this recording see Appendix 1:3. This recording can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. We know Dylan learned this particular traditional song from Paul Clayton. “Paul was just an incredible songwriter and singer”, Dylan said in 1985. “He must have known a thousand songs. I learned ‘Pay Day At Coal Creek’ and a bunch of other songs from him. We played on the same circuit and I travelled with him part of the time. When you’re listening to songs night after night, some of them rub off on you”. Clayton did not record ‘Pay Day At Coal Creek’ until 1965, when it was released on the album “Folk Singer!” (Monument MLP 8017), so as Dylan infers, he must have learned the song from Clayton in person. ‘Pay Day At Coal Creek’, or more appropriately ‘Last Pay Day At Coal Creek’ as it is sometimes known, is one of many songs about losing your job and having to look for work elsewhere. The earliest known recording of the song, by the otherwise unknown banjo player Pete Steele, was made in Cincinnati, Ohio by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax (March, 1938 – AFS 1702). The recording has been reissued on the seven-CD album “Kentucky Mountain Music” (Yazoo 2200). Pete Steele (1891 - 1976), whose first banjo was home-made out of squirrel hide, was born in Woodbine, Kentucky. He worked as a carpenter in the Harlan, Kentucky coal mines and played his banjo mainly at home and at his local church, where he and his wife sang gospel songs. Steele was not a professional musician and by the time folklorist Ed Kahn tracked him down in 1958 he was no longer playing music and had traded his banjo for a pistol. Kahn provided Steele with a banjo and the resulting album “Banjo Tunes And Songs Of Pete Steele” (Folkways FS 3828) was released in 1958. This CD, which includes tunes Lomax failed to record, is currently available directly from Smithsonian-Folkways. Steele had never visited the mining area of Coal Creek, Tennessee, but learned two Coal Creek songs, ‘Coal Creek March’ and ‘Last Pay Day At Coal Creek’, from another miner who told him the songs were written about a mining explosion that occurred in 1902 that “busted the company”, putting the miners out of work. Hence, last pay day.
Peace In The Valley (Thomas A. Dorsey) This song made its first appearance when it was tried out, along with many other covers, during rehearsals for Dylan’s 1989 summer tour of Europe. The song was only played once on the tour on June 13, 1989 in Fréjus, France. ‘Peace In The Valley’ was rehearsed again in 1990 but not played on the tour that followed. The performance from Fréjus, France (June 13, 1989), which was beautifully played with clear and sincere vocals, can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
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Peace In The Valley Originally written by “The Father of Gospel Music”, Thomas A. Dorsey, for the first “Queen of Gospel”, Mahalia Jackson, ‘Peace In The Valley’, also known as ‘(There’ll Be) Peace In The Valley (For Me)’ gained it greatest successes with white artists like Red Foley and Elvis Presley.
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Dorsey wrote this song in 1937, basing it on the earlier spiritual ‘We Shall Walk Through The Valley In Peace’. He intended that Mahalia Jackson should record the song but she declined, and it remained overlooked for a decade until it was recorded by the Flying Clouds of Detroit in 1947. Tiny Powell’s Paramount Singers covered it in 1949 but it was not until 1951, and Red Foley’s million-selling version, that the song became widely popular. Foley’s recording of ‘Peace In The Valley’ was both the first gospel record to sell a million copies and the first gospel song to be included in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. Elvis Presley’s version, which made it to Number Twenty-Five on the US Chart, is almost a note-for-note copy of Red Foley’s recording. Thomas A. Dorsey got religion from his Baptist minister father and learned the piano from his music teacher mother in Villa Rica, Georgia, where he was born on July 1, 1899. He and his family relocated to Chicago during World War I. He began his musical career under the name “Georgia Tom”, playing barrelhouse piano in one of Al Capone’s Chicago speakeasies and leading Ma Rainey’s Jazz band. After this he joined forces with slide guitarist Tampa Red, with whom he recorded the great 1928 blues hit ‘Tight Like That’. Discouraged by his efforts to publish and sell his songs, and dissatisfied with the music industries treatment of “race artists”, Dorsey established the Dorsey House of Music in Chicago in 1932. The company was the first independent publisher of black Gospel. Although he was now doing the Lord’s will and would become massively famous for having written more than 400 gospel songs, Dorsey also left a legacy of more 450 R&B and jazz numbers. Though he refused to be thwarted in his efforts to establish black Gospel music, he initially found sales difficult to come by. He told one interviewer: “I borrowed five dollars and sent out five hundred copies of my song ‘If You See My Savior’ to churches throughout the country ... it was three years before I got a single order. I felt like going back to the blues”. Dorsey died on January 23, 1993, after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s. He was ninety-three years old. Important recordings of ‘Peace In The Valley’ include the Red Foley version that established the song, Elvis Presley’s 1957 single, and Johnny Cash’s 1969 recording, which was included on the massively successful album “Johnny Cash At San Quentin”. Other recordings of note are those by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and the Original Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. By the time Dylan came to perform the song in 1989 he would surely have known all of the above recordings.
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People Get Ready People Get Ready (Curtis Mayfield) The first known performance of this song by Dylan was during the so-called “Basement Tapes” sessions. Judging by the sound of this recording and its placement on the tapes, this song may have been recorded in the “Red Room” in Dylan’s Hi Lo Ha home in Byrdcliffe and not at the main Big Pink sessions. This recording, which is in circulation among collectors, is quite wonderful. Despite getting off to a slightly shaky start and Dylan seemingly struggling to keep his twelve-string guitar in tune, this is a great little rendition. See Appendix 1:59 for further information about this recording. This Curtis Mayfield song was recorded again in October 1975 by Dylan and released on the EP “4 Songs From ‘Renaldo And Clara’ A Film By Bob Dylan”. ‘People Get Ready’ was then played in concert at Bloomington, Indiana on November 20, 1989 and in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 8, 1991. In-between, Dylan recorded this number for inclusion in the film “Flashback”, starring Dennis Hopper and Kiefer Sutherland. The date and location of this recording is not known for certain but it is believed that it may have been recorded during the making of Bob Dylan’s ‘Political World’ promotional video. The song was released as track seven on the “Flashback” movie soundtrack (WTG Records, 1990). ‘People Get Ready’ was originally recorded in Chicago in 1964 by The Impressions and released as a single on ABC-Paramount (10622, 1965). The single reached Number Three on the Billboard R&B Chart and Number Fourteen on the Billboard Pop Chart and was also released as the title track to The Impressions’ sixth album. The writer of the song, Curtis Mayfield, was a member of The Impressions until he left the group in 1970 to pursue a successful solo career. Mayfield then founded the independent record label Curtom Records, which would go on to release the majority his major albums as well as records by The Impressions, Leroy Hutson, The Staple Singers, and Mavis Staples. Mayfield was paralyzed from the neck down after a lighting rig fell on him at an outdoor concert in Brooklyn, New York on August 13, 1990. Although unable to perform or play guitar, Mayfield continued to write and recorded his last album, “ew World Order”, while lying flat on his back in the studio. In February 1998, he had to have his right leg amputated due to diabetes. His health continued to deteriorate and he finally passed away on December 26, 1999. He was aged fifty-seven. Bob Dylan played The Impressions’ 1965 recording of ‘People Get Ready’ on show fortysix of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “More Trains”, which of course picked up on the song’s evocative train motif.
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People Puttin’ People Down
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People Puttin’ People Down (John Prine) This John Prine song was performed twice by Dylan in 1991 (June 6, in Italy and August 17, in Brazil). Dylan’s fine electric performance from Rome, Italy can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The version from Brazil is not in general circulation. John Prine (born October 10, 1946, in Maywood, Illinois,) emerged from the Chicago folk scene in 1971 with his highly-acclaimed eponymous debut album. The LP received positive reviews and Prine was among the first of many artists to be labelled “the new Bob Dylan”. Indeed, Dylan appeared unannounced at one of Prine’s first New York City club appearances, anonymously backing him on harmonica. ‘People Puttin’ People Down’ was originally released by Prine on his 1984 album “Aimless Love” (Oh Boy Records). It can also be found on a best-of CD album entitled “Souvenirs” (Oh Boy Records). Setlist from Brazil which includes ‘People Putting People Down’
(A) Pirate Looks At Forty (Jimmy Buffett) Dylan joined Joan Baez as a surprise guest during her set at the rally in support of the United Nations Special Session on Nuclear Disarmament. The concert, better known as “Peace Sunday”, was staged at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California and attended by some 85,000 people. The event took place on June 6, 1982. The songs that Dylan performed with Baez were ‘With God On Our Side’ – a fragment of which was broadcast by ABC-TV on the Entertainment Tonight show (June 6, 1982) – an extremely below-par rendition of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, and a rather splendid version of the Jimmy Buffett song ‘A Pirate Looks At Forty’. In the song, Buffett bemoaned his plight: “Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late / The cannons don’t thunder, there’s nothing to plunder / I’m an over-forty victim of fate”. The song continues: “I’ve done a bit of smugglin’ / I’ve run my share of grass / I made enough money to buy Miami / But I pissed it away so fast”. James William “Jimmy” Buffett began his musical career in Nashville, Tennessee during the late 1960s as a country artist. Known for his “island escapism” lifestyle, and songs including ‘Margaritaville’ and ‘Come Monday’, Buffett has an extremely devoted fan-
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Po’ Lazarus base known as “Parrotheads”. The term began at a Buffett concert when the singer passed comment about how many of his audience were wearing Hawaiian style shirts and parrot hats and how his fans followed his shows in much the same way that “Deadheads” followed the Grateful Dead. Timothy Schmit, a former member of Buffett’s band, then coined the term ‘Parrothead’. That should lead me on to the joke: if followers of the Grateful Dead are known as “Deadheads”, what are fans of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick called? However, this is far too serious a book for that kind of joke! Buffett’s talents do not end with his song-writing. He has written three number one best selling books, including his autobiography, “A Pirate Looks At Fifty”, which went straight to number one on the New York Times Bestseller non-fiction list. He wrote the soundtrack to the 2006 film “Hoot”, which he also co-produced and acted in, and has made several cameo appearances in other films including “Repo Man”, “Hook”, “Cobb”, “Congo”, “From The Earth To The Moon” and “Rancho Deluxe”, in which he appeared as himself. Buffett owns the Margaritaville Cafe and Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant chains, a brewing label called Land Shark Lager, and is part-owner of two minor league baseball teams. Bufett has also licensed Margaritaville Tequila, Margaritaville Footwear and Margaritaville Shrimp. In 2006, his annual amphitheatre tour, which usually sells out in minutes, grossed in excess of $41 million. Between his restaurants, album sales and annual tours, he earns an estimated $100 million a year. Po’ Lazarus (Traditional) Well, the high sheriff, He told his deputy, Want you go out and bring me Lazarus, Well, the high sheriff, Told his deputy, I want you go out and bring me Lazarus, Bring him dead or alive, Lawd, Lawd, Bring him dead or alive. Dylan’s first known performance of this song was during the July 1961 Hootenanny Special at the Riverside Church in New York City. The song was played again when he stopped off in Minneapolis while on route to Hibbing to visit his parents for Christmas. On this occasion Dylan sang the song during a lengthy informal set at the home of Bonnie Beecher (December 22, 1961). Although these are the only two performances of the song to be captured on tape, it is quite likely that he was performing this song regularly during this period (see Appendices 1:9 and 1:18). Dylan returned to ‘Po Lazarus’, also known as ‘Poor Lazarus’ (Bad Man Lazarus)’ and ‘Po’ Laz’us (Every Mail Day: Muley On The Mountain)’, again during the 1967 Basement
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Po’ Lazarus tapes sessions. Unfortunately, this recording was cut short when the tape machine was stopped inside the first minute (see Appendix 1: 60).
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According to John Lomax, this old American ballad was known to convicts and chain gang workers from Virginia to Mississippi. “‘Po’ Lazarus’ concerns the doomed attempt of an exploited and underpaid black labourer to even the score by stealing the payroll from his bosses”. The song ends with Lazarus being hunted and shot in the side by the High Sheriff. As with most traditional folk songs there are myriad versions of ‘Po’ Lazarus’, one of the earliest of which was published by J. A. & A. Lomax in “American Ballads and Folk Songs” (MacMillan, 1934). Alan Lomax collected at least five different versions of the song during a 1939 field trip to Florida, but the best known rendition is the recording he made on a mid-September day in 1959. On this field trip, Alan Lomax visited the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Lambert, where he found James Carter. Carter, who was serving time for charges unknown, was at Camp B, chopping wood with others on the chain gang. As Carter worked he began singing an old spiritual, ‘Po’ Lazarus’, and the other prisoners joined in, chopping the logs in time to the song. Fortunately, Alan Lomax was able to take a photograph of the men and to make a recording of the song. During the course of his hard life, James Carter completely forgot about the day he sang for Lomax. That is until he was visited more than forty years later in his Chicago apartment and presented with a platinum disc and a cheque for $20,000. Unknown to Carter, his chain gang rendition of ‘Po’ Lazarus’ had been used as the opening track on the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack to the 2000 film “O Brother Where Art Thou?” For more than a year the slow burn soundtrack album had climbed the chart and in the process sold several millions copies, eventually reaching the Number One spot on the US Album Chart. Carter received his Grammy Award for his contribution to the album and the promise that the $20,000 cheque could be the first instalment of what might become regular royalty payments. Who said crime does not pay? Carter could barely remember meeting Lomax and although he was grateful for all the attention he told the press he just wanted to get on with his life. “I sang that a long time back”, he informed one reporter. Sadly, shortly after receiving his Grammy, Carter suffered a stroke. He died in Chicago on November 26, 2003. He was aged seventy-seven. As for Dylan’s source, although he would certainly have been familiar with Woody Guthrie’s recording, it seems he learned his version from blues guitarist Danny Kalb. In an interview with Mitch Blank (Telegraph, issue 47, Winter 1993), Kalb said: “I’d got my
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Polly Vaughan version from Dave Van Ronk and I shared it with Bob Dylan in the kitchen of Fred Underhill’s house in Madison. He’d learned that from me, although my version was really based on Dave Van Ronk’s”. Van Ronk’s recording of the song is available on the album “Inside Dave Van Ronk” (Fantasy FCD-24710-2). Polly Vaughan (Traditional) I shall tell of a hunter whose life was undone, By the cruel hand of evil at the setting of the sun, His arrow was loosed and it flew thru the dark, And his true love was slain as the shaft found its mark, For she’d her apron wrapped around her, and he took her for a swan, and it’s o and alas, it was she, Polly Vaughn. Dylan recorded this as a five-minute semi-acoustic number during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions, which took place with David Bromberg producing in Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. This beautiful song, which circulates in superb audio quality among collectors and contains some fine electric guitar from Bromberg, can be found on the 2008 bootleg CD “Fourth Time Around – GBS-4”. ‘Polly Vaughan’, a song which some scholars believe can be traced back to Celtic mythology, tells the tale of a hunter who accidentally kills his wife or his lover. The huntsman, sometimes named as Johnny or Jimmy Randle (Randall) is hunting, usually by moonlight and often in the rain. He sees something white in the bushes and believing it to be a swan, he shoots. In older songs the hunter is using a bow and arrow but in many later versions his weapon is a gun. To his lasting horror he discovers he has killed his true love, Polly Vaughn, who was sheltering in the bush from the rain. In some versions, such as ‘The Shooting Of His Dear’, Polly is a hind rather than a swan. The hunter takes Polly’s limp body in his arms and returns home either to his father or uncle. Most of the circulating versions of the story contain a supernatural element. In some versions Polly is resurrected as a swan, but in many versions her ghost visits the courtroom to inform those present that her lover is guilty only of a mistake. This ballad has been estimated to originate from around 1787-1802. It was published in Robert Jamieson’s “Popular Ballads and Songs from Tradition, Manuscripts and Scarce Editions” (1806) as ‘Peggy Bawn’. The words, without music, appear in “Vocal Companion” dated circa 1772 and the earliest known Broadside, printed by Pitts of London, has been dated between 1802 and 1819. Other dated Broadsides are Kennedy (New York) 1884, and J. F. Nugent (Dublin) 1850-1899). The song can be found in Roud 166 and Laws 036. It is, however, conspicuous by its absence from Child.
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Polly Vaughan In his book “Popular Ballads…”, Jamieson apologised for printing ‘The Shooting Of His Dear” claiming: “This is indeed a silly ditty, one of the very lowest descriptions of vulgar English ballads which are sung about the streets in country towns and sold four or five for a halfpenny”.
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This disparaging and totally inaccurate evaluation of the song is derived from a popular 19th century opinion that the lower classes were without imagination and therefore could not write anything of worth. Selfevidently the upper classes produced art, the lower classes did not. Variants and alternate titles of the song include ‘Polly Vaughan’ (Sometimes ‘Polly Vaughn’), ‘Peggy Bawn’ (Scotland), ‘Molly Bawn’ (Australia), ‘Molly Bond’(Canada), ‘Young Molly Bán’ (Ireland), ‘Molly Banding’ (United States), plus ‘Molly Vaughan’, ‘Molly Van’, ‘Polly Von’, ‘The Shooting Of His Dear’, ‘At the Setting Of The Sun’, ‘As Jimmie Went AHunting’ and ‘The Fowler’. Many recordings exist of this song; the earliest that I know of is Seamus Ennis’ rendition of ‘Molly Bawn’. This recording was made between 1949 and 1951 for Columbia Records and was released in 1955 on “Columbia World Library Of Folk And Primitive Music: Ireland”. A.L. Lloyd released the song as ‘The Shooting Of His Dear’ on a single in 1951. Lloyd also recorded it as ‘Polly Vaughan’ for the 1955 album “Columbia World Library Of Folk And Primitive Music: England”. Moving forward a little, The Dillards released the song as ‘Polly Vaughn’ in 1963, Peter Paul and Mary as ‘Polly Von’, also 1963, Martin Carthy as ‘Fowler Jack’, 1967, and The Dubliners as ‘Molly Bawn’, 1968. Shirley Collins also released the song in 1968 but her Original ‘Broadside’ printing version of ‘Polly Vaughan’ is sung to a tune which she composed. Dylan’s source for his version is not clear.
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Precious Memories In a June 4, 2008 interview, David Bromberg told Jim Reed: “Every now and then, I’ll hear rumours from some of his [Dylan’s] people that he’s thinking about putting it all out, but then it seems like other projects get in the way and take precedence. Looking back, there’s a ton of great stuff there. …This is the only project of his that’s never really been bootlegged, and that’s because I took the masters home with me every night! … I’ll tell you that ‘Polly Vaughan’ was my favourite of the whole batch. I thought it turned out just great. I have high hopes that one day all of those tracks will see the light of day. I think people will really enjoy the whole set”. I agree with these sentiments and have written elsewhere that the Bromberg sessions should see the light of day. Maybe these songs could be officially released by Columbia as “The Bootleg Series Vol. 9”?
Precious Memories (J. B. E. Wright) Bob Dylan recorded this song in 1986 at Skyline Recording Studios, Topanga Park, California. The resulting track was released on Dylan’s dire “Knocked Out Loaded” album. Despite several discographers listing this track as being recorded in 1984 and overdubbed in 1986, it seems likely that it was recorded on May 6, 1986 and overdubbed at sessions which took place in the days immediately after the initial recording (see Appendix 1:79). The song, which was played twice in October 1989, received its premiere at the Beacon Theater in Dylan’s spiritual home of New York City (October 13, 1989). This lengthy (5:30) performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. ‘Precious Memories’ received its next outing near the end of the fourth and final set at Toad’s Place, New Haven on January 12, 1990. This concert was a four-hour plus public rehearsal in preparation for Dylan’s forthcoming 1990 “Fastbreak Tour”. However, the song was not played on the tour which followed. ‘Precious Memories’ was again tried out at rehearsals for the 1990 US late summer tour, but once more it was not played in concert. Written by composer J. B. E. Wright and copyrighted by him in 1925, ‘Precious Memories’ is gospel hymn that has been recorded by, amongst others, Jim Reeves, Aretha Franklin, Johnnie and Jack, Bill Monroe, Jean Ritchie and the Stanley Brothers. It’s not clear to me where Dylan’s “Knocked Out Loaded” version came from but he certainly makes the song his own! However, whether this is a good thing is open to debate. Personally, I could do without the reggae beat, overbearing backing singers and nauseating steel drums.
Pretty Boy Floyd (Woody Guthrie) It is believed that Dylan played this Woody Guthrie song at Gerdes Folk City, New York sometime in late September 1961. If so, then it is the only documentation we have that he
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Pretty Boy Floyd was performing the song at this stage of his career. Unfortunately, only the first two numbers from the Gerdes set are in circulation (see Appendix 1:12).
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The next known occurrence of ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ was on July 3, 1975, when Dylan joined Jack Elliott on stage for three songs at The Other End, New York City. This performance has Elliott on vocals and Dylan on guitar. Bob Dylan recorded ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ especially for inclusion on the 1988 Folkways tribute album “Folkways: A Vision Shared, A Tribute To Woody Guthrie And Leadbelly” (OC44034). This recording was made sometime in April 1987. See Appendix 1:80 for further details. Dylan also performed this song at The Bridge School benefit concert at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, California on December 4, 1988. The concert, billed as “An All Acoustic Evening of Music to Benefit The Bridge School”, was the second such event to be staged for the charity (the first being in 1986). Apart from 1987, the concert to support The Bridge School has been held annually. The event is the brainchild of Neil Young and Neil has performed at every event. Bob Dylan’s powerful and well recorded acoustic performance (a duet with guitarist G. E. Smith) from The Bridge School benefit can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The Bridge School is a non-profit organization with an educational programme designed to help children with severe speech and physical impairments achieve a fuller participation in their communities. ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ came about when, in April 1940, the RCA Victor Record Company contracted Woody Guthrie to record an album (then 78rpm) containing his Dust Bowl Ballads. This was Woody’s first “commercial” recording. The fourteen track album included Guthrie’s ode to the American outlaw Charles Floyd. Guthrie had written the song in March 1939, about a year prior to his deal with Victor. Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd (February 3, 1904 - October 22, 1934) was much romanticized by the press and Woody Guthrie, both of whom turned Floyd into an American Robin Hood figure. In 1921, at the age of sixteen, Charles Floyd married Lee Ruby Hargrove and popular history (probably myth) says that Floyd’s first crime was when he struck a sheriff’s deputy who had been rude in front of his wife. However, contemporary sources seem to dispute this and Time magazine (October 22, 1922) cites a robbery of $3.50 from a post office as his first known crime. Floyd was arrested on suspicion of the robbery but the eighteen year old was given an alibi by his father. Three years later, and for rather higher stakes than $3.50, he was arrested for a $16,000 payroll robbery from a Kroger store in St. Louis, Missouri. He earned his nickname from
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Pretty Peggy O the paymaster’s description of him as “a pretty boy”. Floyd, who detested the nickname, was sentenced to five years in the Jefferson City Penitentiary. He served three years of the sentence. Over the ensuing years he committed a series of bank robberies which earned him the FBI label of “Public Enemy”. He is said to have robbed as many as thirty banks, killing ten men. However, popular legend has it that Floyd was not responsible for all of these robberies and that the FBI was simply attaching his name to robberies that were being committed by others. In the words of Woody Guthrie, “Every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name”. On June 17, 1933 Floyd and two associates, Adam Richetti, and Vernon Miller, were reported to be involved in the Kansas City, Union Station Massacre, during which five men, including an FBI agent, were gunned down in an attempt to free a notorious underworld figure. Floyd maintained to his death that he was not involved in this crime. Although the exact details of Charles Floyd’s eventual death are disputed, the crux is that he was shot and killed by FBI agents on October 22, 1934. Floyd’s body was placed on public display in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. His funeral was attended by more than twenty thousand people and remains the largest funeral in Oklahoma history. His headstone, which had been desecrated on numerous occasions by macabre souvenir hunters, was stolen in 1985. A new headstone now marks his grave.
Pretty Peggy O (Traditional, arranged Bob Dylan) As we rode out to Fennario, As we rode out to Fennario, Our captain fell in love with a lady like a dove, And he called her by a name pretty Peggy-O. Dylan performed ‘Pretty Peggy O’ during the years 1961 through 1963. The first known performance was on November 4, 1961 at the Carnegie Chapter Hall (see Appendix 1:14). This performance circulates among collectors. A few weeks later, Dylan would record ‘Pretty Peggy O’ for release on his debut album. Also see Appendices 1:15 and 1:46. Martin Carthy heard Dylan perform ‘Pretty Peggy O’ while in London in December 1962 and January 1963. “He used to improvise ‘Pretty Peggy-O’. I heard him do it three or four times, and eventually he added another verse. Basically, he was going through all the ranks in the
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Pretty Peggy O army. ‘The captain he is gone, he’s long gone / He’s riding down to Texas with the rodeo’. His last verse, which is not on the record, went: ‘The sergeant – or whatever it was – he is gone, he’s long gone / He’s fighting with the wild man down in Borneo’. He sang that because he was in the studio, and one guy kept saying to him – ‘If you’re a folk singer, sing a folk song’. ‘I’m a folk singer’ he said ‘Of course I’m a folk singer’. ‘Cos he was always taking the piss about being a folk singer. So, the man said, ‘Why don’t you sing a folk song?’ ‘What do you call a folk song?’ Bob asked and the man said ‘Pretty Peggy-O’. ‘Of course I know ‘Pretty Peggy-O’, he said, and he went and sang: ‘The sergeant he is gone, he’s long gone / He’s fighting with the wild man down in Borneo’. He used to crease the audience up when he sang it. He’s a very funny man, wicked”.
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The song reappeared in 1988 and continued to be performed sporadically throughout the majority of the first decade of the Never Ending Tour. It was played for the last time (so far) in Melbourne, Australia on August 19, 1998. In total there were around fifty performances. The rendition from Saratoga Springs, NY, July 26, 1989 can be found on the bootleg CD “20/20 Vision”, whilst performances from London, England (February 3, 1990) and Albany, New York (April 18, 1997) appear on “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Almost every version of this song from the so called Never Ending Tour is well worth collecting. The song, which is narrated in the third person, tells the tale of a soldier, usually a captain of Irish dragoons, at war, probably in Scotland, who falls in love with a beautiful local girl. The captain, usually called Sweet William, wants to marry the girl but she is afraid that her mother will not allow such a union because the captain does not have enough money (“your guineas are too few”). After this rejection, the captain’s declaration of love becomes a threat. In some versions he says he will save the city only if Peggy-O marries him, whilst in others he says that if he ever returns he will destroy the city. However, this does not happen because he always dies of a broken heart. It is not possible to know where Dylan got his version from. The earliest recording appears to be by John Strachan, but that was as late as 1951 and I would be surprised if the song had not been recorded prior to that. Although early recordings are thin on the ground, the song was massively popular in folk circles and Dylan probably learned it orally. Because Dylan recorded the song very early in his career (“Bob Dylan” CL 1779, March 1962), many recorded versions actually follow his version of the song. Dylan’s lyrics are the first I can find that use Louisiana as a setting. “He’s buried somewheres in Louisiana-o”. Although some music historians believe that the song is derived from an English broadside – ‘Pretty Peggy Of Derby’ or ‘Bonnie Barbara O’ – ‘Pretty Peggy O’ almost certainly
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Pretty Polly began life as a Scottish folk ballad called ‘The Bonnie Lass O’Fyvie’ (Roud 545). It is also known by a variety of other names including ‘Peggy-O’, and ‘Fennario’. All of the American recordings appear to be derived from the Cecil Sharp collected version (Sharp 95) as published in “English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians”. On his debut album, Bob Dylan introduces the song with the words “I’ve been around this whole country but I never yet found Fennario”. It is possible that Fennario is an American corruption of Fyvie-o. Fyvie is thought by some music historians to have been a staging post between the Scottish towns of Aberdeen and Fort George. Others, however, believe that the name is derived from the words “fen” and “area”. So, as with Peggy-o and William-o, we get “fen-ario”. Interesting recordings that pre-date Dylan’s, include the aforementioned John Strachan recording (1951), Ewan MacColl (1956), and The Clancy Brothers (1961).
Pretty Polly (Traditional) I used to be a rambler, staying around in town, I used to be a rambler, staying around in town, I courted Pretty Polly, such a beauty never found. This song was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961. It was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. This song was also captured on tape during a performance at the Gaslight Café, New York in September 1961 (see Appendix 1:10) and at a concert in the Carnegie Chapter Hall in November 1961 (see Appendix 1:14). Bob Dylan played Sandy Denny’s 1967 recording of ‘Pretty Polly’ on show thirty-five of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Women’s Names”. ‘Pretty Polly’, probably derived from ‘The Gosport Tragedy’ or ‘The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter’ (Roud 15), is a traditional folk song found both in the British Isles and in the Appalachian region of North America. It first appeared in print in around 1750 as an English broadside containing no fewer than twenty-seven verses. The song is a murder ballad which tells of a young woman lured into the forest where she is killed and buried in a shallow grave. The murderer, often a ship’s carpenter, kills Polly after discovering that she is pregnant. “Your reputation brings trouble to me”, Willy informs her. In the versions in which Willy is a ship’s carpenter, he returns to the sea but is haunted
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Pretty Saro by Polly’s ghost. He then confesses to the murder, goes insane and dies. In other versions the ship springs a leak and sinks.
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Perhaps not surprisingly, the original ‘Gosport Tragedy’ was set in the English seaport town of Gosport, which accounts for Willy’s employment as a ship’s carpenter and his escape to sea. However, once the song migrated to America and the Appalachian Mountains, the connection to the sea was dropped. Most bluegrass versions including those of Dock Boggs and The Stanley Brothers to name but two, make no reference to the sea. Also, the supernatural elements such as the haunting are no longer in evidence. The omission of supernatural elements from British ballads after their arrival in America is extremely common. Two of the earliest recordings that I have found of this song (Dock Boggs, New York City and B. F. Shelton, Bristol, Tennessee), were both recorded in 1927. Many artists have presented their own versions, including Estil C. Ball, Yonder Mountain String Band, Ralph Stanley, Bert Jansch, Paul Clayton, Pete Steele, and Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson. Dylan later borrowed from ‘Pretty Polly’ for his own composition ‘Ballad Of Hollis Brown’.
Pretty Saro (Traditional) I came to this country in seventeen-forty-nine, I saw many a true love, but I never saw mine, I looked all around me and found I was alone, And me a poor stranger, and a long way from home. This song was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions. It was not released on the album and song is not in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:65 for further information). As I have not been able to hear this recording, I can only assume that the song in question is the traditional ‘Pretty Saro’ as collected by Dorothy Scarborough, and Jean Ritchie and recorded by Ritchie, Doc Watson, The Gateway Singers and Ed McCurdy, etc. Antecedent versions of ‘Pretty Saro’ were probably first brought to America by Scots-Irish settlers in the 1700s. Two version of the song were collected in the USA in 1930 by Dorothy Scarborough and both were printed in “A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, American Folk Songs of British Ancestry” (Columbia University Press, 1937). One of the songs was from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, whilst the other was collected in Asheville, North Carolina, near the Smoky Mountains. Scarborough: “Mrs Stikeleather also sang it [‘Pretty Saro’] into my Dictaphone and contributed it to this collection. She told me that while the date ‘eighteen forty-nine’ is used in some of the versions of the song, ‘seventeen forty-nine’ is more probably correct,
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Pretty Saro as that year witnessed considerable immigration to North Carolina from Ireland, and Scotland, and this old English song was no doubt adapted to its new setting at that time”. Scarborough goes on to say that the use of the phrase ‘free-holder’ indicates the song is of British origin. Folk singer Jean Ritchie, who popularized the song on record, was also responsible for collecting an early version. Ritchie says in Sing Out! magazine that her sister Edna brought the song home to Viper, Kentucky “some thirty years ago, after having learned it from someone in Berea, Kentucky”. The Sing Out! piece was published in 1963, so like Scarborough, Ritchie must have collected the song in the early 1930s. Dylan probably knew it as early as 1961 as he appears to draw from it when performing another song, ‘The Cuckoo Is a Pretty Bird’, which he was playing as early as November ’61. However, without access to the tune or lyrics it is not possible to establish where Dylan learned the song.
Jean Ritchie
Bob Dylan Europe 1984
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Ragged & Dirty
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Ragged & Dirty (Traditional) This song was recorded in May 1993 and released on Bob Dylan’s album “World Gone Wrong” (see Appendix 1:77 for further detail about this recording session). Dylan played the song at the second New York Supper Club show on November 16, 1993 and at the first and second Supper Club shows on November 17, 1993. The authoritative and edgy performance from the second show can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. According to Dylan’s “World Gone Wrong” liner notes: “one of the Willie Browns did this”. The William Brown in question recorded ‘Ragged And Dirty’ for Alan Lomax on July 16, 1942, probably on Sadie Beck’s Plantation in Arkansas. Lomax recorded four songs with finger-style guitarist-singer William Brown. The songs, which were released on “egro Blues And Hollers” (Library of Congress AFS L59), were ‘Ragged And Dirty’, ‘Mississippi Blues’, ‘East St. Louis Blues’ and a Brown duet with guitarist-singer Willie “61” Blackwell entitled ‘Four O’Clock Flower Blues’. Dylan’s comment about “one of the Willie Browns did this” refers to the fact that there were three Willie or William Browns recording at around this time, a fact that has caused a great deal of confusion for a great many music historians, including Alan Lomax who recorded them! As Gayle Dean Wardlow points out in the book “Chasin’ That Devil Music”, our Willie Brown of Sadie Beck’s Plantation, Arkansas is often confused with Little Willie Brown of Robinsonville who recorded in part with Charlie Patton. Writing about Willie Brown of Sadie Beck’s Plantation, Lomax said: “I believe this William Brown [who recorded] with Willie “61” Blackwell was the same William Brown who recorded later in the narrative with Son House and earlier with Charlie Patton”. Very little is known about the William Brown who recorded ‘Ragged And Dirty’ and as far as I can ascertain he did not record any albums. The few recordings he did make all appear on various artists albums like “egro Blues And Hollers” and “Mississippi Blues & Gospel 1934-1942 Field Recordings”. Alan Lomax wrote about his 1942 meeting with William Brown in his book “The Land Where The Blues Began”.
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Ragtime Annie “‘Well, I ain’t got no voice’, said Brown, ‘but I’ll give you the words of an old Memphis song’. William Brown began to sing in his sweet true country voice, poking in delicate passages at every pause, like the guitar was a second voice commenting with feeling on the ironic words of the blues … This was the real blues ... The blues in print give you the skeleton only”. The opening verse as sung to Lomax was, “Now I’m broke and I’m hungry, ragged and dirty, too / What I want to know, baby, kin I stay all night with you”. Although ‘Ragged And Dirty’ is often erroneously credited to Willie Brown, the song was being sung at least twenty years before his recording. The earliest recording I know of is Blind Lemon Jefferson’s ‘Broke And Hungry’ which was recorded in Chicago in 1926 and released on Paramount that same year. Sleepy John Estes recorded the song as ‘Broken Hearted, Ragged And Dirty Too’ on September 17, 1929 for Victor label, but this recording was not released. Estes recorded the song again nine days later on September 26, 1929 and the resulting single, Victor V38582, was his first release. Dylan’s version of ‘Ragged And Dirty’ differs from all of the above recordings. In fact, after the first verse or two all of the above contain different lyrics but all are quite clearly the same basic song. Ragtime Annie (Traditional) ‘Ragtime Annie’ (also known as ‘Raggedy Anne’) is an extremely popular American fiddle tune of uncertain, but possibly of Irish, origins. The tune, played in both old-time and bluegrass genres, is either performed in two or three parts often depending on the area of the country (America) in which it is being played. This tune has been recorded countless times by a multitude of artists. Its one-off inclusion in Dylan’s set at the Chicago Metro on December 14, 1997 was clearly at the behest of long-time Dylan associate David Bromberg, who joined Dylan on stage during this concert. Bromberg, who has long since adopted Chicago as his home, often performed this instrumental tune in concert, but has never recorded it. Dylan band-member Larry Campbell took on the fiddle duties while Bromberg and Dylan played acoustic guitars. Railroad Bill (Traditional) Railroad Bill, Railroad Bill, He’s never worked, Lord, and he never will, ride, ride, ride.
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Railroad Boy Railroad Bill’s a mighty mean man, Shot the light out of the poor brakeman’s hand, ride, ride, ride.
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Dylan’s first known performance of this song was recorded by Tony Glover in May 1961 at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twentyfive-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors and can be found on the bootleg CD “The Minnesota Tapes”(Wanted Man WMM 033). For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. This song was also recorded by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions. However, the recording does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:66 for further information). The song ‘Railroad Bill’ is a ballad about a black train robber by the name of Morris Slater. Slater, who came from Escambia County, Alabama, is believed to have killed a dozen people between 1893 and 1895. However, after he killed Sheriff E. S. McMillan in 1895 the manhunt for Railroad Bill intensified until he was ambushed and shot dead in the following March. For some blacks, Morris Slater’s battle against authority, which supposedly included him leaving some of his spoils outside poor people’s shacks, made him into a black Robin Hood. It is perhaps a little surprising therefore, that although there are some versions of this song in the Library of Congress, there was only one commercial pre-war black blues recording which remembers him. It is also perhaps surprising that this recording is one side of the only single made by unknown guitarist Will Bennett. Bennett recorded ‘Railroad Bill’ for the Vocalion label (Vocalion 1464) in 1929. It should be noted that although Morris Slater was known in the press as Railroad Bill, very few of his deeds are included in this or any of the recordings that followed, and the probability is that the song was only loosely connected to Morris Slater and real events. The song was included in Carl Sandburg’s influential 1927 “American Songbag” collection. Frank Hutchinson was seemingly the first white American to record it and his 1929 recording was hot on the heels of Will Bennett’s record. The song was probably written shortly after Slater’s death in 1896, and although he didn’t record the song we know that Blind Lemon Jefferson was singing it as early as 1914. Other significant covers of ‘Railroad Bill’ released before Dylan’s 1961 performance include recordings by Cisco Houston, who released it on his “Railroad Songs” album (Folkways FA 2013), Jean Ritchie, Etta Baker and Paul Clayton. Railroad Boy (Traditional) The first known performance of this song was recorded by Tony Glover in May 1961 at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The song was committed to tape during
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Railroad Boy one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twentyfive-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors and can by found on the bootleg CD “The Minnesota Tapes”(Wanted Man WMM 033). For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. The song was revived in 1976 when it was introduced into Dylan’s sets for the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. The song, sung with Joan Baez, was played at the opening concert of the tour and featured in fifteen of the shows that followed. ‘Railroad Boy’ had its final 1976 outing at Fort Collins, Colorado on May 23. “Father finds daughter’s body with note attached when railroad boy mistreats her” is how Harry Smith described this song in his notes to the original 1952 Folkways Records’ release of “American Folk Music”. The earliest known recording of this song was made by Buell Kazee in New York on January 16, 1928. The song he sings appears to be ‘Railroad Boy’, but when the recording was released in 1928 on Brunswick 213A it was entitled ‘The Butcher’s Boy’, a title which remained when the track was reissued on the “American Folk Music” anthology in 1952. This choice of title seems strange when Kazee clearly sings the lyric “that railroad boy I love so well”. Other versions of the real ‘Butcher’s Boy’ that I know are a little different from Kazee’s recording and begin with “In London town, where I did dwell / Lived a butcher’s boy I loved so well / He stole my heart away / And with me now he will not stay”. In some versions the locale is changed from London to other settings. Dylan’s version is lyrically very close to Buell Kazee’s original 1928 recording. This dark ballad tells the tale of a broken-hearted girl who takes her own life over her unrequited love for a railroad boy. “Her father he came home from work / Sayin’, ‘Where is my daughter, she seems so hurt’ / He went upstairs to give her hope / An’ he found her hangin’ by a rope”. According to Harry Smith’s writings, “quite full notes on this ballad are found in Kettridge’s notes, “Journal of American Folklore Vol XXIX” p.170 and XXXV p. 361”. He considers it an amalgamation of ‘The Cruel Father’ and ‘There Is An Alehouse In Yonder Town’, both eighteenth century British products. The way in which the two songs were combined, however, seems to have occurred first in America. Dylan may well have taken his 1961 rendition of this song from the 1952 release on the “American Folk Music” album, but he could also have learned it by listening to any one of a number of folk singers who were performing the song around the Greenwich Village folk clubs in 1960. The song, under the title of ‘The Butcher’s Boy’, appears on Peggy Seeger’s 1955 album “Songs Of Courting And Complaint”.
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Railroading On The Great Divide It is probable that the Dylan / Baez performances from 1976 may have more to do with Baez than Dylan. Baez recorded the song in 1961 on her second album “Joan Baez, Volume 2” (Vanguard VRS-9094). However, Dylan could not have taken his 1961 performance of the song from Baez’s album since it was not released until September ’61, a full four months after Dylan played the song at Beecher’s Minneapolis apartment.
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‘Railroad Boy’ is a variant of ‘The Butcher’s Boy’, ‘Go Bring Me Back My Blue-Eyed Boy’ and ‘London City’. In Buell Kazee’s recording, and most other versions and variants, the song is set in London Town. In the Dylan and the Dylan and Baez versions, however, the lyric is “in yonder town”. For further information about the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’. Railroading On The Great Divide (Sara Carter Bayes) Nineteen and sixteen I started to roam, Out in the West, no money, no home I went drifting along with the tide, I landed on the Great Divide. The only known performance of this song was in September 1961 at Gerdes Folk City, New York. This performance circulates among collectors and can be found on several bootleg CDs, including “Hard Times In ew York City” and “I Was So Much Younger Then”. This song was sung by Woody Guthrie but is more usually associated with the Carter Family and its writer, Sara Carter Bayes. The Carter Family recorded it on March 7, 1952 and it has been released several times coupled with ‘Keep On The Sunny Side’, ‘Wildwood Flower’ and ‘The Titanic’. The song also appears on the album “A. P. Carter’s Clinch Mountain Ballads” (Pine Mountain PMR-206). Rambler, Gambler (Traditional) I’m a rambler and a gambler, I’m a long way from my home, If the people don’t like me, they can leave me alone. This song was recorded in September 1960 at the apartment of Hugh Brown and Bob Dylan at 714, 15th Avenue Southwest in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The song was officially released in 2005 on the album “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack The Bootleg Series Vol.7” (C2K 93937, September 30, 2005). See Appendix 1:5 for further information. Also commonly known as ‘I’m a Rambler, I’m a Gambler’, this song is a variant of the traditional folk ballad ‘Wagoner’s Lad’ (also performed by Bob Dylan) and both songs share one verse word-for-word.
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Ramblin’ ‘Round “I once had a sweetheart and her age was sixteen, She’s the flower of Belton and the rose of Seline, But her parents was against me, now she is the same, If I’d writ on your book, love, you just blot out my name.” ‘Rambler, Gambler’ / ‘I’m a Rambler, I’m a Gambler’ is related to a plethora of other traditional songs and more information regarding this ancestry can be found in the entry for ‘Wagoner’s Lad’.
Ramblin’ ‘Round (Woody Guthrie) This song was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twenty-six-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. This recording can be found on “The Minnesota Tapes” (Wanted Man). For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. Woody Guthrie wrote and recorded this tune in 1941 for the Bonneville Power Administration of Portland, Oregon. The song was part of the collection known as the “Columbia River Collection”. For full details about this recording see the entry for ‘Pastures Of Plenty’. For further information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
Ramblin’ Down Through The World (Unknown) There are two known performances of this song. The first, in late 1962, was at an unidentified venue somewhere in New York City. The second performance was on April 12, 1963 at the Town Hall, New York (see Appendix 1:46). This performance is in circulation among collectors and can be found on various bootleg CDs including, “The Banjo Tape” and “YC Town Hall”. The best bootleg of this concert, however, (the complete show in stunning quality) emerged in 2008 as “Stolen Moments” (Hollow Horn). Many Dylan commentators incorrectly list this song as being written by Woody Guthrie. Others, who have been unsuccessful in finding the exact Guthrie template, have suggested that it is an amalgam of several Guthrie songs; ‘Sally, Don’t You Grieve’ and ‘Ramblin’ ‘Round’
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Ramblin’ Man are usually cited. I have listened carefully to ‘Ramblin’ Down Through The World’ backto-back with these two Guthrie songs, and I have to say that lyrically there is no connection between them. I would suggest that this song actually constitutes a Dylan composition, which seems to have been written as a vehicle for some very fine harp playing. Perhaps tellingly, with the possible exception of ‘Ramblin’ Down Through The World’, every song performed at Bob Dylan’s prestigious New York Town Hall concert was a Dylan composition.
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Ramblin’ Man (Dickey Betts) This song was played at the University Of South Florida, Tampa, Florida on September 30, 1995. ‘Ramblin’ Man’ was written by Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band. Betts wrote the song at a late night session in the kitchen of the Macon, Georgia house shared by band members in 1973. Betts based his ‘Ramblin’ Man’ on Hank Williams’1951 song of the same name. At first, he thought the song would not be compatible with the Allman Brothers’ style. However, the band loved the song and it went on to become their first and biggest hit single. The record reached Number Two on the Pop Chart and is also included on the Capricorn Records album “Brothers And Sisters”. Ironically, ‘Ramblin’ Man’ was kept off the top spot by Gregg Allman’s future wife Cher. Dylan’s performance of the song came about when he was joined on stage by Dickey Betts during the Tampa concert. The song was played as the first electric encore of the night. Ramblin’ On My Mind (Robert Johnson) Dylan’s first known performance of this song was on July 2, 1962 at the Finjan Club, Montreal, Canada (see Appendix 1:24 for further information). The recording can be found on the bootleg CD “Rare Live Performances Of The Sixties Vol. II”. The whole of Robert Johnson’s recorded output was cut in three days of sessions in November 1936 and a further two days in June 1937. ‘Ramblin’ On My Mind’ was recorded during the first of those sessions on November 23, 1936. The song was released in 1937 on Vocalion 3519. For further information about Robert Johnson, see the entry for ‘32 / 20 Blues’. Ranger’s Command (Woody Guthrie) Bob Dylan’s only known performance of this song was in early 1962 at the New York apartment of WBAI Radio host, Cynthia Gooding (see Appendix 1:20). This recording
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Rank Strangers (To Me) circulates among collectors and can also be found on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. This cowboy song, about six-shooters and a cattle round-up in which a fair maiden is the hero of the day, was written and recorded by Woody Guthrie during a remarkable 1940s session for Moses Asch. The song is available on the album “Buffalo Skinners - Asch Recordings, Vol. 4”. For further information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
Rank Strangers (To Me) (Albert Brumley) Dylan released this Albert Brumley song on his 1988 album “Down In The Groove”. The song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios, Hollywood on June 16, 1987 (see Appendix 1:80). Dylan introduced the song into live sets at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on June 10, 1988. ‘Rank Strangers To Me’ was played twice more on the “Interstate 88” tour and a further thirteen times during 1989. The song then disappeared from Dylan’s live shows only to make a comeback eight years later with rare outings in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. The song’s most recent appearance was in Terre Haute, Indiana on November 2, 2001. Bob Dylan’s powerful acoustic performance from Rome, Italy (July 5, 1998) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Albert Edward Brumley was born near Spiro, Oklahoma on October 29, 1905. Brumley’s family were poor tenant farmers and he spent much of his early life picking cotton. In 1926, he enrolled at the Hartford Musical Institute in Hartford, Arkansas, and studied there until 1931. Brumley wrote over 500 songs and adapted and arranged hundreds more. He established the Albert E. Brumley Sundown to Sunup Gospel Sing in 1969. He has been inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and Oklahoma Music Hall Setlist Rome, Italy, July 5, 1998 of Fame. He died on November 15, 1977. Bob Dylan played Grandpa Jones’ recording of Brumley’s ‘Turn Your Radio On’ on show fifteen of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of this show was “Radio”. Bob Dylan probably took his version of ‘Rank Strangers’ from the Stanley Brothers’ 1960 recording released on Starday-King (506). For further biographical information about the Stanley Brothers see the entry for ‘I Am The Man, Thomas’.
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Ready Teddy Ready Teddy (John Marascalco / Robert Blackwell)
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Young Bobby Zimmerman, along with friends Howard Rutman and Larry Kegan, cut his own 78rpm record on Christmas Eve 1956. ‘Ready Teddy’ was one of the eight songs that was included as part of their eight-minute medley. None of this recording is in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:1 for further information regarding this recording). John Marascalco wrote ‘Ready Teddy’ – his first song – in 1956. He took it to Specialty Records producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell who thought it would be perfect for Little Richard. Blackwell asked Marascalco if he had any more songs and Marascalco returned a week later with ‘Rip It Up’. Blackwell bought both songs for Little Richard and offered Marascalco a job with Specialty as a staff songwriter. “Little Richard & His Band” recorded ‘Rip It Up’ and ‘Ready Teddy’ (Specialty Records, 579) in June 1956. The song went to Number Eight on the Billboard Black Singles Chart and Number Forty-four on the Billboard Pop Chart. Although he would undoubtedly have known Elvis Presley’s recording, young Bobby Zimmerman almost certainly took his version of ‘Ready Teddy’ from Little Richard’s single. Real, Real Gone (Van Morrison) Dylan played this Van Morrison song for the first time at The Point Depot in Dublin, Ireland on April 11, 1995. The song was played twice more on the 1995 spring tour of Europe. ‘Real, Real Gone’ received its last outing to date at the Molde Jazz Festival in Norway, July 19, 1996. Dylan’s performance from The Edge, Fort Lauderdale (September 23, 1995) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Although this rendition (apart from some guitar work) sounds nothing like Van The Man’s version, it is nevertheless a good performance. ‘Real, Real Gone’ was included on Van Morrison’s 1990 Polydor album “Enlightenment” and was also released by him as a single. Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache (W. B. Thompson / L May) This rockin’ little Warren Smith number was played three times by Dylan during the second leg of his 1986 “True Confessions Tour”. The song got its first outing at East Troy, Wisconsin on June 27, 1986. It was played again at the next concert June 29 (Chicago, Illinois) and received its final excursion three shows later at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio. Dylan also tried out this song at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California on April 28, 1986, during the “Knocked Out Loaded” album sessions. The recording was not
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Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache released on the final album and unfortunately does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:79). Dylan revisited the song in 2001 when he chose to record it as his contribution to the various artists compilation album “Good Rockin’ Tonight: The Legacy Of Sun Records” (London-Sire Records 31165-2). This recording can also be found on the excellent 2008 bootleg CD “Fourth Time Around”. As is usual for Bob, his choice is somewhat perverse because Smith’s truly excellent 1957 recording of ‘Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache’ had been inexplicably passed over by Sun Records at the time. Sam Phillips had justifiably hyped Warren Smith as a potential superstar, but somehow Warren never managed more than a few regional hits and a brief excursion into the lower echelons end of the national chart. However, Smith’s best Sun side, ‘Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache’ (of which there are two cuts), was not released until it began turning up years later with other unreleased Smith sides, on compilation albums. It was, however, released in 1957 by Bob Luman, who is often erroneously credited with writing the song. Even this release escaped most peoples’ notice because it was put out as the B-side to Warren Smith Luman’s ‘All ight Long’ (Imperial 5705). The disc was, however, soon flipped and released on Imperial 8311. Although Luman’s version, which stays true to Smith’s arrangement, is extremely well sung, it is a pale shadow of Smith’s recording. Dylan’s rockabilly recording for the Sun legacy album is truly wonderful and is an absolute must for Dylan collectors or, for that matter, anyone with a good taste in music. Bob Dylan played Warren Smith’s original 1957 Sun recording of ‘Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache’ on show forty-three of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. He also had this to say about Sun Records: “There used to be a lot of record labels, not like today, and each of those record companies had their own sound. When you dropped the needle on a Specialty Record, you knew it was a Specialty Record; same with Imperial, Chess, King, and a million others. Perhaps the most distinctive were those that came out of the Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Studio and were put out on his Sun Record label...” For further details about the Bob Dylan / Warren Smith connection see the entry for ‘Rock ‘Em Dead’.
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Red Hot Red Hot (Billy Emerson)
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Bob Dylan performed this Billy Emerson tune at the Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium in Little Rock, Arkansas, on September 8, 1992, during his summer tour of North America. Although this song was written and originally recorded by black R&B singer Billy Emerson, Dylan’s performance is linked to Billy Lee Riley. Dylan, a long-time fan of Riley’s music, had invited Billy Lee to sing ‘Red Hot’ with him when Dylan’s summer tour rolled through Riley’s home state of Arkansas. Dylan introduced Riley, who took lead vocals on the song, as “my hero”. ‘Red Hot’, or to give the song its seldom used full title ‘My Gal Is Red Hot’, was originally released by Billy “The Kid” Emerson in June 1955 (Sun 219). Born in Tarpon Springs, Florida, William Robert Emerson earned his Billy The Kid moniker while playing in one group who for some inexplicable reason dressed as outlaws. After Emerson’s discharge from the US Air Force in 1952 he met with bandleader Ike Turner who recruited him into his band The Kings of Rhythm. In 1954, he released his first record on Sun, ‘o Teasing Around’. His songwriting for Sun produced ‘When It Rains It Really Pours’, later recorded by Elvis Presley, and ‘Red Hot’, which later became a hit for both Billy Lee Riley and Bob Luman. In late 1955 Emerson signed to Vee-Jay, for whom he made some stylish records including ‘Every Woman I Know (Crazy ‘Bout Automobiles)’, which Dylan played on his Theme Time Radio Hour “Cars” themed programme. Valued more for his song-writing prowess than for his performing ability, Emerson moved to Chess and then onto a succession of smaller labels before starting his own record label, Tarpon Records, in 1966. Two years after Billy “The Kid” Emerson’s original release of ‘My Gal Is Red Hot’, the song gained success through Billy Lee Riley’s single (Sun 277, 1957). However, according to an understandably disgruntled Billy Lee Riley, the success of the single could have been far greater: “I was in the front office at Sun when the mail came and Sam’s secretary opened it and laid it on Sam’s desk. I noticed that there were three pieces of mail ... [and] each letter was an order for ten thousand copies of my record ‘Red Hot’ ... They were asking for ten thousand on a deal. I assumed that meant Sam had some sort of deal where if you buy a certain amount you got some free copies ... I saw when Sam’s car pulled up in front of the studio so I went back over to catch the reaction on Sam’s face at the amount of the orders for my record. What I saw and heard wasn’t what I wanted to see or hear. As soon as Sam saw the orders he got on the phone and called each of the distributors and told them that he was not shipping number 277, the number of my record, he was pushing number 281, Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘Great Balls Of Fire’. This is the time that I left Sun and went to Nashville to record with Brunswick.” [Reprinted from “Delta Boogie” www.deltaboogie.com].
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Red Rosey Bush Ironically, Jerry Lee Lewis was featured on Riley’s ‘Red Hot’. In fact, because of the success of ‘Great Balls of Fire’ (at the expense of ‘Red Hot’?) the single was Jerry Lee Lewis’s last appearance as a regular label session man before going onto solo stardom. Jerry Lee can be heard on ‘Red Hot’ spitting out the response “Your gal ain’t doodilysquat!” to Riley’s rasping intro. Also see the entry for ‘Rock With Me Baby’ and ‘Repossession Blues’. Red Rosey Bush (Traditional) I wish I was a red rosy bush, By the banks of the sea, And every time my true love would pass by, She could pick a rose off of me. Bob Dylan recorded this song in September 1960 at a Minneapolis apartment he shared with Hugh Brown (see Appendix 1:5 for further information). This recording circulates among collectors and is also available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Dylan’s version of ‘Red Rosey Bush’ – sometimes known as ‘Red Rosy Bush’ or ‘I Wish I Was a Red Rosey Bush’ – is quite wonderful. He plays the song in an unhurried but purposeful manner and manages to portray the feeling of loss quite beautifully, especially for someone so young. This song is often associated with John Jacob Niles, writer of ‘Go Way From My Window’. However, despite occasionally being credited to Niles by discographers, this is a traditional song. One of the best and most beautiful versions can be found on Jo Stafford’s 1950 album “American Folk Songs” (Corinthian), an album that also contains ‘Shenandoah’, ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ and ‘Barbara Allen’. Another notable version of ‘Red Rosey Bush’ can be found on the Betty Smith album “Songs Traditionally Sung In orth Carolina” (Folk-Legacy). However, Dylan may well have taken his version from Harry Belafonte’s rendition which was recorded on May 2, 1960 and released on his album “Belafonte Returns To Carnegie Hall” (RCA). The album, so titled because this was Belafonte’s second release in two years from this venue, climbed to Number Three on the National Billboard Album Chart. Remember Me (When The Candlelights Are Gleaming) (Scott Wiseman) Dylan’s first known recording of this song was made at the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961. The tape was made by the Gleasons’ son, Kevin (see Appendix 1:6). This recording circulates among collectors and can also be found on the bootleg CD “The Dylan Root”.
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Repossession Blues This song also made a cameo appearance in the film “Dont Look Back”. The scene was filmed in May 1965 in the Savoy Hotel, London, England.
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Although Dylan changes the lyrics around to this one, the song is the Scott Wiseman 1946 number ‘Remember Me (When the Candlelights are Gleaming)’. It is possible that Dylan got the idea for his own ‘Girl From The orth Country’ from this song. Scott Wiseman and his wife Lulu Belle – real name Myrtle Eleanor Cooper – were an extremely popular 1930s duo who performed under the name of Lulu Belle and Scotty. Best known for their song ‘Have I Told You Lately That I Love You’ and often called “The Sweethearts of Country Music”, Lulu Belle and Scotty were a major act in the 1930s and early ’40s, thanks in part to their regular appearances on WLS Radio’s National Barn Dance show which was a major rival to the now better known Grand Ole Opry. Lulu Belle and Scotty recorded for a variety of labels, including Vocalion, Columbia and Bluebird Records. Except for infrequent appearances, Lulu Belle and Scotty retired from the music business in 1958. After Wiseman’s death from a heart attack on February 1, 1981, Lulu Belle drifted back into music and in 1985 she recorded her first album in twenty years. Also see the entry for ‘Mountain Dew’.
Repossession Blues (Roland Janes) This song was rehearsed by Dylan at his Santa Monica, Rundown Studios facility on February 1, 1978 in preparation for the Far East leg of his ’78 world tour. The song employed as an opener (after a ‘Hard Rain’ instrumental) at Dylan’s concerts in Osaka-fu on February 24 and in Tokyo on February 28. This number was originally recorded by Dylan favourite Billy Lee Riley. It was written by ex-Sun house-guitarist Roland Janes, who had gone into partnership with Riley in the formation of Rita records. Riley released ‘Dark, Muddy Bottom’ b/w ‘Repossession Blues’ (Rita R-106) in 1960 under the name of Lightnin’ Leon. It was one of only two singles that Riley released on his label. It has been suggested that Dylan may have had affinity with this song in 1978 because of his recent divorce. Whilst there might be some truth in this, I doubt Dylan had concerns that he was going to receive a visit from a debt collector anytime soon! If Dylan had any connection at all with ‘Repossession Blues’ it is more likely to have come from his time working with his father in the family electrical and furniture store in Hibbing, Minnesota, where he occasionally had to help with repossessions.
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Return To Me “Well they took my television / Now they’re coming for my radio / They don’t like the way I’m doing / They say I pay my bills too slow”. Also see the entries for ‘Red Hot’ and ‘Rock With Me Baby’.
Return To Me (Daniel DiMinno / Carmen Lombardo) Dylan recorded this song in December 2000 for use in “The Sopranos” television series. Quite how or why Bob Dylan got involved with “The Sopranos” is something that I am not privy to. For those not familiar with the series, “The Sopranos”, which first aired on cable TV in 1999, is about life in the New Jersey mob. ‘Return To Me’ (‘Ritorna a Me’) had been a major hit for Dean Martin in 1958 and Dylan’s version, complete with a verse in Italian, was intended for use over the end credits. A number of tunes were recorded for this purpose and Dylan’s song was used in episode thirty-eight in 2001. It was also issued on “The Sopranos” soundtrack album “Peppers And Eggs: Music From The HBO Original Series” (Columbia C2K 85453, 2001).
Ride ‘Em Jewboy (Kinky Friedman) Dylan performed this number with the song’s composer Kinky Friedman taking lead vocal duties. It was played as the final number in Dylan’s set at the Houston Astrodome on January 25, 1976. Richard S. Friedman, who gained his “Kinky” sobriquet because of his curly hair, varied his act with social commentary, mawkish ballads and irreverent race humour such as ‘They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore’ and ‘Ride ‘Em Jewboy’, a tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.
Riding In My Car (Woody Guthrie) This song, also known as ‘Car, Car’, was performed by Dylan at the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961. The tape was made by the Gleasons’ son, Kevin. See Appendix 1:6 for further information about this recording. This song was also recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. A rather pleasant version of this Guthrie song was performed by Dylan at the New York Gaslight Café on September 6, 1961 as a duet with Dave Van Ronk (see Appendix 1:10). All three of the above recordings are in circulation among collectors.
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Ring Of Fire ‘Riding In My Car’ was also performed by Dylan at his Carnegie Chapter Hall concert but the song is not included on the circulating tape (see Appendix 1:14 for further details about this recording).
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‘Riding In My Car (Car, Car)’ is one of many children’s songs written by Woody Guthrie and included on the album “ursery Days”. Written with vim and imagination and recorded sometime in 1947, “ursery Days” was the second album of children’s songs by Woody Guthrie. The album, which was written for children between the ages of four and eight, was first released in 1956, and a re-mastered recording was issued by Smithsonian Folkways in 1991. Several tracks in the collection are instructional, helping children learn to count, while others are songs of love written by Guthrie, probably with his own children in mind. ‘Howdido’ and ‘Don’t You Push Me Down’ are also included on this album. For information regarding “Songs To Grow On For Mother And Child”, Woody Guthrie’s first album of children’s songs, see the entry for ‘I Want My Milk (I Want It ow)’. For further information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’. Ring Of Fire (June Carter / Merle Kilgore) Dylan recorded this song at Columbia Recording Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album. Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire, are all performed as duets. This recording was never released but does circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). The song can be found on various bootleg CDs including “Dylan / Cash Sessions” (Spank). Dylan persevered with ‘Ring Of Fire’, attempting it once more in May 1969, again at Columbia Recording Studios in Nashville. This recording, without Johnny Cash, was intended for the “Self Portrait” album but once again the song failed to make it onto the final release. It does, however, circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:64 for further details). Dylan took this song back into the studio in 1996, this time for use in the movie “Feeling Minnesota”, a romantic comedy about an ex-convict and his bumbling crook brother who fight over the same woman. The song was released on the soundtrack album “Feeling Minnesota” (Atlantic 82865-2).
Johnny Cash and June Carter
“I felt like I had fallen into a pit of fire and I was literally burning alive” was how June Carter Cash described ‘Ring Of Fire’ in the liner notes to her 1999 album “Press On”.
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Ring Of Fire Originally recorded as ‘(Love’s) Ring Of Fire’ by June Carter-Cash’s sister Anita Carter, the song began life in 1962 when June Carter went on her first tour with Johnny Cash; a tour that included singer-songwriter Merle Kilgore. While on tour, Carter and Kilgore worked together writing songs, an activity that continued after touring finished. The two lived only a few blocks apart in Madison, a suburb of Nashville. It seems the idea for the song came from an Elizabethan book of poetry that had belonged to Carter’s uncle. Several passages were underlined, including a line that read “Love is like a burning ring of fire”. Carter and Kilgore began work on a song based around the phrase but broke for the day before the tune was finished. A little later, Anita Carter called from the studio complaining that she needed one further song to complete her album. June Carter asked Kilgore to come back and the two of them finished the song in a mere fifteen minutes. Johnny Cash was not keen on Anita’s rather twee version and he told her that he would give her record time to chart but that if it didn’t make it, he was going to record the song the way he felt it should be presented. Johnny Cash recorded ‘Ring Of Fire’ in March 1963 (with Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters singing harmony) and by June of ‘63 the song was a smash hit. However, in her autobiography “I Walked The Line”, Johnny Cash’s first wife, Vivian, tells a different story. Vivian claims: “June wrote ‘Ring of Fire’ no more than I did”. She then goes on to say that Johnny Cash wrote the song with Merle Kilgore and that it was about a certain part of a woman’s anatomy. Over time, a number of allegations have been made against June Carter and it is almost impossible to separate fact from fiction and bitterness from truth. In this instance, however, there are several people who back up Vivian’s allegation. Musician Curly Lewis, who toured with Johnny Cash, agrees that the song was written by Johnny Cash and Merle Kilgore. He has stated that the pair wrote the song on a fishing trip in Casitas, California and that he was present. The story continues that Johnny decided to give authorship of the song to June because he did not want any royalties from the song tied up in his divorce settlement. Curly Lewis has also claimed that the phrase “ring of fire” is a double meaning for June’s genitalia. The problem is between May 2003 and May 2005 June Carter-Cash, Johnny Cash, Merle Kilgore and Vivian Cash (Liberto) all passed away. A lawyer for the Cash estate told “fancast.com”: “We find it noteworthy that their authorship [June Cash and Merle Kilgore] has been unchallenged for over forty years, and was only questioned after the deaths of Kilgore and the Cashes”. The story of ‘Ring Of Fire’ does not end there. In 2004, a US company wanted to use the song to promote a haemorrhoid-relief product. It seems that Kilgore, who had been known
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Rise Again to introduce the song in concert with haemorrhoid jokes, liked the idea but Cash’s daughter Rosanne, who called the proposal “moronic” and said it would demean the song, refused permission. In short, Kilgore felt he could make piles of cash from the advert whereas Rosanne thought it was a bum idea.
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Rise Again (Dallas Holm) This contemporary Christian number was played eleven times in concert by Dylan in 1980 and one further time in 1981. The first appearance was at the Fox Warfield Theater in San Francisco on November 18, 1980 and the last performance was at Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan, on June 12, 1981. The song was performed as an intimate piano duet with backing singer Clydie King. This number was also recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992, with David Bromberg producing. This was one of two tracks that featured a Chicago black gospel choir, the Annettes. Regrettably, this recording is not in circulation among collectors. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. The song, a warning of the Second Coming, is sung as a message directly from Christ himself. Like Bob Dylan, Dallas Holm (born November 5, 1948 in St. Paul Park, MN), grew up in Minnesota and began playing in local rock bands. At the age of sixteen, however, he sat down with the pastor of his church to discuss his life, goals, and Jesus Christ. “On October 17, 1965, I committed my life and my music to the Lord”, says Holm; “I’ve never looked back”. Dallas Holm has spent more than thirty years singing and ministering in some three thousand concerts in every state in the USA and further afield. He has made thirty-seven gold albums, won multiple Dove Awards and received several Grammy nominations. Although Holm’s message remains constant, he communicates it across a number of musical genres including country, bluegrass, folk, reggae and even the blues, once fervently believed to be the sole property of the Devil. In 2005, Holm attempted to debunk this myth by releasing a rocking R&B-influenced album complete with a horn section entitled “Good ews Blues”. ‘I Saw The Lord’, ‘Chain Of Grace’, ‘Here We Are, Before Your Throne’ and his signature number ‘Rise Again’, are just a tiny selection of his best known songs.
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Rock ‘Em Dead Rock ‘Em Dead (Unknown) Bob Dylan performed this slightly mysterious song at nearly thirty concerts during the first half of 1986. Its debut on the “True Confessions Tour” was at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney, Australia (February 10). The song remained in the set until August 6, 1986 when it received its final outing to date at Paso Robles, California. This song is very often erroneously listed by chroniclers as ‘Uranium Rock’, though assumedly only by those who wish to either simplify matters or are unfamiliar with the original song. Whilst there is no arguing that Dylan’s song borrows its tune from Warren Smith’s ‘Uranium Rock’, the lyrics, with the exception of the phrase “money, money, honey”, are completely different. Because of its obvious repeated tag line, the song Dylan performs is also often referred to as ‘Rock ‘Em Dead’. However, Smith’s ‘Uranium Rock’ does not contain this repeated line and conversely Dylan’s song does not contain any lyrics that refer to Uranium Rock. The conclusion has to be therefore that Dylan has written his own set of lyrics to Smith’s tune. Interestingly, Dylan was performing this song at the same time (June / July, 1986) that he was playing Warren Smith’s ‘Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache’ in concert. In fact, on June 29, 1986, he performed both songs during the same show in Chicago, Illinois. Dylan may well have been going through a Warren Smith “phase” at this time because his cover of Slim Harpo’s ‘Got Love If Your Want It’ (recorded in April 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions) owes much more to Smith’s rocking 1957 cover of the song than it does to Slim Harpo’s original. If any further proof is needed, Dylan also tried out ‘Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache’ at the very same “Groove” sessions. It is a pity the song did not make it onto the final release because it would have been a better album for its inclusion. It seems that Dylan’s appreciation of Warren Smith’s music has remained with him to the present day because ‘Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache’, ‘Uranium Rock’ and ‘Ubangi Stomp’ were all played by Dylan on his 2006 / 2007 “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby (Johnny Cash) This song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, in May 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:80).
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Rock Me Baby Originally written and recorded by Johnny Cash, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby’ was released on a single (Sun 239) by Dylan favourite Warren Smith. Dylan had attempted to record Warren Smith’s ‘Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache’ at the previous “Down In The Groove” session. Also see the entry for ‘Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache’.
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Rock Me Baby (B.B. King) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios in Chicago, Illinois, in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the around thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. Whilst we cannot know for certain, as stated by Gray, this recording may be the B.B. King song ‘Rock Me Baby’. Rock Of Ages (Traditional adapted, Toplady / Hastings) This traditional number was performed three times during 1999 by Dylan, the first performance being at Pensacola, Florida on February 2, 1999. The song was played at seven shows in 2000, finishing April 4 at the Omaha Civic Arena. The performance from Atlantic City (November 19, 1999), can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This popular Christian hymn, often listed as “traditional”, was probably written, at least in part, by Reverend Augustus Montague Toplady (November 4, 1740 – August 11, 1778). The words of the hymn are believed to have been written in 1763 whilst Toplady was sheltering amongst rocks in Burrington Combe, near the village of Cheddar, in the southwest of England. The words, credited to Toplady, were first published in “The Gospel Magazine” in 1775. The hymn was printed at the end of an article by Reverend Toplady which argued that man, in his own efforts, could never satisfy the eternal justice of a holy God. At that time, the hymn bore the rather cumbersome title “A Living And Dying Prayer For The Holiest Believer In The World”.
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Rock Salt And ails It should be noted that renowned hymnologist Dr. Louis J. Benson, in his “Studies Of Familiar Hymns”, states that Toplady plagiarized his text from a hymn written by Charles Wesley, which had been published thirty years earlier in a collection entitled “Hymns On The Lord’s Supper”. ‘Rock Of Ages’ can be sung to the hymn tunes ‘Toplady’ by Thomas Hastings or ‘Redhead 76’ by Richard Redhead. The more popular tune of the two was composed in 1830 by American church musician Thomas Hastings (1784-1872). In spite of eyesight problems, due to being an albino, Hastings wrote fifty volumes of church music including around one thousand hymn tunes. Regardless of who actually wrote the hymn, Dylan almost certainly took his version from The Stanley Brothers’ recording of the song, which can be found on a number of their albums including “The Stanley Brothers And The Clinch Mountain Boys: The Essential Gospel Masters” (Varese CD66669), and the rather excellent four-CD box-set “The Stanley Brothers: The Early Years 1958 - 1961” (King-7000). Bob Dylan played The Stanley Brothers and The Clinch Mountain Boys’ recording of ‘Rock Of Ages’ on show five of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme.
Rock Salt And ails (Bruce Phillips) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made while he was living in the town of Woodstock in upper New York State and which later became known as the Basement Tapes (1967). This recording is thought by some to have been made in the “Red Room” at Dylan’s Hi Lo Ha Woodstock home prior to relocating to the basement at Big Pink. Although I really cannot tell you why, to me this recording sounds a little less primitive than the some of the other songs attributed to the “Red Room”. This is a lovely song, well sung by Dylan. However, if I were to be overly picky, I would say the slightly drawn out instrumental “outro” is not necessary. I have heard this song done in various ways and it works better when it finishes immediately after the “punch line”, “If the ladies were squirrels, with their high bushy tails / I’d fill up my shotgun with a rock, salt and nails”. Perhaps rather strangely, Bruce Phillips has never recorded this song himself. It seems that he wrote it while he was stationed in Korea during the Korean War. He had received a letter from his then wife informing him that their life together had to end. Phillips wrote the song to purge himself of the pain of the breakup and only ever performed it once, live on Garrison Keillor’s Minnesota radio show “A Prairie Home Companion”. Phillips may also have played the song to Rosalie Sorrels who then performed it live, its popularity escalated from there. As far as I can ascertain, Sorrels was the first person to record the song, which appeared on her Prestige album “Rosalie’s Songbag” (Prestige International INT 13025). This album
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Rock With Me Baby was, I think, released sometime around 1960. Later memorable versions can be found on Flatt & Scruggs’ 1965 Columbia album, “The Versatile Flatt & Scruggs”, Joan Baez’s 1969 Vanguard release, “David’s Album” and Steve Young’s 1969 A&M Records album “Rock Salt & ails”.
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Rock With Me Baby (Billy Lee Riley) This song was played six times during Dylan’s 1986 “True Confessions Tour”. The song was played for the first time at the Cal Expo Amphitheater in Sacramento, California. Its last outing to date was at the Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan, on July 1, 1986. Although some discographers list a different song, I am of the opinion that Dylan also recorded this Billy Lee Riley number at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California on April 28, 1986, during the “Knocked Out Loaded” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:79). The son of a sharecropper, Billy Lee Riley was born on October 5, 1933 in Pocahontas, Arkansas. He learned to play the harmonica at the age of six and was taught to play the guitar at a young age by black farm-workers. Riley, who began recording for the Fernwood label in Memphis in 1956, says he joined Sun records because “Sam [Phillips] was the only one in Memphis with a lathe for mastering a record”. Fernwood had intended to release Riley’s first single ‘Think Before You Go’ b/w ‘Trouble Bound’ themselves, but in the end the masters were leased to Sun. Riley recalls that when he cut ‘Trouble Bound’ Sam Phillips said it was exactly what the kids wanted– “rockabilly”, “that Elvis thing”. Before leaving the studio Phillips said he would release the record on the Sun label but only if Riley could come up with another rockabilly song for the other side. Riley did not have anything but he went away and wrote ‘Rock With Me Baby’. Although ‘Rock With Me Baby’ / ‘Trouble Bound’ was issued as Sun 245 (September 1956), the dead wax carried the original Fernwood matrix numbers. Billy Lee Riley’s first success came with his next single, ‘Flyin’ Saucers Rock And Roll’ (Sun 260, 1957), which was released by Billy Riley and His Little Green Men. His third Sun single, a cover of Billy “The Kid” Emerson’s ‘My Gal Is Red Hot’, was the cause of much consternation between Riley and Sam Phillips, details of which can be found in the entry for ‘Red Hot’.
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Rocks And Gravel (Solid Road) In 1960, Riley left Sun to start the Rita Record label with Roland Janes, and in 1962 he moved to Los Angeles to work as a session musician with the likes of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and the Beach Boys. Riley left the music business in the early 1970s but was drawn back and is still working today. According to an interview given by Riley to his local Arkansas newspaper, Bob Dylan is his number one fan: “Bob said I was his favourite singer and that he had been looking for me since 1985, he’d even been to my old house in Murfreesboro, Tennessee looking for me”. This was in 1991 and a year later, when Dylan played Little Rock, Arkansas, he invited Riley to perform with him. Riley opened for Dylan at the Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium in Little Rock on September 8, 1992. He was also invited to join Dylan during his set and was introduced to the audience by Dylan as “my hero”. Riley took lead vocals on one of his own songs, ‘Red Hot’. Finally, when Riley was inducted to the Arkansas Walk of Fame in March 2000, letters from Dylan, Sam Phillips and The Smithsonian Institute were read out, all hailing him as a pioneer and seminal influence. Some solace, perhaps, for a career characterized by missed opportunities and bad timing. Also see the entries for ‘Red Hot’ and ‘Repossession Blues’.
Rocks And Gravel (Solid Road) (Traditional, adapted Dylan) A clever combination of various blues lyrics, Dylan seemed to delight in performing this song which appears to have been in his concert repertoire for most of 1962. The first performance of the song that we have on tape was recorded at the New York City Apartment of radio show host Cynthia Gooding in March 1962. Dylan then attempted the song during his second “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album session at Columbia Recording Studios, New York City on April 25, 1962. The song was captured again when it was played at the Finjan Club in Montreal, Canada in July 1962, and yet again at the Gaslight Café in Greenwich Village, New York in October 1962. The song was successfully recorded in Columbia Recording Studios, New York City on November 1, 1962 and this recording was released on the first (withdrawn) pressing of the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album. See Appendices 1:20, 1:22, 1:24, 1:31 and 1:33 for details of all of the above performances. Dylan told journalist Nat Hentoff: “I learned one verse from Big Joe Williams, and the rest I put together out of lines that seemed to go with the story”. The truth is, the lines come from across the blues spectrum, or if they do not, they could do. What I mean is that even if Dylan only borrowed from one or two other songs, if you search long enough you will find many of these lyrics in a myriad of blues numbers. Much has been made in recent years of Dylan’s use of blues lyrics within his own songs (“Time Out Of Mind”, “Love And Theft” and “Modern Times”). Wild hysterical accusations of plagiarism have rung out around the world yet Dylan, like countless great blues artists, has employed this approach to his song-writing from day one. In fact, it is the main reason
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Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms that this book exists. Because not only has Dylan “covered” the songs in this book, but he has also borrowed from and been influenced by many of them. His song-writing would not exist in its present form without the rich heritage of traditional folk and blues music.
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Lenny Carr’s ‘Alabama Woman Blues’ and Brownie McGhee’s ‘Solid Road’ are often offered up as partial templates for Dylan’s ‘Rocks And Gravel’. Horace Sprott’s ‘Take Rocks And Gravel To Make a Solid Road – Railroad Blues’, which can be found on the various artists album “Music From The South, Vol. 5: Song, Play, And Dance” is also in the frame, as is ‘Rocks And Gravel Makes a Solid Road’ from “Mance Lipscomb: Trouble In Mind”. The Big Joe Williams song that Dylan mentioned to Nat Hentoff is probably ‘Stavin Chain Blues’. The early album release and the sheet music published by Witmark, both give Dylan full authorship of the song. However, tellingly, the lyrics are not included in “Bob Dylan: Lyrics 1962-1985”.
Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms (Traditional) Rollin’ in my sweet baby’s arms, Rollin’ in my sweet baby’s arms, Lay around the shack till the mail train comes back. I’m rollin’ in my sweet baby’s arms. This song was played in December 1961 at the New York home of Eve and Mac McKenzie (see Appendix 1:17). This song is in circulation among collectors and is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. ‘Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms’ was one of the songs rehearsed by Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead prior to their 1987 “Dylan & The Dead” tour. However, the song was not played during the concerts that followed. ‘Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms’ was being played around the Greenwich Village clubs when Dylan arrived there in the early 1960s. Jack Elliott was certainly performing the song in the Village at that time and Jack’s 1961 recording was released on the album “Ramblin’ Jack Elliott” (Prestige / International 13033). The New Lost City Ramblers also released the song in 1961 on “ew Lost City Ramblers Vol. 3” and their performance from the 1960 Newport Folk Festival was included on the various artists album “ewport Folk Festival 1960 Vol. 1”. The oldest recording of this song that I am aware of is a 1930 single by Buster Carter and Preston Young, with Posey Rorer. Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys had success with their 1951 single of the song, but the best known version is the Monroe Brothers record from 1936 and it is quite probable that Dylan took his adaptation from this recording. He certainly played the Monroe Brothers record on show six of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme.
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Roll On, John Roll On, John (Traditional) This song was performed by Dylan on January 13, 1962 at WBAI Studios in New York City for the Cynthia Gooding radio show, “Folksinger’s Choice”. The recording was broadcast on March 11, 1962 (see Appendix 1:19 for further details). This recording circulates among collectors and can also be found on the bootleg CD “Folksinger’s Choice”. This song is misidentified on some bootlegs as ‘Long John’. In a somewhat peculiar twist, this song has recently gained an official release of sorts. July 23, 2004 saw the opening, in the Columbia Museum of Art, of “There Is No Eye”, an exhibition of photographs taken by John Cohen. Accompanying the exhibition was a 200-page monograph by PowerHouse Books, also entitled “There Is No Eye: Photographs by John Cohen”, which came complete with a Smithsonian Folkways CD of twenty-three songs, one-third of which are previously unreleased. This CD included Bob Dylan’s rendition of ‘Roll On, John’ from the Cynthia Gooding WBAI radio show.
There Is o Eye CD
‘Roll On John’, which is related to ‘ine Pound Hammer’ and ‘Roll On Buddy (Roll On)’, was collected by Margo Mayo in the 1930s and sung by a little-known singer by the name of Rufus Crisp, who had apparently been singing this mountain ballad since the mid to late 1920s. Brunswick released Buell Kazee’s 1927 recording as part of their Hillbilly series of records. The song has been covered by a number of artists including Mike Seeger, Ralph Rinzler and The Greenbriar Boys. Dylan supported The Greenbriar Boys between September 25 and October 8, 1961 at Gerdes Folk City in New York’s Greenwich Village and it is very probable that the group were performing this song at these shows. However, Dylan informed Gooding that he got his version directly from Ralph Rinzler. John Herald, a member of The Greenbriar Boys, has stated that it was Rinzler who brought the song to the group when he joined them. It is very likely, therefore, that Dylan knew the song from Rinzler even before The Greenbriar Boys began to sing it. Their outstanding version is available on a number of compilations including “Big Apple Bluegrass” (Vanguard Records 79723-2).
Rollin’ And Tumblin’ (Traditional / McKinley Morganfeld) This song was recorded at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California on April 28, 1986, during the “Knocked Out Loaded” album sessions. The recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:79).
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Rosin The Beau ‘Rollin’ And Tumblin’’ has been recorded hundreds of times by a long list of artists. Considered as a traditional song, it has also been recorded with differing lyrics and titles. Authorship is most often attributed to McKinley Morganfield (Muddy Waters) or Hambone Willie Newbern. Notable versions were recorded by Muddy Waters (1950) and Elmore James (1960). Bob Dylan recorded his own version for his “Modern Times” album. This recording is copyright 2006 Special Rider Music.
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Rosin The Beau (Traditional) I’ve travelled all over this world, And now to another I go, And I know that good quarters are waiting, To welcome old Rosin the Beau. This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 whilst he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. This ubiquitous, bawdy boast of a song has been used as the template for at least eight political campaign songs, several temperance and alcoholic reformer songs (ironically the original version is an out-and-out drinking song), a Civil War song, a Southern folk hymn, and as the unofficial State song of Washington. Although the song, which is variously known as ‘Rosin The Beau’, ‘Old Rosin The Beau’ and ‘Ol’ Rosin The Beau’, was released on A.L. Lloyd’s album “English Drinking Songs”, this tune almost certainly has its origins firmly in Ireland, where it can be found in the early 1800s. The song was published and copyrighted in the USA in 1838 by Osbourn Music Saloon, Meignen & Co (new words copyright Garrison Keillor). Dylan could have heard this popular song almost anywhere but a good bet has to be his old friends the Clancy Brothers. The song is featured on their 1959 Tradition album “Come Fill Your Glass With Us” (TLP 1032). Roving Blade (Traditional) In Newry town where I was bred and born, In Stephen’s Green now I lie in scorn, I served my time there to the saddlers’ trade, And I always was a roving blade. At seventeen I took a wife, And I loved her dearer than I loved my life, And for to keep her both fine and gay, I went a-robbin’ on the King’s Highway.
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Roving Blade Often known as ‘ewlyn Town’ or ‘ewry Highwayman’, Dylan has performed this song three times in concert (1992, 1998 and 2000). The first performance, which is also probably the best and most haunting, was at the Parc des Expositions in Reims, France on July 1, 1992. The second performance, some six years later, was clearly a product of Dylan’s visit to Northern Ireland. He played the song during his show at the Botanic Gardens in Belfast and remarked, or should that be mumbled, that the song was “from round here”. This performance was made available as an official Internet download from bobdylan.com. This number was last performed on March 17, 2000 at the Reno Hilton Theater in Reno, Nevada. Dylan’s performances from Reims, France (July 1, 1992) and Belfast, Ireland (June 19, 1998) can be found on the bootleg CDs “Golden Vanity” and “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. As is the case with nearly all of Dylan’s early 1990s covers, this song is beautifully performed and is a must for collectors. The song tells the tale of a ‘blade’ (a term often used for a bold and dashing young man) who was born and bred in Newry Town in Northern Ireland. The young man had a trade, a saddler, but after taking a wife at the age of seventeen, and in order to keep her “both fine and gay”, he took to robbing on the King’s Highway. Our young blade then appears to go a “roving” to London, England, where he robs both Lord Golding and Lady Mansfield in Grosvenor Square. His robbing days are cut short when he goes with his wife to see a play in Covent Garden and is pursued and taken by “Lord Fielding’s cursed crew” (Henry and John Fielding started London’s first police force, the Bow Street Runners in 1749). Finally, our blade ends up in Stephen’s Green, which was a place of public execution in Dublin. The first known broadside to feature this song is from about 1830. The song can be found in “Laws” as ‘The Rambling Boy (Wild And Wicked Youth)’, in “Randolph” and “Warner” as ‘The Rambling Boy’, in “Sharp” as ‘The Robber’, in “Combs / Wilgus” as ‘The Rich And Rambling Boy’ and in “Kennedy” as ‘ewlyn Town’. As to exactly where Dylan found the song is anyone’s guess. The Seegers, especially Peggy, were singing it in the 1950s as ‘ewlyn Town’. Dylan’s friend from the early 1960s Martin Carthy, released the song, again as ‘ewlyn Town’, on his 1966 LP entitled “Second Album”, and the Johnstons, with Paul Brady on board, released it as ‘ewry Highwayman’ on their 1969 album “The Barley Corn”. Paul Brady performed this number long after he left the Johnstons, and when you consider that Dylan utilized Brady’s arrangements of ‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’, ‘Arthur McBride’ and ‘Mary And The Solder’, he must also be in the frame for the ‘ewry Highwayman’. Also, although most Dylan chroniclers list this song as ‘Roving Blade’, Dylan appears to know it as the ‘ewry Highwayman’.
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Roving Gambler Roving Gambler (Traditional)
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I am a roving gambler, I gamble all around, Whenever I meet with a deck of cards I lay my money down. Bob Dylan’s first known performance of ‘Roving Gambler’ (aka ‘I’m a Roving Gambler’) was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording see Appendix 1:3. This song can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. After a rather long respite, ‘Roving Gambler’ re-appeared in 1991 for a one-off performance in South Bend, Indiana. The song found favour with Dylan in the late 1990s being played twenty-four times in 1997, six times in 1998, six times in 1999, nine times in 2000, and a further eighteen times during 2001. The song’s final appearance, thus far, was when it opened Dylan’s set at the Newport Folk Festival on August 3, 2002. ‘Roving Gambler’ from the El Rey Theater, Los Angeles, California (December 17, 1997) was officially released on the single ‘Love Sick’. Bob Dylan’s performances from South Bend, Indiana (November 6, 1991) and Hartford, Connecticut (April 19, 1997) can both be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The South Bend performance is also included on the CD “Golden Vanity”, and the version from Dayton, Ohio (November 9, 1991) appears on the CD “20/20 Vision”. This song has always been very well performed by Dylan but some of the renditions in 2000, which are complete with three-part harmonies, are well worth seeking out. (Banks Of The) Royal Canal (The Auld Triangle) (Brendan Behan) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes (see Appendix 1:60 for further information). This song was written by Brendan Behan as ‘The Auld Triangle’ for his play “The Quare Fellow”. The piece is used to introduce the play, a story about the monotony of prison life and the “crime” of capital punishment, and is based on Behan’s own imprisonment (for republican activities) from 1942 to 1946 in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison.
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Rumble Brendan Francis Behan (February 9, 1923 - March 20, 1964) was an Irish author noted for his earthy satire, whose plays and stories depicted the life of the ordinary working men. Behan, who wrote in both Irish and English, was a committed Irish Republican and a volunteer in the IRA (Irish Republican Army). He spent most of the years from 1939 to 1946 in English and Irish penal institutions on political charges. Behan achieved a great deal of notoriety and critical attention in his homeland but he found his fame difficult to cope with. He was an extremely heavy drinker who described himself as “a drinker with a writing problem” claiming “I only drink on two occasions–when I’m thirsty and when I’m not”. As his self-destructive behaviour grew worse, Behan gained a reputation for drunken public appearances both on stage and television. In the early 1960 he developed diabetes, and diabetic comas and seizures began occurring with alarming regularity. Brendan Behan’s prolonged drinking bouts ended when he collapsed in the Harbour Lights bar in Dublin in March 1964. He was admitted to Meath Hospital where he underwent a tracheotomy. He passed away in March 1964 from cirrhosis of the liver. He was aged just forty-one. Over the years, ‘The Auld Triangle’ became known as ‘The Banks of The Royal Canal’, or simply ‘Royal Canal’. Dylan’s probable source for this song is Liam Clancy, who released the song as ‘Royal Canal’ on his album “Liam Clancy” (Vanguard VSD-79169, 1965).
Rumble (Link Wray) This glorious Link Wray power instrumental made brief appearances at four of Dylan’s five concerts at Brixton Academy in London in 2005. A brief snatch of this number was played as an opener before going into the set proper. The four shows in question, which circulate among collectors, were on November 20, 21, 22 and 23, 2005. Dylan, who had called ‘Rumble’ “the greatest instrumental ever”, was clearly playing this number as a tribute to Wray, who had died two weeks prior to Dylan’s London shows. He was aged seventy-six. It seems that Dylan had been to see Link Wray play live in 1958 and after, met and performed with him in Greenwich Village in the early sixties.
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Rumble Link Wray, born Fred Lincoln Wray Jr. on May 2, 1929 was the missing “link” between the pioneering late fifties electric guitarists and the rock-god axe-men of 1970s. ‘Rumble’ was born in 1958 when Wray attempted to work up a backing for The Diamonds’ number ‘The Stroll’ during a gig in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The tune that Link Wray and his Ray Men came up with, a powerful blues instrumental that they originally called ‘Oddball’, was such a hit with the audience they demanded four repeat performances that very night.
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Soon after the Fredericksburg gig, Wray went into a studio to record the number but he had trouble getting the sound that he had achieved live. Believing his problems were due to the clean sound of the studio amps, Wray took a pencil and punched holes in the speakers. Cadence Records producer Archie Bleyer hated the number, although his opinion might have been prejudiced by Wray vandalizing his speakers. Regardless, Bleyer’s stepdaughter loved the tune and insisted it be released, and it was at her suggestion that the number was renamed ‘Rumble’, because it reminded her of “West Side Story”. Unbelievably, the record was banned by several radio stations because rumble was a slang term for a gang fight and it was feared that the intensive sound and title glorified juvenile delinquency. Despite the partial radio ban, the record (Cadence, 1347) made it to Number Sixteen on the US Pop Chart and was also successful in Britain during the summer of 1958. Bob Dylan & Joan Baez “Rolling Thunder Revue” Tour
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Sail On (Unknown) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the some thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. Gray suggests that ‘Sail On’ is probably the 1934 Bumble Bee Slim hit ‘Sail On Little Girl, Sail On’. However, in the absence of a circulating tape I am not able to confirm this supposition.
Sally Gal (Dylan) ‘Sally Gal’ was a regular inclusion in Bob Dylan’s live sets from late 1961 through to the end of ’62. The first recorded evidence we have of this is a live radio broadcast on October 29, 1961 on Oscar Brand’s “Folksong Festival” show on WNYC Radio (see Appendix 1:13). There is, however, some evidence that Dylan might have played the song during his two-week engagement at Gerdes Folk City in late September ’61 (see Appendix 1:12). ‘Sally Gal’ was played again at Dylan’s November 4, 1961 Carnegie Chapter Hall show, but again this performance is not in circulation (see Appendix 1:14). The song turns up again on the so called “Minneapolis Hotel Tape” (see Appendix 1:18), before being recorded at the April 24, 1962“Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album session. This recording was not released on the final album but it did gain official release a quarter century later on “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol. 7” (see Appendix 1:21). The final known appearance of ‘Sally Gal’ was at the Carnegie Hall hootenanny on September 22, 1962 (see Appendix 1:28). Popular wisdom attributes ‘Sally Gal’ as being adapted from Woody Guthrie’s ‘Sally Don’t You Grieve’. However, considering the only lyrical relationship between the two songs is the name Sally, the connection seems somewhat tenuous. There is no doubt that the tune Dylan uses for ‘Sally Gal’ is quite similar to Guthrie’s song but did not Woody once tell
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Sally Sue Brown Dylan that it was the words that mattered and that he should take a tune from anywhere and to just change it around?
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One of the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album outtakes of ‘Sally Gal’ was recently released on the official album “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol.7”. The booklet which accompanies the album “o Direction Home...” states that “All songs written by Bob Dylan except”, and then goes on to quote four songs, but not ‘Sally Gal’. Also, since the release of this album Dylan’s office has lodged the song for copyright under his name.
Sally Sue Brown (Alexander / Stafford / Montgomery) Bob Dylan recorded ‘Sally Sue Brown’ at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California on March 27, 1987. The song, which loses much in the recording and even more in the mix, was released on the “Down In The Groove” album (see Appendix 1:80 for further details). This number was also played twice – Sydney, Australia and Seattle, Washington – in concert during April 1992. Bob Dylan’s performance from Sydney, April 16, 1992 can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Arthur Alexander (May 10, 1940 – June 9, 1993) was an American country-soul pioneer whose songs were known far better in Britain than in his native America. His first single, ‘Sally Sue Brown’ (Judd 1020, 1960), failed to dent the charts but his next and best-known number, ‘You Better Move On’, like most of his songs, would come to be more famous in its cover version than through its original recording, and the song topped the UK Chart when it was released by the Rolling Stones on their eponymous first EP. Earlier, the Beatles covered an Alexander song Arthur Alexander when they included ‘Anna (Go To Him)’ on their 1963 debut album “Please Please Me”. ‘Anna...’ was the first of several of Alexander’s songs to be recorded by the Fab Four. In a 1987 Billboard article, Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards said: “When the Beatles and the Stones got their first chances to record, one did ‘Anna’ and the other did ‘You Better Move On’. That should tell you enough!” Alexander quit the music business in 1977, and for much of the time between then and 1993 he drove a bus in Cleveland, Ohio for a local social service organization. He began to
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Samson And Delilah perform again in 1993 and made an album, “Lonely Just Like Me”, his first in over twenty years. He signed a new recording contract in May 1993 but suffered a fatal heart attack the following month. He was aged fifty-three. Samson And Delilah (Traditional) Dylan pulled this surprise one-off performance out of the bag at the 2004 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee (June 11, 2004). This festival set, which included covers of Willie Johnson’s ‘Samson And Delilah’, Hank Williams’ ‘You Win Again’, Merle Haggard’s ‘Sing Me Back Home’ and Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Pancho And Lefty’, was quite something to behold. Aided and abetted by Pink Anderson (who would later lend part of his name to Pink Floyd), ‘Samson And Delilah (If I Had My Way)’ was released on Rev. Gary Davis’ 1956 album “Gospel, Blues And Street Songs”. Davis popularized this tune in the early sixties via the burgeoning folk music revival and released it on a plethora of albums including “Harlem Street Singer”, “At The Sign Of The Sun”, “Hootenanny At Carnegie Hall”, “The Reverend Gary Davis At ewport”, “Live And Kickin’” and “From Blues To Gospel”. The song became so intrinsically tied up with Davis that he is often given full credit for witting it. However, the origins of this tune go back much further than Davis. Broadsides of the song, the earliest title of which is ‘Samson Tore The Building Down’, exist from the early 1900s, but it may well go even further back than that. The song was certainly being performed with this same title in the early 1920s by the Paramount Jubilee Singers. The best-known early recording, however, is Blind Willie Johnson’s 1927 single entitled ‘If I Had My Way, I Would Tear This Building Down’. This number was extremely popular with street evangelists and Rev. T. E. Weems recorded it under the same title, whilst Rev. T. T. Rose used the abridged title ‘If I Had My Way’. Rev. J. M. Gates also released the song but he used the title ‘Samson And The Woman’. All of these recordings were made around the same time – 1927. Although Dave Van Ronk, Peter Paul and Mary and The Staple Singers all recorded the song during the 1960s, the first version that Dylan heard would probably have been that of Rev. Gary Davis. However, by the time Dylan played it at Bonnaroo in 2004, he would certainly have known Blind Willie Johnson’s fabulous recording. Regardless of this, it was Gary Davis’ 1956 recording of ‘Samson And Delilah’ that Dylan played on show nineteen of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “The Bible”. For details about Rev. Gary Davis, see the entry for ‘Death Don’t Have o Mercy’. San Francisco Bay Blues (Jesse Fuller) Dylan’s first known performance of this song was recorded at the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961. The tape was made by the Gleasons’ son, Kevin. See Appendix 1:6 for further information about this recording.
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San Francisco Bay Blues The next known performance of this song was in May 1961 at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher (see Appendix 1:8); in September 1961 in Gerdes Folk City (see Appendix 1:12); November 4, 1961 at the Carnegie Chapter Hall (see Appendix 1:14) and November 23, 1961 at the New York City home of Eve and Mac McKenzie (see Appendix 1:16).
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Dylan began playing this number again in 1988, pulling two performances out of the bag during his US summer tour. He then chose the song to open his short acoustic set at the 1988 Bridge School benefit concert. Bob Dylan’s excellent performance from Canandaigua, New York (June 28, 1988) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Jesse “Lone Cat” Fuller was born into a rural black family 1896 in Jonesboro, Georgia, near to Atlanta. He never knew his father and by the age of seven he was sent by his mother to live with another family where he was beaten and starved and, according to Fuller, “treated worse than a dog”. He showed his first musical interest at about nine when he made himself a “mouth bow”. “I made a bow like the Indians used to use and put some wax on the string”, explained Fuller. “I put the bow in my mouth and pick the string and it sounded like a jew’s-harp. I don’t know how the idea ever came into my head”. Within a year he had built a crude guitar and learned to play by slipping into Saturday night dances and meeting a variety of colourful musicians. As soon as he was able, he ran away from his foster parents and took a variety of jobs across the South. He grazed cows for ten cents a day, worked in a buggy factory, a lumber factory, a chair factory, had jobs making barrels, brooms, spent time working in a rock quarry, on a railroad, as a shoe-shine and even found a job peddling hand-carved wooden snakes. By his early teens he had mastered the twelve-string guitar and made extra money by singing on street corners. He left Georgia when he was twenty-four and took yet more jobs, including working as a labourer in a circus. In 1929 his wandering brought him to California where he settled in Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco. He took a job with the Southern Pacific Railroad and after a few years they awarded him with an annual pass for “self and wife”. Fuller returned to Georgia to find “a real nice wife to go with the pass”. His mission was soon accomplished and he returned to Oakland with his new wife. Fuller now began spending more of his time playing music, and by the late 1940s jazz and folk musicians in the San Francisco Bay area sought him out. In the early 1950s he was playing regularly at a small club in the Fillmore district of San Francisco called the Haight Street Barbecue where he performed traditional folk material, mostly blues, but also some original compositions which, by 1954, included ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’. In 1954, now fifty-eight years of age, he was invited by Margaret and Irwin Goldsmith to recorded an album of songs in their studio in El Cerrito, CA. The record, a six-track, ten-inch album entitled “Working On The Railroad” (World Songs EG 10 027) was released in 1955. The album contained one self-penned song, his best, ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’. Fuller would re-record the song again in 1961 when it was released as a seven-inch single (Good Time Jazz GV2426). He recorded the number for a third time in 1963 when it was
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Saro Jane released on the album “San Francisco Bay Blues” (Prestige Folklore FL 14006). The song was re-recorded and released several more times over the next couple of years. ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ has now been recorded by a multitude of artists, including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and according to “Chronicles Volume 1”, Dylan first heard the song on Elliott’s 1958 album, “Jack Takes The Floor”, in Minneapolis via Jon Pankake. In any event, Dylan played Jesse Fuller’s 1963 recording of ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ on show four of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “California”.
Jesse Fuller with his “Fotdella”
On the show, Dylan told the story of Fuller’s “Fotdella”, which was a big six string bass viol that he played with his foot via a system of pedals and levers. “I got hearn’ about fellers who were making lots of money on records”, Fuller said. “I tried to get some fellers to play with me but they were always busy drinking wine and gamblin’ so I said ‘I’m goin’ to make me a one man band’ and I did. My wife she call it a fotdella...” Fuller also added a left foot pedal to activate a high-hat cymbal and employed a neck harness to hold a harmonica and kazoo. Fuller would then have both hands free to play his large twelve-string guitar.
Dylan told his radio show listeners: “It never caught on enough to get it in your local music store. I wish it had, it’d sure cut down costs on the road”. Saro Jane (Traditional) I got a wife and five little chillun, I’m gonna take a trip on the big McMillan, With Saro Jane, Saro Jane , Ain’t nothin’ to do, But to set down and sing, And rock about my Saro Jane. Bob Dylan’s first known performance of ‘Saro Jane’, aka ‘Rock About My Saro Jane’, was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording see Appendix 1:3. This recording can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”.
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(I Can’t Get o) Satisfaction This song was also recorded by Dylan at the June 1, 1970 second “ew Morning” album session. The recording was not included on the final album but was later released by Columbia under the title of ‘Sarah Jane’ on the album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973). This song, complete with its awful syrupy chorus, is one of the least memorable tracks on the album. See Appendix 1:69 for details about this session.
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According to Sing Out! magazine: “This is a rousing traditional roustabout song from the days of Mississippi River steam-boating. The last verse was apparently added during the Civil War days by some rebel sharp-shooter … Uncle Dave Macon recalled hearing it sung by ‘a steamboat’s coloured crew singing on Front Street in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1897’”. This song was recorded by, amongst others, Uncle Dave Macon (1927), Kingston Trio (1958) and Odetta (1960).
(I Can’t Get o) Satisfaction (Jagger / Richards) Dylan performed this Rolling Stones riff-driven number at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC on July 7, 1986. This performance was when Dylan made a guest appearance during the encores of the Grateful Dead set. The song turned up again when Dylan played on it during Mick Jagger’s January 1988 performance at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. The Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards says that he came up with the riff for the song in his sleep. He woke up, recorded the riff along with the words “I can’t get no satisfaction” on a near by portable cassette recorder and promptly fell back to sleep. He later described the tape as: “two minutes of ‘Satisfaction’ and forty minutes of me snoring”. Similarities have been drawn between the melody of the song’s pre-chorus (“and I try, and I try, and I try, and I try”) and Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ (“and it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s hard”). However, similarities can be found almost anywhere if you care to search hard enough. If true, then maybe Keith was dreaming about Bob Dylan that night? The Rolling Stones released ‘(I Can’t Get o) Satisfaction’ in the summer of 1965, (Decca F12220, UK), (London 45-LON 9766, USA). The single reached Number One on both the UK and US Pop Charts. Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song at Number Two on its list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” behind, of course, Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’.
(A) Satisfied Mind (Red Hayes / Jack Rhodes) Dylan recorded ‘A Satisfied Mind’ at the second “Saved” recording session at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama on February 12, 1980. The song was released in 1980 as the opening track on the “Saved” album. Dylan has only performed this number once in concert (November 9, 1999) at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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Searching For a Soldier’s Grave Andrew Jackson Rhodes is probably best known for writing or co-writing 1950s rockabilly songs, most notably for Gene Vincent. His affiliation with country music, however, saw his involvement with songs like ‘Silver Threads And Golden eedles’ and ‘A Satisfied Mind’. The song’s co-author, Joe “Red” Hayes, told “Country Music People” magazine (July 1973): “The song came from my mother. Everything in the song is things I heard her say over the years. I put a lot of thought into the song before I came up with the title. One day my father-in-law asked me who I thought the richest man in the world was, and I mentioned some names. He said, ‘You’re wrong, it is the man with a satisfied mind’”. The song, which was written in 1955, has been recorded by a host of artists including Porter Wagoner, Red Foley, Jean Shepard, Joan Baez, Ian and Sylvia, Johnny Cash and The Byrds. Bob Dylan’s beautiful one-off performance from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (November 9, 1999) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Searching For a Soldier’s Grave (Jim Anglin) This song arrived in Dylan’s shows in the summer of 2000. It was played for the first time in Portland, Oregon, at the Roseland Theater and remained an integral part of the sets for the next three years, being played fifty-two times in 2000, thirty-nine times in 2001, and a further twenty times during 2002. The song was played for the final time thus far on October 4, 2002 in Seattle, Washington. Bob Dylan’s performance from Portland (June 15, 2000) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Starting in November 1999, Dylan began introducing several Johnnie and Jack numbers into his live performances including ‘Humming Bird’, ‘This World Can’t Stand Long’ and ‘Searching For a Soldier’s Grave’. For details about Johnnie and Jack, see the entry for ‘Humming Bird’. ‘Searching For a Soldier’s Grave’ was written by Jim Anglin who, as was the case with ‘This World Can’t Stand Long’, then sold the copyright to Roy Acuff. The song was released in 1952 by Kitty Wells, with Johnnie and Jack providing the backing, on her album “Country Hit Parade” (Decca ED 2361). The song, which tells the tale of someone who makes a three thousand-mile journey to search for the grave of a loved one who has been killed in action, has also been recorded by The Blue Sky Boys, Hank Williams, the Bailes Brothers, Louvin Brothers and Dylan’s probable source, Ralph Stanley.
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See That My Grave Is Kept Clean See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson)
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This song, which Dylan performed regularly in the early early 1960s, was released on his debut album. It was also recorded in the Basement of Big Pink in 1967. See Appendices 1:11, 1:12, 1:15, 1:18, 1:27, 1:31 & 1:60 for further information. Lemon Henry Jefferson, aka Blind Lemon, was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s. Blind from birth and the youngest of seven children, Jefferson became a wandering entertainer in his teens, performing a repertoire of blues, moans, prison songs, spirituals and dance numbers. He played his songs in the streets and in brothels and bars in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Virginia, before going to Chicago in the 1920s. Among his best-known songs are ‘Black Snake Moan’, ‘Matchbox Blues’ and ‘See That My Grave Is Kept Clean’. Jefferson recorded a number of spirituals, including the haunting ‘See That My Grave Is Kept Clean’ (Paramount 12585, 1927), under the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates. He took his song from a folk spiritual called ‘Two White Horses In a Line’, also known as ‘One Kind Favour’, and some of the lyrics, “dig my grave with a silver spade” for instance, can be found in a number of old spirituals. Even though the song started life as “traditional”, Jefferson turned it into something entirely his own, and although Dylan’s recording followed Jefferson’s arrangement quite closely, the two versions are also very different. As Robert Shelton wrote: “Blind Lemon’s recording is sprightly, sweet and benevolent, while Dylan’s is stark and morose”. Although Dave Van Ronk released ‘See That My Grave Is Kept Clean’ on Folkways shortly before Dylan recorded his first album, Dylan would almost certainly have known Jefferson’s recording from Harry Smith’s “Anthology Of American Folk Music”. For further information about this Anthology, see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’.
See You Later, Allen Ginsberg (Robert Charles Guidry, adapted Dylan) This light-hearted knock-about, based on Bill Haley’s hit record ‘See You Later, Alligator’, forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes (see Appendix 1:60 for further information). This fun bit of gibberish begins with what can only be described as a jump-start. The entertainment, which includes rhyming ‘crocodile’ with ‘Nile’ and ‘later’ with ‘crocagator’,
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Send Me To The ‘Lectric Chair comes to a rather abrupt end when, after about one-and-a-half minutes, Dylan appears to simultaneously break a string and drop his cigarette. It’s all there on the tapes. Originally entitled ‘Later Alligator’, this song was written and recorded by the white Louisiana songwriter Robert Charles Guidry. Guidry released it (Chess 1609) in 1955 under his stage name, Bobby Charles. The record reached Number Fourteen on the Billboard R&B Chart. The song was quickly picked up by Bill Haley who rearranged it from an R&B shuffle to a fast-paced rock’n’roll number. He recorded it with his backing band The Comets and the song, complete with a flip-side entitled ‘The Paper Boy (On Main Street U.S.A.)’, was released on February 1, 1956 in both 78rpm and 45rpm formats (Decca 29791). Although the record failed to make the top spot on Billboard Chart, it went on to be a million-seller.
Send Me To The ‘Lectric Chair (George Brooks) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the some thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. It seems that Dylan was eager to record various David Bromberg songs and is reported to have repeatedly asked the question of Bromberg: “What about that one of yours ..?” This song, which was written by George Brooks and made famous by the great Bessie Smith, was released on David Bromberg’s third album “Wanted Dead Or Alive” (Columbia 32717, 1974). Bob Dylan played Bessie Smith’s superb 1927 recording of ‘Send Me To The ‘Lectric Chair’ on show six of Season One of his Theme Time Radio Hour programme. The theme of the show was “Jail”.
Shake A Hand (Joe Morris) Bob Dylan played a relatively faithful cover version (lyric-wise) of Joe Morris’ affirmation of undying love at twenty-three of the shows on the second leg of his 1986 “True Confessions Tour”. The song got its first outing at the LA Forum Amnesty Concert on June 6, 1986 before being integrated into the set proper on June 18, at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona. The song, performed by Dylan as a rather infectious rocker, was employed as the opening number.
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Shake, Rattle & Roll Joe Morris began his career as a jazz trumpeter, working with, amongst others, Earl Bostic, Milt Buckner, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Rich and Lionel Hampton. He left Hampton in 1946 to form the Joe Morris Orchestra.
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Vocalist Laurie Tate departed for a solo career in 1952 and her place in the band was taken by Morris’ latest discovery, “the little girl with the big voice”, Faye Adams. Morris wanted Adams to release his composition, ‘Shake a Hand’, but Atlantic Records declined the offer. However, shortly after, Morris moved to Herald Records who agreed to release song as Adams’ debut single (Herald Records 416). Assumedly Atlantic regretted passing on the song which went to the top spot on the Billboard R&B Chart in 1953 and remained there for nine weeks. The record, a million-seller, also reached Number Twenty-Two on the National Pop Chart. ‘Shake a Hand’ was later covered by a variety of artists including LaVern Baker, Ruth Brown, Jackie Wilson, Red Foley and Elvis Presley. Faye Adams originally recorded the number as a ballad and Presley slowed it down even further when he covered it on his 1975 album “Today”. The most rocking version is probably Little Richard’s cover, which he released in 1959 as a single (Specialty 670) and also on his album “The Fabulous Little Richard”. Dylan’s live cover is almost certainly taken from Richard’s recording, but Dylan raves it up even further!
Shake, Rattle & Roll (Charles E. Calhoun) Dylan was present on stage for this number at the 1991 Seville “Guitar Legends” festival. (October 17, 1991). Dylan and Keith Richards shared vocal duties on this one. ‘Shake, Rattle & Roll’ (Atlantic 1026) was written in 1954 by R&B artist Jesse Stone under his assumed song-writing name Charles E. Calhoun. Stone wrote the number specifically for blues shouter Big Joe Turner at the request of Atlantic Records boss Herb Abramson. The song was quickly picked up by Bill Haley who went into the studio on June 7, 1954 and cut a massively rearranged rock’n’roll version of Joe Turner’s recording. The single, released by Bill Haley & His Comets, sold two-and-a-half-million copies in just eight weeks. Shake Sugaree (Elizabeth Cotten) Dylan played this song seven times during his 1996 summer tour. It was played for the first time in Berlin, Germany on June 17, 1996 then, after a gap of more than a year, it reemerged for a single performance on December 1, 1997 at the Roxy in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Shake Your Money Maker Bob Dylan’s beautifully sung and lengthy – close to six-minute – performance from Berlin can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000”. ‘Shake Sugaree’ was originally released by Elizabeth Cotten in 1965 on Folkways (31003). The album has since been reissued on Smithsonian / Folkways 40147 with ten bonus tracks. In issue 16 #2 of Sing Out! magazine (April / May 1966), Mike Seeger said of the song: “One evening a couple of years ago as Elizabeth Cotten was putting her grandchildren to bed, the oldest, Johnny, made the first verse of this song. Elizabeth gave it a tune, a verse or two and (according to the next eldest, Brenda) the chorus. The remainder of the song evolved gradually during the following weeks...” With everything in pawn, the narrator of the song has nothing left but to go to heaven. “I’ve got a secret, I ain’t gonna tell / I’m goin’ to heaven in a split pea shell”, Ms. Cotten sings. For biographical information about Elizabeth Cotten see ‘Oh Babe It Ain’t o Lie’.
Shake Your Money Maker (Elmore James) This R&B song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, in March / April 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:80). ‘Shake Your Money Maker’ was released by Elmore James in 1961 (Fire 504). The single was paired with ‘Look On Yonder Wall’ which Dylan also recorded at the “Down In The Groove” sessions.
She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain (Traditional) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 whilst he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes (see Appendix 1:60 for further information). Also known as ‘Coming Round The Mountain’, this piece, which is not quite what it seems today, was first printed in Carl Sandburg’s “The American Songbag” in 1927. Although in recent times ‘She’ll be Coming Round The Mountain’ has become little more than a children’s song, appearing in hundreds of children’s books as well as being sung during TV shows like The Muppets and Sesame Street, it started life as a Negro spiritual entitled ‘When The Chariot Comes’.
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She’s About A-Mover The song, which seems to have always been sung to the same melody, is believed to have been written sometime during the late 1800s. However, during the 20th century it crept slowly through the Appalachians where the lyrics were tailored into their present form.
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It is not entirely clear who or what the “She” in the song is. There are, nonetheless, various credible interpretations including a suggestion that “She” is the train that will travel the tracks that are being laid by railway workers. The most popular interpretation, however, is that “She” refers to the Appalachian labour organizer, Socialist and Wobbly, “Mother” Jones. Regardless, the song was adopted by railroad workers as a work song in the 1890s. Dylan’s vocal on the ramshackle performance from Big Pink is both tentative and very un-Dylan sounding. He struggles dreadfully with the lyrics but the rendition is nevertheless more traditional than children’s song. She’s About A-Mover (Doug Sahm) Bob Dylan played this Doug Sahm song at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton, Canada on August 24, 1988. The song was performed as a final encore with Doug Sahm taking the lead vocal. Dylan played the song again in Portland, Oregon, on June 15, 2000 and a good quality recording of this rocking performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Sahm formed the Sir Douglas Quintet in 1965, along with his childhood friend Augie Meyers. ‘She’s About a Mover’ was a Top Twenty Chart hit on both sides of the Atlantic and Bob Dylan was quick to compliment the Sir Douglas Quintet in several interviews. In 1973, Jerry Wexler signed Sahm to Atlantic Records and produced his first solo album, “Doug Sahm And Band”. The album featured amongst others Bob Dylan, Dr. John and David Bromberg. Doug Sahm died in his sleep of a heart attack on November 18, 1999 while on vacation in Taos, New Mexico. Dylan’s June 15, 2000 performance of ‘She’s About a Mover’ coincided with the June release of Sahm’s posthumous album “The Return Of Wayne Douglas”. She’s Love Crazy (Tampa Red) ‘She’s Love Crazy’ was played almost fifty times as an opening number on Bob Dylan mammoth 1978 world tour. The first performance was in Dortmund, West Germany on
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Shenandoah June 26, 1978. The song made its final appearance on the last night of the tour at the Sportatorium in Hollywood Florida (December 16 1978). ‘She’s Love Crazy’ is one of blues guitarist Tampa Red’s lesser known songs. It can however be found on a number of CD releases including “The Essential Tampa Red” (Classic Blues), “The Man With The Gold Guitar” (Pristine Audio) and the vast multivolume collection “Tampa Red – Complete Recorded Works” (Document). “The Man With The Gold Guitar” album, which has been cleaned-up using the XR remastering system, kicks off with ‘She’s Love Crazy’ and also contains ‘It Hurts Me Too’ (a song that Dylan has recorded), plus songs with titles like ‘She Wants To Sell My Monkey’, and one for dog lovers everywhere, Tampa Red’s biggest hit, ‘Let Me Play With Your Poodle’. I will leave it to the reader to decide how best to interpret these two song titles! Listeners who only know Tampa’s hokum material are however missing the deeper side of one of the unsung heroes of the Chicago blues. For further information about Tampa Red, see the entry for ‘Love Her With a Feeling’.
Shenandoah (Traditional) Bob Dylan recorded this traditional number at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California on April 3, 1987. The song, which was released on the album “Down In The Groove”, is one of the best performances on this otherwise below par album (see Appendix 1:80 for further details). The song has been played as an instrumental in concert by Bob Dylan on three occasions. ‘Shenandoah’ made its first live appearance at The Coliseum at the University Of Georgia on October 28, 1990. The final performance thus far was on November 4, 1990, on the song’s home turf of St. Louis, Missouri. The origins of ‘Shenandoah’, sometimes known as ‘Oh, Shenandoah’, are difficult to decipher. American folklorist Alan Lomax suggested that the song was a sea-shanty and that its “composers” were quite possibly French-Canadian seafarers. In actual fact, the song may have originated as a “river shanty” which then became popular with sea-going crews as a clipper shipboard work song. Some historians believe the song refers to the Shenandoah River which passes through Virginia and West Virginia, whilst others believe the name Shenandoah is derived from a Native American tribe, the Senedos, who lived in the bottomland between Smith Creek and the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. In the language of the Senedos, the word Shenandoah means “Daughter of the stars”. A variation on this hypothesis is that the song is derived from the story of “Sally”, the daughter of the Indian Chief Shenandoah, who was courted by a white Missouri river trader for many years. Most shanties are “call and response” songs, with one voice (the “shantyman”) singing the line and the other sailors roaring out the response in a similar way to black field workers or prisoners labouring on the chain-gangs might do. The song first appeared in print in
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Sidewalks, Fences, And Walls “Harper’s New Monthly Magazine” in 1882, accompanying an article by William L. Alden, entitled “Sailor Songs”. The song reached its first flush of popularity in the 1830s and in more recent times has been recorded by, amongst others, Harry Belafonte, The Kingston Trio, The Brothers Four, Paul Clayton, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson, Milt Okun and The New Christy Minstrels.
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Sidewalks, Fences, And Walls (Solomon Burke) Bob Dylan recorded this song at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California on March 5, 1987. The song was recorded for possible inclusion on the “Down In The Groove” album but was not released on the final product. The recording does however circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:80 for further details). In February 2007, a reel-to-reel tape containing four “finished” takes of ‘Sidewalk, Fences, And Walls’ was put up for sale on the Internet website eBay. The asking price was an extremely ambitious $12,500. It seems that the producer of the Skyline Studios session, David Briggs, had given the reel to a friend, a Dylan fan, who had sat on it for twenty years before attempting to sell the material to finance a business venture. Not unexpectedly, the tape failed to sell for the minimum bid price and the seller decided to sell cassette copies of the tape on ebay for $50 each. Needles to say, the tape was quickly copied and made available as an Internet mp3 download! The song tells the story of a young boy who writes “Solomon loves Mary” on the sidewalks, fences, and walls of the neighbourhood in which he lives. He returns many years later to reminisce only to find a young girl chalking love messages on the same sidewalks, fences, and walls. Then, as he stares at the young girl, her mother arrives and yes, you probably guessed it, it’s Mary. ‘Sidewalks, Fences, And Walls’, along with ‘Boo Hoo, Hoo (Cra-Cra-Craya)’, was originally released by R&B / soul singer Solomon Burke as a single (Infinity, 50046, 1979). Both songs were also released on Burke’s 1979 album “Sidewalks, Fences, And Walls” (Infinity, 9024). Burke’s critically successful 2002 album “Don’t Give Up On Me” featured Dylan’s unreleased (by him) song ‘Stepchild’. Silhouettes (Frank Slay / Bob Crew) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made whilst he was living in the town of Woodstock in upper New York State and which later became known as the Basement
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Silver Dagger Tapes (1967). This recording sounds a little more primitive than the main body of Basement Tapes songs and was possibly recorded in the “Red Room” in Dylan’s Hi Lo Ha Woodstock home before they moved to the basement at Big Pink. The position of this song on the tapes / bootleg CDs also seems to indicate this. Unfortunately this performance is merely a twenty-second fragment. Dylan also played this song informally at the Park Royal Hotel in Wellington, New Zealand (February 1986). The lyrics to John Lennon’s song ‘o Reply’, which was released on the LP “Beatles For Sale” (1964), were inspired by The Rays song ‘Silhouettes’. The song, in which a boy discovers his girl is cheating on him when he sees two “silhouettes” on the “shades” of her house, was a Top Five hit in the USA for The Rays in 1957.
Silver Dagger (Traditional) Don’t sing love songs, you’ll wake my mother, She’s sleeping here, right by my side, And in her right hand, a silver dagger, She says that I can’t be your bride. Dylan played harmonica on this American folk ballad when he was joined on stage by Joan Baez during his concert at Philharmonic Hall in New York City on October 31, 1964. This number was a regular inclusion in Baez’s live shows and was released as the opening track on her 1960 album “Joan Baez” (Vanguard VRS9078). The song is included on the official 2004 Dylan release “The Bootleg Series Vol. 6 – Bob Dylan Live 1964 – Concert At Philharmonic Hall” (C2K 86882).
Hand signed card from the Philharmonic Hall
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Allthough it is possibly older, ‘Silver Dagger’ can only be dated back to the late 19th century. It is listed in Roud (711) along with a multitude of related titles including ‘An Awful Warning’, ‘O Parents, Parents All Take Warning’, ‘Come All Good People’, ‘The Dying Lovers’ and ‘Katie Dear’. As is often the case with traditional ballads, the first published version, which appeared in 1907, is substantially longer than the one we know today.
Silvio Silvio (Dylan / Robert Hunter)
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Bob Dylan chose this song, along with ‘Ugliest Girl In The World’, in the mid-1980s from a portfolio of songs by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Dylan provided the music and the song was recorded on June 16, 1987 at Sunset Sound Studios, Hollywood. The resulting track, which can only be described as below par, was released on Dylan’s equally grim album “Down In The Groove”. A more appropriate title would have been “Down In The Dumps”. The song is copyrighted jointly to Dylan’s music publishing company Special Rider Music and Hunter’s Ice Nine Music. See Appendix 1:80. Dylan began performing ‘Silvio’ in concert during his “Interstate 88” tour. The song received its first outing on June 21, 1988 at the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. It became a regular in 1988, making over sixty appearances. The song was rested but began making very sporadic appearances from March 2000 through to March 2004. The lyricist and poet Robert C. Hunter was born Robert Burns in San Luis Obispo, California on June 23, 1941. Hunter and his friend Jerry Garcia played together in several bluegrass bands and in the early 1960s Hunter took part in the CIA-financed study Project MKULTRA, a mind-control and chemical interrogation research program that took place at Stanford University. He was paid to take LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DM and to log and report on his experiences. Hunter found the drugs greatly helped his creativity. The first lyrics he wrote for Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead were composed on LSD, and mailed to the band from Arizona. Hunter’s association with the Dead grew until he became a nonperforming band member. ‘Silvio’ was released as a 7 and 12-inch single (Columbia 38-07970, 1988) and has also appeared on several Dylan compilation albums (also see ‘Ugliest Girl In The World’.
Sing Me Back Home (Haggard) Bob Dylan played this slightly clichéd Merle Haggard song for the first time at the 2004 Bonnaroo Music Festival on June 11, 2004. This festival set, which included covers of Rev. Gary Davis’ ‘Samson And Delilah’, Hank Williams’ ‘You Win Again’, Merle Haggard’s ‘Sing Me Back Home’ and Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Pancho & Lefty’, was quite something to behold. Dylan performed the song nine more times while on tour during 2005. The final performance, so far, was in the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, Illinois on April 2, 2005. Merle Haggard’s recording, which is about a man who wishes to hear his favourite song and to relive old memories before he dies, is the title track from his 1968 Capitol album
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Sinner Man “Sing Me Back Home”. Bob Dylan played this recording of Haggard’s ‘Sing Me Back Home’ on show six of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Jail”.
Sinner Man (Traditional) The first documented performance of ‘Sinner Man’ was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twentyseven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. This recording can be found in very poor quality on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Although this “private” rendition is the only known performance of the song, David Lee, owner of the Ten O’Clock Scholar, has stated that ‘Sinner Man’ was a regular inclusion in Dylan’s Minneapolis coffeehouse sets when he played there in late 1959. Many would say that the definitive version of ‘Sinner Man’, or ‘SinnerMan’, was recorded by Nina Simone, who released the song on her 1965 album “Pastel Blues”. Simone is said to have learned the lyrics to the song when she attended spiritual retreats with her mother, a Methodist minister, who helped people to confess their sins. Regardless of this, Bob Dylan was singing the song at least five years before the release of “Pastel Blues”, so this recording was clearly not his inspiration to cover the song. Dylan’s version almost certainly came from The Weavers’ recording, released on their album “Travelling On With The Weavers” (Vanguard VRS 9043). The album, released in 1958, contained a version of ‘Sinner Man’ featuring changes and additions that most contemporary recorded versions are derived from. The song was also printed in “Sing Out! Reprints” (1959). This number was first collected from Florence Semples by Cecil Sharp in 1917 and printed in “English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians”.
(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay (Steve Cropper / Otis Redding) This song was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions. The recording was, however, not released on the finished album (see Appendix 1:65 for further information). ‘Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay’ was rehearsed for the summer 1990 US tour and duly appeared in concert at the Champs de Brionne Music Theater in George, Washington. This bold but failed attempt at the song can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Otis Redding was on tour with the Bar-Keys in August 1967 when he began work on ‘Dock Of The Bay’. He continued to make notes and scribble lyrics on hotel paper and even napkins. In November 1967 Redding met with producer and Stax Records’ guitarist Steve Cropper at Stax studios in Memphis, Tennessee and laid down an unfinished take of the song.
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Sitting On Top Of The World During a 1990 interview with NPR radio’s Fresh Air programme, Steve Cropper described the genesis of the song:
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“Otis was one of those kind of guys who had a hundred ideas. Anytime he came in to record he always had ten or fifteen different intros or titles, or whatever. He had been at San Francisco playing The Fillmore, and he was staying at a boathouse, which is where he got the idea of the ship coming in. That’s about all he had: “I watch the ships come in and I watch them roll away again”. I took that and finished the lyrics. If you listen to the songs I wrote with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him. He didn’t usually write about himself, but I did … ‘I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay’ was all about him going out to San Francisco to perform”. After the recording session with Cropper, touring with The Bar-Kays continued, but on December 10, 1967 the plane which had been chartered by the band crashed in a lake in Madison, Wisconsin and seven of the eight passengers, including Redding, were killed. It seems that when Otis Redding recorded ‘Dock Of The Bay’ in the November, he and Cropper did not have a last verse for the song, so Redding simply whistled it intending to return to Memphis to record the verse after performing in Madison. We will probably never know if Redding ever wrote the verse but when Cropper carried out the final mixing of the song he left the whistling in. ‘(Sitting On The) Dock Of The Bay’, released posthumously on Stax Records’ Volt label, reached Number One on the Billboard Chart and was ranked twenty-eighth on Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Sitting On Top Of The World (Walter Jacobs / Armenter Chatmon) Dylan provided backing vocals and harmonica on Victoria Spivey’s recording of this Mississippi Sheiks number. The album, which featured Victoria Spivey, Big Joe Williams, Roosevelt Sykes and Lonnie Johnson, was released as “Three Kings And The Queen” (Spivey 1004, 1963). Bob Dylan recorded and released his own version of this song on his 1992 covers album “Good As I Been To You” (Columbia 47210 2). See Appendix 1:76 for further detail about this session. This song has been recorded by innumerable artists including the Mississippi Sheiks (1930), Joe Evans and Arthur McClain (1931), Alabama Sheiks (1931), Leon’s Lone Star Cowboys (1932), Milton Brown & His Brownies (1934), Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys (1935), Bill Monroe (1957) and Doc Watson (1964).
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Sloppy Drunk According to the original record label to ‘Sitting On Top Of The World’ (Okeh 8784) the song was written by Walter Vinson (also known as Walter Jacobs) and Armenter Chatmon (also known as Bo Carter). However, on a number of subsequent releases Armenter Chatmon’s name is substituted for that of Lonnie Chatmon. Walter Vinson and Armenter and Lonnie Chatmon were all members of the Chatmon family and all were members of the Mississippi Sheiks. If you dig deeper, however, the confusing tale becomes even more confusing. Walter Vinson claimed to have written the song after playing at a white dance in Greenwood, Mississippi. Nevertheless, the melody for the Sheiks’ song appears to be derived from Tommy Johnson’s ‘Big Road Blues’ and Johnson’s label, Victor records, are said to have sued Okeh, who settled out of court. There is, however, another school of thought that Tommy Johnson sold the rights to all of his songs for the princely sum of $50. The story goes that Johnson was so short of money and hooked on canned heat (a product manufactured by Sterno as a cooking fuel) that he sold the rights to all his songs to Vinson. According to blues singer Houston Stackhouse, Johnson told him firsthand: “I just got to wantin’ some canned heat so bad, and I got broke and pawned my guitar”. Then, when he got $50 Johnson says: “[I] went on, got me some canned heat and went by the pawnin’ shop and picked ... up another guitar”. As well as using Tommy Johnson’s tune, the Mississippi Sheiks recording also seems to be influenced by the Brown / Henderson / Lewis composition ‘I’m Sitting On Top Of The World (Just Rolling Along)’. Regardless of how they came to record the final result, the Mississippi Sheiks song, with nothing more than vocals, one guitar and one fiddle to propel it, is simply wonderful. It is also Dylan’s source for the song. For biographical information about the Mississippi Sheiks see the entry for ‘Blood In My Eyes’. Sloppy Drunk (David Bromberg) This song was recorded by Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992. This song, which circulates among collectors, can be found in superb audio quality on the 2008 bootleg CD “Fourth Time Around – GBS-4” (see Appendix 1:75 for further information). It seems that Dylan was eager to record various David Bromberg songs and is reported to have repeatedly asked the question of Bromberg: “What about that one of yours..?” ‘Sloppy Drunk’ is one of several Bromberg sessions recordings to have emerged on the “Fourth Time Around” bootleg CD and these songs, coupled with ‘Duncan And Brady’ and
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Sloppy Drunk ‘Miss The Mississippi’, which were officially released in 2008 on the rarities album “Tell Tale Signs”, only go to reinforce the fact that these sessions should be granted full official release. The take we have of ‘Sloppy Drunk’ features brass instruments and some rather fine electric guitar.
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The song was originally released by Bromberg on his 1976 double album “How Late’ll Ya Play ‘Til?”(Fantasy 79007). Although Jimmy Rodgers released a song entitled ‘Sloppy Drunk’ the two are in no way connected. David Bromberg was born in Philadelphia on September 19, 1945. He grew up in New York and began playing guitar at the age of thirteen. In the 1960s Bromberg studied guitar with the legendary Reverend Gary Davis. An exceptionally talented player on both guitar and dobro, Bromberg is known for his idiosyncratic, humorous lyrics, and the ability to play rhythm and lead guitar at the same time. Bromberg was recruited by Dylan in 1969 to play on the “Self Portrait” album – he contributed guitar, dobro and bass – and in 1970 he played guitar and dobro on the “ew Morning” album sessions. Jerry Jeff Walker’s ‘Mr. Bojangles’ (released on the “Dylan” album) is also associated with David Bromberg. Bromberg had played on Walker’s debut album, “Mr. Bojangles” (Atco 33-259, 1968), the previous year and would later release the song on his own “Demon In Disguise” album. Dylan returned the “Self Portrait” favour by playing harmonica on the final track, ‘Sammy’s Song’, on Bromberg’s first Columbia album “David Bromberg” (Columbia C 31104, 1972). That same year Bromberg and Dylan appeared together on Doug Sahm’s first “solo” album “Doug Sahm And Band”. Dylan met Bromberg again in 1992. The meeting occurred when Bob Dylan went to see one of Bromberg’s late shows at The Bottom Line after attending one of Neil Young’s New York, Beacon Theater concerts. Dylan then went into Chicago’s Acme Recording Studio (June 1992) with Bromberg producing. Some thirty songs were recorded at these sessions and David Bromberg 1972 some were said to have been mixed down by Bromberg for possible inclusion on the album. Soon after the recording sessions Dylan went out on tour and on his return, and assumedly after listening to the mixed down tracks, he recorded a completely new and different solo album (“Good As I Been To You”) in his own garage studio without Bromberg’s assistance. See Appendix 1:75 for details of the Bromberg sessions. As far as can be ascertained, Dylan and Bromberg have remained in touch and Bromberg joined Dylan on stage during his concert at Chicago’s Metro on December 14, 1997 playing
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Smoke Stack Lightin’ guitar on a couple of numbers including ‘Ragtime Annie’. For further information about this performance see the entry for ‘Ragtime Annie’.
Smoke Stack Lightin’ (Chester Burnette) Dylan’s only known performance of this Howlin’ Wolf classic blues was on January 13, 1962 at WBAI Studios in New York City for the Cynthia Gooding radio show, “Folksinger’s Choice”. The recording was broadcast on March 11, 1962 (see Appendix 1:19 for further details). In the menacing ‘Smoke Stack Lightnin’’ (Smoke Stack is two words on the original record), recorded by Howlin’ Wolf in 1956, the singer is addressing a woman who has been cheating on him with a “little bitty boy”. Most men must have seemed “little bitty” to a man of Wolf’s stature, and as the singer spits out the words, you get the feeling that it would not have been a good idea to stand between Howlin’ Wolf and his woman. Bob Dylan was not much more than a “little bitty boy” himself when he recorded his acoustic offering for Ms. Gooding. Nevertheless, Dylan gives a time-weathered vocal performance complete with plaintive moans that belie his age. Wolf’s ‘Smoke Stack Lightning’ (Chess 1618) charted for three weeks in 1956, peaking at Number Eight on the Billboard Chart.
So Long, Good Luck And Goodbye (Weldon Rogers) ‘So Long, Good Luck And Goodbye’ was first performed at the San Diego Sports Arena on June 9 1986. The song was played some nineteen times on the “True Confessions Tour”, getting its final outing on July 31 in Tacoma, Washington. The song was then tried out during live rehearsals at Toad’s Place but was not played on the tour which followed. This great rocking version can however be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Country singer Weldon Rogers only dabbled with Rockabilly but when he did strut his stuff the result was the arrogant ‘So Long, Good Luck, Goodbye’, a record with such a menacing riff that it belongs in every rock’n’roll collection.
Sold American (Kinky Friedman) Bob Dylan joined Kinky Friedman on his performance of this song at the Chabad TV Studios in Los Angeles, California (September 15, 1991). The performance, which featured Kinky Friedman (vocal, acoustic guitar) and Bob Dylan (electric guitar only), was broadcast live during the television programme “L’Chaim To Life, Telethon ‘91”.
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Somebody Touched Me The Chabad Telethon is a Jewish organized televised event with an estimated thirty million viewers. Donations made during the event are used to provide food, clothing, shelter, and hope to thousands of people of all faiths.
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‘Sold American’ is the title-track from Kinky Friedman’s 1973 debut album. For further information about Kinky Friedman see the entry for ‘Ride ‘Em Jewboy’. Also see entry for ‘Hava egeilah’. Somebody Touched Me (Traditional) Glory, glory, glory, somebody touched me, Glory, glory, glory, somebody touched me, Glory, glory, glory, somebody touched me, Must have been the hand of the lord. This up-tempo traditional gospel bluegrass number was employed as the opening acoustic number at numerous shows from the summer of 1999 through to August 2003. The performance from Ithaca, New York (November 15, 1999) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The performance from Portsmouth, England, on September 24, 2000, which is probably one of the best renditions of the song, appeared as the opening track on the officially released 2001 Japanese album “Bob Dylan Live: Thirty ine Years Of Great Performances” (SRCS 2438). This live compilation album, exclusive to Japan, was released to coincide with Bob Dylan’s 2001 tour there. Beginning in the Fall of 1999, Dylan was playing several songs associated with the Stanley Brothers including ‘I Am The Man Thomas’, ‘Hallelujah, I’m Ready (To Go)’ and ‘Somebody Touched Me’. All three of these songs were employed as show openers. ‘Somebody Touched Me’ was released by the Stanley Brothers on their 1961 album “Old Time Camp Meeting” (King 750). Between 1956 and 1962 the song was being played and recorded by artists like Carl Butler and the Webster Brothers, Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen, Carl Story and his Rambling Mountaineers, the Stanley Brothers, the East Kentucky Boys, Sonny Osborne and, most notably, Bill Monroe. For information about Ralph Stanley see the entry for ‘I Am The Man, Thomas’. Something (George Harrison) Bob Dylan performed this Beatles song at Madison Square Garden, New York on November 13, 2002, at around the time of the first anniversary of the death of George
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Song For Canada Harrison. In my view this type of song does not suit Dylan’s voice but he certainly gives it his best. There is some nice guitar from band member Charlie Sexton but I find the mandolin a bit of a distraction. Dylan was originally rumoured to be appearing at the London gala concert for George Harrison but he appears to have pulled out a few weeks before the event. Fellow Traveling Wilburys Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne did participate in the gala. One of George Harrison’s finest songs, ‘Something’ was begun on the piano in mid-1968 during recording sessions for the album “The Beatles” (aka “White Album”). However, by time Harrison had finished the song, the album was all but complete so it was not considered for inclusion. Talk of using the song came up again during the “Get Back” sessions but, when that album was temporarily shelved (eventually being released in 1970 as “Let It Be”), the song, which was only finished on August 15, 1969, was released on the “Abbey Road” album (UK Apple PCS 7088, September 1969). ‘Something’ was also rush-released by The Beatles as a double A-side single with ‘Come Together’. It was the only song written by George Harrison to be released as an A-side of a Beatles single. The record went to Number Four on the UK Chart (Apple R5814) and Number One on the US Chart (Apple 2654).
Song For Canada (Ian Tyson / Sylvia Fricker) Bob Dylan recorded this song in 1967 during the “Basement” sessions. It is one of several songs recorded at this time which are connected with Ian and Sylvia and in my opinion it is one of the highlights of the covers which Dylan recorded during these lengthy sessions (see Appendix 1:59 for further information.) ‘Song For Canada’, a plea for English and French Canadians to talk with each other, is often mistakenly listed by bootleggers and chroniclers alike as ‘One Single River’. ‘Song For Canada’ was originally released on Ian and Sylvia’s “Early Morning Rain” album (Vanguard VSD-79175, 1965). For further information regarding Ian and Sylvia, see the entry for ‘Four Strong Winds’.
Soon (Ira Gershwin / George Gershwin) Alone with acoustic guitar and harmonica, Bob Dylan gives a splendid performance of this song at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, New York City, during a concert held on the 50th anniversary of George Gershwin’s death. The concert took place on March 11, 1987 and was broadcast by ZDF-TV, West Germany, July 7, 1987.
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(The) Sound Of Silence George Gershwin (September 26 1898 - July 11, 1937) was a songwriter who, along with his brother Ira, became one of the greatest creative song-writing teams in the history of popular music. Their compositions from the 1920s and 1930s include ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’, ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’ and the jazz piece ‘Rhapsody In Blue’. The song ‘Soon’ is from the Broadway show “Strike Up the Band”.
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“Strike Up the Band” began its pre-Broadway run in 1927. The original book by George S. Kaufman centred on Horace J. Fletcher, a cheese tycoon who attempts to preserve his monopoly on the American market by convincing the US government to declare war George and Ira Gershwin on Switzerland! When the revised show opened on Broadway in 1930, it included a number of new songs including Gershwin’s ‘Soon’. George Gershwin died suddenly from a brain tumour at the age of thirty-eight.
(The) Sound Of Silence (Paul Simon) This Paul Simon song was played for the first time when Simon joined Dylan on stage at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, Colorado on June 5, 1999. The song was performed seventeen times during the 1999 Dylan / Simon “double header” tour. Dylan and Simon joined together on stage for ‘The Sound Of Silence’, ‘I Walk The Line’, ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ and ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’. Later in the tour ‘The Sound Of Silence’ was replaced by Simon’s ‘The Boxer’. The two artists shared the vocals on five of these performances. ‘The Sound Of Silence’ was originally released on Simon and Garfunkel’s rather unremarkable 1964 debut album “Wednesday Morning 3 AM” (CL 2249). The album also contained a cover of Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’. The song, written by Paul Simon in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was intended to convey the emotion felt by many Americans at the time. It was originally recorded as an acoustic piece but was later overdubbed with electric instruments and released as a single (Columbia 43396) in September 1965. These overdubs were carried out by Columbia Records’ producer Tom Wilson without Simon’s knowledge. Wilson also took the unusual step of overdubbing electric instruments onto four of Dylan songs including ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. For further information about these overdubs, see the entry for ‘House Of The Rising Sun’.
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Southern Cannonball Southern Cannonball (Jimmie Rodgers / R. Hall) This song, about a problem train and a girl, was captured on tape at the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961. The tape of Bob Dylan was made by the Gleasons’ son, Kevin. See Appendix 1:6 for further information about this recording. ‘Southern Cannonball’ was originally released as a single in 1931 by Jimmie Rodgers (RCA Victor 23811). The song was also released in 1953 by another Dylan favourite, Hank Snow, on the album “Hank Snow Salutes Jimmy Rodgers” (RCA Victor) and as the B-side to Snow’s ‘Jimmy The Kid’ single (RCA Victor 20-5191). For further information about Jimmie Rodgers see the entry for ‘Blue Yodel’.
Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Clark / Williams) This song has been performed on several occasions, the first of which was during the 1967 Basement sessions at Big Pink, West Saugerties (see Appendix 1:60). Dylan also recorded this song during the “Self Portrait” album sessions. This recording was however left off the final release. See Appendices 1:62, 1:65, & 1:70 for further information about the sessions. A “band” version, recorded at the April 24, 1969 “Self Portrait” album session (see Appendix 1:62), was released without Dylan’s consent by Columbia on the album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973). This version suffers from over production and over-the-top backing vocals. A superior “solo” version recorded on June 2, 1970 at the “ew Morning” album session (Appendix 1:70), was released on the album “Masterpieces” CBS / Sony 57AP-875/6/7, March 1978). This recording was also released in mono as the B-side of the ‘Watching The River Flow’ single. The song was performed live for the first time by Dylan at the May 9, 1974 Friends of Chile Benefit Concert at the Felt Forum, Madison Square Garden, New York. The song was also tried out on March 30, 1976 with Eric Clapton in Shangri-La Studios, Malibu, California. Dylan then opened his Rolling Thunder Revue show with the song on May 11, 1976 in the Municipal Auditorium in San Antonio, Texas. This song is based on a poem by the well-known western poet, Charles Badger Clark, Jr. The poem, entitled ‘The Border Affair’, was published in Badger Clark’s book “Sun and Saddle Leather” (The Gorham Press, 1915). It was later set to music by an unknown composer, but both Billy Simon and J. Williams are often credited with the deed.
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Stack-a-Lee The notes by Earl Robinson, in Irwin Silber’s book “Songs of the American West” (Macmillan, 1967), describe the song as, “[a] story of true love thwarted by the barrier of ‘racial’ differences ... [which] had wide appeal in a romantic age. For there is a sentiment”, Robinson continued, “which appeals to us all in this bitter-sweet ballad of the rough-hewn cowpuncher who doesn’t ‘look much like a lover’ and the senorita who whispered, ‘Adios, mi corazón’”.
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‘Spanish Is The Loving Tongue’ is erroneously credited as “traditional” on bobdylan.com and on a number of official Columbia record releases. Some Columbia releases actually credit the song to Bob Dylan! Stack-a-Lee (Traditional, arr. Hutchison) Po-lice officer, how can it be? You can ‘rest everybody but cruel Stagolee, That bad man, oh cruel Stagolee, Billy DeLyon told Stagolee, “Please don’t take my life, I got two little babes and a darling, loving wife”, That bad man, oh cruel Stagolee. This song was recorded in May 1993 and released on Dylan’s album “World Gone Wrong”. See Appendix 1:77 for further detail about this recording session. The lyrics printed above are from one of the very early and common versions of ‘Stack-aLee’ from which Dylan’s recording differs greatly. Although some of the details vary, the tale of Stack-a-Lee is the true account of the murder of William Lyons at the hand of Lee Shelton. Lee Shelton known variously as Stack-a-Lee, Stagger Lee, Stagolee, Stackerlee, and Stack O’Lee was a black cab driver, and some say a pimp, who was convicted of the murder of William “Billy” Lyons (in some older versions De Lyons). The incident, which happed in St. Louis, Missouri on Christmas Day, 1895, was reported in the local newspaper, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. “William Lyons, 25, a levee hand, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 O’clock in the saloon of Bill Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan Streets, by Lee Shelton, a carriage driver. Lyons and Shelton were friends and were talking together. Both parties, it seems, had been drinking and were feeling in exuberant spirits. The discussion drifted to politics, and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Shelton’s hat from his head. The latter indignantly demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Shelton withdrew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen. When his victim fell to the floor Shelton took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away. He was subsequently arrested and locked up at the Chestnut Street Station. Lyons was taken to the Dispensary, where his wounds were pronounced serious. Lee Shelton is also known as ‘Stag’ Lee’”. Note: The coroner’s report calls him ‘Stack Lee’.
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Stack-a-Lee According to anecdotal evidence from eyewitness George McFaro, Lee Shelton walked into the Curtis saloon in Deep Morgan, the heart of St. Louis’ red-light district, and asked the bartender: “Who’s treating?” In reply, someone pointed out Billy Lyons. Apparently, the two men drank and laughed together for some time until the conversation turned to politics. It seems that half-hearted blows were exchanged, which involved the two men hitting each other’s hats. Lee Shelton then grabbed Billy Lyons’s derby and knocked it out of shape. Lyons said he wanted payment of “six bits” from Shelton for damaging his derby. Lyons then grabbed Shelton’s hat and, after Lyon’s refused to return it, Shelton pulled out a .44 Smith & Wesson revolver and hit Lyons over the head with it. The argument continued and Lyons pulled out a knife saying: “You cock-eyed son-of-a-bitch, I’m going to make you kill me”, after which Shelton stepped back and shot Lyons who fell to the floor still holding the hat. Shelton was then heard to utter the words: “Give me my hat, nigger”. He then took the hat and walked out into the night. Lyons died a few days later in hospital. Shelton was arrested later that night in a bar appropriately called The Bucket of Blood. He stood trial for the murder and was found guilty. Contrary to popular belief, Lee Shelton was neither executed nor sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. He spent ten years in jail for the murder and was then released. Shelton died seven years later in 1912 of tuberculosis while serving a second prison term for an unrelated crime committed after his release. Although Lee Shelton was believed to be a pimp and maybe more besides, Billy Lyons, who is usually portrayed as the innocent party, also had a reputation as a bad man, and was know by the police as “Billy the Bully”. It also seems that the December 25, 1895 incident was not the first altercation in Bill Curtis’ saloon involving Billy Lyons. There is a previous police report that involved Lyons brandishing a “double-edged blade” in the same bar. This song has been recorded hundreds of times by a diverse array of performers. Mississippi John Hurt’s 1928 recording (Okeh 8654) is viewed by many as being close to definitive, containing all or most of the elements that appear in other versions. Whilst there is no doubt that Mississippi John Hurt’s ‘Stack O’Lee’ provides the classic template from which many later recordings drew, we know from Bob Dylan’s own “World Gone Wrong” album notes that he took his version not from Hurt, but from Frank Hutchison. In fact, Dylan’s tune, lyrics, and vocal delivery are almost identical to Hutchison’s 1927 recording of ‘Stack-a-Lee’(Okeh 45106), which Dylan almost certainly found on the much
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Mississippi John Hurt
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There seems little doubt that Mississippi John Hurt adapted his successful version of the Stack-a-Lee tale from Frank Hutchison’s recording, because not only did Hutchison’s single, recorded early in 1927, come more than a year before John Hurt’s recording, but both artists were on the same record label, Okeh Records. It was common practice at this time for artists on the same record label to cover already released works. Hurt’s adaptation is shorter than the Hutchison / Dylan version and includes the first verse reprinted at the beginning of this song entry. This verse is not present in the Hutchison / Dylan versions. There is some speculation that the ‘Stag O Lee’ family of songs predate even the 1895 murder incident, and that Lee Shelton may have got his nickname from an earlier folk song. I personally doubt this theory. Another supposition is that the name came from a famous Mississippi River steamer called the Stack Lee (there is historic proof that this river steamer existed), or that the name came from a black steamboat captain called Stack Lee. Other sources say that black “roustabouts” (workers) on Mississippi River docks were called “stack o lees” because they would stack cargo on the lee side of the docks. The story behind Lloyd Price’s extremely successful, but wholly inaccurate, version of the song is worth telling. Price’s recording career had met with a hiatus due to the Korean War but after his discharge in 1956 he returned to making records and soon became an ABC recording artist. While in Korea and Japan, Price had entertained the troops with a short play which he wrote around the Lee Shelton / William Lyons murder story. Price thought that the story would make a good single and the resulting release, which at one point was selling nearly two hundred thousand copies a day, soon rocketed to Number One on the Pop Chart. However, ABC man Dick Clark was not happy with the violence portrayed in the song and Lloyd was forced to go back into the studio and record a version in which ‘Stag’ Lee and Billy kissed and made up and everyone lived happily ever after! For further information about the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’.
Stand By Me (Charles Albert Tindley) Dylan performed a one-off rendition of ‘Stand By Me’ in Merillville, Indiana on August 28, 1990. This performance, which began as a slightly tentative semi-acoustic number and ended up as a rather blistering electric song, can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Often referred to as “The Prince of Preachers”, hymn-writer Reverend Charles Albert Tindley (July 7, 1851 – July 26, 1933) was a profound influence on African-American gospel music, his two most popular compositions being ‘I Shall Overcome’ and ‘Stand By Me’.
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Stealin’, Stealin’ ‘I Shall Overcome’ is credited by some historians as being the basis for the Civil Rights anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’, though this is hotly disputed. The two songs do have very similar lyrics but the melodies are entirely different. Tindley, who began composing in the early 1900s, wrote ‘Stand By Me’ in 1905. Five of his hymns appear in the revised Methodist hymnal used worldwide. Reverend Garry Davis recorded the song for ARC in 1935 as ‘Lord, Stand By Me’ and Sister Rosetta Tharpe recorded it a few years later (her recording can be found on the Document Records album “Sister Rosetta Tharpe Vol. 1 1938 – 1941”). Ernest Tubb recorded the song in 1951 for Decca and Elvis Presley slowed it down almost to a halt when he recorded it in 1966 for his RCA Victor album “How Great Thou Art” (LSP-3758). Bob Dylan’s version may well have come from Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s recording. Dylan, who is known to be a fan of Tharpe’s music, played her on his Theme Time Radio Hour programme. Tindley’s ‘Stand By Me’ should not to be confused with the Ben E. King number which was written by King with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. However, it is said that the Ben E. King song was inspired by Tindley’s ‘Stand By Me’. Stealin’, Stealin’ (Traditional, arranged Memphis Jug Band) Stealin’, stealin’, pretty mama don’t you tell on me, I’m stealin’ back to my same old used to be. Dylan’s first known performance of this song was at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher in December 1961 (see Appendix 1:18). The song was then performed by Dylan on January 13, 1962 at WBAI Studios in New York City for the Cynthia Gooding radio show, “Folksinger’s Choice”. The recording was broadcast on March 11, 1962 (see Appendix 1:19). The song was still in evidence in the Gerdes Folk City, ew York summer of 1962 when it was played at the Finjan Club in Montreal, Canada, (see Appendix 1:24), and although the song was captured on tape in the basement of Gerdes Folk City in New York in February 1963, this rendition seems to have been suggested by one of the other musicians present. All of these performances are in circulation among collectors. Dylan rehearsed ‘Stealin’’ in June 1987 with The Grateful Dead at Club Front in San Rafael, California. However, the song was not played on the joint summer tour which followed. The origins of this song (concerning having relations with a married woman) are unknown and as such it should be classed as traditional. The song was “discovered” by Gus Cannon
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Stealin’, Stealin’ and made famous by the Memphis Jug Band who recorded it on September 15, 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee. The recording, featuring Will Shade (Lead Vocal), Vol Stevens (Guitar and Vocal), Ben Ramey (Kazoo) and Jab Jones (Jug), was released in 1928 on Yazoo 1067. Very few cover version of the song emerged until the Memphis Jug Band’s recording was included on Sam Charters’ 1959 various artists compilation album “The Country Blues”, which is almost certainly where Dylan would have first heard the song, very probably via his Minneapolis friend and musician “Spider” John Koerner.
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Much has been written over the years with regard to the influence of the Harry Smith Anthology (see entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’) on folk / blues musicians like Bob Dylan, but, by contrast, Sam Charters’ various artists’ compilations, including “The Country Blues” (1959) and “The Rural Blues” (1960) have been criminally overlooked by later researchers. A young Bob Dylan almost certainly got a number of his songs either directly or indirectly from these albums. “Spider” John Koerner had this to say about Charters: “In the old days, you were just jumping into the music, going to parties and sitting around trading songs. That was folk music, from blues to Elizabethan ballads to coal miner songs. Sam Charters put out a record called “The Country Blues” that had quite a variety of old recordings on it. That to me was very rich. It sort of opened up a concept to me which was real useful: It doesn’t have to be this kind of blues, or that kind of blues. You have to be true to a concept, but you’re allowed to do any of it”. Gus Cannon has claimed authorship of ‘Stealin’, Stealin’ and he may well have written some of the lyrics. Cannon certainly claimed to have written the opening line “Put your arms around me like a circle ‘round the sun”, and the lyric “She’s a married woman / Come see me all the time” is included in another of Cannon’s songs, ‘Minglewood Blues’, recorded on January 30, 1928 some eight months before the Memphis Jug Band recorded ‘Stealin’, Stealin’. Although these lyrics seem to point to Cannon’s involvement in writing ‘Stealin’, Stealin’, it seems strange that he did not record the song himself. The likelihood is that many of the lyrics contained in the song are actually generic blues lyrics. For instance, the “Put your arms around me like a circle ‘round the sun” lyric which Cannon claimed as his own appears in the traditional folk song ‘Woman Blues’ and also in some versions of ‘I Know You Rider’, and it is possible that one or both of these songs may predate Cannon’s recording. In addition, the lyric “If you don’t believe I love you, look what a fool I’ve been / If you don’t believe I’d fall for you, look what a hole I’m in” was recorded in 1921 by the New Orleans jazz musician Clarence Williams and released in February 1922 as‘(If You Don’t Believe I Love You) Look What A Fool I’ve Been’, Columbia matrix 80553. Dylan’s various live versions of ‘Stealin’, Stealin’ are usually well performed. However, as stated in the introduction to this entry, the version recorded in the Basement of Gerdes Folk City in February 1963 – six months after the previous last known performance – appears to have been suggested by one of the other musicians present and Dylan, who can be heard to say “I used to do that”, is clearly struggling to remember many of the words.
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Step It Up And Go This is in stark contrast to his December ’61 Minneapolis performance (complete with some spirited harmonica). Step It Up And Go (adapted, Blind Boy Fuller) This song was recorded in the summer of 1992 and released on Dylan’s album “Good As I Been To You”. See Appendix 1:76 for further detail about this recording session. Reverend Garry Davis has claimed authorship of this song, or at least has stated that he taught it directly to Blind Boy Fuller. However, without casting too much doubt on the good Rev. Davis’ character, he has claimed authorship of a number of other songs that were clearly written before he was associated with them. Fuller’s last two recording sessions took place in New York City during March and June 1940. The session on March 5, 1940 produced his hit recording of ‘Step It Up And Go’ which, rather than being learned from Davis, was more likely “modelled” after Tommy McClennan’s November 22, 1939 recording entitled ‘Bottle It Up And Go’ (Bluebird B-8373-B), which, according to the Bluebird label, was written by Tommy McClennan. I say modelled on McClennan’s recording because whilst the subtext of the song and the tune are the same, the lyrics to Fuller’s version are completely re-written, presumably by Fuller. Fuller’s up-tempo ragtime version, which sold over half a million copies, appears to be Dylan’s template. Both recordings have very similar lyrics. This basic model – with altered lyrics – has been recorded by numerous artists as ‘Step It Up And Go’, ‘Bottle It Up And Go’, ‘Borrow Love And Go’, ‘Shake It Up And Go’, ‘Oil It Up And Go’ and even ‘Touch It Up And Go’. Dylan’s recording was copyrighted in 1992 to Special Rider Music.
Still In Town (H. Cochran / H. Howard) This song of unrequited love forms part of the recordings made by Bob Dylan in 1967, while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. Listed by several chroniclers as ‘Still In Love With You’, this recording is in fact the Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard song which Johnny Cash released on his outstanding 1964 Columbia Records album ‘I Walk The Line”. Dylan’s suitably laidback recording from the bowels of Big Pink features some rather nice understated guitar work. The recording itself, however, seems slightly overcooked.
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Stone Walls And Steel Bars Stone Walls And Steel Bars (Ray Marcum / Ray Pennington)
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Dylan began playing this song in concert in 1997. It was performed for the first time when Dylan played three songs at a Simon Wiesenthal Center benefit dinner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, California (May 21, 1997). The song next appeared in concert at the Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, on August 23, 1997 and from this point on ‘Stone Walls And Steel Bars’ remained a regular inclusion in Dylan’s set lists for the rest of 1997, with three of the sixteen performances being acoustic. The song continued to be featured in concert through 1998 and into 1999, making more than thirty appearances in total. After a break of a couple of years the song reappeared for a one-off performance during Dylan’s shortened fourteen-song festival set in Baltimore, Maryland at the Harley-Davidson 100th Anniversary Open Road Tour show (August 18, 2002). Bob Dylan’s rather pleasant acoustic performance from Beverly Hills, California, (May 21, 1997) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This short bluegrass number tells the tale of a young man who has committed an unspecified crime – but one might assume murder – over the love he has for “another man’s wife”. The man is now “at the end of the line” – presumably facing the death penalty – and therefore will no longer have to suffer the torment of “stone walls and steel bars and you on my mind”. Written by lesser known country artists Ray Marcum and Ray Pennington, ‘Stone Walls And Steel Bars’ is most often associated with the Stanley Brothers, from whom Dylan would certainly have taken the song. The Stanleys released the number several times, including as a single for King records (King 45-5809, 1963). The song has also appeared on several Ralph Stanley compilations including a rather nice three-CD collection which gathers together the first three solo albums that Ralph made for King after the death of his brother, Carter. For further biographical information about the Stanley Brothers, see the entry for ‘I Am The Man, Thomas’.
Streets Of Glory (Traditional) I’m gonna walk the streets of glory, On that great day in the morning. This song was recorded in September 1960 at a Minneapolis apartment that Bob Dylan shared with Hugh Brown (see Appendix 1:5 for further information). This recording of ‘Streets Of Glory’ is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. A brief excerpt from the recording is also included (during the credits) in the 2005 Martin Scorsese
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Su Su’s Got a Mohawk documentary film “o Direction Home”. Dylan’s recording of this traditional number was copyrighted by his office for his SESAC catalogue in May 2006. Over the years this black spiritual has appeared in various guises with many lyric changes. The tag line “I’m gonna walk the streets of glory / On that great day in the morning” is part of a floating verse which appears in songs like ‘Welcome Table’ and ‘Some Of These Days’. There are, however, many other related songs such as ‘God’s Going To Set This World On Fire’, which can be found in Carl Sandburg’s 1928 book “American Songbag”, the Carter Family’s 1928 ‘River Of Jordan’, and Peter, Paul and Mary’s ‘Come And Go With Me’, which have different lyrics but appear to use the same basic structure.
The Almanac Singers
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (‘Streets Of Glory’) and the Old Reliable String Band (‘I’m Gonna Walk The Streets Of Glory’) both recorded the song in the early 1960s, but both records were released after Dylan’s September 1960 recording. The song was, however, being performed by the Almanac Singers long before this date.
“Sing Out! Reprints Vols 1-6” (1959-1964) summed up this song rather well. “‘Welcome Table’ is an African-American spiritual with pre-Civil War roots. A spiritual is characteristically repetitive to be easily learned by a group or singers. The lyrics to ‘I’m Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table’ speak of a better day when the singer will be able to ‘walk the streets of glory’ and be ‘welcomed’ to the dinner table of just souls. During the Civil Rights demonstrations of the 1960s, many of the older spirituals were revived. Their repetitive structure again served impromptu groups of marchers and singers well. And the subject matter of ‘I’m On My Way’, ‘Study War o More’ and ‘Welcome Table’ spoke directly to the worldly concerns of the freedom marchers”.
Su Su’s Got a Mohawk (Unknown) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the roughly thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. In the absence of a circulating tape, identification of this gloriously titled song has not been possible.
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Sukiyaki (Ue o muite arukō) Sukiyaki (Ue o muite arukō) (Rokusuke Ei / Hachidai Nakamura)
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This number received three outings in five days during the Japanese leg of the 1986 “True Confessions Tour”. The first performance was in Osaka-fu (March 6, 1986); the last performance was at the Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo (March 10, 1986). ‘Ue o muite arukō’, the English translation of which is “I shall walk looking up”, is a Japanese song that was released by singer Kyu Sakamoto. The record (Toshiba JP 5083) was originally released in Japan in 1961 by Toshiba-EMI. It topped the Popular Music Selling Record Chart in the Japanese magazine “Music Life” for three months. The song was covered in Britain in 1962 by Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen (Pye-Jazz (7NJ2062), but released with the title changed to ‘Sukiyaki’. This title was retained by Capitol Records in the US and His Master’s Voice in the UK, when both of these labels put out Kyu Sakamoto’s original version in early 1963. These releases went to Number One on the US Billboard Pop Chart and Number Six on the UK Pop Chart. ‘Sukiyaki’ made history on both sides of the Atlantic as the first Japanese language song to make the British Chart and the only song sung entirely in Japanese to top the US Chart. ‘Sukiyaki’ sold in excess of thirteen million copies worldwide. The lyrics to the song tell the story of a man who looks up toward the heavens and whistles while he is walking so that his tears won’t fall. The title ‘Sukiyaki’ (which is a popular one-pot Japanese steamed beef meal), has absolutely nothing to do with the song and was only used because it was a short, catchy Japanese word. A journalist writing for Newsweek noted that the re-titling of the song was the equivalent of issuing ‘Moon River’ in Japan under the title ‘Beef Stew’. When Dylan played this number in Japan it was preceded by a short introduction about how the song was popular in the US when he was growing up in the late fifties and how he heard it on the radio. Although he was a few years out with his dating I think we get his drift. At his concert in Nagoya, Dylan introduced the song with: “We’re gonna play this song here. This was a popular song when we were growing up; always meant a great deal. So, we don’t know exactly all the words, but maybe you do. If you know them, you sing them”. Dylan’s only vocal contribution was to hum the tune.
Summer Wages (Tyson) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors.
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Summer Wages Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the roughly thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. It seems that Dylan was eager to record various David Bromberg songs and is reported to have repeatedly asked the question of Bromberg: “What about that one of yours..?” This song had been released by Bromberg on his 1976 double album “How Late’ll Ya Play ‘Til?” (Fantasy 79007). It is, however, an Ian Tyson composition that was originally released on Ian and Sylvia’s 1967 album “So Much For Dreaming” (Vanguard 79241). The song appears on several Ian and Sylvia compilations and was also recorded by Ian Tyson on his 1987 solo album “Cowboyography”. For information about Ian and Sylvia see the entry for ‘Four Strong Winds’. Bob Dylan on the set of “Masked & Anonymous”
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Take a Message To Mary
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Take a Message To Mary (Felice & Boudleaux Bryant) This charming well-sung number was recorded by Bob Dylan on May 3, 1969 and released on the album “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970). See Appendix 1:64 for further information. ‘Take a Message To Mary’ was written by the prolific husband and wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. The Bryants, who were friends with Johnny Cash, were responsible for writing most of The Everly Brother’s hits. Dylan had met Boudleaux Bryant when both men were invited to dinner at Johnny Cash’s home. ‘Take a Message To Mary’ (Cadence 1364) was released by The Everly Brothers in March 1959. The song reached Number Sixteen on the Billboard Pop Chart. Also see entry for ‘Take Me As I Am (Or Let Me Go)’.
Take Me As I Am (Or Let Me Go) (Boudleaux Bryant) This song was recorded on April 26, 1969 and released on the album “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970). See Appendix 1:63 for further information. Although this number is slightly treacly, Dylan vocal performance is delightful. ‘Take Me As I Am’ was written by Boudleaux Bryant. Boudleaux, along with his wife Felice, was responsible for writing most of The Everly Brother’s hits. Dylan had met Boudleaux Bryant when both men were invited to dinner at Johnny Cash’s home. Ray Price’s recording of ‘Take Me As I Am (Or Let Me Go)’ went to Number Eight on the US Country Music Singles Chart in 1967 and was also released as the title track of Price’s 1968 album ”Take Me As I Am”. Also see entry for ‘Take a Message To Mary’.
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Take This Hammer Take This Hammer (Traditional) Dylan’s first known performance of ‘Take This Hammer’ was captured on tape in the St. Paul, MN apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-sevensong tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording see Appendix 1:3. Collected by John and Alan Lomax, ‘Take This Hammer’ (Roud 4299) is a prison work song related to the traditional number ‘ine Pound Hammer’ with which it shares several phrases. The song was made famous by Lead Belly who recorded it with The Golden Gate Quartet in 1940 and also released it as a single in 1942. The song was recorded by, amongst others, Big Bill Broonzy in 1956 and Sonny Terry in 1960. However, Dylan probably took his version of ‘Take This Hammer’ from Odetta’s 1956 debut album “Odetta Sings Ballads And Blues” (TLP 1010). Dylan wrote in his autobiography “Chronicles Volume One” that he first discovered Odetta’s music in a record store in Dinkytown in 1959 or early 1960. He doesn’t say which album he came across, but he does say that the record was on the Tradition label which suggests that it must have been one of her first two albums, both of which were released on Tradition. “Odetta Sings Ballads And Blues” contained ‘Take This Hammer’, ‘Jack o’ Diamonds’, ‘Another Man Done Gone’, and ‘Muleskinner Blues’, all of which have connections to Bob Dylan.
Talking Columbia (Woody Guthrie) Bob Dylan’s first known performance of this song was recorded in September 1960 in a Minneapolis apartment he shared with Hugh Brown (see Appendix 1:5 for further information). This recording is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”. Dylan also played this song on May 6, 1961 at the Indian Neck Folk Festival which was held at the Montowesi Hotel in Branford, Connecticut. This recording is in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:7).
Woody Guthrie
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‘Talking Columbia’ was written in 1944 by Woody Guthrie as a commission from the Bonneville Power Administration. The project was cancelled, but only after Guthrie had written twenty-six songs for the promotional film. Guthrie’s original recording of this song is now in the vaults of the Oregon Department of the Interior. He later recorded it for the Disc Company of America and it was released on the album “Ballads From The Dust Bowl”
Talking Columbia (610). The song was reissued, along with sixteen other of the Bonneville songs, on the Folkways Records’ “Columbia River Collection” album. For information about the Bonneville Power Administration project, see entry for ‘Pastures Of Plenty’.
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Guthrie said of ‘Talking Columbia Blues’: “I made [it] up one day while I was standing up along the Columbia River in sight of the Grand Coulee Dam, and all I done was just take out my pencil and scribble down this song”. For information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’. Although Woody Guthrie is usually cited as being Bob Dylan’s chief influence for the talking blues genre, Manfred Helfert, on his Internet website “Bob Dylan Roots” (www.bobdylanroots.com), points to the possibility that some of Guthrie’s talking blues were learned “second-hand” from John Greenway’s 1958 Folkways Records album “Talking Blues” ( FW05232) . Dylan’s first known (recorded) performance of the talking blues form was in Minneapolis in September 1960. The songs were Guthrie’s ‘Talking Columbia’ and ‘Talking Merchant Marine’, Tom Glazer’s ‘Talking Inflation Blues’ and Dylan’s first known talking blues composition, ‘Talking Hugh Brown’. As stated by Helfert, ‘Talking Columbia’, ‘Talking Merchant Marine’ and ‘Talking Inflation Blues’ are all included on Greenway’s album and are performed by Dylan in the same sequence that they appear on the record. In addition, several of the other songs from the album contain lines that can be found in Dylan’s talking blues songs. The fifth verse of Greenway’s recording of ‘Original Talking Blues’ (one of the earliest examples of the genre) ends with the lyric “Eatin’ hog eye. Love chittlins”. This is very reminiscent of Dylan’s “He’s eatin’ bagels / He’s eatin’ pizza / He’s eatin’ chitlins’...” from ‘I Shall Be Free’. This song also contains the lyric “Oh, there ain’t no use in me workin’ so heavy / I got a woman who works on the levee…” Compare this to the eighth and tenth stanzas of Greenway’s performance of ‘ew Talking Blues’: “There ain’t no use of me workin’ so much / I got a gal that brings me the mush” and “There ain’t no use of me workin’ so hard / I got a gal in the white folks’ yard”. Greenway’s little-known ‘Talking Butcher’ contains the line “Women screamin’ / Babies yellin’ / Me a-hiddin’ / Yes-siree”. Compare this to Dylan’s “Women screamin’ / fists a-flyin’ / babies cryin’ / cops a-comin’ / me a-runnin’”, from ‘Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues’. Dylan’s ‘Talking ew York’ follows Woody Guthrie’s ‘Taking Subway’, also released on the Greenway album, very closely. Compare the sentiments in Guthrie’s opening verse:
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Talking Fishing Blues “I struck out for old New York, Thought I’d find me a job of work, One leg up and the other leg down, I come in through a hole in the ground, Holland Tunnel. Three mile tube. Skippin’, Through that Hudson River dew”. to Dylan’s “Thought I’d seen some ups and down, ‘Til I come into New York town. People goin’ down to the ground, Buildings goin’ up to the sky...” Guthrie’s fourth verse contains the line “I swung onto my old guitar / Train come a-rumblin’ down the track…” which is very close indeed to Dylan’s “I swung on to my old guitar / Grabbed hold of a subway car. However, the real clincher comes in the notes that accompany Greenway’s album, which state that his version of ‘Talking Subway’ contains the four stanzas found on Woody Guthrie’s recording plus a further seven verses obtained by Greenway directly from Guthrie, which had never been published or recorded until the release of Greenway’s album. Greenway’s eleventh stanza, not recorded by Guthrie, reads: “You got to join the union / got to pay your dues...” whilst Dylan’s ‘Talking ew York’ lyrics are “Even joined the union and paid m’ dues”. As Helfert also points out: “Greenway’s album even seems to have influenced Dylan as late as 1965. Just compare these lines from ‘ew Talking Blues’ … to the well-known chorus from Dylan’s ‘Tombstone Blues’: “Mama’s in the pantry fixin’ up the yeast / Sister’s in the kitchen preparin’ for the feast...” For further information about the talking blues form, see Appendix 3.
Talking Fishing Blues (Woody Guthrie) Dylan performed this song, which is often listed as ‘Talkin’ Fish Blues’, in May 1961 at the Indian Neck Folk Festival which was staged in the Montowesi Hotel in Branford, Connecticut (see appendix 1:7). The song was also captured on tape in May 1961 in the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8.
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Talking Inflation Blues [aka Talking Lobbyist] This Woody Guthrie song can be found on the album “This Land Is Your Land - Asch Recordings, Vol. 1”.
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For further information about Bob Dylan’s talking blues influences see entry for ‘Talking Columbia’. For information about the talking blues as a form, see Appendix 3.
Talking Hava egeilah Blues (Traditional) See entry for ‘Hava egeilah’.
Talking Inflation Blues [aka Talking Lobbyist] (Tom Glazer) This Tom Glazer song was recorded by Bob Dylan in September 1960 in a Minneapolis apartment he shared with Hugh Brown. See Appendix 1:5 for further information. Thomas Zachariah “Tom” Glazer (September 2, 1914 - February 21, 2003) is best known as the writer of ‘On Top Of Spaghetti’, a children’s song about a wayward meatball sung to the tune of ‘On Top Of Old Smokey’. This enduring record reached Number Fourteen on the Billboard Pop Chart in 1963. A pioneer of the American folk music revival, Tom Glazer helped to popularize the style during the 1940s and also played a significant role in the emergence of the politically aware folk movement of that era. ‘Talking Inflation Blues’ was originally published in a special issue of the “People’s Songs” journal (Vol. I, supplement to No.3, April / May, 1946). Bob Dylan appears to have learned ‘Talking Inflation Blues’ from John Greenway’s 1958 Folkways Records’ album “Talking Blues” (FW05232). For further information about Dylan’s talking blues influences see entry for ‘Talking Columbia’. For information about the talking blues as a form, see Appendix 3.
Talking Merchant Marine [Talking Sailor] (Woody Guthrie) Sometimes known as ‘Talking Sailor’, this song was first recorded by Dylan in September 1960 in a Minneapolis apartment he shared with Hugh Brown. This recording is available on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”.
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Tell Old Bill ‘Talking Merchant Marine’ was also performed by Dylan during his New York City, Carnegie Chapter Hall concert (November 4, 1961) and this recording is also in circulation. See Appendix 1:5 & 1:14 for further information. Woody Guthrie wrote this talking blues from his own experiences as a member of the Merchant Marine during World War II. He frequently shipped out on Liberty ships and other cargo vessels. ‘Talking Merchant Marine’ was originally recorded by Guthrie in 1944 for the “The Asch Recordings”. The songs recorded at these sessions have been issued on a variety of labels over the years and ‘Talking Merchant Marine’ can currently be found on the album “Hard Travelin’: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 3”. For further information about Bob Dylan’s talking blues influences see entry for ‘Talking Columbia’. For information about the talking blues as a form, see Appendix 3.
Tell Old Bill (Traditional) Tell old Bill, when he leaves home dis mornin’, Tell old Bill, when he leaves home dis evenin’, Tell old Bill, when he leaves home, To let dem down-tow’n coons alone, Dis mornin’, dis evenin’, so soon. This song was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 during the “Self Portrait” album sessions. The recording was not released on the album and is not in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:66 for further information). Although we are unable to hear Bob Dylan’s recording from the “Self Portrait” sessions, I think it is fairly safe to assume that the song in question is the traditional ‘Tell Old Bill’, sometimes known as ‘Old Bill’ and ‘This Mornin’, This Evenin’, So Soon’. This recording should not be confused with the song of the same title that was released by Dylan on the 2005 Sony motion picture soundtrack album “orth Country”, an outtake of which was released in October 2008 on the compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs...” This bleak blues-ballad has been printed in a number of publications, including Robert Gordon’s “Old Songs That Men Have Sung” (Adventure, 1923), John and Alan Lomax’s “American Ballads and Folk Songs” (Macmillan, 1934) and Carl Sandburg’s book “The American Songbag” (Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1927). Below is a quote from Sing Out!, Volume 9, Number 2, Fall 1959: “Carl Sandburg first heard this grim blues-ballad from Nancy Barnhart of St. Louis back in the 1920s. Ten years later, folklorist and singer Sam Hinton came across an African-
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Tennessee Blues American farmer in Walker County, TX who sang another version. And in the late 1950s, Bob Gibson introduced ‘Tell Old Bill’ to a wider audience when he recorded an interpretation of Sandburg’s version...”
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Bob Gibson, originally handled by Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, released ‘Tell Old Bill’ on his 1957 album “I Come For To Sing” (Riverside RLP 12-806). The song was also covered by Dave Van Ronk on his 1961 Folkways’ album “Dave Van Ronk Vol 2” (Folkways FA 2383). Tennessee Blues (Charles) This song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992, with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of the circa thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. ‘Tennessee Blues’ is a song that both Dylan and Bromberg would have been familiar with, if not from the original, then through their 1972 session with Doug Sahm on which Dylan and Bromberg both played. That Lucky Old Sun (Haven Gillespie / Beasley Smith) The first recording we have of this song is from the rehearsals for the Farm Aid fundraising event for American farmers. This performance of the song, backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, was filmed by ABC television. The rehearsal, which was held at Soundstage 41 in Universal Studios, Los Angeles, took place on September 19, 1985. Dylan went on to perform the song three days later at the Farm Aid Concert in Champaign, Illinois. Although Dylan played six songs at this event, only four were broadcast by ABC (October 10, 1985) on their 20/20 programme. Unfortunately, ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ was one of the casualties, which is a great pity because it was an absolutely stunning rendition of the song. Happily, Dylan retained the song for his 1986 “True Confessions Tour” of America, during which it was performed twenty-three times. ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ has reared its head several time since, being played in 1991 at the Memorial Coliseum in Dane County, 1992 at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, 1995 at The Edge in Fort Lauderdale, 1997 during a sound check before a concert in Bournemouth, England, and in 2000, when it was played in Irvine, California. Bob Dylan’s charming semi-acoustic performance from the Memorial Coliseum, Dane County (November 5, 1991) can be found on the bootleg CDs “Golden Vanity” and
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That’ll Be The Day “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This excellent quality recording finds Dylan in fine voice. The 1995 performance from The Edge, which is also included on “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers...”, is slightly less well played and also suffers from a lot of audience noise. ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ was written in 1949 by Haven Gillespie (lyrics) and Beasley Smith (music). Although the song has been recorded by a number of artists including Frankie Laine, Vaughn Monroe, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Willie Nelson, Dylan’s cover is likely to have been inspired by the Ray Charles version. Perhaps tellingly, at the same time that Dylan was performing ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ in concert in 1986, he was also performing another number associated with Ray Charles, ‘Unchain My Heart’. ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ enjoyed its greatest success through Frankie Laine’s 1949 Mercury Records recording (5316), which reached Number One on the Billboard Best Seller Chart and remained on the Chart for twenty-two weeks. Three other covers of the song also charted in 1949: Vaughn Monroe’s Victor Records release (47-3018) went to Number Nine on the Chart, Sinatra’s recording made it onto the Top Twenty, and Louis Armstrong’s recording broke into the Top Thirty. Ray Charles’ cover, which appeared on his 1963 album “Ingredients In a Recipe For Soul”, was also released by him as a single in the summer of 1963. That’ll Be The Day (Buddy Holly / Jerry Allison / Norman Petty) This song was performed as a duet with Paul Simon during the July and September legs of their joint 1999 US tours. The song was first played by Dylan and Simon at the Marcus Amphitheatre in Milwaukee, on July 4 1999. The final performance on this tour was at the Starplex Amphitheatre in Dallas, Texas, on September 18, 1999. The seed of an idea for ‘That’ll Be The Day’ came about when Buddy Holly visited the cinema in June 1956 with The Crickets guitarist Sonny Curtis and drummer J. I. Allison. In the film, a western entitled “The Searchers”, John Wayne frequently used the worldweary phrase “That’ll be the day!” Holly and Allison wrote a song around this phrase and recorded it in Decca’s Nashville Studios, on July 22, 1956. Decca did not rate the record and it was not chosen for release.
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That’s All Right Mama The label did release several Holly singles, but when the records met with no success, they quickly dropped the artist from their roster. The slow original recording of ‘That’ll Be The Day’ can be found on the 1980s release “The Complete Buddy Holly” and on the MCA reissue of “That’ll Be The Day”, which is also known as “The Great Buddy Holly”.
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Holly was soon signed to Brunswick Records and eight months later he recorded a superior version of ‘That’ll Be The Day’ at the Norman Petty studios in Clovis, New Mexico. The single (Brunswick 9-55009) went to Number One on the Billboard Pop Chart and remained on the chart for twenty-three weeks. Bizarrely, although Holly had been dumped by Decca, he was contractually prohibited from re-recording any of the songs that he had recorded with the label for a period of five years. To avoid possible legal action, producer Norman Petty credited the new recording to “The Crickets” and not Buddy Holly. This deceit was particularly ironic when you consider that Brunswick was a subsidiary of Decca Records! That’s All Right Mama (Arthur Crudup) Dylan first tried to record this song during the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album sessions. Several takes were committed to tape during October and November 1962, and although the song failed to make it onto the album, two of the takes are in circulation among collectors (see Appendix 1:32 and 1:33). A year later, at the fourth “The Times They Are A-Changin’” session, Dylan can be heard banging out as a strident solo piano version of the song which, whilst not released, is in circulation among collectors. The song was attempted again on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61) and although this recording was not released, it is in circulation among collectors. Made famous by Elvis Presley as ‘That’s All Right’, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s original recording, which was released in 1946 on the Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup RCA Victor label, was pure rock‘n’roll eight years before the genre was invented. Although the song is without doubt a Crudup original, he appears to have based his lyrics around the refrain from Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 1926 recording of the song ‘Black Snake Moan’. “Mama that’s alright, Mama that’s alright for you, Mama that’s alright, Mama that’s alright for you, Mama that’s alright, most seen all you do”.
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The All-American Boy Despite the song’s present day fame, ‘That’s All Right Mama’ (RCA 500000) failed to chart for Big Boy, and even Elvis Presley’s single (Sun 209) sold fewer than 20,000 copies and did not chart nationally.
The All-American Boy (Bill Parsons / Orville Lunsford) For this entry see ‘All-American Boy’. The End Of The Innocence (Don Henley / Bruce Hornsby) See Entry for ‘End Of The Innocence’. The French Girl (Ian Tyson / Sylvia Fricker) See entry for ‘French Girl’. The Girl I Left Behind (Traditional) See entry for ‘Girl I Left Behind’. The Grand Coulee Dam (Woody Guthrie) See entry for ‘Grand Coulee Dam’. The Great Divide (Woody Guthrie) See entry for ‘Great Divide’. The Great Historical Bum (Woody Guthrie) See entry for ‘Great Historical Bum’. The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff) See entry for ‘Harder They Come’. The Heart That You Own (Dwight Yoakam) See entry for ‘Heart That You Own’.
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The Lady Came From Baltimore The Lady Came From Baltimore (Tim Hardin)
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See entry for ‘Lady Came From Baltimore’. The Lady Of Carlisle (Traditional) See entry for ‘Lady Of Carlisle’. The Long And Winding Road (Lennon / McCartney) See entry for ‘Long And Winding Road’. The Main Street Moan (David Bromberg) See entry for ‘Main Street Moan’. The ew Lee Highway Blues (David Bromberg) See entry for ‘ew Highway Blues’. The Times We’ve Known (Charles Aznavour) Dylan played ‘The Times We’ve Known’ during his concert at Madison Square Garden in New York on November 1, 1998. “The times we’ve known are slipping by / Like vapour trails across the sky / The best of times, the worst of times / Have come and gone”. Beautifully sung and seemingly well rehearsed, Dylan introduced this song in his spiritual hometown of New York City with the words “I usually play these songs all by myself; but I feel all by myself tonight”. Sure enough, Mr. Dylan could have been singing this one just for you in your living room!
Charles Aznavour
Dylan’s inspiration for this one-off performance was presumably the fact that the song’s author, Charles Aznavour, was appearing on Broadway on the same night that Bob was in town.
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Then He Kissed Me This recording can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”.
Then He Kissed Me (Jeff Barry / Ellie Greenwich / Phil Spector) This song by The Crystals probably shouldn’t qualify for inclusion here as it was performed only as part of a rehearsal for the Farm Aid fund raising event. However, as unlikely as it might seem, it is possible that this song was being considered for the performance proper! The rehearsal, which was held Soundstage 41 in Universal Studios, Los Angeles, took place on September 19, 1985. Produced by Phil Spector and recorded by The Crystals, the single release of ‘Then He Kissed Me’ peaked at Number Six on the Billboard Pop Chart in 1963 and reached Number Two on the UK Pop Chart in the same year.
These Hands (Eddie Noack) This song was recorded by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions. See Appendix 1:65 for further information. This recording was not issued on the final album and does not circulate among collectors. The song in question is probably the Eddie Noack composition as recorded in 1956 by Hank Snow. Bob Dylan played both Eddie Noack and Hank Snow on his 2006 – 2008 Theme Time Radio Hour shows. On his January 24, 2007 show Dylan said of Noack: “Eddie Noack, a singer and a songwriter, originally from Houston, Texas, who recorded for the Starday record label. He wanted to be a journalist. But we have enough journalists, but not enough people who could sing and write like Eddie Noack. Eddie recorded the song called ‘Psycho’, written by Leon Payne, a song about a serial killer and, quite understandably, it never got a lot of airplay, but has become quite a bit of a cult favourite, as is Eddie Noack himself...” Noack joined Starday in 1953 and had immediate success as a writer when several of his songs were recorded by top artists, including Hank Snow, who had a top five country hit with ‘These Hands’ in 1956.
They Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dog Aroun’ (Traditional) See entry for ‘Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dog Around’.
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They Killed Him They Killed Him (Kris Kristofferson)
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Bob Dylan recorded this clichéd piece of country pap in the summer of 1986 at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California. The song was released on the album “Knocked Out Loaded” (Columbia, 40439). See Appendix 1:79 for further details. Not surprisingly, Dylan has never played this song live. He did, however, try it out in rehearsal during his June 1987 time with the Grateful Dead (Club Front, San Rafael). Having said that, he tried just about everything out during those rehearsals! I’m not certain that the question of how Dylan came by this Kris Kristofferson song has ever been tackled. Most commentators simply state that this is a Kristofferson song which Bob Dylan covered. However, the Dylan album containing the song, “Knocked Out Loaded”, was released on July 14, 1986, but as far as I can ascertain, Kristofferson did not release his original version until October 1986. Maybe it was available as a demo, or maybe Bob simply popped round to Kristofferson’s for tea one night? At any rate, Dylan’s manger and keeper of the archive, Jeff Rosen, was unable to shed any light on the mystery when I asked the question of him in September 2008. After Kris Kristofferson’s ninth and tenth solo albums, “Shake Hands With The Devil” (1979) and “To The Bone” (1981), failed to chart, it was six years before he made another full-length album on his own. The “politically aware” Mercury Records’ album “Repossessed” included his self-penned tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi and Jesus. The song ‘They Killed Him’ was also released as a single, but the record failed to break into the chart. Although the two versions are in many ways not dissimilar, all of Dylan’s tinkerings, such as the gospel-type arrangement, children’s choir and overdubs, combined with the appalling 1980s production values, go to make this song one of the worst things that Dylan has ever put out. In 1991, Sony released a double CD compilation entitled “Kris Kristofferson Singer / Songwriter”. The first disc was a seventeen-song best-of collection of Kristofferson’s songs as performed by him whilst the second disc was a compilation of Kristofferson “hits” as covered by other artists. Both the Kristofferson and Dylan recordings of ‘They Killed Him’ are featured on the album. Thirsty Boots (Eric Anderson) A song about life on the open road and more besides, ‘Thirsty Boots’ was attempted four times by Bob Dylan during the March 4, 1970 “Self Portrait” album sessions. Unfortunately, none of these takes are in circulation (see Appendix 1:66 for further information). Without doubt one of his most enduring songs, the lengthy ‘Thirsty Boots’ was first released on Eric Anderson’s second album “Bout Changes n’ Things” (Vanguard 79260,
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This Land Is Your Land February, 1966). In what appears to be a rather strange move, but one obviously endorsed by his record label, Anderson followed this release some eighteen months later with “Bout Changes n’ Things Take 2” (VSD-79236 July, 1967), which comprised the same songs as the previous album, but with folk-rock instrumentation replacing the acoustic presentation. This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie) Dylan’s first known performance of ‘This Land Is Your land’ was captured on tape in the St. Paul, MN apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twentyseven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording, see Appendix 1:3. The second known performance of this song was made in the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961 (see Appendix 1:8). The first “real” performance of ‘This Land Is Your Land’ was at Dylan’s New York Carnegie Chapter Hall concert on November 4, 1961. This recording was released in 2005 on the official album “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol.7” (see Appendix 1:14). An incomplete recording of the song can be found on the November 23, 1961 Eve and Mac McKenzie tape (see Appendix 1:16) and a complete recording exists on a December ’61 tape, which is also from the McKenzie’s home. Dylan’s final known early 1960s rendition of Woody’s masterpiece was captured on August 11, 1962 in the home of David Whitaker (see Appendix 1:26). ‘This Land Is Your Land’ was next played at the January 20, 1968 afternoon performance for the Woody Guthrie Memorial Concert. The ensemble featured amongst others Bob Dylan (guitar & vocal), Woody’s son, Arlo, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and Odetta. This performance was released on the 1972 album “A Tribute To Woody Guthrie, Part II” (Warner Brothers K46144). The song was next resurrected for two dozen shows on the 1975 leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour and again these were ensemble performances. Originally entitled ‘God Blessed America’, Woody Guthrie wrote this number as an “answer song” / parody of Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America’, which Guthrie considered to be unrealistic, idealistic and self-righteous.
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This Old Man The lyrics, which express a belief that the working classes should have the same rights as the wealthy, were written by Guthrie in February 1940 on an existing melody which he took from ‘When The World’s On Fire’, a Baptist hymn recorded by the Carter Family a decade before. As Woody put it: “Well, if they already know the tune, they’re halfway to knowing the song”.
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Guthrie recorded the song twice in March / April 1944, but it was not published until 1951, when it was included in a mimeographed booklet of ten songs. The second recording, which contains alternate verses, can be found on the Smithsonian / Folkways album “This Land Is Your Land: The Asch Recordings Volume 1”. The so called “private property” fourth verse transcribes as: “There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me, Sign was painted, it said private property, But on the back side it didn’t say nothing, That side was made for you and me”. The song was recorded again, this time for Decca on January 7, 1952, at Guthrie’s last commercial recording session. ‘This Land Is Your Land’ became popular again during the 1960s folk music resurgence, when it was recorded by, amongst others, The Kingston Trio, The New Christy Minstrels and Peter Paul and Mary. The song has been used as an advertising jingle by United Airlines and the Ford Motor Company, and was also used by George McGovern during his 1972 presidential campaign.
This Old Man (Traditional) Bob Dylan recorded this traditional nursery rhyme for inclusion on the 1991 Walt Disney Records children’s charity album “For Our Children” (Walt Disney Records 60616). The song was recorded at Dylan’s Garage Studio on an unknown date between January and March 1991. The track was recorded and mixed by Andrew McCartney, who was also responsible for the design and installation of the studio at Dylan’s home in Malibu, California. Dylan treats this performance with what can only be described as love and care. His voice is quite charming and the song features some wonderfully understated harmonica at the beginning, middle and end of the piece. He could have been singing this to his grandchildren. The royalties from this album, which featured twenty-two of the biggest names in the business including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Meryl Streep, Elton John, Carole King and Brian Wilson, benefitted the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
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This Train Is Bound For Glory The foundation was established in 1988 by Elizabeth Glaser, the wife of the television star Paul Michael Glaser, and her close friends Susan DeLaurentis and Susan Zeegen. In 1981, Mrs. Glaser contracted the AIDS virus from blood transfusions following childbirth and unwittingly passed it on to her daughter, Ariel, and her son, Jake. This Train Is Bound For Glory (Traditional) This song was recorded by Tony Glover in the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. The song was played again at the January 20, 1968 evening performance for the Woody Guthrie Memorial Concert. This ensemble performance featured amongst others Bob Dylan (guitar & vocal), Woody’s son, Arlo, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and Odetta. This performance was released on the 1972 album “A Tribute To Woody Guthrie, (Volume 1” (Columbia KC31171). Bob Dylan played Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s 1947 recording of ‘This Train’ on show fortysix of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “More Trains”. This Was My Love (Jim Harbert) Bob Dylan attempted this nice if rather syrupy number at two of the April “Infidels” album sessions. The song, which was not released on the finished album, was tried out for the first time at the April 14, 1983 session. This take is not in circulation. ‘This Was My Love’ was worked on extensively at the April 20 session. In fact, most of that day’s recording was taken up with the song. Two of the eight takes from this date are in circulation among collectors. This sad but powerful ballad was written by Jim Harbert for Frank Sinatra. Sinatra recorded it as ‘This Was My Love’ in May 1959 and it was released the same year as a single (Capitol 4408). Sinatra recorded the song again, with the same arranger, Gordon Jenkins, in July 1967. This time round Frank gave the number a more positive spin and amended the title to ‘This Is My Love’. This recording was released in 1967 on Reprise 0631. ‘This Was My Love’ has been covered by a number of artists including Sammy Davis Jr. who released the song in 1963. This World Can’t Stand Long (Jim Anglin) This song was performed by Dylan for the first time on November 20, 1999 at the University Of Delaware in Newark, DE. The song remained in the sets when touring
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Tomorrow ight recommenced at the Sun Theatre in Anaheim, California on March 10, 2000 and made frequent appearances thereafter until September 1, 2002, when it made its final appearance so far at the Janus Jazz Festival in Aspen, Colorado.
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Copyright for this song can be found registered variously to “Wright / Anglin” and “Acuff”. As is the case with ‘Searching For a Soldier’s Grave’, it appears this number was written by Jim Anglin, who then sold the copyright to Roy Acuff. A song about the impeding destruction of the world, ‘This World Can’t Stand Long’ was regularly performed by Johnnie and Jack who recorded it in 1947. It was released by them as a single under the name Johnny (sic) and Jack on King Records (King 674). This is one of several Johnnie and Jack numbers that Dylan began performing in November 1999. See entry for ‘Humming Bird’ for further details. Roy Acuff’s version was originally released in 1948 as a single (Columbia 20454) and can now be found on a number of Acuff compilations including “The Essential Roy Acuff: 1936-1949”, “In The Shadow Of The Smokies” and “Roy Acuff: 20 Greatest Songs”. Bob Dylan’s performance from Anaheim, CA (March 10, 2000) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This is an excellent quality recording of a superb performance. This song was simply made for Bob Dylan’s voice! Tomorrow ight (Sam Coslow / Will Grosz) This song was recorded in the summer of 1992 and released on Bob Dylan’s album “Good As I Been To You”. See Appendix 1:76 for further detail about this recording session. Dylan began performing ‘Tomorrow ight’ in concert on February 5, 1993 at The Point Depot in Dublin, Ireland. The song was played at forty-two shows in ’93 and a further fifteen concerts in ’94. It was also played on March 23, 1994 during “The Rhythm, Country & Blues Concert” at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, California. For this singlesong performance, Bob Dylan and Trisha Yearwood shared the vocal duties and were backed by Randy Jacobs (guitar), Birny Leadon (guitar), Charlie Musselwhite (guitar), Mickie Raphael (keyboards), Benmont Tench (keyboards), Don Was (bass), Kenny Aronoff (drums). Backing vocals were provided by Sweet Pea Atkinson, Robby Turner, Reggie Young, Lenny Castro and Sir Harry Bowen. A fragment of this performance was broadcast on ABC-TV Entertainment Tonight programme on March 30, 1994. The complete song is not in circulation among collectors.
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(It’s) Too Late (She’s Gone) After a layoff of almost five years, ‘Tomorrow ight’ was resurrected for a single performance at a concert at The Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan on October 28, 1998. The rendition from London, England (February 8, 1993) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Whilst this is a very good performance, the song, which by this time is only three shows old, would grow in stature as the tour progressed. Written by Sam Coslow (lyrics) and Will Grosz (music), the first recording of ‘Tomorrow ight’ was probably made by Horace Heidt and his orchestra for Columbia Records in 1939. Jimmy Dorsey & His Orchestra cut a second big band version that same year. The recording that broke this jazz number into the mainstream was, however, Lonnie Johnson’s stripped-down guitar / piano version, which he recorded for King Records in December 1947. Johnson had made his transition from jazz / blues to rhythm and blues and ballads after World War II, with ‘Tomorrow ight’ (King 4021) being one of his first and biggest successes. With record sales reportedly at around the three million mark the song topped the Billboard R&B Chart for seven weeks and also made it to Number Nineteen on the National Pop Chart. Dylan’s performance of the song is almost identical in every way to Lonnie Johnson’s beautiful mellow ballad. Elvis Presley’s Sun Records release suffers from horribly overdubbed backing vocals and in my opinion the outtakes from the Sun sessions sound both better and more authentic than the released version. Some of these outtakes can be found on the many CD releases which have appeared over the years and two takes of ‘Tomorrow ight’ were released on the Chrome Dreams two-CD album “Elvis Presley: The Complete Sun Sessions” (CDCD5010). Both of these outtakes are infinitely better than Presley’s officially released recording. As a matter of interest, this Chrome Dreams release also includes Presley’s rare 1955 Louisiana Hayride recording of ‘Tweedle Dee’ in which Presley sings about a couple of characters named “Tweedley Dee and Tweedley Dum”. It’s been pointed out before that Dylan’s own composition, ‘Tweedle Dee And Tweedle Dum’, from his 2001 album “Love And Theft”, features an unorthodox (“Tweedledee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee”) pronunciation of the names that is very akin to Presley’s song. Bob Dylan played Lonnie Johnson’s 1947 recording of ‘Tomorrow ight’ on show three of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Days of the Week”.
(It’s) Too Late (She’s Gone) (Chuck Willis) This song was recorded at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California, in May 1986 during the “Knocked Out Loaded” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:79).
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Touch Of Gray This song is often listed as ‘It’s Too Late’ by Tim Davis and Ricky Clinton Ryan. It is, however, far more likely to be the Chuck Willis number ‘It’s Too Late (She’s Gone)’. Dylan certainly played the Chuck Willis song in concert in August 1991 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and twice more at The Edge in Fort Lauderdale (September 23, 1995) and the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas (November 11, 1995). The song was also played at a sound check at the Bournemouth International Centre in Bournemouth, England on October 1, 1997.
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Harold (Chuck) Willis (January 31, 1928 – April 10, 1958) began his recording career with Columbia, but after cutting one single for them and then having a couple of minor successes on the Okeh label, he moved to Atlantic Records in 1956 where he had an instant success with ‘It’s Too Late (She’s Gone)’ (Atlantic 1098), which reached Number Three on the Billboard R&B Chart. Willis should also be given credit for his 1957 reworking of the classic folk-blues ‘C.C. Rider’ , which topped the R&B Chart in 1957 and also achieved respectable sales figures in the pop market. The song was instrumental in the emergence of the popular dance, The Stroll. Unhappily, time for the man with the turban was growing short. Willis, who had lived with stomach ulcers for many years, died suddenly of peritonitis in 1958, and much has been made of the ironic title of his last single, ‘What Am I Living For’, which was coupled with ‘Hang Up My Rock And Roll Shoes’. Both of these songs became massive hits upon the singer’s death ‘It’s Too Late (She’s Gone)’ has been covered by many artists, including Otis Redding, Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly.
Touch Of Gray (Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia) This Grateful Dead song was performed by Bob Dylan when he joined the Dead on stage during three concerts on their joint 1987 summer tour. Dylan is on guitar only. The Grateful Dead began performing this Hunter / Garcia composition in 1982. However, it was not released on record until 1987, when it was included on the album “In The Dark” (Arista AL8452). ‘A Touch Of Gray’ was also released as a single. The record was the only song by the band which broke into the Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100. It was also released as the Grateful Dead’s first ever music video.
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Trail Of The Buffalo (Buffalo Skinners) Trail Of The Buffalo (Buffalo Skinners) (Traditional, arranged Woody Guthrie) Come all you old-time cowboys and listen to my song, Please do not grow weary, I’ll not detain you long, Concerning some wild cowboys who did agree to go, And spend a summer pleasant on the trail of the buffalo. The first known performance of this song was recorded in the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961. The tape was made by the Gleason’s son Kevin. See Appendix 1:6 for further information about this recording. This song, or a variant thereof, has been performed in concert on a number of occasions by Dylan. It was also recorded at the Basement sessions (see Appendix 1:59). Although the same basic song, the Basement version is actually entitled ‘The Hills Of Mexico’; no buffalo in this one, just cattle. Almost immediately upon starting, Dylan stumbles and has to restart the Basement rendition. Three minutes into the song he stumbles again, and this time abandons it, telling Garth Hudson to stop taping because they are “just wasting tape”. It is a real pity, because by this stage the song was beginning to sound very promising. Dylan probably toyed with the idea of playing ‘Trail Of The Buffalo’ in concert in 1987 – he certainly rehearsed it on at least one occasion – however, the song did not make its initial latter-day appearance until the first month of the Never Ending Tour (Holmdel, New Jersey, June 25, 1988). After this debut, it made sporadic appearances every year for the next five years, with 1991 being the most prolific. Bob Dylan’s electric performance from The Hague, Netherlands (June 10, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000” and although this is a fine version, I have difficulty listening to this as an electric song. Far better is the stunning acoustic rendition from West Point, NY (October 13, 1990) which can be found on the same bootleg. Fine acoustic covers from Germany (June 18, 1991) and Austin, TX (October 25, 1991) are included on the CDs “Golden Vanity” and “20/20 Vision”. Although the 19th century buffalo hunts which took place on Great Plains of the United States and Canada are now legendary, this primitive trade lasted barely twenty years between 1870 and 1890. However, during this time massive herds of buffalo, or American bison as they should be known, were hunted almost to extinction. Before commercial hunting began, massive herds of buffalo could be found ranging from the Great Slave Lake in Canada’s far north to Mexico in the south. Their numbers were incalculable. However, by the mid-1880s (only fifteen years after hunting began) there was probably less than 1,000 animals left and by 1899 it is thought that only seven pure American bison remained in existence. The buffalo were hunted mainly for their skins, with the rest of the animal left to rot on the ground. The American Government encouraged buffalo hunting for a number of reasons,
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Trail Of The Buffalo (Buffalo Skinners) not least because without their primary food source, the Plains tribes of American Indians (Native Americans) were starved away from their lands and forced onto reservations, but also the herds were troublesome both to the railroads and to cattle ranchers.
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Many of these skilled hunters, such as Buffalo Bill Cody, killed well over a hundred beasts during a single “stand”. One professional hunter, by his own count, alleged that he killed over 20,000 animals over his career.
Buffalo Skinners
The little town of Jacksboro, Texas was a centre for the buffalo trade and it is from this town that a group of hunters, lead by “old Crego”, left on the hunting expedition that is said to be recounted in the song ‘Buffalo Skinners’. According to John A. Lomax, who first collected the song, the story is true and he describes his first-hand meeting with an old hunter who claimed to be on the fabled trip in his book “Adventures of a Ballad Hunter”.
“It was a hell of a trip down Pease River”, the old buffalo hunter told Lomax, “We fought sandstorms, flies, bed-bugs, wolves, and Indians. At the end of the season old Crego announced he had lost money and could not pay us off. We argued the question with him. He didn’t see our side of things, so we shot him down and left his damned old bones to bleach where we had left so many stinking buffalo. On the way back to Jacksboro, one of the boys started up a song about the trip and the hard times ... and we all set in to help him. Before we got back to Jacksboro we had shaped it up and the whole crowd could sing it”. ‘Buffalo Skinners’ is based around a much early traditional folk song entitled ‘Canada-io’. Although they are in some ways related, this song should not be confused with ‘Canadee-i-o’, which Dylan released on his album “Good As I Been To You” (see entry for ‘Canadee-i-o’ for further information about this family of traditional songs). ‘Canada-i-o’ or ‘Canaday-i-o’ as it is sometimes know, is said to have been composed by a lumberman named Ephraim Braley in about 1854. The song, which is surely the basis for ‘Buffalo Skinners’, is about a bunch of “jolly fellows” who are asked if they would like to go and “spend the winter in the woods of Canaday-i-o”. One young fellow asks about the pay and is told: “Sure we’ll pay good wages / We’ll pay your passage out ... But if you should get homesick / And say back home you’ll go / We’ll not pay your passage from Canaday-i-o”. The lumbermen have a “pleasant journey” until, upon their arrival at the lumber camp, they discover that the living conditions are appalling and the only place they have to sleep is on the snow-covered ground, which is where this lament usually ends. ‘Buffalo Skinners’ follows the same pattern, i.e. a group of cowboys are invited to go to the hills of Mexico (not Canada) where they will work as buffalo skinners (not lumbermen). One young man asks about the pay and is told: “Of course I’ll pay good wages / And
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Train Of Love transportation too / If you will agree to work for me / Until the season’s through / But if you do get homesick / And try to run away / You will starve to death / Out on the trail and also lose your pay”. The cowboys, ten or twelve in number, have a pleasant trip until they cross “old Boggy Creek” in the hills of Mexico and discover, as did the lumberjacks in ‘Canaday-i-o’, that living conditions are poor and that either bandits or Indians are waiting to pick them off. However, the ‘Buffalo Skinners’ lament continues to include a final verse in which the cowboys are informed that they will receive no wages because the boss has become “bankrupt”. So, in classic cowboy fashion, they simply gun the drover down and leave his bones to “bleach on the planes of the buffalo”. Although variants of this song have been recorded by many artists, Dylan’s original source was undoubtedly Woody Guthrie. Guthrie’s version is certainly the most well-known of all of the early recordings and he, like Jack Elliott, sings the line “I found myself in Griffin / In the spring of ’83”. The date and setting for this song varies greatly across Dylan’s versions, but the 1961 performance reads exactly the same as Guthrie’s: “Well, I found myself in Griffin / In the year of ’83”. In Dylan’s 1967 Big Pink version, the town remains as Griffin, but the date changes to a slightly unrealistic ’65”. By the time of the Never Ending Tour, Dylan has probably heard many more versions of the song and these later performances place the event not in Griffin, but in the probable correct location of Jacksboro, Texas. Dylan’s dates are, however, all over the place and versions vary from “1900” to “’63” and “’73”. Finally, it is possible that Dylan had the “Our trip it was a pleasant” line from this song in mind when he wrote: “My trip hasn’t been a pleasant one” for his song ‘Drifter’s Escape’?
Train Of Love (Johnny Cash) Dylan performed this Cash song for the “All-Star Tribute To Johnny Cash”. The programme was aired on April 18, 1999 on TNT in the United States. At the time of the event Dylan was on tour in Europe, and although he could not attend the televised tribute in person, he and his tour band performed for the show at an unknown location in Europe. Dylan introduced this great semi-acoustic performance with the words: “Hey, Johnny, I wanna say ‘Hi!’ and sorry we can’t be there, but that’s just the way it is. I wanna sing you one of your songs about trains. I used to sing this song before I ever wrote a song, and I also want to thank you for standing up for me way back when”. Bob Dylan played Johnny Cash’s original 1957 recording of ‘Train Of Love’ (SUN 258) on show forty-six of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “More Trains”.
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Train Of Pain Train Of Pain (Unknown)
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This instrumental opener was played several times during Dylan’s February 1986 shows in Australia. By February 12, however, the song featured lyrics. The song is not known to me and it may indeed have been a Bob Dylan composition in the making.
Trouble o More (Worried Life Blues) (Morganfield) This song was played, with altered lyrics, by Bob Dylan during the first of his four sets at Toad’s Place in New Haven, Connecticut, on January 12, 1990. Although things sound a little hectic, the band are playing well (great guitar) and Dylan’s vocal is strong. It must have been absolutely wonderful to have been there, but the somewhat enthusiastic audience doesn’t help the overall listening experience. This one-off performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. ‘Trouble o More’ was recorded in November 1955 by Muddy Waters and released on (Chess 1612). The song reached Number Seven on Billboard R&B Singles chart. Waters could have based his song either on Big Maceo’s June 24, 1941 recording of ‘Worried Life Blues’ (Bluebird B 8827) or Big Joe Williams’ December 11, 1941 recording of ‘Someday Baby’ (Bluebird B9025). The origins can, however, be traced back even further to Sleepy John Estes’ July 9, 1935 recording entitled ‘Someday Baby Blues’ (Champion 50068). This recording was credited to Nixon / Estes. Dylan’s performance of ‘Trouble o More’ appears to be based loosely on Sleepy John Estes’ song. Bob Dylan released his own composition entitled ‘Someday Baby’ on his 2006 album “Modern Times”. Below is a selection of lyrics from the above songs. ‘Someday Baby Blues’ – Sleepy John Estes (July 1935) “I don’t care how long you’re gone, I don’t care how long you stay, But that good kind treatment bring you back home someday, Someday, Baby, you ain’t gonna worry my mind anymore”. ‘Worried Life Blues’ – Big Maceo (June 1941) “Oh lordy lord, oh lordy lord, It hurts me so bad for us to part, But someday Baby, I ain’t gonna worry my life anymore”.
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Tupelo (Backwater Blues) ‘Someday Baby’ – Big Joe Williams (December 1941) “Don’t care when you’re gone, or how long you stay, That good kind treatment bring you back home someday, Someday, Baby, you ain’t gonna worry my mind anymore”. ‘Trouble o More’ – Muddy Waters (November 1955) “I don’t care how long you’re gone, I don’t care how long you stay, But good kind treatment gon’ bring you home someday, But someday Baby, you ain’t gonna trouble poor me any more”. ‘Someday Baby’ – Bob Dylan (2006) “I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what you say, I don’t care where you go or how long you stay, Someday Baby, you ain’t gonna worry po’ me any more”.
Tupelo (Backwater Blues) (John Lee Hooker) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 whilst he was living in the in upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were mainly made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. It seems that Dylan either doesn’t know or cannot remember the words to this Hooker classic talking blues. Nevertheless, he gives a wonderful performance as he growls his way through a set of lyrics that he appears to make up on the spot. The song was originally released by John Lee Hooker as ‘Tupelo Blues’ on his 1959 Riverside album “The Country Blues Of John Lee Hooker”. He recorded the song several more times including a 1960 version, issued as ‘Tupelo (Backwater Blues)’, and a 1962 recording, released simply as ‘Tupelo’. Both recordings were on the Vee Jay label. Dylan has commented in several interviews that he always remembers the time he opened for John Lee Hooker in Greenwich Village. Hooker has also said that he remembers those times with great fondness. “Bob is a beautiful person”, said Hooker, “a good, good man. Very sweet, very kind. I met him when I was playing in the coffee houses ... We played some shows together and he’d come back to my place and we’d stay up all night playin’ and drinkin’ wine”. Hooker’s song is often described as being about the “disastrous flood” which hit Tupelo, Mississippi in April 1936. Whilst flooding and severe weather certainly made the headlines in the spring of 1936, there is no record of floods affecting Tupelo. Hooker’s biographer, Charles Shaar Murray, states that “‘Tupelo’ is a one-chord, free-form talking blues which … evokes the terrible floods which devastated the Delta in 1927”. This statement could be interpreted as saying that Tupelo was actually hit by the great Delta flood of 1927, which it was not. Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, is in the hills rather than the Mississippi
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Tupelo Honey Delta, and although the city was devastated in April 1936, the disaster was caused by an outbreak of nocturnal tornadoes and not a flood. The tornadoes, which hit on April 5-6, 1936, left the city in ruins and 216 people dead.
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Inspired by Hooker’s song, Nick Cave recorded a number entitled ‘Tupelo’ which combined flood imagery with the birth place of Elvis Presley. Tupelo Honey (Van Morrison) Dylan once remarked that the song ‘Tupelo Honey’ had always existed and that Van Morrison was merely the vessel and the earthly vehicle for it. The first of Dylan’s two performances of the song occurred in 1984 when Morrison joined him on stage at Slane Castle in Ireland on July 8, 1984. On this occasion the song featured Morrison on lead vocal with Dylan joining him on the choruses. This number was performed again when Dylan played a concert at Dundonald Ice Bowl in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on February 6, 1991. On this occasion Dylan and Morrison both give powerful vocal performances on a “spliced” rendition of two of Morrison’s songs, ‘Tupelo Honey’ and ‘Why Must I Always Explain?’. The performance begins with Dylan singing a verse of ‘Tupelo Honey’ followed by Morrison taking the lead on a verse of ‘Why Must I Always Explain’. The song’s title is derived from an expensive mild-tasting honey which is produced exclusively from the white tupelo blossoms that grow along the river basins of northwest Florida. Morrison uses the honey as a motif to describe the girl in the song. “She’s as sweet as tupelo honey / She’s an angel of the first degree / She’s as sweet as tupelo honey / Just like honey, baby, from the bee”. The song was originally released as the title track to Van Morrison’s 1971 Warner Bros. album (WS1884), ‘Tupelo Honey’ was also released by Morrison as a single in the USA in 1972.
Twist And Shout (Phil Medley / Bert Russell) The first known Dylan performance of this song was at The Palomino Club in Hollywood on February 19, 1987. The occasion was an all-star jam in which Bob Dylan, George
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Two Sisters Harrison and John Fogerty joined Taj Mahal and his “Graffiti Band” (featuring Jesse Ed Davis) on stage. Dylan features on rhythm guitar only. A couple of months later in Sunset Sound Studios, Hollywood (April 3, 1987) Dylan tried out the song during a “Down In The Groove” recording session. This is a lively and seemingly concerted effort at recording. However, to my ears Dylan’s vocal sounds very un-Dylan. Our man was also involved in playing guitar on ‘Twist And Shout’ behind Billy Joel, Ben E. King and others at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in The Grand Ballroom, Hotel Waldorf-Astoria, New York City, January 20, 1988. ‘Twist And Shout’ was originally recorded by the Top Notes in 1961. The song was written by songwriter Bert Berns (under the pseudonym Bert Russell) along with Bill Medley from the Righteous Brothers. Although it was recorded on February 23, 1961, the song was not released until the September, and then as the B-Side of ‘Always Late (Why Lead Me On)’ (Atlantic Records 2115). ‘Twist And Shout’ was produced by Atlantic Records’ co-founder Jerry Wexler along with a new staff producer by the name of Phil Spector. Wexler said: “It was when Spector was working with us, and he and I produced the record and it was horrible. Bert was such a newcomer, he was sitting in the spectator’s booth, watching Phil and I butcher this song. Phil changed the middle around, we had the wrong tempo, the wrong feel, but we didn’t realize that Bert could’ve produced it”. After the session, Russell apparently told Spector: “Man, you fucked it up”. The recording, which is certainly a million miles away from the covers that came after, definitely had none of the energy the Top Notes displayed in their live performances. Russell convinced the fabulous Isley Brothers to record the song and this time he left nothing to chance, taking on the role of producer himself. The resulting single (Wand Records 124, 1962) made it all the way to the top of the R&B Chart and also to Number Seventeen on the Billboard Pop Chart. The Beatles cover of ‘Twist And Shout’, released on their first album “Please Please Me” (Parlophone PMC 1202), was taken from the Isley’s version. The song was also released as an EP on Parlophone (GEP 8882).
Two Sisters (Traditional) The first known performance of ‘Two Sisters’ was captured on tape in the St. Paul, MN apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twenty-seven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, the complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this recording
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Two Soldiers see Appendix 1:3. This song can be found on the bootleg CD “I Was So Much Younger Then”.
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‘Two Sisters’, also commonly know as ‘The Twa Sisters’, is a murder ballad that describes the tale of a girl drowned by her sister. The first known broadside, under the name of ‘The Miller And The King’s Daughter’, dates back to a 1656 printing by Francis Grove. There are twenty-seven English variants of this ballad (some of them fragmentary) and twentyone are listed by Francis J. Child (Child 10). The song is also included in the Roud Folk Song Index (Roud 8). Variants include ‘The Cruel Sister’, ‘The Wind And Rain’, ‘Bonnie Bows Of London’, ‘Bow And Balance (To Me)’, ‘Rollin’ A-Rollin’, ‘Peter And I’, ‘Swan Swims So Bonnie O’ and ‘Binnorie’. There are also many Scandinavian versions of this ballad and the theme is widespread in the folk-tales of countless European countries. In the British versions, the two sisters, who in some printings live in Edinburgh and others simply in a mill, go down to either a river or the sea where the older of the two sisters, “vexed” by the younger, pushes her into the water and then refuses to help her out. In most cases this vexation is over a man and in many versions the older sister is described as dark, while the younger sister is of course fair. When the younger sister’s body comes ashore, someone makes a musical instrument, usually a harp or a fiddle, from the girl’s bones. The strings are made from her “long golden hair”. The instrument then plays itself and in doing so recounts the tale of the murder. The variant entitled ‘The Two Sisters’ typically omits the haunted instrument stanza. The omission of supernatural occurrences is commonplace in American versions of traditional British folk ballads. Dylan appears to have borrowed the structure for his own ‘Percy’s Song’ (August 1963) from ‘The Two Sisters’ ballad. ‘The Two Sisters’: “The only tune that my fiddle would play, Was, ‘Oh, the wind and the rain’ / The only tune that my fiddle would play, was, ‘the dreadful wind and rain’”. ‘Percy’s Song’: “And I played my guitar through the night to the day, Turn, turn, turn again / And the only tune my guitar could play Was, ‘Oh the cruel rain and the wind’”. Probably quite coincidently, one of Bob Dylan’s paintings exhibited at Halcyon Gallery in London in 2008 was entitled Two Sisters. Two Soldiers (Traditional) He was just a blue-eyed Boston boy, His voice was low with pain,
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Two Soldiers I’ll do your bidding, comrade mine, If I ride back again, But if you ride back and I am left, You’ll do as much for me, Mother, you know, must hear the news, So write to her tenderly. This song, sometimes know as ‘Blue-eyed Boston Boy’, received its first outing on June 9, 1988 at the Cal Expo Amphitheatre in Sacramento, California. ‘Two Soldiers’ was played twice more on the “Interstate ’88” tour, six times in ’89, four times in ’90, nine times in ’91 and once each in ’92 and ’94. The performances from 1988 and ’89 were acoustic renditions featuring Bob Dylan and his guitarist G.E. Smith. This same format was employed with guitarist John Jackson at some of the shows in 1991 and ’92. Other performances were acoustic but with full tour-band. Bob Dylan’s performances from Munich, Germany (June 21, 1991) can be found on the bootleg CD “Golden Vanity”, whilst a better recorded performance from Ames, Iowa (November 2, 1991) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. ‘Two Soldiers’ was recorded in May 1993 and released on the album “World Gone Wrong”. See Appendix 1:77 for further detail about this recording session. ‘Two Soldiers’ is a traditional song from the American Civil War which was collected in Kentucky and Arkansas. It originates from a longer ballad entitled ‘The Last Fierce Charge’. Dylan said of the song: “Jerry Garcia showed me ‘Two Soldiers’ (Hazel & Alice do it pretty similar) a battle song extraordinaire, some Setlist from Hannover, 1991 showing “Boston Boy” (Two Soldiers) dragoon officer’s epaulettes laying liquid in the mud, physical plunge into Limitationville, war dominated by finance (lending money for interest being a nauseating & revolting thing) love is not collateral … before Charlie Chaplin, before the Wild One, before the Children of the Sun–before the celestial grunge, before the insane world of entertainment exploded in our faces–before all the ancient & honorable artillery had been taken out of the city, learning to go forward by turning back the clock, stopping the mind from thinking in hours, firing a few random shots at the face of time...” (“World Gone Wrong” liner notes). Dylan’s recording is copyrighted as “traditional song arranged by Bob Dylan” (Special Rider Music 1993).
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Two Trains Running (Still a Fool) Jerry Garcia probably learned ‘Two Soldiers’ from Mike Seeger’s 1964 recording (Vanguard VRS-9150). In turn, Seeger had learned it from the Gevedon family of Kentucky. As stated by Dylan in his album notes, the song was also recorded in 1973 by Hazel Dickens and Mike Seeger’s wife Alice Gerard.
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Two Trains Running (Still a Fool) (Morganfield) This song was recorded by Tony Glover in the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twenty-five-song recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. Dylan also played this song in the Finjan Club in Montreal, Quebec on July 2, 1962, and in the home Eve and Mac McKenzie in April 1963 (see Appendix 1:24 & 1:47). Dylan’s cover of this song is almost certainly based directly on Muddy Waters’ rendition. In turn, Waters appears to have written his song around Tommy Johnson’s 1928 ‘Bye Bye Blues’. Waters’ tune is almost identical to Johnson’s and he also borrows most of the last verse from Johnson. “Well, they’s two trains runnin’ Runnin’ side by side, There two trains runnin’ Now baby, runnin’ side by side, You’ve got my woman, Baby, know you’re satisfied”. Dylan uses two of Waters’ three verses and adds verses of his own. The circulating recordings, all of which are very fine Dylan performances, vary lyrically. The fuller Finjan rendition appears to rework a verse from Peg Leg Howell’s ‘Low-down Rounder’s Blues’, which was issued on the Samuel Charters-compiled LP “The Country Blues” (1959). Muddy Waters originally made his recording on July 11, 1951. It was released as a single (Chess 1480) under the title ‘Still a Fool’. Bob Dylan played this recording on show fortyfive of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Trains”.
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Bob Dylan 1990
Ugliest Girl In The World
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Ugliest Girl In The World (Dylan / Robert Hunter) Bob Dylan chose this song, along with ‘Silvio’, in the mid-1980s from a portfolio of lyrics by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Dylan provided the music and the song was recorded on June 16, 1987 in Sunset Sound Studios, Hollywood. The resulting track, which can only be described as dire, was released on Dylan’s equally grim album “Down In The Groove”. A more appropriate title would have been “Down In The Dumps”. The song is copyrighted jointly to Dylan’s music publishing company Special Rider Music and Hunter’s Ice Nine Music. For information about Robert Hunter, see the entry for ‘Silvio’. Unchain My Heart (Originally copyrighted to Freddy James / Agnes Jones) This song is one of ten known outtakes from Bob Dylan’s dismal “Knocked Out Loaded” album. He made several attempts to capture this song on tape during recording sessions at Skyline Studios in Topanga Park, California. Despite being attempted during four sessions in April and May 1986, the song did not make the final album and none of the takes from these sessions are in circulation among collectors. Starting on June 9, 1986 in San Diego, California, Dylan regularly performed this number with the help of his backing singers. The song was played thirteen times during the “True Confessions Tour” with the final performance being at Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, Colorado, July 25, 1986. As is the case with numerous songs from the 1950s and before, the real authorship of this number is somewhat complex. What must be remembered with copyright credits is that the holder of the copyright is not necessarily the true author of the song. The real author of ‘Unchain My Heart’ is a little known black R&B / jazz composer by the name of Bobby Sharp. Sharp, who was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1924, wrote the song one Sunday afternoon in 1960 while sitting at the piano in his parents’ living room while they watched Perry Mason on TV.
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Universal Soldier Sharp, a drug addict who needed to score, decided to earn some quick money by writing “something catchy” that he could sell. He quickly knocked off ‘Unchain My Heart’ and sold the song to producer Teddy Powell for $50. Powell agreed to pay the $50 on the understanding that Sharp also gave him fifty percent of the copyright. The song was therefore credited to Teddy Powell and Bobby Sharp but to confuse matters even more Sharp used his cousin’s name, Agnes Jones, for his part of the credit. The song was then given to Ray Charles to sing and his recording (ABC 45-10266, 1961) went to Number Nine on the US Pop Chart. Sharp then wrote tunes for Sarah Vaughan and Sammy Davis Jr., but drugs took their toll and he sold his half of the rights to ‘Unchain My Heart’ to Powell for $1,000. The story goes that Powell paid Sharp with royalty money that was already owed to him. The following year Sharp took legal action to win back his rights to the song and, although he eventually won, it took seven years to settle the matter. Finally, when the original US copyright expired in 1987, Sharp renewed the copyright for his own music publishing company, B. Sharp Music. Bobby Sharp got out of the music business but returned in 2004 to release his debut album, at the ripe old age of eighty! Regardless of the copyright on ‘Unchain My Heart’ it seem pretty certain that Dylan got the inspiration to cover the song from listening to Ray Charles. Dylan also performed another Ray Charles song, ‘That Lucky Old Sun’, on his 1986 “True Confessions Tour”.
Universal Soldier (Buffy Sainte-Marie) This song was attempted by Dylan in March 1970 at the “Self Portrait” album sessions. The recording is fragmentary and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:65 for further information). Although this song is usually associated with Donovan, it was originally written and released by Canadian singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. The song was released on her 1964 debut album “It’s My Way!”. “I wrote ‘Universal Soldier’ in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties”, Sainte-Marie told one interviewer. “It’s about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965”. In the United Kingdom, Donovan’s recording was released in 1965 on a picture sleeve EP entitled “The Universal Soldier” (Pye NEP 24219). The war-themed EP, which contained ‘The Universal Soldier’ (Sainte-Marie), ‘The Ballad Of a Crystal Man’ (Donovan Leitch), ‘Do You Hear Me ow’ (Bert Jansch) and ‘The War Drags On’ (Mick Softley) reached Number Five on the UK Chart.
Uranium Rock (Warren Smith) See the entry for ‘Rock ‘Em Dead’.
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VD Blues (Woody Guthrie) Well, I hear folks tellin’ them VD blues ain’t bad, Well, I hear folks tellin’ them VD blues ain’t bad, These VD blues are the worst I ever had. The only known performance of this song by Dylan was in December 1961 at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher (see Appendix 1:18 for further information). In 1949 Woody Guthrie wrote a collection of tunes for the US Public Health Service. The songs, which were used as a public service announcement initiative against the post-war spread of venereal diseases, were broadcast on US radio. Among Guthrie’s titles were ‘VD Blues’, ‘VD City’, ‘VD Gunner’, ‘VD Waltz’, ‘VD Avenue’, ‘VD Day’, and ‘A Child Of VD’. It seems that Dylan learned several of these songs in the second half of 1961. There is some evidence to support this dating in the form of a set of writings popularly known as the “McKenzie manuscripts”. These manuscripts, first transcribed by Chris Cooper in ISIS magazine (issue 45, October-November 1992), were left by Bob Dylan at the home of Eve and Mac MacKenzie in the summer, or possibly the fall, of 1961. The fact that one of these manuscripts is entitled ‘VD Seaman’s Letter’, and this manuscript is contemporary with Dylan’s only known performance of the VD songs – December 1961 – appears to support the notion that he learned these songs in mid to late 1961. It seems likely that ‘VD Seaman’s Letter’ is not a Guthrie number, but rather an attempt by Dylan to write a song in the style of Guthrie’s VD cycle. Although many Dylan authorities seem to be of the opinion that Dylan learned these songs from Woody Guthrie, this seems very unlikely because they were not available on record
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VD City and by this time Woody’s illness would have made it impossible for him to have taught Dylan the songs in person. A quote from Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, included in Robert Shelton’s Bob Dylan biography “No Direction Home” (Beech Tree Books / William Morrow, 1986), might help to solve the problem. Elliott: “I suppose I taught Bobby a few of my songs. Those old VD songs by Woody that nobody wanted the young kids to know, he picked them up from me”. VD City (Woody Guthrie) Well you’ve seen your bright visions of glory, where love built your cities on high. I’ve just seen the cold dark dungeons, where the victims of syphilis cry. The only known performance of this song was in December 1961 at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher (see Appendix 1:18 for further information). The strongest and most poignant of all of Guthrie’s VD songs is ‘VD City’. Guthrie writes about the “victims” of the whores and pimps and the weeping associated with a disease which he sees as being worse than cities “blown down by the bombs”. This song above all presses home the message of the importance of avoiding “the madness and physical waste that can arise from venereal disease”. For further information about this song, see the entry for ‘VD Blues’. VD Gunner (Woody Guthrie) Landlady, hey, landlady, Push your window high. Landlady, hey, landlady, Push up your window screen. Well, I’ve come to kill that woman That give me the old VD. The only known performance of this song, which is sometimes know as ‘Landlady’, was in December 1961 at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher (see Appendix 1:18 for further information about this session). For further information about this song, see the entry for ‘VD Blues’. VD Waltz (Woody Guthrie) All the birds are singin’ in the mornin’ trees, But the birds are not singin’ for me.
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Vincent Van Gogh My man did meet with a flirt on the street, Gave him a case of VD.
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The only known performance of this song was in December 1961 at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher. (See Appendix 1:18 for further information). For further information about this song, see the entry for ‘VD Blues’. Vincent Van Gogh (Robert Freimark) This song was performed regularly by Bob Dylan and Bob Neuwirth during the 1976 leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour and these performances are in circulation among collectors. This number has never been recorded but is believed to have been written by Californian abstract-expressionist painter Robert Matthew Freimark, who was Neuwirth’s art teacher at the time. Neuwirth has said that he brought the song to Dylan and that he, Dylan, and Kris Kristofferson worked on it, adding some lyrics of their own. Viola Lee Blues (Noah Lewis) Dylan’s only known performance of this traditional prison song was in Sapporo, Japan on February 24, 1997. This rather nice acoustic number can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Although it is fairly obvious that Bob Dylan re-engaged with this song through the Grateful Dead (he also performed ‘ew Minglewood Blues’ in concert in 1996), he would almost certainly have known the original Noah Lewis / Cannon’s Jug Stompers recording. Two takes of ‘Viola Lee Blues’ were recorded by Cannon’s Jug Stompers during a session in Memphis, Tennessee on September 20, 1928. The writer of the song, Noah Lewis, took lead vocal duties on both takes but only one take was released at the time (the second version did not emerge on record until 1990). The lyrics to the third verse were different on the two takes and inexplicably the Dead’s version, which they were performing in concert long before the 1990 recording surfaced, uses the unreleased lyrics. How this came about remains a mystery, but the relevance of this to our story is that Dylan sings the released version of the song which would seem to indicate that he went back to the original 1928 release. Also see the entry for ‘ew Minglewood Blues’. (A) Voice From On High (Bill Monroe / Lee Mauldin) Bob Dylan played this gospel / bluegrass number in concert seven times during his 2002 USA tour. The first outing for the song was on August 15, 2002, at the Erie County Fair in
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Hamburg, New York. Interestingly, two weeks prior to its concert debut, a journalist for a Worcester, Massachusetts newspaper had mistakenly stated that Dylan had opened his Worcester Palladium show with ‘A Voice From On High’. The number in question was in fact ‘Humming Bird’, but the out-of-the-blue inclusion of the song two weeks later begs the question did the journalist simply see ‘A Voice From On High’ on the cue sheet, or did Dylan read the review?! The song, which was written by Bill Monroe and his bass player Bessie Lee Mauldin, was played for the last time on October 5, 2002 at the University Of Oregon in Eugene. Bill Monroe began his illustrious music career in the early 1930s and, over the sixty years that followed, his band, the Blue Grass Boys, provided work for more than 150 musicians including both Flatt and Scruggs, Jimmy Martin and, for a short time, Carter Stanley. ‘A Voice From On High’ was recorded by Monroe’s stripped-down Bluegrass Quartet and released as a single in 1954.
Bob Dylan and The Band 1974
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Wade In The Water (Traditional) Bob Dylan’s only known performance of this song, and a rather dazzling one at that, was in December 1961 at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher (see Appendix 1:18 for further details). This recording was officially released on the 2001 Japanese album “Bob Dylan Live: Thirty-ine Years Of Great Performances” (SRCS 2438). This live compilation album, exclusive to Japan, was released to coincide with Bob Dylan’s 2001 tour there. ‘Wade In The Water’ (Roud 5439) is a well-known gospel number which started life as a slave song, possibly containing coded lyrics that informed those in bondage of the best way to escape from their “masters”. The song was originally published by John Wesley Work II and his brother, Frederick J. Work, in their first book of spirituals, “New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers” (1901). In this printed form the song was probably intended to encourage people to be baptized in order to find salvation and hope for the future. However, in earlier forms the song appears to relate to the Old Testament accounts of the Israelites escape out of Egypt and their crossing of the Red Sea, as found in Exodus 14. There are of course clear parallels between the Israelites flight from their Egyptian oppressors and the plight of Negro slaves in America. It is no longer possible to decode the song because the printed gospel version is almost certainly far removed from the original slave song. For obvious reasons, slave songs followed the oral tradition and were never written down. There may therefore have been several other variants before we arrived at today’s well-known gospel version. Nevertheless, even the printed version could be seen as suggesting the safest way to get to the Promised Land, in this case Canada, where slavery did not exist, was to follow the river. This meant that slaves could easily navigate at night to avoid being seen and the water would mask their scent from any bloodhounds that might be trying to track them.
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Wagoner’s Lad The journey was long (usually taking a year) so the song also needed to offer hope and moral support along the way. The slave song would probably have contained a coded message that would have helped the runaways to locate people, sympathetic toward their plight, along the highly organized network known as the Underground Railroad. ‘Wade In The Water’ had been recorded by a number of artists prior to Dylan’s performance. One of the earliest is probably the 1925 recording by the Sunset Four Jubilee Singers (Paramount 12273). A further nine versions were released between 1928 and 1940. Bob Dylan could have got his 1961 cover of this song from almost anywhere and may well have learned it first-hand from one of the Village folkies. One of Dylan’s favourite folk singers, Odetta, was performing the song in concert at around this time so it is quite possible that she was his source of inspiration. Nevertheless, suggestions that Dylan might have learned the song from Odetta’s 1954 Fantasy Records’ album “The Tin Angel” are misplaced. The original thirteen-track “...Tin Angel” LP, or for that matter the EP, did not include ‘Wade In The Water’, which was added to the 1993 CD release as one of six bonus tracks. Bob Dylan played Ramsey Lewis’ 1966 recording of ‘Wade In The Water’ on show twentythree of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Water”. Wagoner’s Lad (Traditional) Oh, hard is the fortune of all womankind, They’re always controlled, they’re always confined, Confined by their parents until they are wives, Then slaves to their husbands for the rest of their lives. Bob Dylan began playing this traditional song at the beginning of his now celebrated Never Ending Tour. The first performance of the song was at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, October 14, 1988. The song received five outings that year and a couple more during the following year. It was played for the final time at the Charleston Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia on October 23, 1990. Bob Dylan’s stunning acoustic performance from Upper Derby, Pennsylvania (October 14, 1988) can be found on the bootleg CDs “Golden Vanity” and “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The first known recording of ‘Wagoner’s Lad’ was made in 1928 by Buell Kazee and released by Brunswick (213B). This recording was issued in 1952 on the now legendary album “American Folk Music”. Harry Smith’s notes which accompany the album are quite informative: “This composition although approaching a ballad in narrative unity is of the type classified by H. M. Belden as folk-lyric. He characterizes these as almost exclusively love songs;
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Wait For The Light To Shine most often of love denied or betrayed, but occasional expressions of freedom recovered, in which the woman (or the man) says she (he) will love whom she (he) pleases or that she (he) cares ... word clusters and entire verses of ‘The Wagoner’s Lad’ are found in a great many other similar American and British songs.” Smith goes on to say that several of the songs in the “American Folk Music” anthology – ‘The Coo-coo Bird’, ‘East Virginia’, ‘Sugar Baby’, and ‘Country Blues’ – “contain verses often used interchangeably with each other … All of these examples (principally from Kentucky) have five-string banjo accompaniment which suggests that this type of composition-compounding developed between 1850-1875”.
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Other variants (not found on the Harry Smith anthology) are ‘The Unconstant Lover’, ‘Old Smoky’, ‘Rambling (Rambler) Gambler’, ‘My Horses Ain’t Hungry’, ‘Loving ancy’, ‘Pretty Saro’, ‘Poor Girl’s Warning’, ‘It Was a Young Man’, ‘Texas Cowboy’, ‘I’m a Rambler, I’m a Gambler’, ‘Farewell Sweet Mary’ and ‘Pretty ancy’. The parent song has yet to be definitively traced, but it dates at least from the eighteenth century and is probably considerably older. The song’s origins are clearly British and the cuckoo variants have been traced back to 1776. For further information about the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” see the entry for ‘Fishin’ Blues’. Also see the entry ‘Rambler, Gambler’. Wait For The Light To Shine (Fred Rose) Dylan began performing this song on the opening night of his 2001 US tour. It was used to open his concert in Spokane, Washington, on October 5, 2001 and was then played as an opener at twenty-three concerts on the tour. The song, which was alternated with other spiritual numbers including ‘I Am The Man Thomas’, ‘Hallelujah, I’m Ready To Go’ and ‘Somebody Touched Me’, remained in Dylan’s sets until May 8, 2002. It was performed as an acoustic band number with Larry Campbell providing some very fine mandolin. It has been suggested, and possibly with some justification, that ‘Wait For the Light To Shine’ was included in Dylan’s sets to provide hope and inspiration to a nation still in shock from the events of the previous September 11. Dylan’s live performances are extremely close to Roy Acuff’s July 1945 recording released on Okeh 6745. The author of ‘Wait For the Light To Shine’, Knowles Fred Rose (August 24, 1897 December 1, 1954) was a key figure in the rise
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Walk a Mile In My Shoes of the Nashville music industry between 1942 and 1954. Rose was a musician, songwriter, producer, music publisher and respected talent scout. He established himself as a successful songwriter during the 1920s, authoring or coauthoring popular songs and jazz numbers like ‘Red Hot Mama’ and ‘Deed I Do’. In his teens, he began working in Chicago, busking in bars for tips. He worked his way up to a job in radio, which he lost because of his heavy drinking. Rose then moved to Nashville to work on WSM radio and between 1933 and 1938 he divided his time between Nashville, Chicago and New York, performing on live radio shows and peddling his wares to music publishers. In 1942 Rose joined forces with Roy Acuff in founding Acuff-Rose Publications. The company, which was the first major Nashville publishing house, was a godsend for country artists who had previously been ripped-off by the Nashville music industry. Acuff-Rose was affiliated with BMI and had a subsidiary firm, Milene Music, which handled music from ASCAP member composers. Rose continued to write or co-write country standards like ‘Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain’, and ‘Wait For The Light To Shine’. He was responsible for helping to promote the careers of the aspiring husband and wife songwriting team Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, and also for discovering Hank Williams. Walk a Mile In My Shoes (Joe South) Dylan performed this Joe South song on January 12, 1990 during his lengthy four-set concert at Toad’s Place in New Haven, Connecticut. The song was played as the first number of the opening set. This concert was used as a rehearsal for Dylan’s 1990 “Fastbreak” tour. However, the song was not performed on the tour. Although things sound a little hectic, the band are playing well (great guitar) and Dylan’s vocal is strong. It must have been absolutely wonderful to have been at this concert but the enthusiastic audience does not help the overall listening experience on CD. This performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Joe South released several successful singles in the late 1960s and early 1970s including ‘Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home’ and ‘Walk a Mile In My Shoes’. His biggest hit was his 1968 single ‘Games People Play’, which was a Top Ten pop hit on both sides of the Atlantic. ‘Walk a Mile In My Shoes’, released by Joe South & The Believers, peaked at Number Twelve on the US Chart in 1970. Bob Dylan played this single on show forty-two of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Shoes”.
Waltzin’ With Sin (Red Hayes / Sonny Burns) This song forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were
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The Wanderer made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes (see Appendix 1:60 for further information).
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Things soon break down on this one, but the song is quickly restarted and with greater success. Later in the song Dylan can be heard to say, “Let’s try it again”, but for some reason they just keep on keeping on until the end. This is a very promising performance and a second take might have nailed it. However, in the words of the great man, “lost time is not found again!” Dylan may be covering the original 1954 Sonny Burns recording released on Starday 152. However, this performance sounds closer to the honky-tonk singer Cowboy Copas’ 1965 Starday release (Starday 759). Popular in the late 1940s, Cowboy Copas made something of a comeback in the early ’60s before he died in the air crash that also killed Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins. The Wanderer (Ernie Maresca) Bob Dylan performed this song during the encores on his 1999 US summer tour with Paul Simon. The song, which was performed as a shared vocal duet with Simon, was debuted on July 4, 1999 at the Marcus Amphitheater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It received its final outing of the tour on September 17, 1999 at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in Houston, Texas. There were twenty-three performances in total. Even though Ernie Maresca had co-written Dion DiMucci’s Number One hit single ‘Runaround Sue’, he intended his next song, ‘The Wanderer’, to be recorded by the New York group Nino and the Ebbtides. Nino Aiello turned the song down in favour of another Maresca number, so Dion ended up with the song. Even so, his record label Laurie decided to issue it as the B-side to Dion’s ‘The Majestic’ (Laurie 3115, 1961). In spite of all this, it seems that ‘The Wanderer’ was destined to make it and persistent radio plays meant that the single was flipped and rose swiftly up the chart reaching Number Two in the US and Number Ten in the UK. As a classic oldie, the song made the UK Top Twenty again in 1976. The song that Nino and the Ebbtides chose in favour of ‘The Wanderer’ sank without trace. (The) Water Is Wide (Traditional) The water is wide, I cannot get o’er, And neither have I wings to fly, Give me a boat that can carry two, And both shall row my true love and I. Dylan and Joan Baez played this traditional number as a rather fine acoustic duet during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. The song was aired for the first time at the afternoon concert at the Civic Center in Providence, Rhode Island on November 4, 1975. This number was played a further seven times during this leg of the tour and once more on the 1976 leg.
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(The) Water Is Wide ‘The Water Is Wide’ made a comeback in 1989 when it was played at Simmonscourt, R.D.S., in Dublin, Ireland on June 3. The song was played again in Istanbul, Turkey, on June 24, 1989 and popped up once more in 1990, when it was played at the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton, Canada on August 12, 1990. These Never Ending Tour performances feature an extremely fine and powerful Dylan vocal. Bob Dylan’s performances from the Rolling Thunder Revue tour can be found on various bootleg CDs, whilst the rendition from Dublin, Ireland (June 3, 1989) is included on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. The performance from the Boston Music Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, November 21, 1975 (second show) was released on the official two-CD album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 5 – Bob Dylan Live 1975” (Columbia Legacy 510140 3). This recording is copyright 2002 Special Rider Music. Joan Baez probably introduced Bob Dylan to this old Celtic ballad. “The Joan Baez songbook” has this note for ‘The Water Is Wide’: “Originally part of a long Scots ballad, ‘Lord Jamie Douglas’, all that remains are these few verses which constitute the emotional core of that ballad. Most singers know it in another form as ‘Waly, Waly’, by which title it was known as far back as the early eighteenth century. It remains one of the most beautiful and evocative of all British lyric folksongs.” Ms. Baez is not too far from the mark. Often known as ‘Waly, Waly’ or ‘O Waly, Waly’, the song is thought to be of Scottish or possibly Irish origin and may well have been sung in one form or another since the 1600s. It is related, although in my opinion only tenuously, to Child Ballad 204 (Roud number 87) ‘Jamie Douglas’, which refers to the unhappy first marriage of James Douglas, second Marquis of Douglas (1671 – 1692) to Lady Barbara Erskine, and it is from this Child entry that the Scottish attribution comes. To me ‘The Water Is Wide’ seems like a much simpler version of the Irish ‘Carrickfergus’. “I wish I was in Carrickfergus / Only for nights in Ballygrant / I would swim over the deepest ocean / The deepest ocean for my love to find / But the sea is wide and I cannot swim over / Nor have I the wings to fly / I wish I could meet a handsome boatsman / To ferry me over, my love to find.” However, although I am unable to date ‘Carrickfergus’ with any degree of certainty, it probably dates from more recent times than ‘Waly, Waly’. Even so, ‘The Water Is Wide’, which appears to have been developed in the USA in the early 1800s from ‘Waly, Waly’, may indeed have been set to an Irish tune. Dylan’s own ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’ appears to borrow its melody from ‘The Water Is Wide’.
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Wayfaring Stranger Wayfaring Stranger (Traditional)
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The only known performance of this song was on November 23 1961 at the New York home of Eve and Mac McKenzie. Tragically, only a fragment of this song exists on tape (see Appendix 1:16 for further details). ‘Wayfaring Stranger’, also commonly known as ‘Poor Wayfaring Stranger’, is a wellknown traditional folk song concerning the many trials of life. The song was made popular by Burl Ives when it was released in 1944 on his album “The Wayfaring Stranger” (Asch 345). The album, consisting of three ten-inch records, should not be confused with the Columbia set (C-103) which was also released in 1944 and entitled “The Wayfaring Stranger”, but rather bizarrely did not contain the track itself. The song became Ives’ signature piece and he employed it as the title of his 1940s CBS radio show and his 1948 autobiography. Although Dylan would almost certainly have known Ives’ recording, he probably took his version from Bob Gibson, who released the song in July 1961 on the popular album “Bob Gibson And Bob Camp At The Gate of Horn” (Elektra).
We Belong Together (Mitchell / Carr / Weiss) ‘We Belong Together’ was captured on tape by Bobby Zimmerman’s teenage friend John Bucklen. The six-song tape, extracts of which were featured in the BBC television documentary “Highway 61 Revisited” (see Appendix 1:2), contains songs and dialogue between Zimmerman and Bucklen about the music which they were playing. ‘We Belong Together’ was a single by Robert & Johnny (Robert Carr and Johnny Mitchell), which made it to Number Thirty-Two on the Billboard Chart in March 1958. It was released, backed with ‘In The Rain’, in December 1957 on Old Town 1047.
We Had It All (Fritts / Seals) This song was regularly played by Dylan on his 1986 “True Confessions Tour”. The first performance was at the Lawlor Events Center in Reno, Nevada, on June 11, 1986. The song was played thirty-two times with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers providing the backing, with the last performance on the tour being on August 6, 1986 at the Mid-State Fairground in Paso Robles, California. Written by country artists Troy Seals and Donnie Fritts in 1973, ‘We Had It All’ has been covered by almost every country singer that I can think of, and then some. A few memorable versions are; Waylon Jennings from his album “Honky Tonk Heroes” (1973), Dobie Gray, “Drift Away” (1973), Rita Coolidge, “Fall Into Spring” (1974), Dylan’s longtime sidekick Bobby Neuwirth on his album “Bob euwirth” (1974) and Willie Nelson on “Take It To The Limit” (1983).
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We Just Disagree A member of the prominent Seals family of musicians that includes Jim Seals (Seals and Crofts), Dan Seals (England Dan & John Ford Coley) and Brady Seals (Little Texas and Hot Apple Pie), Troy Seals is a Nashville session guitarist and country songwriter who has also released a couple of albums in his own name. Donnie Fritts, one of the unsung architects of the “Muscle Shoals Sound”, who later forsook Alabama for Nashville, is both a session player and songwriter. He met the fledgling Kris Kristofferson in 1967 and soon joined his band, spending more than twenty years on the road as Kristofferson’s keyboard player. In what must have been a bit of a “jobs for the boys” move, Kristofferson got Fritts a walk-on part as “Beaver” in the film “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” since which time he has appeared in more than ten of Kristofferson’s films, including “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” and “A Star Is Born”. We Just Disagree (Jim Krueger) Played at ten shows in 1980 and six more in ’81, Jim Krueger’s ‘We Just Disagree’ made its debut appearance on November 17, 1980, at the Fox Warfield Theater in San Francisco. The final performance was at the Holiday Star Music Theater in Merrillville, Indiana, on October 19, 1981. “So let’s leave it alone, ’cause we can’t see eye to eye / There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys / There’s only you and me and we just disagree”. ‘We Just Disagree’ was released as a single by ex-Traffic guitarist Dave Mason. Krueger, who played second guitar in Mason’s later bands, wrote the song especially for Mason, who took it to Number Twelve on the US singles Chart in 1977. Krueger released the song himself on his 1978 album “Sweet Salvation” (Columbia 35295). We Three (My Echo, My Shadow And Me) (Robertson / Mysels / Cogan) Dylan first ran through this old Ink Spots number in 1984 while rehearsing in his home studio in Malibu, California (March 21, 1984). The rehearsals were for the Late Night with David Letterman show, but the song was not performed there. It received its first concert outing at the Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Japan on March 10, 1986, supposedly in response to a request from “a very special person”. ‘We Three’ was performed again at Madison Square Garden on July 17, 1986 before being played for the final time in Carlsbad, California on August 6, 1988, when it was played as a first encore. This tender performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Written by Dick Robertson, Sammy Mysels and Nelson Cogan, ‘We Three (My Echo, My Shadow And Me)’ has been recorded by a number of artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and most notable of all The Ink Spots, for whom it was a Number One hit.
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Weary Blues From Waitin’ Bob Dylan played The Ink Spots’ 1940 Decca recording of the song on show thirty-three of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “Countdown”.
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Weary Blues From Waitin’ (Hank Williams) The first occurrence of this Hank Williams number was on May 3-4, 1965 in a room at the Savoy Hotel in London, England. This clip is available as an outtake from the film “Dont Look Back”. The song made an under-rehearsed and slightly ragged one-off concert appearance on the 1976 Rolling Thunder Revue tour when it was sung as a duet with Bobby Neuwirth at the Civic Center in Lakeland, Florida on April 18, 1976. ‘Weary Blues From Waitin’’ was originally recorded by Hank Williams, probably in Castle Studio in Nashville in late 1951. The song was made as a demo for Ray Price who released it on the Columbia label in October, 1951 (Columbia 4 20883). After Williams’ death on January 1, 1953, MGM, desperate for fresh material, overdubbed backing tracks onto several of his recent, unreleased vocal recordings and quickly put them out as singles. The first of these, ‘Weary Blues From Waitin’’ (MGM 11574, 1953), was a hit, reaching Number Seven on the Country Chart, but subsequent releases proved rather less successful. For further information about Hank Williams, see the entry for ‘Honky Tonk Blues’. Weeping Willow (Blind Boy Fuller) This song, which was performed as a delightful one-off at Dylan’s November 17, 1993 second New York Supper Club show, can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Packed to the brim with raw power and passion, this is sadly Dylan’s only performance of Blind Boy Fuller’s sad lament. This is one of the best performances from the four Supper Club shows and thankfully a wonderful quality line recording is in circulation among collectors. Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen, July 10, 1907 - February 13, 1941) was one of the most popular exponents of the Carolina / Piedmont blues style. After being spotted by James Baxter Longby, a young white Burlington record store manager and talent scout, Fuller was signed to the ARC label, and over the next five years (1935 - 1940) he recorded 135 songs for several record companies.
Setlist showing ‘Weeping Willow’
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West LA Fadeaway Fuller recorded solo as well as with Bull City Red (a long forgotten washboard player whose real name was George Washington), Floyd Council and Sonny Terry. As well as playing somber Piedmont blues, Fuller’s repertoire also included a number of popular suggestive hokum songs such as ‘I Want Some Of Your Pie’, ‘Truckin’ My Blues Away’ and ‘Get Your Yas Yas Out’. Fuller’s last two recording sessions took place in New York City during 1940 and one of these sessions produced what is probably his best remembered song, the up-tempo ‘Step It Up and Go’ (released by Dylan on his 1992 album “Good As I Been To You”). Fuller recorded ‘Weeping Willow’ at a New York session on July 14, 1937 and the song can be found on a number of CD albums including “Blind Boy Fuller: The Complete Recorded Works, Volume 3” (Document) and “Truckin’ My Blues Away” (Yazoo 1060).
West LA Fadeaway (Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia) This Hunter / Garcia number got its first outing at the Perth Entertainment Centre in Perth, Western Australia on March 18, 1992. The song was played again in Luleå, Sweden on June 26, 1992 at the opening concert on Dylan’s European summer festivals tour. This was an acoustic performance featuring recently recruited band member Bucky Baxter on dobro. The song reappeared in Dylan’s sets after the death of Jerry Garcia on August 9, 1995. Dylan’s first concert performance after Garcia’s passing was at The Edge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on September 23, 1995, and, whilst I might be reading too much into that night’s set list, it does seem to have a theme. Dylan opened the concert with ‘Real Real Gone’, which was immediately followed by the Garcia / Hunter / Dawson song ‘Friend Of The Devil’. Later in the set, which also featured the staple Robert Hunter song ‘Silvio’, Dylan performed ‘West L.A. Fadeaway’ directly after singing the lines “I know that lucky old sun, has nothin’ to do / But roll around heaven all day” (‘That Lucky Old Sun’). ‘West L.A. Fadeaway’ made five further electric band appearances during this tour and was played again when Dylan toured in 1999 with “Phil Lesh and Friends” and again when he sat in on several Dead concert sets in 2003. Bob Dylan’s extended, rocking, and slightly edgy performance from The Edge, Fort Lauderdale, Florida (September 23, 1995) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Dylan would have had several opportunities to hear the Dead play their newly-minted song live when they toured together in 1987. ‘West L.A. Fadeaway’ was released on the Grateful Dead album “In The Dark” (Arista Records AL8452, July 6, 1987).
West Memphis (Traditional) This song was recorded on July 17, 1963 by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis home of David Whitaker. Only five of the seventeen songs performed there are in general
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West Texas circulation and then only as poor quality fragments. Due to ‘West Memphis’ being one of the uncirculated songs I am unable to comment further. See Appendix 1:53 for information about this session.
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West Texas (Traditional) Bob Dylan’s only known performance of this song was in October 1962 at the Gaslight Café, New York. This powerful rendition received an official release of sorts when it was included on the CD “Live At The Gaslight 1962” (Columbia/Legacy A 96016, USA). This CD, released in 2005, was originally distributed through an exclusive eighteen months deal with Starbucks in the USA, after which it was made available through retail stores in North America only. ‘West Texas’ is the final track on the CD and, probably due to a lack of tape at the time of the recording, the song ends extremely abruptly. See Appendix 1:31 for further information. This song may qualify as a Dylan composition. I certainly cannot pin it down to any one source, traditional or otherwise. Some chroniclers of Dylan’s work list this as Willie Reed’s 1928 song ‘Texas Blues’, which it is not. The two songs do, however, share a couple of lines. Willie Reed ‘Texas Blues’: “I’m going out in West Texas, where I can hear the wild ox moan” and “Then I’m comin’ back to Dallas, gonna run these women wild”. These two lines are quite close to Dylan’s: “I’m going down to West Texas, behind the Louisianan line” and “If you ever go to Dallas, take the right-hand road”. Having said that, a similar line can be found in Big Bill Broonzy’s ‘Key To The Highway’: “I’m goin’ to West Texas / I’m goin’ down behind the farm”. Mance Lipscomb, Sleepy John Estes, Marshall Owens and others have also been mentioned as possible candidates for Dylan’s inspiration. One writer, with either a rather vivid imagination, or just poor hearing, even links the song to Texas Alexander’s ‘Work Ox Blues’. The probable truth is that Dylan has borrowed a number of stock blues lines for this one, including the popular “You never miss your water ’til the well runs dry”, and melded them into an archetypal blues.
What Did The Deep Sea Say? (Traditional) This song was recorded on July 17, 1963 by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis home of David Whitaker. Only five of the seventeen songs performed there are in general
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What’d I Say circulation and then only as poor quality fragments. ‘What Did The Deep Sea Say?’ is one of the uncirculated songs. See Appendix 1:53 for further information about this session. Woody Guthrie recorded this traditional song on April 25, 1944 during what have become known as “The Asch Recordings”. Recorded in 1944 and ’45, these sessions are among the most important of Guthrie’s career. This song can now be found on numerous Woody Guthrie compilation albums including the Smithsonian / Folkways release “Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs”. For information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’.
What’d I Say (Ray Charles) This Ray Charles classic song probably should not qualify for inclusion here as it was performed only as part of a rehearsal for the Farm Aid fund-raising event. However, some of this rehearsal performance, with Dylan backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, was filmed and broadcast on ABC television on their “20/20” programme. The rehearsal took place on September 19, 1985. This song was also sound-checked on October 13, 1988 before the concert at The Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania but was not played at the show. Ray Charles improvised this number at a dance after he had supposedly played every song he knew, but contractually still had twelve minutes left to play. The show was recorded by Atlanta radio station WAOK for a live album, “Ray Charles In Person”. Despite its length – six-and-half minutes – the station thought the song was something special and put it onto their “heavy rotation” list. Listeners loved ‘What’d I Say’, but executives at Atlantic Records felt it was both “too long” and “too risqué”. To remedy the problem, Atlantic cut the song in half, making sure that the raunchy groaning call-and-response section was at the beginning of the B-side. The single (Atlantic 2031), which was released in the spring of 1959, went to Number One on the Billboard R&B Chart and to Number Six on the Pop Chart. It was Ray Charles’ first Top Ten pop hit.
When Did You Leave Heaven? (Walter Bullock / Richard Whiling) Bob Dylan recorded this clichéd tune at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California in April 1987. The song was released on the “Down In The Groove” album (see Appendix 1:80 for further details). What possessed Dylan to record something as banal as ‘When Did You Leave Heaven?’ is one of life’s little mysteries. I am not sure if this is the same angel that was flying too close to the ground in 1983, or if another one had gone AWOL from paradise. At any rate, I wish she had not flown in Dylan’s direction. As with much of the material released on “Down In The Groove” Dylan’s choice of ‘When Did You Leave Heaven?’ smacks of a man desperate for a direction home.
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When First Unto This Country The song was played in concert eight times during Dylan’s 1989 touring exploits. Two of these performances were acoustic, whilst the other six were electric. The song was played twice in 1990 and twice more in ’91 with the final performance being in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on August 21, 1991.
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Bob Dylan’s performances from London, England (June 8, 1989) and Saratoga Springs, New York (July 26, 1989) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”, whilst the performance from the Santa Barbara County Bowl, California (September 5, 1989) is available on the CD “20/20 Vision”. All of these outings, which feature nice guitar work and harp, are greatly preferable to the studio recording. Written by Walter Bullock and Richard Whiling, the Oscar-nominated ‘When Did You Leave Heaven?’, was sung by Tony Martin in the 1936 musical “Sing, Baby, Sing”.
When First Unto This Country (Traditional) When first unto this country, A stranger I came, I courted a fair maid, And Nancy was her name. Dylan has played this song twice in concert. The first rendition, a full band performance, was at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk, Virginia on November 7, 1989. The second performance, a superb acoustic duo with guitarist John Jackson, came eighteen months later on June 12, 1991 in Budapest, Hungary. The Budapest rendition can be found on the bootleg CDs “Golden Vanity” and “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. This latter CD also contains the performance from Norfolk, Virginia. This number should not be confused with the Oscar Brand recording of the children’s song ‘When I First Came To This Land’, nor should it be confused with Phil Ochs’ song ‘When I First Came To This Country’, which has completely different and sardonic lyrics. Although there are those who believe that the origins of this tale of unrequited love are in Texas, the song could also have begun life somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains. John and Alan Lomax first collected the song in 1935 from Foy and Mrs. Gant in Austin, Texas
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White Dove and the lyrics were included in the book “Our Singing Country” (published 1935). Words and music for the song were included in “Sing Out! Reprints” (1959). The tale tells of an immigrant who courted, without success, a fair maid by the name of Nancy. He steals a “fine stallion from Colonel Charles Grey” (Dylan sings Captain Grey), is caught by the sheriff’s men and imprisoned in the penitentiary where he is beaten, his head is shaved, and he is fed on dry beans. The song has been performed and recorded by numerous artists, the most well known being The New Lost City Ramblers who included it on their 1959 album “The ew Lost City Ramblers Vol. 2”. Their live performance recorded that same year at the Newport Folk Festival was released on “Folk Festival At ewport, Vol. 2” (1959). Ian & Sylvia released the song on their 1962 eponymous Vanguard album and John Koerner, with Tony Glover contributing harp, included it on “Some American Folk Songs Like They Used To”(1974). Happy Traum released the song on his 1983 album “Buckets Of Songs” and it is also included on the expanded version of Joan Baez’s “In Concert, Part Two”. It has been written elsewhere that Dylan based his 1962 song ‘Liverpool Gal’ on ‘When First Unto This Country’. Although Dylan’s ‘Liverpool Gal’ was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Dave Whitaker on July 17, 1963, this recording is not in circulation. This song does, however, exist as a manuscript and apart from the lines “When first I came to London town / A stranger I did come”, the lyrics bear no resemblance to ‘When I First Unto This Country’. Also, it has been suggested that the melody for ‘Liverpool Gal’ might be based upon ‘The Lakes of Pontchartrain’ or another related tune.
White Dove (Carter Stanley) After being sound-checked twice on December 1 and twice more on December 2, ‘White Dove’ was debuted at the show at the Roxy in Atlanta, Georgia on the evening of December 2, 1997. The song got another half-a-dozen outings during ’97 and was also played at three concerts in 1998 and once more in 2000 at the Five Seasons Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The tender performance from New York City (December 8, 1997) can be found in excellent audio quality on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 19882000”. This mournful song about a life of sorrow being lived by a son after the loss of both parents was first recorded by the Stanley Brothers in 1949 and released the same year as a single (‘White Dove’ backed with ‘Gathering Flowers For The Master’s Bouquet’ (Columbia 20577)). Over the years ‘White Dove’ has become one of the Stanley Brothers’ most recognizable songs and one that has been both re-recorded and re-released innumerable times, including as an EP in 1958, a second single release in 1959, and on the album “Hymns And Sacred Songs”, also in 1959.
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Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet? A flood of albums, almost all of them containing ‘White Dove’, arrived during the 1970s including “Ralph Stanley And The Clinch Mountain Boys” (1971), “Sing Gospel Echoes Of The Stanley Brother” (1973), Ralph Stanley & Guests “Live At McClure” (1976) and a number of greatest hits releases.
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The song has also been recorded by, amongst others, the Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Martin, Johnnie & Jack and Jerry Garcia. Bob Dylan played The Stanley Brothers’ 1949 recording of ‘White Dove’ on show twentytwo of Season Two of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme. The theme of the show was “More Birds”. For further biographical information about the Stanley Brothers, see the entry for ‘I Am The Man, Thomas’. Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet? (Traditional) This song, which is not in circulation among collectors, was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twentyseven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, this song is not included on the circulating tapes. The complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this tape see Appendix 1:3. Scholars trace ‘Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet’ to Scotland and the 1790s. It is listed as being part of the Child Ballad number 76 family of songs which include ‘Lass Of Loch Royal (Lochroyan)’, ‘Truly Understand’, ‘Little Red Shoes’, ‘Storms Are On The Ocean’, ‘Blue-Eyed Boy’, ‘Single Girl, Married Girl’, ‘True Lover’s Farewell’, ‘Who’s Gonna Be Your Man?’ and ‘He’s Gone Away’. The song was published in Carl Sandburg’s book “American Songbag” (Harcourt, 1928) under the title of ‘Who Will Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?’. Lee Charles’ version of the song was included on the 1958 album “Our Singing Heritage Vol. 1” (Elektra EKL 151). This outstanding album also contains ‘House Carpenter’, ‘Lakes Of Ponchartrain’, ‘Froggie Went A-Courting’, ‘John Riley’ and ‘Love Henry’. Regardless of this song’s ancestry, Dylan would almost certainly have learned it from Woody Guthrie, who recorded the song during his April 19, 1944 Asch Recordings Session. The song is currently available on a number of Guthrie compilation albums including “Asch Recordings Vol. 2: Muleskinner Blues”. For information about Woody Guthrie, see the entry for ‘1913 Massacre’. Why Do I Have To Choose? (Willie Nelson) Bob Dylan seems to have been on a bit of a Willie Nelson kick in the mid-1980s. He had recorded Nelson’s ‘Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground’ in 1983 at the “Infidels” album sessions and began performing Why Do I Have To Choose?’ in concert in 1984.
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Wichita (Going To Louisiana) This Willie Nelson song was rehearsed in May 1984 in Verona, Italy, before the ’84 summer tour of Europe. The song was played eight times on that tour beginning in Basel, Switzerland on June 2, and receiving its last outing in Milan, Italy on June 24, 1984. This song was usually performed as an encore and Carlos Santana joined Mick Taylor on guitar on all of the outings. Written by Willie Nelson, ‘Why Do I Have To Choose?’ was released on Nelson’s 1983 Columbia Records’ album “Take It To The Limit”. The song was also issued as a single which reached the Number Three slot on the Country Chart. Wichita (Going To Louisiana) (Traditional) The first known performance of this song was in early 1962 at the New York apartment of radio show host Cynthia Gooding. This song was also recorded on April 25, 1962 during the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album sessions. Both these recordings circulate among collectors. See Appendices 1:20 & 1:22 for further information. This number, which is usually listed as being traditional, but should possibly be considered as a Dylan composition, should not be confused with the Big Joe Williams song ‘Wichita’ on which Dylan played harmonica during the March ’62 Victoria Spivey recording session. This song, which Dylan appears to have partly borrowed from Sleepy John Estes, is nevertheless a real vehicle for his harmonica playing. Dylan’s opening verse closely follows Estes’ ‘Special Agent (Railroad Police Blues)’, a song written by Estes that supposedly chronicles his attempt to make it to a recording session by “freighthopping” a train to Ripley. Estes: Sleepy John Estes “Now I left for Ripley, the weather was kind of cool / Now when I left for Ripley, the weather was the worst kind of cool / Say boy, you’all be careful, or probably you might catch the flu”.
While riding the train, Estes finds himself in trouble with a “special agent” or railroad policeman. In ‘Wichita (Going To Louisiana)’ Dylan sings: “When I left Wichita, the weather was a-killing me / When I left Wichita, the weather was a-killing me / Well, Papa said son, watch out you might catch that ol’ TB.” The freighthopper in Dylan’s song also encounters problems on the train, but in the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” version, the man in question is the “operator”.
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Wild & Wicked World After the opening verse of the song Dylan moves away completely from Estes’ lyrics while still keeping to the basic theme of the song. Estes recorded ‘Special Agent (Railroad Police Blues)’in New York City on April 22, 1938 and the song was released as a single on Decca 7491.
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Wild & Wicked World (Unknown) This song was recorded at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California, in May 1986 during the “Knocked Out Loaded” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:79. This song is often listed as being by J. D. Miller and George Sherry. It is, however, most likely to be the 1959 Johnnie and Jack recording (RCA Victor 47-7545).
Wild Mountain Thyme (Traditional, adapted Francis McPeake) Oh, the summer time is coming, And the leaves are sweetly blooming, And the wild mountain thyme, Blooms around the purple heather, Will you go, lassie go? The first known performance of this song was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twenty-fivesong recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors. For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. Dylan has performed the song numerous times since May ’61, the first and most noteworthy being at the Isle of Wight pop festival (August 31, 1969). The song appeared again at several shows during both legs of the Rolling Thunder tour (1975 - ’76) and was then played during the 1981 “Shot Of Love” album session. The final appearance for ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ was at the Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 22, 1988. This gorgeous concert performance can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’, also known as ‘Will You Go Lassie, Go’, is based on a traditional Scottish folk song. It was first recorded in 1957 by Ulster (Ireland) native Francis McPeake (of the McPeake Family) and has been attributed to him, though it is generally described as a variant of ‘The Braes Of Balquhidder’ by Scotsman, Robert Tannahill. The US copyright (1962 & 1967) is attributed to E.F.D.S.S. Publications, whilst in the UK, MCPS list the song as McPeake.
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Wildwood Flower Wildwood Flower (Irving / Webster) I’ll twine ‘mid the ringlets of my raven black hair, The lilies so pale and the roses so fair, The myrtle so bright with an emerald hue, And the pale aronatus with eyes of bright blue. Driven mainly by bass guitar and Bob Dylan’s autoharp playing, this bouncy little number forms part of the recordings that Dylan made in 1967 while he was living in the upper New York State town of Woodstock. This extensive set of recordings, which were made in the basement of Big Pink, later became known as the Basement Tapes (see Appendix 1:60 for further information). Collected and recorded by the Carter Family, ‘Wildwood Flower’ features lead vocals from A.P Carter’s wife and autoharpist, Sara Carter. Recorded on May 10, 1928 in Camden, New Jersey, the song sold around one million copies between 1928 and 1929 and reached Number Three on the Chart. It also became one of the Carter Family’s most memorable songs. The Carter Family, who auditioned for Victor Records legendary A&R man Ralph Peer, were signed to the label in 1928 and over the next seven years Victor recorded the majority of the group’s most famous numbers including the hits ‘Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow’ (1928), ‘Wildwood Flower’ (1928) and ‘Keep On The Sunny Side’ (1929). However, the origins of ‘Wildwood Flower’ predate the Carter Family’s recording by nearly seventy years. The song, the original title of which was ‘I’ll Twine ‘Mid The Ringlets’, was written by Maud Irving (who wrote the words) and Joseph Philbrick Webster (who wrote the music in 1860). Maybelle Carter told interviewer Dorothy Horstman: “The first time I heard this song, I was just a kid. My mother sang it and her mother sang it. It has been handed down for years and years. It’s the most popular song we ever recorded, and there’s hardly a country group who doesn’t use this song”. Without doubt Bob Dylan learned his version from the original Carter Family recording which he played on programme eleven of Season One of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” show. The theme of the show was “Flowers”. Dylan said of the Carter Family: “[They were] the most influential group in country music history”.
Will The Circle Be Unbroken? (By and By) (Traditional, collected by A P. Carter) The first known performance of this song was recorded by Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Bonnie Beecher in May 1961. The song was committed to tape during one of Dylan’s visits to Minneapolis from his then home in New York City. The twenty-fivesong recording, often known as the “Minnesota Party Tape”, circulates among collectors.
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Willie And The Hand Jive For further details about this recording see Appendix 1:8. Although this is Dylan’s only known 1960s performance of ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken?’ there is evidence, in the shape of written set lists, which indicates that Dylan was probably performing this song around the Village in the summer of ’61.
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The next Dylan associated recording we have of this song is the version released on Jack Elliott’s 1964 eponymous album (Vanguard VSD 79151) on which Dylan plays harmonica under the pseudonym Tedham Porterhouse. ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken?’ was also played at the S.N.A.C.K. (“Students need Athletic and Cultural Kicks”) Benefit concert at the Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco on March 23, 1975. The song featured Bob Dylan (vocal and guitar) and Neil Young (vocal). Unfortunately, Dylan’s microphone was not working and his vocal is therefore almost inaudible. The concert was broadcast by K101-FM radio in San Francisco and has, therefore, appeared on numerous bootlegs. ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken?’ first appeared in 1910 in the hymnal “Alexander’s Gospel Songs, No. 2”. Although most historians believe that this piece was written as a hymn in 1907 by Charles H. Gabriel (music) and Ruth Ada Habershon (lyrics) there are those who think it might originate from an even earlier piece. The song also occurs as ‘May The Circle Be Unbroken’ or ‘Can The Circle Be Unbroken’. The Carter Family collected the song in the late 1920s and A. P. Carter adapted it by rewriting some of the words and by using the same melody for the verses and choruses. The Carter Family recorded ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken? (By And By)’ on May 27, 1928, in Camden, New Jersey. This extremely productive session produced twelve songs including ‘Keep On The Sunny Side’ and ‘Wildwood Flower’.
Willie And The Hand Jive (Johnny Otis) This song was played at the Lone Star Café in New York City on February 16, 1983. The occasion was Dylan’s guest appearance at a Rick Danko / Levon Helm gig. Dylan participates by playing guitar only. Bob Dylan then recorded this song at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California on April 3, 1987. The song was recorded for possible inclusion on the “Down In The Groove”
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Willin’ album but was not released on the final product. This recording does, however, circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:80 for further details). The Hand Jive, a 1950s dance, was popularized by Johnny Otis’ 1958 hit ‘Willie And The Hand Jive’. The multi-talented bandleader and hipster Johnny Otis regularly placed singles near the top of the R&B Charts. He had ten Top Ten records on the R&B singles charts in 1950 alone. Yet the only crossover hit of his career came with the salty R&B novelty number ‘Willie And The Hand Jive’ (Capitol F3966). The song became popular again in 1974 when Eric Clapton’s version reached the Top Forty. Willin’ (Lowell George) Bob Dylan played this Lowell George number at half-a-dozen concerts in 1990 and once more in 1991, 1992 and 1995. The final performance of the song (so far) was at The Edge in Fort Lauderdale Florida, on September 23, 1995. This rather nice acoustic rendition can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Lowell George (April 13, 1945 - June 29, 1979) is best known for his time as the lead vocalist with the 1970s American rock band Little Feat. He began his career with LA bands The Factory and The Standells before spending several months in late 1968 and early 1969 as a member of the Mothers of Invention. According to George, who can be heard on the album “Weasels Ripped My Flesh”, he was asked to leave the band after suggesting they might record his truck-driving song ‘Willin’’, which contained references to drugs: “And if you give me weed, whites, and wine / and you show me a sign / I’ll be willin’ to be movin’”. It seems that Zappa, who was a strict opponent of illicit drugs and would not tolerate their use within his presence, decided that Lowell George was a wild and undesirable influence on his band. After leaving the Mothers George formed Little Feat, and in January 1971 the band released ‘Willin’’ on their eponymous debut album. Best remembered for his time with Little Feat, his exceptional ability on the slide guitar, and his distinctive and soulful voice, George died in a hotel room of a massive heart attack while on tour in Arlington, Virginia. He was thirty-four years of age. Wop De Alano (Traditional) This song, which is not in circulation among collectors, was captured on tape at the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment of Karen Wallace. Although poor quality extracts of the twentyseven-song tape, which was made in May 1960, circulate among collectors, this song is not included on the tapes. The complete tape remains in the possession of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. For further details regarding this tape see Appendix 1:3. I have to say that I am not familiar with this song title, which is sometimes listed as ‘Wop Da Alano’ and I have not been able to uncover its origins.
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Without Love (There Is othing) Without Love (There Is othing) (Clyde McPhatter)
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This song was recorded at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California, at several sessions in April and May 1986 during the recording of the “Knocked Out Loaded” album. The track was not released on the resulting album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:79). Although we cannot be certain, this song is probably Clyde McPhatter’s 1957 Atlantic hit ‘Without Love (There Is othing)’(Atlantic 1117). This single reached Number Four on the R&B Chart and Number Nineteen on the Billboard Pop Chart.
World Gone Wrong (Walter Jacobs) This song was recorded, along with ‘Blood In My Eyes’ (another number associated with the Mississippi Sheiks), in May 1993 and released on Bob Dylan’s album “World Gone Wrong”. See Appendix 1:77 for further details about this recording session. The Mississippi Sheiks, pronounced Mississippi “Shakes”, were a popular guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s and, although various line-ups existed, they consisted mainly of members of the Chatmon family. When the group first recorded in 1930, the line-up was Armenter Chatmon (more usually know as Bo Carter), Lonnie Chatmon, Sam Chatmon and Walter Vinson (also known as Walter Jacobs). The original group was active between 1930 and 1935, during which time they recorded over seventy songs. As with many of the Mississippi Sheiks’ songs, writing credits for ‘The World Is Going Wrong’ (recorded October 24, 1931), are both contradictory and confusing. Often credited to Lonnie Chatman, the official copyright, at least in the UK, appears to be in Walter Jacobs’ (a.k.a Walter Vinson) name. ‘The World Is Going Wrong’ can be found on several compilation CDs including “Mississippi Sheiks Vol. 2 (1930 - 1931)” (Document), “Mississippi Sheiks: The Essential” (Classic Blues) and “Stop And Listen” (Yazoo). For further biographical information about the Mississippi Sheiks see the entries for ‘Blood In My Eyes’ and ‘Sitting On Top Of The World’. World Of Fools (David Bromberg) ‘World Of Fools’ was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. It seems that Dylan was eager to record various David Bromberg songs and is reported to have repeatedly asked the question of Bromberg: “What about that one of yours..?” This
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Worried Blues song is an outtake that Bromberg has performed in concert. For information about David Bromberg, see the entry for ‘Sloppy Drunk’.
Worried Blues (Traditional, collected by Hally Wood) Dylan began playing this song in late 1961 and probably performed it throughout the first half of 1962. The only live recording to circulate, however, was made at the home of Eve and Mac McKenzie in New York City, on November 23, 1961 and even then, this is only fragmentary (see Appendices 1:16 & 1:25).‘Worried Blues’ was also recorded during the sessions for the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album but the song was not released on the final product. It did, however, receive an official release when it was included in 1991 on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382). It should be quite simple to establish Bob Dylan’s source for this song. It has been written elsewhere, including on bobdylan.com, that he took the song from little-known folk singer, Hally Wood. I cannot, however, find any information to substantiate this claim. When released in 1991, the song was copyrighted by Dylan’s office as “traditional arranged Bob Dylan”, so no mention of Hally Wood there. In the booklet notes which accompany the “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” John Bauldie wrote: “The song’s origins and where he heard it are uncertain”. In the same set of notes, John B. Way suggests that Dylan’s fingerpicking guitar style may owe something to Elizabeth Cotten. Harriet “Hally” Elizabeth Wood was born on September 29, 1922 in Washington, D.C. She grew up in a musical family and was a classically trained pianist and singer. Hally became extremely interested in folk music while attending the University of Texas in the early 1940s where she met and married John Henry Faulk. Faulk’s name will be familiar to Dylan enthusiasts as he was the host of the 1963 “Westinghouse” television special “Folk Songs And More Folk Songs” on which Dylan appeared.
Harriet “Hally” Elizabeth Wood
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As a musicologist, Wood collaborated with Mike Seeger, Pete Seeger and Jean Ritchie, and corresponded regularly with Woody Guthrie. She transcribed a number of field recordings for Alan Lomax, including songs by Led Belly and Guthrie. Wood only made two solo albums of songs, both of which were recorded in the early 1950s. The first LP, “Hally Wood Sings Texas Folksongs”, was released by the tiny Stinson Records label and, search as I might, I have not been able to find a copy of the album, or even locate a track listing. Her second album, “Oh Lovely Appearance Of Death” (EKL 10, 1953) was on the Elektra label and therefore easier to track down. This album
Would You Lay With Me (In a Field Of Stone) does not, however, contain ‘Worried Blues’. As a solo performer, Wood also features on a couple of compilations such as the 1960 various artists album “Hootenanny At Carnegie Hall” (Folkways Records). She also played in a group called The Skifflers which included Lee Charles (Leon Bibb), Milt Okun and Libby Knight. They recorded several LPs in the late 1950s, including the forgettable “Goin’ Down To Town” (Epic LC 3391). Most of the music recorded by The Skifflers was traditional and again there is no sign of ‘Worried Blues’.
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It would appear then that ‘Worried Blues’ was either recorded on that elusive first Hally Wood album or Dylan heard it live via Wood, or possibly through Alan Lomax. If not, then many other artists have recorded this song, especially in the early 1960s. Dylan and Happy Traum sing more or less the same verses but in a different order. However, Traum’s recording appears to be later than Dylan’s. Frank Hutchison, who is sometimes credited as being a possible source for Dylan’s version is an unlikely candidate. Although he recorded the song as early as 1927, the lyrics are mostly different with only the repeated lines “I got those worried blues” matching Dylan’s recording. Doc Watson and Mike Seeger have both recorded versions (credited trad.) that are, I think, far enough removed from Dylan’s rendition so as not to be in the running. Lightin’ Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James have all recorded songs entitled ‘Worried Blues’, but all of these songs were written by the artists in question and all of them are completely different songs. Whilst Led Belly’s 1940 recording (credited Leadbetter) is somewhat different from Dylan’s, it might be Hally’s source, if indeed Hally ever recorded the song. I say this only because Hally spent quite some time transcribing many of Led Belly’s songs for musicologist and song collector Alan Lomax, and would therefore probably have had the opportunity to hear this version. Would You Lay With Me (In a Field Of Stone) (David Allan Coe) This David Allan Coe song was recorded by Bob Dylan during the aborted “Good As I Been To You” album sessions which took place at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago in June 1992 with David Bromberg producing. This recording is not in circulation among collectors. Until quite recently, we only had details of twelve of the songs attempted at these sessions. Information outlining a further eighteen of around thirty songs recorded at Acme emerged in Michael Gray’s “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” in 2006, some fourteen years after the sessions took place. See Appendix 1:75 for further information about this session. ‘Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)’ was written by country music artist David Allan Coe in 1955. The song has been recorded by, among others, Tanya Tucker, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.
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Yesterday
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Yesterday (Lennon / McCartney) Dylan recorded this Beatles song at the first “ew Morning” album session on May 1, 1970. See Appendix 1:68 for details about this session. Although this slightly out of tune rendition is sung as only Bob Dylan could, he does seem to be making a real effort on this acoustic Beatles’ tale of woe. As a tribute to the Mop Tops and to acknowledge the fact that he was playing in their hometown, Dylan played a snatch of the Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ at his show at the Liverpool Empire, June 26, 1996. ‘Yesterday’, which was originally recorded by The Beatles for their 1965 album “Help!”, was also released as a single and included on an EP in the UK. With more than three thousand recorded cover versions, the “Guinness Book of Records” lists this as the most covered song ever. Ironically, Dylan is sometimes quoted as having a dislike for the song. He once said: “If you go into the Library of Congress, you can find a lot better than that. There are millions of songs like ‘Michelle’ and ‘Yesterday’ written in Tin Pan Alley”. Dylan is of course quite right. However, as with many of his statements he fails to get his point across in the desired way. In my view, Dylan is not criticizing the Beatles’ songwriting prowess here, but rather extolling the sheer depth and beauty of many of the traditional folk songs to be found in the Library of Congress, and also pointing out that there is quality in abundance in the often maligned professionally written songs of Tin Pan Alley.
You Are My Sunshine (Jimmie Davis / Charles Mitchell) Bob Dylan recorded this song on February 18, 1969 during one of the recording sessions for the “ashville Skyline” album (see Appendix 1:61 for further information). Johnny Cash was present throughout this session and the songs, many of which come from Cash’s repertoire, are all performed as duets. This recording was not released on the final album but it does circulate among collectors. The song is performed to a familiar Cash beat with Johnny taking the lead vocal and Dylan joining him on the choruses.
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You Belong To Me As stated in my introduction to this book, songs used to warm up the band or general studio doodles are not included in this encyclopaedia. However, it seems quite evident that most of the songs at this session were potentially being considered for release, perhaps not as part of “ashville Skyline”, but as some future product. A feasibility study, but in studio time!
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Dylan played Jimmie Davis’ recording of this song on the opening night of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” programme (May 3, 2006). The theme of the show was “Weather”. Although this number was made internationally famous by Jimmie Davis, he was not the first artist to release the song. Two versions of ‘You Are My Sunshine’ were recorded and released prior to Davis’ record. The first, which was by the Atlanta group The Pine Ridge Boys, was released by Bluebird on August 22, 1939. The second recording, by the Rice Brothers Gang, was released less than a month later by Decca (September 13, 1939). Songwriter and Country star Jimmie Davis was a household name in Shreveport, LA. Starting in 1944 he served two separate terms as Governor of the state of Louisiana, but before that he recorded his version of ‘You Are My Sunshine’ for Decca Records. The song was released in March 1940 and went on to be a million-seller. Gene Autry and Bing Crosby were among the first of more than 350 artists to cover the song, which was eventually translated into more than thirty languages. Although some of the early releases of the song are credited to Paul Rice (of the Rice Brothers Gang), all other releases credit Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell as being the songwriters. According to many sources, Davis bought the rights to the song from Paul Rice and put his own name to it; a practice not uncommon in the pre-World War II music business.
You Belong To Me (Pee Wee King / Redd Stewart / Chilton Price) Bob Dylan recorded this song in the summer of 1992 at the “Good As I Been To You” album sessions. It is not clear, however, if the song was intended for inclusion on the album or if it was recorded for some other purpose. As with all of the songs recorded at these sessions, this is a solo acoustic performance. Although the song was not released on “Good As I Been To You”, it was featured in the film “Natural Born Killers” and is included on the soundtrack album (United Artists ITSC-92460, 1994). See Appendix 1:76 for further details about this recording session.
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You Can’t Judge a Book By The Cover This track, incorrectly identified on the sleeve as ‘If You Belonged To Me’ (a Traveling Wilburys song) was released in 2008 on the CD bootleg “GBS 4 – Fourth Time Around”. Although the 1952 copyright credits three names (Chilton Price, Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart), the song was written in the 1940s by Chilton Price, who agreed to a joint copyright with King and Stewart in exchange for their work in promoting the song. Originally released in 1952 by Sue Thompson on Mercury’s country label, the song was covered a matter of weeks later by Patti Page, whose version was also issued by Mercury. This recording remained on the Billboard Chart for twelve weeks, peaking at Number Four. The most popular cover however, also released in 1952, was a version by Jo Stafford (Columbia Records 39811). This recording topped the charts in both the USA and the United Kingdom. It remained on the UK Chart for twenty-four weeks. The song was later recorded by, among others, Gene Vincent, The Duprees, Patsy Cline and Bing Crosby.
You Can’t Judge a Book By The Cover (Ellas McDaniel) This song was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, in June 1987 during the “Down In The Groove” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:80). ‘You Can’t Judge a Book By The Cover’ was a 1962 song written and recorded by Bo Diddley. The song reached Number Forty-Eight on the Pop Chart and Number Twenty-One on the R&B Chart.
You Don’t Know Me (Cindy Walker / Eddy Arnold) This song was first performed by Bob Dylan in Sweden on May 27, 1989 after which it was played a further ten times during the rest of 1989 and 1990. The last appearance on these tours was in Erie, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1991. This slow-paced well sung ballad, which certainly had the most of his audiences perplexed, can be found on a number of bootleg CDs. The performance from Dallas, Texas (August 27, 1989) can be found on the CD “20/20 Vision”, whilst a rendition from Madison, Wisconsin (November 5, 1991) is available on “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Dylan could have got this number from anyone of a dozen artists. The song was co-written by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold in 1955 and the first recording to make the Billboard
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You Wanna Ramble Pop Chart, peaking at Number Fourteen, was released by Jerry Vale. Arnold’s own recording, which came two months later, only scored on the Country Chart, making it to Number Ten. The song was covered by Lenny Welch (1960), Patti Page (1961), The Band (1964) on their album “Crossing The Great Divide”, Elvis Presley (1967), Ray Pennington (1970), Kenny Loggins (1977), Mickey Gilley (1981) and Richard Manuel (1985) on the album “Whispering Pines: Live At The Getaway”. The best-selling version, however, was Ray Charles’ 1962 cover, which reached Number Two on the Billboard Pop Chart.
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Richard Edward “Eddy” Arnold (May 15, 1918 – May 8, 2008) was a country music artist who placed an incredible 146 songs on the Country Charts of which twenty-eight reached the Number One spot. Only George Jones had more hits on the Country Charts. You Wanna Ramble (Herman Parker Jr.) Dylan recorded this song at Skyline Recording Studios, Topanga Park, California on May 5, 1986. The song was released on the album “Knocked Out Loaded” (1986). I have to say that I am confused by the author credits to this song. The credits on Dylan’s “Knocked Out Loaded” album are quite clear– ‘You Wanna Ramble’ is credited to Herman Parker Jr., MAC Music Ltd. The lyrics to the song also appear on bobdylan.com but are not included in the official Bob Dylan lyrics book “Bob Dylan Lyrics 1962 – 2001”. Quite why Dylan credits Parker with the song is something of a mystery to me. The only similarity between Parker’s song, entitled ‘I Wanna Ramble’, as released by Little Junior Parker & His Orchestra (Duke 137, 1955), and Dylan’s song appear to be the repeated lyric “You wanna ramble / To the break of dawn”. For further information about Herman Parker Jr. see the entry for ‘Mystery Train’. You Win Again (Hank Williams) Dylan’s first known performance of this song was in 1967 as part of the “Basement” sessions. The ensemble begins slightly before the tape machine, so we will never get to hear the first line of this rendition. This performance is slightly more R&B than Hank Williams country. See Appendix 1:60 for further information. The song appeared again in 1986 when Dylan took a stab at it during a kick-about in the Marriot Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. Next, Dylan joined the Grateful Dead on stage during their set at the Germain Amphitheater in Columbus, Ohio (August 6, 2003). Dylan then played the song in Manchester, Tennessee, during his cover laden set at the Bonnaroo Music Festival (June 11, 2004). Its final performance (thus far) was at
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You’ll ever Walk Alone Willie Nelson’s 32nd Annual 4th of July Picnic at Fort Worth Stockyards (July 4, 2005). The song was performed acoustically when Willie Nelson joined Dylan on stage at the mid-point of a nine-song set. January 1952 was almost the last hurdle in Hank Williams’ successful but short and tremulous career. Williams and his wife Audrey separated for a final time and he headed back to live with his mother. However, the hits had not slowed for Williams and 1952 saw him have Top Ten Country successes with ‘Honky Tonk Blues’, ‘Half As Much’, ‘Jambalaya’, ‘Settin’ The Woods On Fire’, ‘You Win Again’ and the ironically titled ‘I’ll ever Get Out Of This World Alive’. Shortly after midnight on New Year’s morning 1953, Hank Williams fulfilled his own prophecy when he died in the back seat of a car whilst on his way to play a concert. He was just twenty-nine years of age. For further details about Hank Williams see the entry for ‘Honky Tonk Blues’.
You’ll ever Walk Alone (Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein II) This number was recorded at Skyline Recording Studios in Topanga Park, California, in April and May 1986 during the “Knocked Out Loaded” album sessions. This recording was not released on the final album and does not circulate among collectors (see Appendix 1:79). ‘You’ll ever Walk Alone’ was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical “Carousel”, which opened at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre on April 19, 1945. The show ran for 890 performances, closing on May 24, 1947. Richard Rodgers (1902 – 1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895 – 1960) formed their song writing team when Rodgers’ original song writing partner, Lorenz Hart, died in 1943. Amongst Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most successful musicals are ‘Oklahoma!’, ‘Carousel’, ‘South Pacific’, ‘The King And I’ and ‘The Sound Of Music’. You’re Gonna Quit Me (Blind Arthur Blake) You gonna quit me, baby, good as I been to you, Good as I been to you, Lord, Lord, Good as I been to you. This song was recorded by Dylan in the summer of 1992 and released on his album “Good As I Been To You”. The track was also released on the 2007 3-CD compilation boxed set “Dylan” (Columbia / Legacy 88697 11420-D3). See Appendix 1:76 for further detail about this recording. Dylan opened his concert in Vancouver on August 22, 1993 with this newly minted number and it remained a show opener at all but one of the concerts on the Summer / Fall US tour.
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You’re Gonna Quit Me The song returned in 1999 as the opening number for three Spanish concerts but then disappeared from view.
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The performance, complete with some pleasant harmonica, from Vienna, Virginia (September 8 1993) can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. There has been a great deal of controversy over the song credits, or lack of them, on Bob Dylan’s “Good As I Been To You” album. The officially lodged copyright for Dylan’s recording of ‘You’re Gonna Quit Me’ is “trad, arranged Dylan”. Sometimes listed as traditional, ‘You’re Gonna Quit Me Blues’ (the “blues” is omitted from Dylan’s title) is more usually credited to blues singer Blind Arthur Blake. Blake became a very popular recording artist, cutting about eighty sides for Paramount Records in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was one of the most accomplished blues / ragtime guitarists of his era and his intricate finger-picking style influenced artists like Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Willie McTell and the Reverend Gary Davis. Blake’s best known sides include ‘He’s In The Jailhouse ow’, ‘That Will ever Happen o More’ and the aforementioned ‘You’re Gonna Quit Me Blues’. ‘You’re Gonna Quit Me Blues’, with its repeated line “Good as I been to you”, which Dylan borrowed for the title of his album, was recorded by Blake in Chicago in October 1927. Despite being an extremely popular artist at the time, very little is known about Blake’s life, or for that matter, his death. Arthur Blake is believed to have been born in Jacksonville, Florida, sometime around 1890. Although his birthplace was listed as such by Paramount Records this is not established as fact. There are no details about his death and even his name cannot be confirmed for certain. Most of the details we know about him come from Paramount’s sketchy biography of Blake published in “Book of Blues”. There is only one surviving photograph of him. Blake disappeared from view after 1932 and was thought by some to be dead. However, he is believed to have worked in Atlanta after this date. Bill Williams stated Blake was a heavy drinker and assumed he died of alcohol-related causes. Josh White did not see Blake after about 1930 and believed he was murdered in Chicago. Tampa Red believed he died in St. Louis in the early 1930s. Big Bill Broonzy thought he died sometime around 1932 in Joliet, and Rev. Gary Davis heard that he had been run over by a streetcar in New York City in 1934. There are other sources who believe that Blake was sill alive in the early 1940s and
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You’re o Good that he was killed in a streetcar accident in Atlanta in 1941. However, historians that have checked city records have been unable to find any record of a streetcar death connected to Blake either in New York City or Atlanta. Paramount recording artist Blind Arthur Blake should not be confused with the Bahamian guitarist, Alphonso “Blind Blake” Higgs. Although Higgs did not record until well after Arthur Blake’s death, both artists went under the name Blind Blake, which has caused some confusion during the ensuing years. In fact, when the copyrights to Blind Arthur Blake’s early recordings came up for renewal in the USA (after twenty-eight years) in the mid-1950s, the copyright to them was claimed for Alphonso “Blind Blake” Higgs! For further information about Alphonso “Blind Blake” Higgs see the entry for ‘Delia Gone’. Many Dylan chroniclers list Dylan’s recording of ‘You’re Gonna Quit Me’ as being by Mance Lipscomb, and whilst the song was clearly written by Blind Arthur Blake, it seems very likely that Dylan’s version is taken from Lipscomb’s arrangement and recording of the song. Firstly, it is worth noting that Lipscomb’s recording is entitled ‘You’re Gonna Quit Me’, i.e. there is no “blues” in the title; perhaps more importantly though, Dylan knew Mance Lipscomb personally. In Glen Alyn’s “I Say Me For a Parable: The Oral Autobiography Of Mance Lipscomb” (W W Norton & Co Inc., 1993) Lipscomb states that he met Bob Dylan when Dylan followed him to shows at Berkeley and UCLA. “When I went off duty”, Lipscomb said, “he [Dylan] was sitting round me ... an’ [he would] pick up a lot of songs. Dylan was certainly enthusing about Lipscomb in the early 1960s and in something of a role reversal, Dylan introduced the encyclopaedic Jack Elliott to Lipscomb’s music. Dylan certainly took the phrase “jack o’diamonds is a hard card to play” from Lipscomb’s song of the same name. The song was included on Lipscomb’s first album, which is probably the record Dylan introduced Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to. “Mance Lipscomb: Texas Sharecropper And Songster” was released in 1960, by which time Lipscomb was sixty-five years of age. Dylan included the “jack o’diamonds” phrase in his poem “Some Other Kinds Of Songs”, which appears on the back cover of the “Another Side Of Bob Dylan” album. Lipscomb also claims that Dylan adapted his ‘Baby Let Me Follow You Down’ from his version of ‘Baby Let Me Lay It On You’. However, it seems more likely that Dylan learned the song from blues guitarist Eric Von Schmidt. Lipscomb’s version of ‘You’re Gonna Quit Me’ was first released on the album “Mance Lipscomb Vol. 3: Texas Songster In a Live Performance”. You’re o Good (Jesse Fuller) Bob Dylan’s first known performance of this song was on November 23, 1961 at the New York home of Eve and Mac MacKenzie (see Appendix 1:16 for further details).
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You’re Too Late The song was released as the opening track on Bob Dylan’s eponymous debut album (Columbia CL–1779, CS–8579, 19 March 1962). This track was recorded at Columbia Studios, New York, on November 20, 1961.
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According to Robert Shelton’s notes to Dylan’s debut album, ‘You’re o Good’ was “learned from Jesse Fuller, the West Coast singer”. This statement has been taken at face value by most Dylan chroniclers. It should be noted, however, that both of Dylan’s known performances of this song took place before Jesse Fuller had recorded the song. In fact, Fuller’s recording, released on the album “San Francisco Bay Blues” (Prestige Folklore FL 14006, 1963), was not released until eighteen months after Dylan’s recording. This discrepancy in the recording dates does not preclude Fuller from being Dylan’s source. It does however mean that if Dylan did get the song from Fuller, he must have learned it directly from him rather than via a recording. Dylan maintains he met Jesse Fuller in Denver, Colorado in 1959 and has acknowledged his debt to him in interviews. Todd Harvey, author of “The Formative Dylan”, argues that Dylan most likely learned the song from Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, who was intimately familiar with Fuller’s live work. Jesse Fuller (March 12, 1896 – January 29, 1976) worked at a plethora of jobs but when employment became scarce after World War II, his thoughts increasingly turned to music. A veteran of tent shows and dives, Jesse “Lone Cat” Fuller began recording late in life. His first record, a ten-inch, six-track album entitled “Jesse Fuller: Folk Blues – Working On The Railroad”, was not released until 1954, by which time the Lone Cat was no longer a kitten. Fuller’s one-man band, which included his own invention, the fotdella, is said by some to have inspired Dylan’s use of a harmonica rack. Fuller’s profile as a musician grew in the late 1950s, partly as a result of his appearances on US television following Ramblin’ Jack Elliot’s recording of ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’. However, he was also one of a number of blues artists who profited from the folk and blues revival that swept the United States in the 1960s. From virtual obscurity, Fuller went on to perform at the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival, as well as playing in concert with the Animals and the Rolling Stones. For a detailed biography about Jesse Fuller, and for information regarding Fuller’s fotdella, see entry for ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’. You’re Too Late (Lefty Frizzell / Herman P. Willis) Dylan played this song for the only time in Daytona Beach, Florida, on January 29, 1999. This excellent pedal steel-propelled rendition can be found on the bootleg CD “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000” where it is incorrectly titled as ‘It’s Too Late’. The relevance, if any, of Dylan’s performance of the song escapes me, but the composer of ‘You’re Too Late’, Lefty Frizzell, did have a song inducted in to the Grammy Hall of Fame that same month.
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You’re Too Late The ultimate honky tonk singer, Texan William Orville Frizzell (March 31, 1928 – July 19, 1975) acquired the nickname “Lefty” at the age of fourteen after a schoolyard scrap. Fellow Texan Roy Orbison was a devout fan of Frizzell’s music and his Traveling Wilburys pseudonym, “Lefty Wilbury”, was adopted in honour of his musical hero. Like his father, Frizzell found employment in the Texas oilfields while performing at small venues and fairgrounds. His reputation grew quickly and he soon found regular work on the honky tonk circuit. Frizzell got his big break in 1950 when he was spotted by Columbia record producer Don Law who signed him to the label. Frizzell’s success was immediate and his first single, ‘If You’ve Got The Money (I’ve Got the Time)’ went to Number One on the Country Chart. This debut single was quickly followed by two more chart toppers. Frizzell’s first year-and-a-half in the business was almost like a fairytale. His first fifteen sides brought him ten Top Ten Country hits, six of which went to Number One. Four of his songs were in the Country Top Ten at the same time in 1951. Frizzell made it onto the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride radio shows but for various reasons his career went into a sudden decline, and by the mid-1950s he seemed to be burnt out. Frizzell appeared to lose his songwriting touch (between 1952 and his death in 1975 he only managed two chart hits, neither of which were written by him). Although he was still recording a wealth of material, Columbia had cut back on releases. Regrettably, Frizzell developed a debilitating alcohol problem that plagued him throughout the late 1960s and to the end of his life. A change in style temporarily revived his Lefty Frizzell fortunes. ‘Long Black Veil’, a hit for Frizzell in 1959, broadened his audience base beyond the limitations of country music, but unfortunately any increase in his success was matched by an increase in his drinking. On July 19, 1975 Lefty Frizzell suffered a massive stroke and died. He was aged forty-seven. Years of mediocre songs and neglect by his record label had diminished Frizzell’s reputation, but after his death, a new generation of artists acknowledged him as an influence and an idol. ‘You’re Too Late’ was written by Lefty Frizzell and Herman P. Willis and released as a single by Frizzell in 1954. Frizzell and Willis co-wrote a number of songs including ‘I’ve Been Away Too Long’, ‘You Can Always Count On Me’, ‘Tragic Letter’ and ‘Two Heart’s Broken ow’. ‘You’re Too Late’ was the only song from this failed partnership to be
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Your True Love released as a single, and perhaps not surprisingly this rather ordinary number failed to make the Top 100. Also see the entry for ‘Long Black Veil’.
Y
Young But Daily Growing (Traditional) See the entry for ‘Long Time A-Growing’.
Your True Love (Carl Perkins) Dylan recorded this Carl Perkins number at the May 1, 1970 “ew Morning” album session. This recording, which circulates among collectors, can be found on various bootleg CDs including “Possum Belly Overalls” and “Yesterday” (see Appendix 2). Some knowledge of the lyrics may have helped Dylan with this one! He stumbles around the song, often seemingly off mic, until the recording is mercifully cut short. Dylan’s inspiration to try the song presumably came from the previous number, Carl Perkins’ ‘Matchbox’ (see Appendix 1:68 for details). ‘Your True Love’ (Sun 261, 1957) was only a minor hit for Perkins. The song stalled at Number Sixty-Seven on the Billboard Chart. Also see the entries for ‘Matchbox’ and ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead together in 1986
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Appendix 1
Appendix 1 The intention of this appendix is to take many of the songs contained in this book out of isolation and to provide the reader with the historic and chronological settings in which they were performed or recorded. Whilst this appendix makes no attempt to be complete – this would require an entire book in itself – it does contain most of the early gigs, parties and recording sessions at which cover songs were performed by Bob Dylan. These begin with a 78rpm record made by Dylan and two High School friends in 1956, and continue with the many private “party” performances and folk club appearances that spanned the years 1960 to the summer of ’63. The decision as to where to halt this chronology was not as straightforward as one might imagine. In the end, I decided that the July 1963 Newport Folk Festival was as good a place as any (especially with the recent release of the Newport Festivals DVD “The Other Side Of The Mirror”). This throws up some anomalies. For instance, my summer ’63 hiatus means that the April 1963 New York Town Hall concert is included in the listing whilst the October 1963 Carnegie Hall show is not. However, these sorts of anomalies would have occurred wherever the finish-line was placed. Most sessions between 1960 and July 1963 are included in this appendix even though a few of these feature only Dylan compositions. These sessions have been included purely for the sake of continuity. As stated in the introduction to this book, the so called “sideman” session, where Dylan simply contributed to other artists’ rerecords, are omitted. Similarly, the many Witmark demos sessions, all of which contain only original compositions, are absent from this appendix. Our adventure begins again with the historic Basement Tapes sessions from 1967 and the studio sessions that produced the albums “ashville Skyline”, “Self Portrait”, “ew Morning” and “Dylan”. Our chronology then halts for almost fifteen years, before resuming with “Empire Burlesque”, “Knocked Out Loaded” “Down In The Groove” and the two truly excellent covers albums “Good As I Been To You” and “World Gone Wrong”. This appendix therefore contains the majority of the songs that Dylan has covered over the years. Although there are of course other albums and album sessions that contain cover songs (“Planet Waves”, “Saved”, “Shot Of Love” and “Infidels”), these multiple recording sessions produced less than a dozen covers between them and even fewer official releases. For reasons of space, therefore, these sessions are not included.
Songs in italics are not in circulation among collectors. Songs in standard text are in circulation among collectors but have not been officially released. Songs in bold text have been officially released to the public. The above notation only applies to the session listings and not to the main bodies of text. trad. = traditional arr. = arranged by ad. = adaption
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Appendix 1 (1) Terlinde Music St Paul, Minnesota December 24, 1956 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Let The Good Times Roll (Goodman / Lee) Boppin’ The Blues (Griffin / Perkins) Won’t You Be My Girl? (unknown) Lawdy, Miss Clawdy (Lloyd Price) Ready Teddy (John Marascalo / Robert Blackwell) Confidential (Dorinda Morgan) In The Still Of The ight (Fred Parris) Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine) (Belvin / Williams / Hodge)
The above is a ten-inch, 78rpm record that was made by Bob Dylan (then Robert Zimmerman) with High School friends, Howard Rutman and Larry Kegan, on Christmas Eve 1956. Three discs are believed to have been made (one for each of the boys) and one is known to have survived to today. The record, which appears to be a medley of the eight songs listed above, has a total running time of approximately eight minutes. No part of this recording has come into circulation. Apart from the unidentified ‘Won’t You Be My Girl?’ and the Penguins’ classic ‘Earth Angel’ (1954), all the other songs on the disc: ‘Let The Good Times Roll’ (Shirley and Lee), ‘Boppin’ The Blues’ (Carl Perkins), ‘Confidential’ (Sonny Knight), ‘In The Still Of The ight’ (Fred Parris), and ‘Lawdy, Miss Clawdy’ and ‘Ready Teddy’ (both of which had been released by Little Richard and Elvis Presley), had all been US chart hits during 1956. These songs were therefore completely contemporary with the boys’ December ’56 recording. Information about these records came to light when, after his death, Larry Kegan’s personal copy was put up for sale by one of his family members. The record presumably formed part of Kegan’s estate. The seller(s) offered the record for sale through New York auction house Guernsey’s (in conjunction with the Internet auction site eBay). The reserve on this record was said to be $120,000. The reserve was not met and it is my understanding that the record remains unsold.
(2) The Home of Bob Dylan Hibbing, Minnesota John Bucklen Tape Mid to Late 1958 1 2 3 4 5
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Hey, Little Richard (Dylan) Buzz, Buzz, Buzz (Byrd / Gray) Jenny, Jenny (Johnson / Penniman / Crewe) We Belong Together (Mitchell / Carr and Sam Weiss) Blue Moon (Rogers / Hart)
Appendix 1 This tape, which features Robert Zimmerman and his High School friend John Bucklen, was recorded at Zimmerman’s Hibbing home. Extracts from this tape were utilized throughout a BBC television documentary entitled “Highway 61 Revisited”, which was broadcast on the BBC 2 “Arena” programme on May 8, 1993. A sixth fragmentary song, with a lyric that sounds like ‘Betty Lou’, was included in a 100minute programme, originally broadcast in the “Biography” series on the Arts & Entertainment network, USA (August 2000). This programme was released as a commercial videocassette “Bob Dylan: The American Troubadour” (A&E Home Video AAE-17988, October 2000), and on DVD (A&E Home Video, 2002, re-released 2005). Extracts from the original tape were also shortlisted for release on the official “Highway 61 Interactive” CD-ROM but were not included on the final release. The song ‘Hey, Little Richard’ probably derived its title from Little Richard’s song ‘HeyHey-Hey-Hey!’. The song was the flipside of Richard’s 1958 hit ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’ (Specialty 624). ‘Jenny, Jenny’ had been a Top Ten hit for Richard the previous year. Released in November 1957 by The Hollywood Flames, ‘Buzz, Buzz, Buzz’ reached number Eleven on the US Pop Chart. The single remained on the chart for seventeen weeks. Also captured on this tape are the Rogers and Hart number ‘Blue Moon’, which had been a minor hit for Elvis Presley in 1956, and ‘We Belong Together’ by Robert & Johnny (Robert Carr and Johnny Mitchell), which made it to Number Thirty-two on the Billboard Chart in March 1958. John Bucklen says that his mother had kept the tapes of the two teenage friends “just joking around”. He revealed that he has ten reel-to-reel tapes that contain “bits and pieces” of Dylan “singing and playing”. At the time of this recording, Dylan would have been just approaching, or possibly just past, his seventeenth birthday.
(3) The Home Of Karen Wallace St. Paul, Minnesota May 1960 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Gotta Travel On (Clayton / Ehrlich / Lazar / Six) Doney Gal (trad.) Roving Gambler (trad.) Go Down, You Murderers (Ewan MacColl) Bay Of Mexico (trad.) The Two Sisters (trad.) Go Way From My Window (John Jacob Niles) This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie) Go Tell It On The Mountain (trad.) Fare Thee Well (trad.) Pastures Of Plenty (Woody Guthrie) Saro Jane (trad.)
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Appendix 1 13 Take This Hammer (trad.) 14 Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out (J. Cox) 15 The Great Historical Bum (Woody Guthrie) 16 Mary Ann (trad.) 17 Every Night When The Sun Goes In (trad.) 18 Sinner Man (trad.) 19 Delia (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) 20 Wop De Alano (trad.) 21 Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet? (trad., arr. Guthrie) 22 Abner Young (trad.) 23 900 Miles (trad.) 24 Blues Yodel No. 8 (Jimmie Rodgers / G. Vaughan) 25 One-Eyed Jacks (Dylan) 26 Columbus Stockade Blues (Woody Guthrie) 27 Payday At Coal Creek [incomplete] (trad.) Dylan made his first extended recording at the apartment of Karen Wallace (Moynihan) in St. Paul, Minnesota. The session tape, which features twenty-seven songs, remains the property of Karen Moynihan, née Wallace. There are, however, three abridged tapes in circulation among collectors. One is a “samples” tape that consists of short extracts of fourteen of the songs. This tape was made available by Moynihan as a presentation tape for prospective buyers. A US collector was also invited to listen to the tape at Moynihan’s home and while doing so he surreptitiously made a recording. This poor quality recording, sometimes known as the “armpit tape”, contains thirteen complete songs and extracts of others. A British collector also obtained a version that was provided to him by Moynihan with a view to the collector purchasing the master tape. This version features four complete songs, ‘The Two Sisters’, ‘Pastures Of Plenty’, ‘Blues Yodel o. 8’, and ‘Payday At Coal Creek’, all in good quality. The final track, ‘Payday At Coal Creek’, is cut short due to the “master” tape running out during the original recording session. The tape, which had an asking price of $10,000, was offered for sale in the late 1970s. It was not sold and Mrs Moynihan has since disappeared from view. ‘Go Tell It On The Mountain’, ‘Fare Thee Well’, ‘Delia’, ‘Wop De Alano’, and ‘Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?’ do not circulate in any form and it is therefore uncertain as to exactly which version of ‘Delia’ Dylan performed. Whilst this could be the Blind Blake variant, ‘Delia’s Gone’, it is more probable that Dylan’s performance is based on the Blind Willie McTell adaptation that he would record more than thirty years later for his “World Gone Wrong” album. As Clinton Heylin points out in his book “Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions 1960– 1994”, even at this early stage in Dylan’s development there is a breadth to Dylan’s repertoire beyond his years. Although the tape only contains one song that appears to be a Dylan original, ‘One-Eyed Jacks’, some of the traditional numbers played here are certainly not run of the mill performances.
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Appendix 1 This tape has for many years been erroneously reported as being a fake. This faulty judgment may be partly based on Dylan’s voice, which is “sweet” and rather more “ashville Skyline” than the 1960s Dylan that we are more used to. Karen Wallace Tape: ‘The Two Sisters’, ‘Pastures Of Plenty’, ‘Blue Yodel #8’, ‘Payday At Coal Creek’. Tape Excerpts: ‘One-Eyed Jacks’, ‘Go Down, You Murderers’, ‘This Land Is Your Land’, ‘(Rockabye) My Saro Jane’, ‘obody Knows You When You’re Down And Out’, ‘Great Historical Bum’, ‘Mary Ann’, ‘Sinner Man’, ‘Abner Young’, ‘Blue Yodel #8’, ‘One-Eyed Jacks’, ‘Columbus Stockade Blues’, ‘Go Down, You Murderers’, ‘This Land Is Your Land’. Armpit Tape: ‘Gotta Travel On’, ‘Roving Gambler’, ‘The Two Sisters’, ‘Go Away From My Window’, ‘(Rockabye) My Saro Jane’, ‘obody Knows You When You’re Down And Out’, ‘Great Historical Bum’, ‘Mary Ann’, ‘Every ight When The Sun Goes In’, ‘Sinner Man’, ‘Abner Young’, ‘900 Miles’, ‘Blue Yodel #8’, ‘One-Eyed Jacks’, ‘Columbus Stockade Blues’, ‘Payday At Coal Creek’, plus an interview with Karen and Terri Wallace. (4) Bastille or The Purple Onion St. Paul, Minnesota May or June 1960 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Go Down, You Murderers (trad.) Sinner Man (trad.) House Of The Risin’ Sun (trad., arr. Van Ronk) Timber (trad.) Jerry (trad.) Another Man Done Gone (trad.) Black Jack Blues (trad.) Man Of Constant Sorrow (trad.) One-Eyed Jacks (Dylan) Greyhound Blues Everytime I Hear The Spirit (unknown)
No tape of this performance is in circulation and it is not clear to me if the above song list is genuine. It is included here for the sake of completeness. These performances are not included in the main body of this book. (5) The Apartment of Hugh Brown and Bob Dylan 714, 15th Avenue Southwest , Minneapolis, Minnesota September 1960 1 Red Rosey Bush (trad., arr. John Jacob Niles) 2 Johnny I Hardly Knew You (trad.) 3 Jesus Christ (Woody Guthrie)
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Appendix 1 4 Streets Of Glory (trad.) 5 K.C. Moan (1927 Memphis Jug Band) 6 Blues Yodel No. 8 (Jimmie Rodgers / G. Vaughan) 7 Rambler Gambler (trad.) 8 Talking Columbia (Woody Guthrie) 9 Talking Merchant Marine (Talking Sailor) (Woody Guthrie) 10 Talking Hugh Brown (Dylan) 11 Talking Inflation Blues [aka Talking Lobbyist] (Tom Glazer) This tape was recorded at an apartment shared by Hugh Brown and Bob Dylan while Dylan was “occasionally” attending the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 1960. Cleve Pettersen, an acquaintance of Dylan’s, says he made the recording shortly after acquiring a new $50 reel-to-reel tape recorder from Radio Shack. The latter portion of this tape displays Dylan’s new found love of Woody Guthrie and his talking style songs. Although this recording was only made four months after the Karen Wallace tape (appendix 1:3), the distinctive Dylan voice is now partly in evidence. The tape was believed to have been recorded by Dylan’s then girlfriend Bonnie Beecher. It seems, however, that although Beecher was present, the tape was made by Pettersen. The original reel-to-reel tape was donated to the Minnesota Historical Society by Cleve Pettersen in 2005. The listing for this tape, which was reported in the press at the time of the donation, also lists ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ and ‘Come See Jerusalem’ as being included on the reels (if so, these tracks have not come into circulation among collectors). However, this report does not list ‘Talking Columbia’, which is strange because a fragment of the song is in circulation among collectors. Below is the list as shown in the press release. (1) ‘Blues Yodel o. 8’, (2) ‘Come See Jerusalem’, (3) ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’, (4) ‘Rambler Gambler’, (5) ‘Talking Merchant Marine’ (aka ‘Talking Sailor’) (6) ‘Talking Hugh Brown’, (7) ‘Talking Inflation Blues’ [aka ‘Talking Lobbyist’], (8) ‘Red Rosey Bush’ (9) ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew You’ (10) ‘Jesus Christ’, (11) ‘Streets Of Glory’ , (12) ‘K.C. Moan’. Track 7, ‘Rambler Gambler’ was released on the album “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol.7” (C2K 93937, September 30, 2005). (6) The Home of Bob and Sid Gleason East Orange, ew Jersey February or March 1961 1 2 3 4 5 6
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San Francisco Bay Blues (Jesse Fuller) Jesus Met The Woman At The Well (trad., arr. Rev Gary Davis) Gypsy Davey (trad., arr. Woody Guthrie) Pastures Of Plenty (Woody Guthrie) Trail Of The Buffalo (trad., arr. Woody Guthrie) Jesse James (trad., arr. Woody Guthrie)
Appendix 1 7 8 9 10
Car, Car (Woody Guthrie) Southern Cannonball (R. Hall / Jimmie Rodgers) Bring Me Back, My Blue-Eyed Boy (trad.) Remember Me (Scott Wiseman)
Bob and Sidsel “Sid” Gleason were close friends of Woody Guthrie – who at the time was suffering from the incurable disease Huntington’s chorea – and from around 1959 onward the Gleasons had Guthrie over to their home in East Orange, New Jersey, for weekend sabbaticals. On Sundays they hosted get-togethers that included folk musicians playing songs to entertain Guthrie. Although the young Bob Dylan rarely played for his elders it was a great way for him to learn his trade. Dylan became friends with the Gleasons and would often visit them, staying over for days at a time and it was on one such visit that Dylan and Kevin Gleason (Bob and Sidsel’s son), made a tape of ten songs. This tape provides us with another glimpse of the speed at which Dylan was developing at this time. There was a marked progression from the Wallace tape (appendix 1:3 May / June 1960), to the apartment tape of September 1960 (appendix 1:5), but the development that can be heard on the Gleason tape – after being in New York for only a month or two – is even more significant. Shortly after this recording was made Dylan wrote ‘Song To Woody’. However, at about the same time the Gleasons’ tape recorder broke which scuppered the possibility of further recordings. This is a great pity as the quality of this recording is much better than anything that had gone before. This is the first tape on which Dylan can be heard playing harmonica. (7) Montowesi Hotel Branford, Connecticut (Indian eck Folk Festival) May 6, 1961 1 Talking Columbia (Woody Guthrie) 2 Hangknot, Slipknot (Woody Guthrie) 3 Talking Fish Blues (Woody Guthrie) This festival, which took place at the Montowesi Hotel in Branford, Connecticut, was Dylan’s first “real” public performance. Dylan’s entire set, which comprises of just three Woody Guthrie songs, was captured on tape and although the guitar is clear, Dylan’s vocal is barely audible. (8) The Home Of Bonnie Beecher Minneapolis, Minnesota May 1961 1 Ramblin’ Round (Woody Guthrie) 2 Death Don’t Have No Mercy (Rev. Gary Davis) 3 It’s Hard To Be Blind (trad.)
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Appendix 1 4 This Train Is Bound For Glory (Tharpe) 5 Harmonica solo 6 Talking Fish Blues (Woody Guthrie) 7 Pastures Of Plenty (Woody Guthrie) 8 This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie) 9 Two Trains Runnin’ (McKinley Morganfield) 10 Wild Mountain Thyme (trad.) 11 Howdido (Woody Guthrie) 12 Car, Car (Riding In My Car) (Woody Guthrie) 13 Don’t Push Me Down (Woody Guthrie) 14 Come See (Woody Guthrie) 15 I Want My Milk (Woody Guthrie) 16 San Francisco Bay Blues (Jesse Fuller) 17 A Long Time A-Growin’ (trad.) 18 Devilish Mary (trad. / Bess Lomax Hawes) 19 Railroad Bill (trad.) 20 Will The Circle Be Unbroken (A. P. Carter) 21 Man Of Constant Sorrow (trad.) 22 Pretty Polly (trad.) 23 Railroad Boy (trad.) 24 James Alley Blues (Richard “Rabbit” Brown) 25 Bonnie, Why’d You Cut My Hair? (Dylan) This tape was recorded when Dylan returned to Minneapolis for a visit from his then home in New York City. The date of the visit was May 1961. Dylan was eager to demonstrate how much he had learned from his time in the Big Apple and performed on at least two occasions for his old friends. These two performances, in the apartment of Bonnie Beecher, were recorded by Tony Glover and twenty-five songs circulate among collectors. The so-called “Minnesota Party Tape” appears to be an amalgam of these two sessions. The first session probably runs from track one to track seven, Woody Guthrie’s ‘Pastures Of Plenty’, while the second and longer session begins with Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ and continues to the end of the tape. The final song, ‘Bonnie, Why’d You Cut My Hair?’, is a quirky Dylan original. It seems that Dylan’s visit to Minneapolis may well have been a stop-off on the way up to Hibbing to visit his parents. This is what Beecher (now Jaharana Romney) told interviewer Markus Wittman in May 1989: “He [Dylan] came to my apartment and said, ‘It’s an emergency! I need your help! I gotta go home an’ see my mother!’ He was talking in the strangest Woody Guthrie-Oklahoma accent … it was an unexpected trip he had to make up to Hibbing and he wanted me to cut his hair. He kept saying, ‘Shorter! Shorter! Get rid of the sideburns!’ So I did my very best to do what he wanted and then in the door came Dave Morton, Johnny Koerner and Harvey Abrams. They looked at him and said, ‘Oh my God, you look terrible! What did you do?’ And Dylan immediately said, ‘She did it! I told her just to trim it up a little bit but she cut it all off. I wasn’t looking in a mirror!’ And then he went and wrote that song, ‘Bonnie, Why’d You Cut My Hair?’ … He played it that night in a coffeehouse and somebody told
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Appendix 1 me recently that they had been to Minnesota and somebody was still playing that song. It’s like a Minnesota classic! And so I’ve gone down in history!” Although the tape(s) show a further progression in Dylan’s performance art, the nine Guthrie songs in evidence go to show that there is no cooling of Dylan’s Woody obsession. These performances are much less assured than the later, December 1961 Minnesota tapes.
(9) Riverside Church Morningside Heights ew York City, ew York (12-Hour Hootenanny Special) July 29, 1961 1 2 3 4 5
Handsome Molly (trad.) Omie Wise (trad.) Po’ Lazarus (trad.) Mean Old Railroad (Danny Kalb) Acne (Eric von Schmidt)
These five songs were performed as part of a twelve-hour “Hootenanny” held at the Riverside Church in New York City. Dylan’s set, which took place mid-afternoon, contained just three songs – all traditional – ‘Handsome Molly’, ‘Omie Wise’ (sometimes incorrectly called ‘aomi Wise’), and ‘Po’ Lazarus’. Dylan returned later to play harmonica for Danny Kalb on Kalb’s song ‘Mean Old Railroad’ and also performed a duet with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on Eric von Schmidt’s teenage lament ‘Acne’. Although there were no big-name stars in attendance, this event was quite prestigious in New York folk circles, and the elaborate Gothic building, a towering landmark on the Upper East Side, must have provided a wonderful setting for the event which was broadcast live on WRVR-FM Radio’s programme “Saturday Of Folk Music” (July 29, 1961). Track 5 was released on the album “The Ballad Of Ramblin’ Jack” (Vanguard Records 79575-2, August 2000).
(10) Gaslight Café ew York City, ew York September 6, 1961 1 2 3 4 5 6
Man On The Street (Dylan) He Was a Friend Of Mine (trad., arr. Dylan) Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues (Dylan) Song To Woody (Dylan) Pretty Polly (trad.) Car, Car (Riding In My Car) (Woody Guthrie)
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Appendix 1 This six-song set recorded at the Gaslight is the earliest of Dylan’s Greenwich Village café performances to circulate on tape. Dylan has again moved on and the set includes three original compositions: ‘Man On The Street’, ‘Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues’ and ‘Song To Woody’. Also included is ‘He Was a Friend Of Mine’, which is a traditional folk song but performed here in an arrangement that can only be described as Dylanesque. The song would later be copyrighted (1962) as “arranged by Bob Dylan”. The final song, ‘Car, Car (Riding In My Car)’ is performed as a duet with the “Mayor of MacDougal Street”, Dave Van Ronk.
(11) Gerdes Folk City ew York City, ew York September 26, 1961 1 2 3 4 5 6
Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues (Dylan) Talking ew York (Dylan) Talking Hava agilah (Moshe Nathanson / Dylan) House of The Risin’ Sun (trad., arr. Van Ronk) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson) In The Pines (trad.)
On Tuesday September 26, 1961 Dylan embarked on what would quickly become his most important engagement to date. The owner of Gerdes Folk City, Mike Porco, had booked Dylan for a two-week stint (September 26 to October 8, 1961), as a support to the excellent bluegrass trio The Greenbriar Boys. The above set-list is compiled from the writings of journalist Robert Shelton. In his biography “No Direction Home” Shelton describes Dylan as being “studiously unkempt and very slight and frail”. He continues; “His pinched, constricted voice seemed to be fighting its way out of his throat. It was a rusty voice, suggesting Guthrie’s old recordings. It was etched in gravel, like Van Ronk’s. It sometimes crooned a bit, like Elliott’s. Yet it was also a voice unlike anyone else’s. You didn’t think of it as something beautiful or sinuous, but as something that rolled up from the heart”. Robert Shelton gave Dylan’s performance a spectacular review that was massively helpful in moving Dylan’s fledgling career forward. Shelton’s review of Dylan’s September 26 performance appeared in The New York Times on Friday September 29, 1961.
(12) Gerdes Folk City ew York City, ew York September, 1961 1 2 3 4 5
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San Francisco Bay Blues (Jesse Fuller) The Great Divide (Woody Guthrie) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson) Ain’t o More Cane (trad., arr. Huddie Leadbetter) Dink’s Song (trad.,. arr. John & Alan Lomax)
Appendix 1 6 7 8 9
He Was A Friend Of Mine (trad., arr. Dylan) Pretty Boy Floyd (Woody Guthrie) In The Pines (trad.) Sally Gal (Ad. Dylan)
Another performance from Dylan’s two-week engagement at Gerdes Folk City (see appendix 1:11). This set may well have been performed on the evening that Robert Shelton’s New York Times review was published (September 29, 1961). Only the first two songs from the above list are in circulation among collectors. The accuracy of this listing cannot therefore be guaranteed. It is believed that Jim Kweskin (of the soon-to-be Jim Kweskin Jug band) joined Dylan for this performance, and that the two artists duet on at least two of the songs.
(13) WYC Radio Studio Oscar Brand’s Folk Song Festival ew York City, ew York October 29, 1961 1 Sally Gal (Ad., Dylan) 2 The Girl I Left Behind (trad.) These two songs were broadcast live on WNYC Radio during Oscar Brand’s radio show “Folksong Festival”.
(14) Carnegie Chapter Hall ew York City, ew York ovember 4, 1961 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Pretty Peggy-O (trad.) In The Pines (trad.) Gospel Plow (trad.) 1913 Massacre (Woody Guthrie) Backwater Blues (A. J. P. Johnson / Bessie Smith) A Long Time A-Growin’ (trad.) Fixin’ To Die (Bukka White) San Francisco Bay Blues (Jesse Fuller) Car, Car (Riding In My Car) (Woody Guthrie) Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues (Dylan) Man On The Street (Dylan)
12 13 14 15
Sally Gal (Ad., Dylan) This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie) Talking Merchant Marine (Talking Sailor) (Woody Guthrie) Black Cross (Joseph S. Newman)
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Appendix 1 16 He Was A Friend Of Mine (trad., arr. Dylan) 17 Pretty Polly (trad.) 18 House of The Risin’ Sun (trad., arr. Van Ronk) 19 The Cuckoo Is a Pretty Bird (trad.) 20 Freight Train Blues (John Lair, arr. Dylan) 21 Song To Woody (Dylan) 22 Talking New York (Dylan) Folklorist Izzy Young promoted this concert at the 200-seat Carnegie Chapter Hall. The concert sold poorly and was attended by a paying audience of just fifty-two people– a few others were invited along as guests. Izzy Young and Dylan had agreed to split the door money after expenses but the concert made a loss. Even so, Young offered Dylan $20 for his night’s work. Dylan accepted $10. The first seven of the twenty-two songs performed have been in circulation among collectors for several years. However, five additional songs appeared in December 2004 and a further two (‘Talking Merchant Marine’ and ‘Talking ew York’) arrived via MP3 in May, 2008. Track 13 was released on the album “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol.7” (C2K 93937, September 30, 2005).
(15) Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York (“Bob Dylan” Album Recording Sessions) ovember 20 and 22, 1961 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
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You’re o Good (Jesse Fuller) You’re o Good (Jesse Fuller) You’re o Good [false start] (Jesse Fuller) You’re o Good [false start] (Jesse Fuller) You’re o Good (Jesse Fuller) You’re o Good [false start] (Jesse Fuller) You’re No Good (Jesse Fuller) You’re o Good (Jesse Fuller) Fixin’ To Die (Bukka White) Fixin’ To Die (Bukka White) Fixin’ To Die (Bukka White) He Was A Friend Of Mine [false start] (Dylan) He Was A Friend Of Mine (Dylan) House Of The Risin’ Sun [false start] (trad., arr. Van Ronk) House Of The Risin’ Sun (trad., arr. Van Ronk) House Of The Risin’ Sun (trad., arr. Van Ronk) Talkin’ ew York (Dylan) Talkin’ ew York (Dylan) Song To Woody [false start] (Dylan) Song To Woody (Dylan)
Appendix 1 21 Baby Let Me Follow You Down (trad., arr. Eric von Schmidt) 22 Man Of Constant Sorrow [incomplete] (trad.) 23 In My Time Of Dyin’ (trad.) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43
Man On The Street [false start] (Dylan) Man On The Street (Dylan) Man On The Street [false start] (Dylan) Man On The Street [false start] (Dylan) Man On The Street [false start] (Dylan) (As I Go) Ramblin’ Round (Woody Guthrie) (As I Go) Ramblin’ Round (Woody Guthrie) Man Of Constant Sorrow (trad.) Man Of Constant Sorrow [false start] (trad.) Man Of Constant Sorrow (trad.) Pretty Peggy-O (trad.) Pretty Peggy-O (trad.) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean [false start] (Blind Lemon Jefferson) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson) Gospel Plow (trad.) Highway 51 ( Curtis Jones [sic]) Freight Train Blues (John Lair) House Carpenter (trad.)
Bob Dylan’s début LP, “Bob Dylan”, was recorded in just two sessions at a rumoured cost of only $402. Tracks 1-23 were recorded between 7 pm and 10 pm on November 20, 1961 and tracks 24-43 were recorded between 2:30 pm and 5:30 pm on November 22. The recording date given for track forty-three, ‘House Carpenter’, in the notes to the official album release of “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” is March 19, 1962. Tracks 5, 11, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 33, 35, 39, 40, 41 & 42 were released on the album “Bob Dylan” (CL-1779 & CS 8579, March 19, 1962). Tracks 13, 25 & 43 were released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991). Track 20 was also released on the album “Masterpieces” (CBS/Sony 57AP-875/6/7, March 1978). Track 21 was also released on the album “Biograph” (Columbia, C5X, November 7, 1985). As can be seen from the above list, the young twenty-year-old Bob Dylan was a quick worker, getting the entire album and some to spare in just two three-hour sessions. He managed to capture the final five songs of the second session (four of which made it onto
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Appendix 1 the album) all in single takes. Even so, producer John Hammond would later say that Dylan “popped every p, hissed every s, and habitually wandered off mike”. Hammond went on, “It occurred to me at the time that I’d never worked with anyone so undisciplined before”. Even so, Dylan gives a good account of himself and this quick-fire debut album is quite pleasing to the ear. What does seem a little strange however is that Dylan decided, apparently on the spot, what he was going to record and in doing so appears to have only chosen seven songs that he had been regularly performing live. It is of course possible that some of the other songs had been performed live but a lack of documentation from the period deprives us of that knowledge.
(16) The Home Of Eve and Mac McKenzie ew York City, ew York ovember 23, 1961 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Hard Times In New York Town [fragment 1:29] (Dylan) Wayfaring Stranger [fragment 0:43] (trad.) Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad [fragment 0:22] (trad.) (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle Blues (Hank Williams / Jimmy Davies) Worried Blues [fragment 0:52] (Hally Wood) Baby Of Mine [fragment 0:56] (unknown) Unidentified Instrumental [fragment 0:27] Baby Let Me Follow You Down (trad., arr. Eric von Schmidt) Fixin’ To Die (Bukka White) San Francisco Bay Blues (Jesse Fuller) You’re No Good (Jesse Fuller) House Of The Risin’ Sun (trad., Van Ronk) Unidentified Instrumental This Land Is Your Land [fragment 1:00] (Woody Guthrie)
Another home recording, this time made at the home of the McKenzie family. Two recordings were made of Dylan at this location in quick succession. The first (above) was taped on November 23, 1961 after Dylan and his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, had eaten a Thanksgiving Day meal with Eve and “Mac” McKenzie. The second recording (appendix 1:17) was made about ten days later on or around December 4, 1961. The tape in general circulation among collectors is fragmentary, often muddled, and of poor quality. Running times for the fragmentary tracks have been included in this appendix.
(17) The Home Of Eve and Mac McKenzie ew York City, ew York December 1961 1 Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms [fragment 0:29] (trad.) 2 The Bells Of Rhymney [fragment 0:12] (Idris Davies/Pete Seeger)
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Appendix 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (trad.) Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms (trad.) Bells Of Rhymney (Idris Davies/Pete Seeger) Unidentified Instrumental [fragment 0:56] Unidentified Instrumental [fragment 0:33] Highway 51 (Curtis Jones [sic]) This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)
The exact date of this recording is uncertain but December 4, 1961 is a possible candidate (see appendix 1:16). The tape in general circulation among collectors is fragmentary, often muddled, and of poor quality. Running times for the fragmentary tracks have been included in this appendix.
(18) The Home Of Bonnie Beecher Minneapolis, Minnesota “Minneapolis Hotel Tape” December 22, 1961 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
Candy Man (trad., arr. Rev. Gary Davis) Baby Please Don’t Go (Big Joe Williams) Hard Times In ew York Town (Dylan) Stealin’, Stealin’ (trad., arr. Memphis Jug Band) Po’ Lazarus (trad.) I Ain’t Got No Home (Woody Guthrie) It’s Hard To Be Blind (trad.) Dink’s Song (trad., arr. John & Alan Lomax) Man Of Constant Sorrow (trad.) Story Of East Orange, New Jersey (Dylan) Omie Wise (trad.) Wade In The Water (trad.) I Was Young When I Left Home (Dylan) In The Evening (Brownie McGhee) Baby Let Me Follow You Down (trad., arr. Eric von Schmidt) Sally Gal (ad. Dylan) Gospel Plow (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Long John (trad.) Cocaine (trad., arr. Rev. Gary Davies) VD Blues (Woody Guthrie) VD Waltz (Woody Guthrie) VD City (Woody Guthrie) VD Gunner’s Blues (Woody Guthrie) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson) Ramblin’ Round (Woody Guthrie) Black Cross (Joseph S. Newman)
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Appendix 1 While en route to Hibbing to visit his parents for Christmas, Dylan stopped off in Minneapolis and just as he had done on a similar visit six months earlier (see appendix 1:8), he and Tony Glover made a recording at Bonnie Beecher’s apartment. By far the most prominent of the early tapes, the “Minneapolis Hotel Tape” (seemingly so called because Dylan had christened Beecher’s apartment the “Minneapolis Hotel”), became the basis for the first ever rock bootleg, “Great White Wonder”. Gary Davis’ ‘Candy Man’, which opens the tape, is followed by Big Joe Williams’ ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’– on which Dylan displays his now perfected skills on slide guitar. Next up is the first Dylan original, ‘Hard Times In ew York Town’, which Dylan adapted from the Bentley Boys’ 1929 song ‘Down On Penny’s Farm’. Among the other songs recorded that day are the Memphis Jug Band’s arrangement of the traditional ‘Stealin’’, an outstanding cover of ‘Dink’s Song’, the slightly strange story of ‘East Orange’, a mixed up ‘Cocaine’ in which Dylan manages the rhyme “purple” with “nipples”, four of Guthrie’s VD songs and the disturbing, racially-charged morality monologue, ‘Black Cross’. Track 3 was released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991). Track 12 was released on the album “Bob Dylan Live 1961-2000” (SME Records SRCS 2438, February 28, 2001). Track 13 was released on the bonus CD of the special limited edition of “Love And Theft” (CSK 54967, September 11, 2001). Tracks 2, 6, 8, 10 and 12 were featured on the officially released “Highway 61 Interactive” CD-ROM. Tracks 8 & 13 were released on the album “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol.7” (C2K 93937, September 30, 2005).
(19) WBAI Studios ew York City, ew York Cynthia Gooding radio show. January 13, 1962 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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Lonesome Whistle Blues (Hank Williams / Jimmy Davies) Fixin’ To Die (Bukka White) Smokestack Lightning (Burnett aka Howlin’ Wolf) Hard Travelin’ (Woody Guthrie) The Death Of Emmett Till (Dylan) Standing On The Highway (Dylan) Roll On, John (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Stealin’, Stealin’ (trad., arr. Memphis Jug Band) Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad (trad.)
Appendix 1 10 Baby Please Don’t Go (Big Joe Williams) 11 Hard Times In New York Town (Dylan) Believed to have been recorded on January 13, 1962, this session was broadcast on March 11, 1962 on Cynthia Gooding’s WBAI radio show Folksinger’s Choice. Featured here is the first known recording of a new Dylan composition, ‘The Death Of Emmett Till’. This performance is also unique in that it contains the only known Dylan recordings of ‘Smokestack Lightning’, ‘Hard Travelin’’ and ‘Roll On, John’. ‘Roll On, John’ was released on “There Is o Eye: Music For Photographs” (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, SFW CD 40091, October 2001).
(20) Cynthia Gooding’s Apartment ew York City, ew York March 1962 1 2 3 4 5 6
Ballad Of Donald White (Dylan) Wichita (Going To Louisiana) (trad.) Acne (Eric von Schmidt) Rocks And Gravel (ad. Dylan) Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad (trad.) Rangers Command (Woody Guthrie)
This recording, which features two new Dylan compositions, was made at the New York apartment of WBAI radio show host, Cynthia Gooding.
(21) Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York (1st “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album Recording Sessions) April 24, 1962 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Going To ew Orleans (trad.) Going To New Orleans (trad.) Sally Gal (Ad. Dylan) Sally Gal (Ad. Dylan) Sally Gal (Ad. Dylan) Rambling, Gambling Willie (Dylan) Rambling, Gambling Willie [incomplete] (Dylan) Rambling, Gambling Willie (Dylan) Rambling, Gambling Willie (Dylan) Corrina Corrina (trad., arr. Dylan) Corrina Corrina (trad., arr. Dylan) The Death Of Emmett Till (Dylan) Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues [incomplete] (Dylan) Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues [incomplete] (Dylan)
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Appendix 1 15 Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues (Dylan) 16 (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle [incomplete] (Hank Williams/Jimmie Davies) 17 (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle (Hank Williams/Jimmie Davies) On April 24, 1962, one month after the release of his first LP, Dylan was back in Columbia Studio ‘A’ to begin work on his follow-up album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”. By this juncture Dylan was writing many original songs, but some covers were still attempted. In the end, however, only two such songs would make it onto the final release. Track 3 was released on the album “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol. 7” (C2K 93937, September 30, 2005). Track 9 was released on the promotional “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (CL 1986, CS 8786) and on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991). Track 15 was released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991).
(22) Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York (2nd “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album Recording Sessions) April 25, 1962 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Rocks And Gravel [fragment] (ad. Dylan) Rocks And Gravel [fragment] (ad. Dylan) Rocks And Gravel (ad. Dylan) Let Me Die In My Footsteps (Dylan) Talking Hava egilah Blues (Moshe Nathanson / Dylan) Sally Gal (ad. Dylan) Sally Gal (ad. Dylan) Baby Please Don’t Go (Big Joe Williams) Baby Please Don’t Go [fragment] (Big Joe Williams) Baby Please Don’t Go (Big Joe Williams) Milk Cow’s Calf’s Blues (Robert Johnson) Milk Cow’s Calf’s Blues [fragment] (Robert Johnson) Milk Cow’s Calf’s Blues (Robert Johnson) Wichita (Going To Louisiana) (trad.) Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues [incomplete] (Dylan) Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues [incomplete] (Dylan) Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues (Dylan) Milk Cow’s Calf’s Blues (Robert Johnson) Wichita (Going To Louisiana) (trad.)
Far more covers are in evidence at this second session for the “Freewheelin’” album. Dylan begins the session with ‘Rocks And Gravel’, which probably has its roots in a
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Appendix 1 number of blues songs. The third song, ‘Talking Hava egilah Blues’ is another adaptation, this time of a well known Jewish song, probably written by Moshe Nathanson. Big Joe Williams’ ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ and an adaption of Robert Johnson’s ‘Milk Cow’s Calf’s Blues’ are then followed by the traditional number ‘Wichita (Going To Louisiana)’. None of these songs would make it onto the final album. Track 4 was released on the promotional “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (CL 1986, CS 8786). Tracks 4, 5 and 17 were released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991). (23) Gerdes Folk City ew York City, ew York Mid to Late April 1962 1 2 3 4 5
Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Henry Thomas / Bob Dylan) Talkin’ New York (Dylan) Corrina, Corrina (trad., arr. Dylan) Deep Elem Blues (Joe & Bob Attlesay) Blowin’ In The Wind (Dylan)
The venue and date of this recording are unsubstantiated but Gerdes Folk City has long been the main contender. This tape is noteworthy because of the inclusion of an as yet unfinished ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’. Dylan had begun working on the song early in April and on April 9, 1962 he taught Gil Turner the chords so that Turner could perform the song at Gerdes during the Monday night hootenanny. At that time the song only had two verses. The same two verses were all that was in evidence when Dylan performed it himself. Dylan’s performance of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ may have taken place on the Monday after the Turner premiere, which would place the tape as being from April 16. (24) Finjan Club Montréal, Quebec, Canada July 2, 1962 1 The Death Of Emmett Till (Dylan) 2 Stealin’, Stealin’ (trad., arr. Memphis Jug Band) 3 Hiram Hubbard (trad.) 4 Blowin’ In The Wind (Dylan) 5 Rocks And Gravel (ad. Dylan) 6 Quit Your Low Down Ways (Dylan) 7 He Was a Friend Of Mine (Dylan) 8 Let Me Die In My Footsteps (Dylan) 9 Two Trains Runnin’ (McKinley Morganfield) 10 Ramblin’ On My Mind (Robert Johnson) 11 Blues Yodel No. 8 (Jimmie Rodgers / G. Vaughan)
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Appendix 1 At the end of June and the beginning of July 1962, Dylan made it up to Montreal, Canada where he played at least two gigs. The first gig at the Potpourri was not recorded, but, thanks to Jack Nissenson of the Mountain City Four, Dylan’s set at the Finjan on July 2, 1962 was. This tape is notable not only for its quality, but also because it contains the only live performances known to have been committed to tape of: ‘Let Me Die In My Footsteps’, ‘Hiram Hubbard’, ‘Quit Your Low Down Ways’, and Robert Johnson’s ‘Ramblin’ On My Mind’. At one time this tape was believed to be from the Gaslight, New York City. Track 4 was featured on the officially released “Highway 61 Interactive” CD-ROM.
(25) Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York (3rd “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album Recording Sessions) July 9, 1962 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Baby, I’m In The Mood For You [fragment] (Dylan) Baby, I’m In The Mood For You (Dylan) Baby, I’m In The Mood For You (Dylan) Bob Dylan’s Blues (Dylan) Blowin’ In The Wind (Dylan) Blowin’ In The Wind (Dylan) Blowin’ In The Wind (Dylan) Quit Your Low Down Ways (Dylan) Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Henry Thomas / Bob Dylan) Down The Highway (Dylan) Worried Blues (Hally Wood) Worried Blues (Hally Wood) Baby, I’m In The Mood For You (Dylan) Bob Dylan’s Blues (Dylan) Bob Dylan’s Blues (Dylan)
After a break of almost eleven weeks, Dylan resumed recording for the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album. This time only one cover, Hally Wood’s ‘Worried Blues’, was in evidence. Although the session lasted for less than two hours, Dylan still managed to record seven songs, four of which would make in onto the final album. Track 3 was released on the album “Biograph” (Columbia, C5X, November 7, 1985). Tracks 7, 9, 10 & 15 were released on Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (CL 1986, CS 8786, May 27, 1963). Tracks 8 & 12 were released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991).
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Appendix 1 (26) The Home Of David Whitaker Minneapolis, Minnesota (Minnesota Home Tape) August 11, 1962 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Dylan) This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie) Talkin’ Hypocrite (Dylan) Long Ago, Far Away (Dylan) Motherless Children (trad.) Blue-Eyed Babe (unknown) Long Time Gone (Dylan) Worried Blues (Hally Wood) Deep Ellem Blues (Joe & Bob Attlesay) Corrina, Corrina (trad., arr. Dylan)
The intrepid Tony Glover made another home recording while Dylan was visiting Minneapolis, this time at the home of “Diamond” Dave Whitaker. Dylan played four new originals ‘Tomorrow Is a Long Time’, the Guthrie-influenced ‘Talkin’ Hypocrite’, ‘Long Ago, Far Away’, and ‘Long Time Gone’. Unfortunately, only the first song is in circulation among collectors and in very poor audio quality.
(27) The Home Of Eve and Mac McKenzie ew York City, ew York September 1962 1 2 3 4 5 6
Unidentified Instrumental See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson) Ballad Of Donald White (Dylan) A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan) Unidentified Instrumental James Alley Blues (Richard Brown)
Sometime towards the end of September Dylan was again recorded at the McKenzie home. This tape contains an early performance (possibly the first) of the epic ‘A Hard Rain’s AGonna Fall’. (Also see Appendix 1:47).
(28) Carnegie Hall ew York City, ew York Carnegie Hall Hootenanny September 22, 1962 1 Sally Gal (ad., Dylan) 2 Highway 51 (Curtis Jones [sic])
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Appendix 1 3 Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues (Dylan) 4 Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Dylan) 5 A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan) Dylan makes his debut at the Carnegie Hall proper (not to be confused with the much smaller Carnegie Chapter Hall, which Dylan played on November 4, 1961). This hootenanny sees the first public performances of ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ and ‘Ballad Of Hollis Brown’.
(29) ew York Town Hall ew York City, ew York “Travelin’ Hootenanny” October 5, 1962 1 2 3 4
Talkin’ ew York (Dylan) Talking John Birch Paranoid Blue (Dylan) Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Dylan) A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan)
Dylan is selected to headline this hoot at the Town Hall. All four songs are Dylan originals.
(30) WBAI Studios ew York City, ew York Billy Faier Show October 1962 1 2 3 4
Baby Let Me Follow You Down (Eric von Schmidt) Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues (Dylan) The Death Of Emmett Till (Dylan) Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor (trad.)
This radio show, broadcast on WBAI-FM in New York City, is interesting because it contains the only known performance of the traditional song ‘Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor’.
(31) Gaslight Café ew York City, ew York October 1962 1 2 3 4
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Barbara Allen (trad.) A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan) Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Dylan) Black Cross (Joseph S. Newman)
Appendix 1 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
o More Auction Block (trad.) Rocks And Gravel (ad. Dylan) Moonshine Blues (trad.) John Brown (Dylan) Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Dylan) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson) Cocaine (trad., arr. Rev. Gary Davies) Cuckoo (Is a Pretty Bird) (trad.) Ain’t No More Cane (trad,. arr. Huddie Leadbetter) Motherless Children (trad.) Handsome Molly (trad.) Kindhearted Woman Blues (Robert Johnson) West Texas (trad.)
Although this seventeen-song set contains the Dylan originals ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, ‘John Brown’, ‘Ballad Of Hollis Brown’ and an unfinished ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’, Dylan surprisingly reverts to playing mostly traditional covers. Two tracks from this tape have made it onto official (all territories) releases. Track 5 was released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991). Track 15 was released on the album “Bob Dylan Live 1961-2000” (SME Records SRCS 2438, February 28, 2001). Tracks 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15 & 17 were released on the CD “Live At The Gaslight 1962” (Columbia/Legacy A 96016, USA). This CD was released in 2005 by Columbia Records and was originally distributed through an exclusive eighteen months deal with Starbucks in the USA, after which it was made available through retail stores in North America. In the notes contained with this release, Sean Wilentz claims that the circulating seventeen-song tape is actually taken from two separate shows. This CD was also made available in Belgium via a limited offer through the weekly magazine Humo. The CD could be obtained by exchanging a voucher plus twelve Euros. This concert, which is without a doubt one of the best early Dylan (pre-1964) live performances, should have been made more widely available.
(32) Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York (4th “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album Recording Sessions) October 26, 1962 1 Corrina, Corrina [incomplete] (trad., arr. Dylan) 2 Corrina, Corrina (trad., arr. Dylan) 3 Corrina, Corrina (trad., arr. Dylan)
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Appendix 1 4 Corrina, Corrina (trad., arr. Dylan) 5 Corrina, Corrina [fragment] (trad., arr. Dylan) 6 Corrina, Corrina (trad., arr. Dylan) 7 Mixed-Up Confusion [fragment] (Dylan) 8 Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) 9 That’s All Right Mama (Arthur Crudup) 10 That’s All Right Mama [fragment] (Arthur Crudup) 11 That’s All Right Mama (Arthur Crudup) 12 That’s All Right Mama [fragment](Arthur Crudup) 13 That’s All Right Mama (Arthur Crudup) 14 Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) 15 Mixed-Up Confusion [fragment] (Dylan) 16 Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) 17 Corrina, Corrina (trad., arr. Dylan) After a second lengthy break Dylan returned to Studio ‘A’ to continue recording the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album. This rather unproductive session, with an electric band in tow, only yielded Dylan’s first single, ‘Corrina, Corrina’. The original idea seems to have been to feature ‘That’s All Right Mama’ as the B-side! Track 4 was released on the Columbia single (COL 4-42656, December 1962). Track 17 was released on “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (CL 1986, CS 8786, May 27, 1963).
(33) Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York (5th “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album Recording Sessions) ovember 1, 1962 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion [fragment] (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) That’s All Right Mama (Arthur Crudup) Rocks And Gravel (ad. Dylan) Rocks And Gravel (ad. Dylan)
Six days after the disappointing October 26 session, Dylan was back in the studio with an electric band. He continued work on ‘Mixed-Up Confusion’ even though a usable take had been captured at the previous session. ‘That’s All Right Mama’ was also attempted again. Track 8 was released on promotional copies of “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (CL 1986, CS 8786). This track can also be found on the official “Highway 61 Interactive” CD-ROM.
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Appendix 1 (34) Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York (6th “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album Recording Sessions) ovember 14, 1962 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion [fragment] (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion [fragment] (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion [fragment] (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion [fragment] (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion [incomplete] (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion [fragment] (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion [incomplete] (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion [fragment] (Dylan) Mixed-Up Confusion (Dylan) Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Dylan) Ballad Of Hollis Brown [fragment] (Dylan) Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Dylan) Kingsport Town [incomplete] (arr. Dylan) Kingsport Town (arr. Dylan) Whatcha Gonna Do (Dylan)
This was Dylan’s third and final “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album session with an electric band. After a great deal of effort Dylan managed to commit a usable ‘Mixed-Up Confusion’ to tape. The track was used as the B-side to his first single. After this the band were dismissed and Dylan continued to work on four acoustic tracks, ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’, which he appeared to get in just one take, ‘Ballad Of Hollis Brown’, ‘Kingsport Town’ and ‘Whatcha Gonna Do’. After the protracted struggle with the electric band these four acoustic songs came very easily. Track 10 was released on the album “Masterpieces” CBS/Sony 57AP-875/6/7, March 1978) and “Biograph” (Columbia, C5X, November 7, 1985) Track 13 was released as the B-side of Columbia single (COL 4-42656, December 1962). Track 16 was released on the album “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (CL 1986, CS 8786, May 27, 1963). Track 20 was released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991).
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Appendix 1 (35) Broadside Office ew York City, ew York ovember 1962 1 2 3 4 5
I’d Hate To Be You On That Dreadful Day (Dylan) Oxford Town (Dylan) Paths Of Victory (Dylan) Walkin’ Down The Line (Dylan) Playboys And Playgirls (Dylan)
Dylan went into the offices of “Broadside” to record songs for the magazine. Over the following weeks and months he would continue to record for “Broadside” and for obvious reasons these song were almost exclusively Dylan originals. “Broadside” was, for the want of a better word, an “underground” magazine founded in February 1962 by Agnes “Sis” Cunningham with her husband Gordon Friessen in the wake of McCarthyism. The magazine had, in part, originated from Pete Seeger’s visit to England during the winter of 1961-62. While in England Seeger had discovered the British topical song movement, a group of singers who were fashioning new songs that addressed current affairs. Dylan, an ardent supporter of “Broadside” from its beginning, contributed a new original song, ‘Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues’, to the first issue of the magazine. “Broadside”, which was printed on an old mimeograph machine, was designed to provide an outlet for “topical songs”, often in support of the Civil Rights or Folk Protest Movements. The term “Broadside office” is perhaps a little grand because the magazine was actually produced in Cunningham’s home in a New York City housing project. There are stories of the magazine being “smuggled out” of the project in a baby’s pram. Many wonderful and historic “Broadside” tapes exist because the musicians would go to the “Broadside” offices and record their songs onto a reel-to-reel so that Cunningham could transcribe the lyrics for use in the magazine. Over the years “Broadside” recorded and published many of the leading singers of the folk revival. The homespun appearance of the magazine belies its influence on American folk music. Dylan’s girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, was very much involved with the civil rights movement and would provide illustrations for some of Dylan’s lyrics. Track 1 was released on “Broadside Reunion” (Folkways FR5315, 1972).
(36) Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York (7th “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album Recording Sessions) December 6, 1962
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Appendix 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Hero Blues (Dylan) Whatcha Gonna Do (Dylan) Oxford Town (Dylan) I Shall Be Free [fragment] (Dylan) I Shall Be Free (Dylan) I Shall Be Free [incomplete] (Dylan) I Shall Be Free [fragment] (Dylan) I Shall Be Free (Dylan) Hero Blues (Dylan) Hero Blues [fragment] (Dylan) Hero Blues (Dylan) A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan)
Dylan returned to Columbia Studio ‘A’ for his seventh recording session for the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album. With the idea of an electric band now behind him, he had a very productive session and of these songs three would make it onto the final release. This should have been the final album session but circumstances resulted in the finished album being pulled at the last minute, providing a lucky few collectors with a choice and extremely rare and valuable version of the album (see appendix 1:48). Very little has become available to collectors from the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” sessions. The whole of this session is however in circulation. Tracks 3, 5 & 12 were released on “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (CL 1986, CS 8786).
(37) Unidentified Folk Club ew York City, ew York Late 1962 1 Ramblin’ Down Thru The World (ad. Dylan) 2 Freight Train Blues (John Lair, arr. Dylan) 3 Walls Of Red Wing (Dylan) These three songs were recorded at an unknown location towards the end of 1962. ‘Ramblin’ Down Thru The World’ is often stated as being an amalgam and adaptation of two Woody Guthrie songs, ‘Sally, Don’t You Grieve’ and ‘Ramblin’ ‘Round’, whilst ‘Freight Train Blues’ is a song written by John Lair in 1935 and recorded by Roy Acuff’s Crazy Tennesseans in 1936.
(38) Broadside Office ew York City, ew York January 19, 1963 1 Talkin’ Devil (Dylan) 2 Farewell (Dylan)
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Appendix 1 Three days after returning to New York from London, England, where he had taken part in a BBC TV play entitled “Mad House On Castle Street”, Dylan returned to “Broadside” to record two songs for transcription for publication in “Broadside” magazine. This is the only known performance of ‘Talkin’ Devil’ and the first known performance of ‘Farewell’. The second song has Gil Turner on background vocals. Track 1 was released on “Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1” (Broadside Records, BR 301, September 1963). For contractual reasons Bob Dylan appeared as Blind Boy Grunt. See appendix 1:35 for further details about “Broadside” magazine.
(39) Broadside Office ew York City, ew York January 24, 1963 1 Masters Of War (Dylan) 2 Let Me Die In My Footsteps (Dylan) After recording two songs for “Broadside” on January 19, Dylan quickly returned to the magazine to record two further songs. The first song was the recently penned epic ‘Masters Of War’. The second song, ‘Let Me Die In My Footsteps’, which Dylan had already recorded for the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album and had been performing since the summer of 1962, was recorded here with Happy Traum on vocals and Dylan on guitar. Track 2 was released on “Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1” (Broadside Records, BR 301, September 1963). For contractual reasons Bob Dylan appeared as Blind Boy Grunt. See appendix 1:35 for further details about “Broadside” magazine.
(40) Broadside Office ew York City, ew York February 1963 1 Only A Hobo (Dylan) 2 John Brown (Dylan) Dylan visited “Broadside” for a fourth time. Both these song were published in the March issue of the magazine. Tracks 1 & 2 were released on “Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1” (Broadside Records, BR 301, September 1963). For contractual reasons Bob Dylan appeared as Blind Boy Grunt. See appendix 1:35 for further details about “Broadside” magazine.
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Appendix 1 (41) The Basement of Gerdes Folk City ew York City, ew York “Banjo Tape” February 8, 1963 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Lonesome River Edge (unknown) Back Door Blues (trad.) Bob Dylan’s Dream (Dylan) You Can Get Her (unknown) Farewell (Dylan) All Over You (Dylan) Masters Of War (Dylan) Instrumental (unknown) Keep Your Hands Off Her (Huddie Leadbetter) Honey Babe (unknown) Goin’ Back To Rome (unknown) Stealin’, Stealin’ (trad., arr. Memphis Jug Band)
This recording has long since been dubbed as the “Banjo Tape”, so titled because it allegedly features Happy Traum playing banjo and singing occasional backing vocals. This tape was previously said to have been recorded at Gil Turner’s home in January 1963. More recent information, however, casts serious doubt over the date, the place of recording and the person responsible for making the tape. Recent information suggests the recording was not made at Gil Turner’s home in January, but that this tape was recorded on February 8, 1963 during a private session in the basement of Gerdes Folk City. It also seems that the tape was recorded by folklorist Peter K. Siegel and that Happy Traum may not after all be the banjo player. This is what Peter K. Siegel had to say about the tape in reply to an Internet post by Manfred Helfert: “My recollection is that Gil Turner played the banjo. You can also hear an old electric fan that was on a stand in Gerdes basement … Happy is probably right, he knows whereof he speaks. But the Feb. 8 tape was recorded in Gerdes by me for sure ... The tape was recorded using a Tandberg tape machine and an EV 644 mike. I was carrying the equipment because earlier the same night, I had recorded Bill Monroe’s first NY show at the NYU auditorium also on 4th Street…” It seems that Siegel gave a copy of the tape to the renowned guitarist Stefan Grossman and that Grossman actually released it commercially! Although I have never seen this item, it appears that Grossman was responsible for releasing the twelve-song tape on a cassette some time in 1984. The tape, which had no catalogue number or track listing, was entitled “Rev. Gary Davis / Bob Dylan” and was released on Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop Series of tapes. This item, which featured Davis on one side and Dylan on the other, was very quickly withdrawn and is therefore something of a collectors’ item.
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Appendix 1 The tape is quite unusual in a number of respects. First, it includes a goodly number of traditional covers – which Dylan had seemingly almost moved away from – some of which he had not performed previously. The second thing of interest is that Dylan is playing a twelve-string guitar. The status of ‘Lonesome River Edge’, ‘You Can Get Her’, ‘Honey Babe’ and ‘Goin’ Back To Rome’ (if indeed these are the correct titles) is unclear. These songs are not (at least to me) obvious traditional numbers but neither are they listed for copyright as Dylan compositions. A couple of the songs, notably ‘Goin’ Back To Rome’, may even have been on the spot improvisations. It is a pity that many of the songs are only fragments and that the sound quality of the circulating tape is quite poor.
(42) WBAI Studios ew York City, ew York Skip Weshner Show February 1963 1 Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Dylan) 2 Masters Of War (Dylan) 3 Bob Dylan’s Blues (Dylan) Dylan performed three of his recent original compositions on the Skip Weshner radio show. Broadcast on the WBAI show “Wireless Waves”.
(43) Westinghouse Studios ew York City, ew York “Folk Songs And More Folk Songs” March 1963 1 Blowin’ In The Wind (Dylan) 2 Man Of Constant Sorrow (trad.) 3 Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Dylan) Three Dylan performances were recorded on a rather tacky looking set in Westinghouse Studios, New York City for a television special entitled “Folk Songs And More Folk Songs”. The programme, which ran for almost one hour, included The Brothers Four, Carolyn Hester, The Staples Singers, Barbara Dane and others. The show’s host was John Henry Faulk. A video recording of this show is in circulation among collectors. Track 2 was released on the album “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol.7” (C2K 93937, September 30, 2005).
(44) Broadside Office ew York City, ew York March 1963
440
Appendix 1 1 I Shall Be Free (Dylan) 2 Train-A-Travelin’ (Dylan) 3 Cuban Missile Crisis (Dylan) Dylan returned to “Broadside” to record three more songs. To my knowledge ‘I Shall Be Free’ had not appeared anywhere since it was first recorded in December ’62 for the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album. ‘Train-A-Travelin’’ and ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ were both new songs. Track 2 was released on “Broadside Reunion” (Folkways FR 5315, 1972). See appendix 1:35 for further details about “Broadside” magazine.
(45) WBC Radio Studios ew York City, ew York Oscar Brand Show, World Of Folk Music March 1963 1 Girl From The North Country (Dylan) 2 Only a Hobo (Dylan) Dylan appeared as a surprise guest on Oscar Brand’s “World Of Folk Music” radio show. Dylan arrived at WNBC’s studios with the show’s scheduled guest, Barbara Dane. Dane had recently appeared with Dylan on the Westinghouse TV show “Folk Songs And More Folk Songs”. At Brand’s request, Dylan performed two songs. One was a new composition, ‘Girl From The orth Country’, which he would soon record for his “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album.
(46) Town Hall 123 West 43rd Street ew York City, ew York April 12, 1963 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Ramblin’ Down Thru The World (ad. Dylan) Bob Dylan’s Dream (Dylan) Talkin’ New York (Dylan) Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Dylan) Walls Of Red Wing (Dylan) All Over You (Dylan) Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues (Dylan) Boots Of Spanish Leather (Dylan) Hero Blues (Dylan) Blowin’ In The Wind (Dylan) John Brown (Dylan)
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Appendix 1 12 Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Dylan) 13 A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan) 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Dusty Old Fairgrounds (Dylan) Who Killed Davey Moore? (Dylan) Seven Curses (Dylan) Highway 51 (Curtis Jones [sic]) Pretty Peggy-O (trad., arr. Dylan) Bob Dylan’s New Orleans Rag (Dylan) Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Dylan) Hiding Too Long (Dylan) With God On Our Side (Dylan) Masters Of War (Dylan) Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie (Dylan)
The evening of April 12, 1963 saw Dylan take the stage at the prestigious Town Hall, New York City for his first truly major solo concert. The evening was well attended with close to a thousand people present. Perhaps surprisingly for a new artist with just one rather poor selling album to his name, Columbia Records decided to record the concert which, according to studio sheets reprinted in ISIS Magazine, consisted of the twenty-four songs listed above. Some chroniclers of Dylan’s work have pointed out that the twenty-four songs listed on the recording sheets makes for a rather lengthy concert and Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin has put forward the premise that this listing might have come from composite reels that Columbia had put together for the aborted album “Bob Dylan In Concert” (CL-2302 / CS9102). We know that this album was to be made up of songs from more than one concert and that one of those concerts was indeed the April 12, 1963 Town Hall show. Heylin also draws attention to the inclusion on the Columbia list of the song ‘Seven Curses’ which was not thought to have been written by April 1963. Nevertheless, the unofficial release in February 2008 of a two-CD set entitled “Stolen Moments” seems to validate the Columbia studio sheets. This superb audio document, released by the bootleg label Hollow Horn, contains all twenty-four of the songs listed on the Columbia sheets, and whilst this CD release could have been taken from a professionally spliced amalgam of more than one concert, the soundstage is uniform and the recording seems to be more or less continuous. Track 12 was released on “Greatest Hits Vol II” (Columbia KG-3112, November 17, 1971 (released as “More Greatest Hits” in the UK), and on “Masterpieces” (CBS/Sony 57AP875-7, March 1978, Japan). Track 24 was released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991). Tracks 10 and 23 were released on the album “o Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol.7” (C2K 93937, September 30, 2005).
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Appendix 1 Tracks 2, 11, 14 and 24 were included on the unreleased album “Bob Dylan In Concert” (CL-2302 / CS-9102).
(47) The Home Of Eve and Mac McKenzie ew York City, ew York April 19, 1963 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
I Rode Out One Morning (Dylan) Unidentified Instrumental Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Dylan) Unidentified Instrumental Long Time Gone (Dylan) Only a Hobo (Dylan) House Of The Risin’ Sun (trad., arr. Van Ronk) Two Trains Runnin’ [Instrumental] (McKinley Morganfield) Cocaine [Instrumental] (trad., arr. Rev. Gary Davies)
The exact date of this recording is unconfirmed; April 19, 1963 is often quoted as being correct. To make matters worse, several tapes were recorded at the McKenzie home and we cannot be certain as to which songs should be attributed to which tapes. These nine songs are very often included with the September ’62 McKenzie tape (Appendix 1:27). Dylan plays some nice acoustic guitar on this short tape which is dominated by instrumentals. He introduces the first song on the tape, ‘I Rode Out One Morning’ (if indeed that is the correct title), by saying: “Here’s a couple of verses of one of my songs that never did get done”. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I have listed this song as a Dylan original.
(48) Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York (8th “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album Recording Sessions) April 24, 1963 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Girl From The orth Country (Dylan) Girl From The orth Country (Dylan) Masters Of War [fragment] (Dylan) Masters Of War [fragment] (Dylan) Masters Of War (Dylan) Walls Of Red Wing [fragment] (Dylan) Walls Of Red Wing [fragment] (Dylan) Walls Of Red Wing (Dylan) Talking World War III Blues [fragment] (Dylan) Talking World War III Blues [fragment] (Dylan) Talking World War III Blues [fragment] (Dylan)
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Appendix 1 12 Talking World War III Blues [fragment] (Dylan) 13 Talking World War III Blues (Dylan) 14 Bob Dylan’s Dream (Dylan) 15 Bob Dylan’s Dream (Dylan) 16 Girl From The orth Country [fragment] (Dylan) 17 Girl From The orth Country (Dylan) 18 Girl From The orth Country [fragment] (Dylan) 19 Girl From The orth Country (Dylan) 20 Masters Of War (Dylan) 21 Masters Of War (Dylan) 22 Masters Of War (Dylan) And so to the eighth and final recording session for the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” Album. The story of Bob Dylan’s first collection of original songs is a strange one. After his eponymous debut album (appendix 1:14) notched up sales of less than 5,000 copies, there were those at Columbia Records who would have been happy to offload the fresh-faced flop that some were already calling “Hammond’s Folly”. The “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album had been finished in early December 1962 (appendix 1:36) but now, almost five months later, Dylan returned to the studio to record more songs. The question is why? The popular misconception is that Dylan’s return to Columbia Studio ‘A’ was brought about by the Ed Sullivan Show’s refusal to air ‘Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues’, which they felt might be seen as libellous. Columbia Records’ lawyers supposedly found out about this and advised the powers that be against releasing the track on the album. Although this is a convenient tale, the thinking behind it is surely faulty. The truth of the matter is that Columbia Records were not even aware which songs Dylan intended to sing on the Sullivan Show until he attended the rehearsal on the afternoon of May 12, which was eighteen days after he had cut the replacement songs for the album! The other story is that Dylan was moving so fast that he was unhappy with an album that had aged before his very eyes. Whilst it is true that the eighth session – organised to record the replacement tracks – took place one year to the day after the first “Freewheelin’” session, any notion that this kid with next to no sales under his belt had the clout to decide that he wanted to re-record an album that was already finished, pressed and ready to ship is surely misplaced! The probable truth is that it was Columbia Records’ decision to update the album, but exactly why is not clear. One reason could have been that Peter, Paul and Mary had got behind Dylan (the group, whose affairs were looked after by Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, had a financial interest in Bob Dylan’s success, but that’s another story!). They were certainly flavour of the month with Columbia at that time. Their first album (released in March 1962) had been in the Top Ten for ten months and would remain in the Top Twenty for two years. Consequently, their willingness to champion Dylan by recording ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ probably helped convince Columbia that Dylan was not only worth
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Appendix 1 hanging on to, but that maybe they should be putting a little more effort into cultivating him. If so, they were right to do so. Peter, Paul and Mary released ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ on June 18, 1963 and it sold 320,000 copies in just ten days! At any rate, on April 24, 1963 Dylan went back into the studio and recorded five new songs for possible inclusion on the replacement album. The new songs were ‘Girl From The orth Country’, ‘Masters Of War’, ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’, ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream’ and ‘Walls Of Redwing’. All but ‘Walls Of Redwing’ would make it onto the final release. The probability is that by the time the new tracks were recorded, mixed, and a decision had to be made as to which songs would come off the album, the news of the Sullivan Show’s refusal to air ‘Talkin’ John Birch’ had begun rebounding around the corridors at Columbia. The timing was therefore ideal for the label to address the issue of the potentially libellous song. The four casualties were ‘Rocks And Gravel’, which was not a Dylan original, ‘Let Me Die In My Footsteps’, which may well have been superseded by the sentiments of ‘Masters Of War’, ‘Rambling Gambling Willie’ and the now contentious ‘Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues’. Tracks 2, 5, 13 & 15 were released on “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (CL 1986, CS 8786). Track 8 was released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991).
(49) The Bear Chicago, Illinois April 25, 1963 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Henry Thomas / Bob Dylan) Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues (Dylan) Bob Dylan’s Dream (Dylan) Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Dylan) Talking World War III Blues (Dylan) A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan) With God On Our Side (Dylan)
Dylan performed at The Bear, a newly opened Chicago folk club that his manager Albert Grossman had recently added to his fast growing empire. As can be seen from the set list, Dylan’s performances now consist of almost all original compositions.
(50) WFMT-Radio Studio Chicago, Illinois “Studs Terkel Wax Museum” April 26, 1963
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Appendix 1 1 Farewell (Dylan) 2 A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan) 3 Bob Dylan’s Dream (Dylan) 4 Boots Of Spanish Leather (Dylan) 5 John Brown (Dylan) 6 Who Killed Davey Moore? (Dylan) 7 Blowin’ In The Wind (Dylan) The day after The Bear gig and while still in Chicago, Dylan recorded seven songs for the “Studs Terkel Wax Museum” WFMT-Radio show. Included in this clutch of originals were two new songs, ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream’ and ‘Boots Of Spanish Leather’.
(51) Monterey California Monterey Folk Festival May 18, 1963 1 Masters Of War (Dylan) 2 A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan) 3 With God On Our Side (Dylan) This set, from the Monterey Folk Festival, does not circulate among collectors and the track listing is therefore unconfirmed. There is a possibility that ‘Talking John Birch’ was also performed. Joan Baez dueted with Dylan on ‘With God On Our Side’.
(52) Silas Magee’s Farm Greenwood, Mississippi “Greenwood Mississippi Rally” July 6, 1963 1 Only a Pawn In Their Game (Dylan) Dylan attended a voter registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi where he performed a brand new song ‘Only a Pawn In Their Game’. The song is about the dreadful murder of the Mississippi leader of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Medgar Evers. Most of the black audience at the rally had little or no idea who Pete Seeger (who was also there) and Bob Dylan were. Dylan’s performance, on an improvised stage on the back of a truck, is featured in D.A. Pennebaker’s pioneering documentary “Dont Look Back”.
(53) Home Of David Whitaker Minneapolis, Minnesota July 17, 1963
446
Appendix 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Only A Pawn In Their Game (Dylan) With God On Our Side (Dylan) Girl From The North Country [fragment 0:52] (Dylan) Boots Of Spanish Leather [fragment 0:20] (Dylan) Eternal Circle [fragment 1:10] (Dylan) Who Killed Davey Moore? (Dylan) Instrumental Jam [fragment 0:58] What Did The Deep Sea Say? (Woody Guthrie) Hero Blues [fragment 1:25] (Dylan) Liverpool Gal (Dylan) West Memphis (unknown) Death Letter Blues (House) Only a Pawn In Their Game (Dylan) Bob Dylan’s ew Orleans Rag (Dylan) Ballad Of Hollis Brown [fragment 0:25] (Dylan) With God On Our Side (Dylan) Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Dylan)
The final home tape to feature in this appendix was recorded by taping stalwart Tony Glover at the Minneapolis apartment of Dave Whitaker. This tape contains the only known recording of ‘Liverpool Gal’, an apparently autobiographical song which Dylan wrote about his time in London during the making of the BBC TV play “Mad House On Castle Street”. Only tracks 3, 4, 5, 7, 9 & 15 are in general circulation and then only as poor quality fragments. Spider John Koerner joins Dylan on guitar for track 7. Tracks 11 & 12 featured Tony Glover on harmonica.
(54) ewport, Rhode Island ewport Folk Festival Freebody Park, Evening Concert, Main Stage July 26, 1963 1 2 3 4 5
Talkin’ World War III Blues (Dylan) With God On Our Side (Dylan) Only a Pawn In Their Game (Dylan) Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues (Dylan) A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (Dylan)
On the evening of July 26, 1963 Dylan took to the main stage for his first taste of Newport. Tracks 1 & 3 were released on the official DVD “The Other Side Of The Mirror: Bob Dylan Live At The ewport Folk Festival 1963-1965” (Columbia/Legacy, 88697144669, 2007).
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Appendix 1 For details of the July 26, 1963 finale see below (appendix 1:55). (55) ewport, Rhode Island ewport Folk Festival Freebody Park, Finale Of Evening Concert, Main Stage July 26, 1963 1 Blowin’ In The Wind (Dylan) 2 We Shall Overcome (trad.) A collective rendition of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ with Dylan, Joan Baez, The Freedom Singers, and Peter, Paul and Mary is followed by the ensemble linking hands for the finale and the trad. anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’. Track 1 was released on the official DVD “The Other Side Of The Mirror: Bob Dylan Live At The ewport Folk Festival 1963-1965” (Columbia/Legacy, 88697144669, 2007). Tracks 1 & 2 were released on “Evening Concerts At ewport, Vol 1” (Vanguard VRS 9148, July 1964). For details of the July 26, 1963 “main set” see above (appendix 1:54). (56) ewport, Rhode Island ewport Folk Festival Ballads Workshop, Porch 1 of ewport Casino July 27, 1963 1 orth Country Blues (Dylan) 2 With God On Our Side (Dylan) ‘orth Country Blues’ and ‘With God On Our Side’ were performed during the afternoon “workshop” at the Porch of Newport Casino. Joan Baez joined Dylan for ‘With God On Our Side’. The booklet that accompanies the official 2007 DVD “The Other Side Of The Mirror…” states that these two workshop performances took place on the afternoon of July 26. However, the available evidence indicates that these performances are more likely to be from July 27, 1963. These performances definitely took place at “Porch 1” and the two songs seem to fit the “Ballads Workshop” tag. Tracks 1 & 2 were released on the official DVD “The Other Side Of The Mirror: Bob Dylan Live At The ewport Folk Festival 1963-1965” (Columbia/Legacy, 88697144669, 2007).
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Appendix 1 (57) ewport, Rhode Island ewport Folk Festival Topical Songs Lawn of ewport Casino July 28, 1963 1 Who Killed Davey Moore? (Dylan) 2 Masters Of War (Dylan) 3 Playboys And Playgirls (Dylan) The booklet that accompanies the official 2007 DVD, “The Other Side Of The Mirror…” states that ‘Who Killed Davey Moore?’ was performed at the workshop on the afternoon of July 27. However, the available evidence indicates that this performance is more likely to have taken place on July 28, 1963. The performance of ‘Who Killed Davey Moore?’ seems to belong with ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Playboys And Playgirls’, which appear to come from the “Topical Songs” workshop of July 28. Track 1 was released on the official DVD “The Other Side Of The Mirror: Bob Dylan Live At The ewport Folk Festival 1963-1965” (Columbia/Legacy, 88697144669, 2007). Track 3 was released on “ewport Broadside” (Vanguard VRS 9144 & VSD 79144, July 1964). Also released on “Vanguard Sessions: Folk Duets” (Vanguard 79511 2, 1998) and “The Best Of The ewport Folk Festivals” (Vanguard VSD 8003, West Germany).
(58) ewport, Rhode Island ewport Folk Festival Freebody Park, Evening Concert Main Stage July 28, 1963 1 With God On Our Side (Dylan) Dylan was invited to join Joan Baez during her evening set at the Newport Folk Festival. They performed together on ‘With God On Our Side’. Track 1 was released on “ewport Broadside” (Vanguard VRS 9144 & VSD 79144, 1964), “Golden Folk Festival” (ANT TD-1158159) and “Joan Baez Live At ewport” (Vanguard VAN 0077015-2, 1996). This performance is also available on the official DVD “The Other Side Of The Mirror: Bob Dylan Live At The ewport Folk Festival 1963-1965” (Columbia/Legacy, 88697144669, 2007).
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Appendix 1 (59) The Red Room in Hi Lo Ha Byrdcliffe, near Woodstock, ew York State “The Basement Tapes” May - June 1967 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Lock Up Your Door [fragment 0:19] Baby, Won’t You Be My Baby (Dylan) Try Me, Little Girl (Dylan) I Can’t Make It Alone (Dylan) Don’t You Try Me Now (Dylan) A Long Time A-Growin’ (‘Young But Daily Growin’) (trad.) Bonnie Ship The Diamond (trad.) The Hills Of Mexico (Trail Of The Buffalo) (trad.) Down On Me [fragment 0:40] (trad.) One For The Road (Dylan) I’m Alright [fragment 0:59] (Dylan?) Song For Canada (One Single River) (Ian Tyson / Sylvia Fricker) People Get Ready (Curtis Mayfield) I Don’t Hurt Anymore (Don Robertson / Jack Rollins) (Be Careful Of) Stones That You Throw (Dodd) One Man’s Loss (Dylan) Instrumental Baby Ain’t That Fine (Dallas Frazier) Rock, Salt And Nails (Bruce Phillips) A Fool Such As I (Bill Trader) Silhouettes (Frank Slay & Bob Crewe) Bring It On Home (Dylan, improvisation) King Of France (Dylan)
(60) The Basement at Big Pink West Saugerties, near Woodstock, ew York State “The Basement Tapes” June – Late October or early ovember 1967 24 I Can’t Come In With a Broken Heart (Dylan) 25 Under Control (Dylan) 26 Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (trad., arr. Dylan) 27 28 29 30 31 32 33
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900 Miles (trad.) Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad (trad., arr. Woody Guthrie / Lee Hays) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Charles Badger Clark) Piano Instrumental On a Rainy Afternoon (Dylan) Rosin le Beau (trad.) I’m Guilty Of Loving You (Dylan)
Appendix 1 34 35 36 37
Johnny Todd (trad.) Cool Water (Bob Nolan) Banks Of The Royal Canal / Auld Triangle (Dominic Behan) Po’ Lazarus [incomplete] (trad.)
38 39 40 41 42 43
Belshazzar [false start / fragment 0:18] (Johnny Cash) Belshazzar [3:03] (Johnny Cash) I Forgot To Remember To Forget (S. Kesler / C. Feathers) You Win Again (Hank Williams) Still In Town, Still Around (H. Cochran / H. Howard) Waltzin’ With Sin [fragment 0:29] (Red Hayes / Sonny Burns)
44 45 46 47 48
Waltzin’ With Sin (Red Hayes / Sonny Burns) Big River [incomplete 0:50] (Johnny Cash) Big River (Johnny Cash) Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash) The Bells Of Rhymney (Idris Davies / Pete Seeger)
49 50 51 52 53
I’m A Fool For You (Dylan) Next Time On The Highway (Dylan) Tupelo [The Big Flood], [Mississippi] (John Lee Hooker) They Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dog Aroun’ (Trad.) See You Later, Alligator [Allen Ginsberg] (Robert Charles Guidry)
54 Tiny Montgomery (Dylan) 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71
Attackin’ My Broom [fragment 0:21] The Spanish Song (Luisa) [take one, 3:05] (Dylan, improvisation) The Spanish Song (Luisa) [take two, 2:11] (Dylan, improvisation) Big Dog / Won’t You Please Come Home? [fragment] I’m Your Teenage Prayer [false start 0:22] (Dylan) I’m Your Teenage Prayer (Dylan) Four Strong Winds (Ian Tyser) The French Girl [take one, 2:30] (Ian Tyser & Sylvia Fricker) The French Girl [take two, 2:57](Ian Tyser & Sylvia Fricker) Joshua Gone Barbados (Eric von Schmidt) I’m In The Mood For Love [incomplete] (John Lee Hooker) All American Boy (Bill Parsons / Orville Lunsford) Bourbon Street (Dylan) Sign On The Cross (Dylan) Don’t Ya Tell Henry (Dylan) Santa Fé (Dylan) Wild Wolf (Dylan)
72 Million Dollar Bash [take one, 2:34] (Dylan) 73 Yea! Heavy And a Bottle Of Bread [take one, 1:48] (Dylan)
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Appendix 1 74 Million Dollar Bash [take two, 2:31] (Dylan) 75 Yea! Heavy And a Bottle Of Bread [take two, 2:11] (Dylan) 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87
I’m ot There (1956) (Dylan) Please Mrs Henry (Dylan) Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood) [take one, 2:03] (Dylan) Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood) [take two, 2:01] (Dylan) Lo And Behold! [take one, 2:48] (Dylan) Lo And Behold! [take two, 2:43] (Dylan) You Ain’t Going Nowhere [take one, 2:43] (Dylan) This Wheel’s On Fire (Bob Dylan & Rick Danko) You Ain’t Going owhere [take two, 2:41] (Dylan) I Shall Be Released (Dylan) Too Much Of othing [take one, 2:59] (Dylan) Too Much Of Nothing [take two, 2:48] (Dylan)
88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98
Tears Of Rage [take one, 3:53] (Bob Dylan & Richard Manuel) Tears Of Rage [take two, 2:26] (Bob Dylan & Richard Manuel) Tears Of Rage [take three, 4:08] (Bob Dylan & Richard Manuel) Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) [take one, 1:58] (Dylan) Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) [take two, 2:12] (Dylan) Open The Door Homer [take one, 2:41] (Dylan) Open The Door Homer [take two, 0:55] (Dylan) Open The Door Homer [take three, 3:13] (Dylan) othing Was Delivered [take one, 4:16] (Dylan) Nothing Was Delivered [take two, 3:33] (Dylan) Odds And Ends (Dylan)
99 Nothing Was Delivered [fragment 0:30] (Dylan) 100 Odds And Ends (Dylan) 101 Get Your Rocks Off! (Dylan) 102 Clothes Line Saga (Dylan) 103 Apple Suckling Tree [take one, 2:37] (Dylan) 104 Apple Suckling Tree [take two, 2:48] (Dylan) 105 Goin’ To Acapulco (Dylan) 106 Gonna Get You Now (Dylan) 107 Silent Weekend (Dylan) 108 Wildwood Flower (A. P. Carter) 109 See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (trad., Blind Lemon Jefferson) 110 She’ll Be Comin’ Round The Mountain (trad.) 111 Flight Of The Bumble Bee (Rimsky-Korsakov / Jam) 112 Confidential (Dolinda Morgan) 113 All You Have To Do Is Dream #1 [3:42] (Dylan) 114 All You Have To Do Is Dream #2 [3.46] (Dylan) 115 It’s Just Another Tomato In The Glass [Instrumental]
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Appendix 1 The recordings that took place in the quiet backwaters around the tiny town of Woodstock in upper New York State are probably Dylan’s finest collection of songs to date. To attempt to organize these tracks into a strict chronological sequence is like trying to catch water in a sieve. For the purpose of this appendix however, I have attempted to divide these sessions into songs recorded sometime during May and June in the “Red Room” in Dylan’s Byrdcliffe home and those recorded between June and late October in what would become the most celebrated basement in the history of popular music (except for perhaps the Cavern in Liverpool). It is almost impossible to know exactly where the “Red Room” sessions finish and the Basement recordings start. It is possible therefore that a few of the early songs listed in appendix 1:60 actually belong in appendix 1:59. I have also inserted ten line-spaces where obvious breaks in recordings occur. There were of course many more sessions than these but as I have already stated trying to pin everything down exactly is a futile exercise. Our story centres on the cinder-block basement of an unremarkable, if rather garish, pinkpainted ranch house. The shingled property, which nestles in the shadow of Overlook Mountain and is set in a hundred acres of woods and fields, provides a quiet secluded setting, ideal for creating and recording music. Encircled by maples and oaks, the modest three-bedroom house, now known the world over as “Big Pink”, was rented furnished in the spring of 1967, at $250 a month, by three of the Hawks, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. Danko and Manuel had arrived in Woodstock in February 1967 to shoot further footage for Dylan’s intended movie “Eat The Document”. Originally they stayed at the Woodstock Motel but after a short time they began renting the aforementioned “Big Pink” house. Although the postal address for “Big Pink” is 2188 Stoll Road, Woodstock, West Saugerties, the property is actually located along Parnassus Lane, a hard-to-find crumbling track midway between Woodstock and West Saugerties. In March 1967 – almost nine months after falling from his Triumph motorcycle – Bob Dylan recommenced music-making. In May - June he began recording his sessions with the Hawks in what was known as the “Red Room” at his Byrdcliffe home, but when the distractions of family life became too much, the musicians relocated to Big Pink. Working with the Hawks in their makeshift basement studio became almost a daily ritual, sometimes six days a week. On weekdays, Dylan would deliver his adopted daughter, Maria, to preschool before heading over to Big Pink, where he would sit at the kitchen table and type out lyrics and ideas for songs. Around noon, he would be joined by the Hawks; they would then relocate down to the Basement and, after working through the songs, any recording would usually take place mid-afternoon. Between June and late October 1967, Dylan and the Hawks committed well over a hundred songs to tape via an Ampex reel-to-reel recorder. (The cover of the official album incorrectly shows a Revox A77 tape machine. This machine is also on display in the Cleveland Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!). The Hawks, who had backed Dylan on the second (electric) half of his infamous 1966 world tour, had served their apprenticeship working behind rockabilly great Ronnie Hawkins. The music they were putting down in Big Pink, however, was something completely new. Correction, it was actually something very old.
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Appendix 1 “The Basement Tapes” sessions produced a kaleidoscope of American music and more. The sessions summoned up cowboy songs (‘Cool Water’), sea shanties (‘Bonnie Ship The Diamond’ and ‘Johnny Todd’), and blues (such as John Lee Hooker’s ‘I’m In The Mood’). Then there’s Hank Williams, lots of Johnny Cash, several Ian and Sylvia numbers and several traditional songs (‘Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies’ and ‘Hills Of Mexico’, to name but two). The real beauty of these recordings is the old-time “Americana” feel that was captured at these sessions. This mood is communicated both through the traditional songs and also through the songs that Dylan had penned – in some cases – just ten minutes earlier at the kitchen table. Guitarist Robbie Robertson told Greil Marcus: “He [Dylan] would pull these songs out of nowhere. We didn’t know if he wrote them or if he remembered them. When he sang them you couldn’t tell”. And that is precisely the point. Songs like ‘Tears Of Rage’ could have been written by Dock Boggs or Clarence Ashley. If you didn’t know it was a Dylan song, you might search for it on Harry Smith’s “Anthology Of American Folk Music”. The basement recordings are a collection of retrospective songs that evoke a mythical American landscape in which Dylan turns to the past in the hope of finding something permanent in a now transient America. Many of the songs bemoan a loss of national identity, where the fabled past has given way to a violent and uncertain present that included America’s continued involvement in the war in Vietnam. The official “The Basement Tapes” album (Columbia, C2 33682) is nothing short of a train wreck. After eight years of waiting we got an album that was compiled and produced by Robbie Robertson containing twenty-four songs, eight of which had nothing whatsoever to do with Bob Dylan. As a listening experience, which I suppose is the point of releasing any recording, “The Basement Tapes” album stands up extremely well. In fact, it is an outstanding album. It does, however, fail the Dylan devotee on three points. First, it fails as an historical document due to the inclusion of non-Basement tracks. Second, much of the magic of the Big Pink sessions is lost by the inclusion of Band tracks, with overdubs carried out eight years after the event, and the fact that the warm stereo recordings are compressed into “collapsed” mono for release. Finally, with so much Dylan material available, why were eight Band tracks included? There has been much debate over the years as to the true origin of the so-called “Basement” songs that appear on the officially released album and although it is probably outside my remit to write at length about that subject here, I feel that some comment is needed, especially after my referring to the album as a “train wreck”. The first thing to mention is that only thirteen of the twenty-four tracks have been used in their original form. By this I mean that there are only thirteen tracks from the original Basement sessions with Dylan in attendance that have not had overdubs added. Of the remaining eleven tracks, three of the original Dylan Basement songs have had instruments dubbed on in 1975. A further five tracks were either not recorded in Big Pink, or if they were, it was subsequent to the Dylan sessions. And finally, certainly two, but possibly
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Appendix 1 three tracks, (‘Ain’t o More Cane’, ‘Don’t Ya Tell Henry’ and ‘Bessie Smith’), were recorded in Shangri-La Studios, Malibu by the Band in 1975 specifically for inclusion on the official release. Note to Mr Rosen and Sony: we await an official “Bootleg Series” release featuring the best of Dylan’s Basement Sessions proper. Robertson has defended the decision to include the Band material on the official album by saying that he did not have access to all of the material that has since become available on bootleg CDs. This statement is, however, in stark contrast to comments made by Rob Fraboni (engineer of the official “The Basement Tapes” album). Fraboni informed author Sid Griffin that there were something like ten hours of music over fifty or sixty reels of tape! While I am quite confident that there was far more material than Robertson cares to admit, fifty or sixty reels seem too many. Although it is quite possible, ten hours of music over sixty reels would mean that on average each of the sixty reels was only half used. That seems to me to be an awful lot of wasted tape. Another often quoted figure is thirty-seven seven-inch reels. For argument’s sake, if all thirty-seven reels ran at 7½ inches per second (in reality some of the earlier “Red Room” reels probably ran at 3¾ i.p.s), you would get about twenty minutes of recording onto each reel. Let us say that on average each reel had five minutes of unused tape at the end, thirtyseven reels would hold around ten hours of music. So, regardless of the actual quantity of reels, ten hours of music is a distinct possibility. There is little doubt that more Basement songs exist; the question is how many? Tracks 54, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 86, 90, 93, 96, 100, 102, 105, were released on the album “The Basement Tapes” (Columbia, C2 33682, June 26, 1975). Track 92 was released on the album “Biograph” (Columbia, C5X, November 7, 1985). Tracks 70, 85 were released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991).
(61) Columbia Recording Studios ashville, Tennessee 5th ashville Skyline Session February 18, 1969 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
One Too Many Mornings (Dylan) One Too Many Mornings (Dylan) Mountain Dew [incomplete] (Bascom Lamar Lunsford / Scott Wiseman) Mountain Dew (Bascom Lamar Lunsford/Scott Wiseman) I Still Miss Someone [fragment] (Johnny Cash / Roy Cash Jr.) I Still Miss Someone [incomplete] (Johnny Cash /Roy Cash Jr.) I Still Miss Someone [fragment] (Johnny Cash / Roy Cash Jr.)
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Appendix 1 8 I Still Miss Someone (Johnny Cash / Roy Cash Jr.) 9 Careless Love (trad.) 10 Matchbox [incomplete] (Carl Perkins) 11 Matchbox [fragment] (Carl Perkins) 12 Matchbox (Carl Perkins) 13 That’s All Right Mama [fragment] (Arthur Crudup) 14 That’s All Right Mama (Arthur Crudup) 15 Mystery Train [fragment] (Sam Phillips / Herman Parker) 16 Big River (Johnny Cash) 17 Big River (Johnny Cash) 18 Girl From The orth Country (Dylan) 19 Girl From The orth Country [fragment] (Dylan) 20 Girl From The orth Country (Dylan) 21 I Walk The Line [incomplete] (Johnny Cash) 22 I Walk The Line (Johnny Cash) 23 Five Feet High And Rising [incomplete] (Johnny Cash) 24 You Are My Sunshine (Jimmy Davies / Charles Mitchell) 25 Ring Of Fire [incomplete] (June Carter / Merle Kilgore) 26 Ring Of Fire [incomplete] (June Carter / Merle Kilgore) 27 Ring Of Fire (June Carter / Merle Kilgore) 28 Wanted Man [fragment](Dylan) 29 Guess Things Happen That Way [incomplete] (Jack Clement) 30 Guess Things Happen That Way (Jack Clement) 31 Guess Things Happen That Way [fragment] (Jack Clement) 32 Guess Things Happen That Way [fragment] (Jack Clement) 33 Guess Things Happen That Way (Jack Clement) 34 Amen [fragment] (unknown) 35 Amen [incomplete] (unknown) 36 Just a Closer Walk With Thee (trad.) 37 Blue Yodel # 1 (Jimmie Rodgers) 38 Blue Yodel # 5 (Jimmie Rodgers) Dylan had gone into the studio seemingly in an attempt to produce another “John Wesley Harding”. Anyone who has studied Dylan will be well aware that his comments should be taken with a truckload of salt, but according to Dylan what would eventually become “ashville Skyline” was originally going to be called “John Wesley Harding Vol 2”. In any event, apart from perhaps ‘Lay, Lady, Lay’, ‘I Threw It All Way’, ‘To Be Alone With You’ and ‘One More ight’, all of which were attempted at the first session on February 13, 1969, Dylan seemed to be short on ideas and on the afternoon of February 17, after several days of floundering, he invited Johnny Cash to join him. The Man in Black was again present for this final session (February 18, 1969), and many of the songs recorded here are associated with Cash. It also seems likely that Carl Perkins played guitar at this session. The previous four sessions, which contain no cover songs, are not included in this appendix. Apart from the just about acceptable Dylan / Cash duet on ‘Girl From The orth Country’, this session is a complete failure, with most of the songs
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Appendix 1 being little more than impromptu jams. Producer Bob Johnson has said that the session musicians began calling out suggestions and Dylan and Cash simply attempted to play them while the studio tapes were rolling! For the most part Dylan appeared to be content to take a back seat allowing Cash to take the lead. The songs that work best are probably those on which the vocals are performed as a “trade off”. The only song to be released from the two Dylan / Cash sessions was ‘Girl From The orth Country’, which would appear on the twenty-eight-minute “ashville Skyline” (Columbia KCS 9825, April 1969).
(62) Columbia Recording Studios ashville, Tennessee 1st “Self Portrait” Album Session April 24, 1969 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Living The Blues [incomplete] (Dylan) Living The Blues (Dylan) Living The Blues (Dylan) Living The Blues [fragment] (Dylan) Living The Blues [fragment] (Dylan) Living The Blues (Dylan) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Charles Badger Clark Jr) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue [fragment] (Charles Badger Clark Jr) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue [fragment] (Charles Badger Clark Jr) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue [fragment] (Charles Badger Clark Jr) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Charles Badger Clark Jr) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue [fragment] (Charles Badger Clark Jr) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Charles Badger Clark Jr)
Although only two months had passed since the completion of the “ashville Skyline” album, April 24, 1969 saw Dylan return to Nashville and Columbia Music Row Studios for the first of the six sessions that would be needed to record the double album “Self Portrait”. Two three-hour sessions (6:00 pm - 9:00 pm and 10:00 pm - 1:00 am), produced two tracks; the Dylan original ‘Living The Blues’ and the Charles Badger Clark cowboy love song ‘Spanish Is The Loving Tongue’, which had previously been attempted during the “Basement Tapes” sessions (appendix 1:60). Most of the session musicians who worked on “ashville Skyline” (Charlie Daniels, Norman Blake, Pete Drake, Kenneth Buttrey and Charlie McCoy) were again brought in over the “Self Portrait” sessions to either record or provide overdubs. The three sessions that took place in Nashville spanned nine days, but it would be eleven months before Dylan completed the album with a further three sessions over three days in Colombia Studios, New York.
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Appendix 1 Over the years, Dylan’s reasons for releasing “Self Portrait” have been the subject of much debate. The bone of contention has always been “was it intended as a serious release or not”. In 1984 Dylan told Kurt Loder, interviewing for Rolling Stone: “…I had that motorcycle accident, which put me out of commission. Then, when I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was workin’ for all these leeches. And I didn’t wanna do that. … I’d also seen that I was representing all these things that I didn’t know anything about … It was all storm-the-embassy kind of stuff – Abbie Hoffman in the streets – and they sorta figured me as the kingpin of all that. I said, ‘Wait a minute, I’m just a musician. So my songs are about this and that. So what?’ But people need a leader. People need a leader more than a leader needs people. …But then came the big news about Woodstock [festival] … and it was like a wave of insanity breakin’ loose around the house day and night. You’d come in the house and find people there, people comin’ through the woods, at all hours of the day and night, knockin’ on your door. It was really dark and depressing. And there was no way to respond to all this, you know? It was as if they were suckin’ your very blood out. …We had to get out of there. This was just about the time of that Woodstock festival, which was the sum total of all this bullshit. And it seemed to have something to do with me, this Woodstock Nation, and everything it represented … I got very resentful about the whole thing, and we got outta there. We moved to New York. Lookin’ back, it really was a stupid thing to do. But there was a house available on MacDougal Street, and I always remembered that as a nice place. So I just bought this house, sight unseen. But it wasn’t the same when we got back. The Woodstock Nation had overtaken MacDougal Street also. There’d be crowds outside my house. And I said, ‘Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can’t possibly like, they can’t relate to. They’ll see it, and they’ll listen, and they’ll say, ‘Well, let’s get on to the next person. He ain’t sayin’ it no more. He ain’t givin’ us what we want’ … But the whole idea backfired … people said, ‘This ain’t what we want’, and they got more resentful”. Dylan stuck with this story in part, when he was interviewed by Cameron Crowe for the “Biograph” album booklet notes. “…I was being bootlegged at the time … So I just figured I’d put all this stuff together and put it out, my own bootleg record, so to speak. Also, I wasn’t going to be anybody’s puppet and I figured this record would put an end to that”. There have been times, however, when Dylan has tried to justify “Self Portrait” as a “proper” attempt at an album. One instance was Dylan’s defence of at least some of the tracks on the album during a telephone conversation with A.J. Weberman. In the main, however, Dylan has stuck to the premise that he purposely made a bad album to keep his
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Appendix 1 overly obsessive “fans” at bay, a claim he reiterates in his 2004 memoir “Chronicles Vol. 1”. Although the press reaction to the album was generally poor – the most memorable and often quoted being Greil Marcus’ review for Rolling Stone which opened with “What is this shit?” – the album went to Number Four on the US Chart and gave Dylan his third successive UK Number One album. If Dylan’s intention really was to alienate his most zealous fans, the ploy failed. Even four years of chiefly mediocre albums, culminating with “Self Portrait”, and no live dates failed to douse the fans’ appetite for Bob Dylan. Track 6 was released on the album “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970). Track 13 was released on the album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973).
(63) Columbia Recording Studios ashville, Tennessee 2nd “Self Portrait” Album Session 26 April 1969 1 2 3 4 5
Take Me As I Am (Boudleaux Bryant) A Fool Such As I (Bill Trader) I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know (Cecil A. Null) Let It Be Me (Pierre Delanoë / Gilbert Becaud / M. Curtis) Running (unknown)
The April 26 session produced four tracks, all covers. Tracks 1, 3 & 4 were released on the album “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970). Track 2 was released on the album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973). For further details on the “Self Portrait” sessions see appendix 1:62.
(64) Columbia Recording Studios ashville, Tennessee 3rd “Self Portrait” Album Session 3 May 1969 1 2 3 4
Take a Message To Mary (Felice Bryant/Boudleaux Bryant) Blue Moon (Lorenz Hart/Richard Rogers) Ring Of Fire (June Carter/Merle Kilgore) Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
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Appendix 1 May 3, 1969 saw Dylan continuing to record only covers. The first song recorded at this session was written by the prolific husband and wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. The Bryants, who were friends with Johnny Cash, were responsible for writing most of the Everly Brothers’ early hits. Dylan had already recorded one of Boudleaux’s songs, ‘Take Me As I Am’, at the previous session (April 24, 1969). Dylan had met Boudleaux Bryant two days earlier when both men had been invited to dinner at Johnny Cash’s home. Cash’s influence on Dylan is emphasized by attempts to record ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘Ring Of Fire’ at this session. Tracks 1 & 2 were released on the album “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970). For further details on the “Self Portrait” sessions see appendix 1:62.
(65) Studio B, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 4th “Self Portrait” Album Session 3 March 1970 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Pretty Saro (trad.) Pretty Saro [fragment] (trad.) Pretty Saro [fragment] (trad.) Pretty Saro (trad.) Pretty Saro (trad.) Pretty Saro (trad.) Little Sadie (trad.) Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay [fragment] (Steve Cropper / Otis Redding) Went To See The Gypsy (Dylan) In Search Of Little Sadie (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Belle Isle (trad.) Universal Soldier [fragment] (Buffy Sainte-Marie) Copper Kettle (Albert Frank Bedoe) When a Fellow’s Out Of a Job [fragment] (unknown) These Hands (Eddie Noack) It Hurts Me Too (Tampa Red, arr. Elmore James) The Boxer (Paul Simon) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Charles Badger Clark) Unidentified [fragment] Woogie-Boogie [instrumental] (Dylan)
After a break of eleven months, during which time Dylan had headlined at the Isle Of Wight Music Festival, he got back to the business of recording further songs for the “Self Portrait” album. This four-hour session yielded seven songs that would be included on the final album. Apart from the first song, ‘Pretty Saro’, everything attempted at the session was done in a single take.
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Appendix 1 The songs are quite diverse. The traditional ‘Belle Isle’, ‘Pretty Saro’ and ‘Little Sadie’ sit, if sit is the right word, alongside Paul Simon’s ‘The Boxer’, Otis Redding’s ‘Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay’ and Donovan’s version of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s ‘Universal Soldier’. Several of the songs that were attempted at the March 3 session are difficult to identify. ‘When a Fellow’s Out Of a Job’, ‘These Hands’ and the unidentified song (number 19) are not in circulation among collectors, and without the opportunity of hearing these tracks – two of which are only fragments – it is difficult to pin them down. I assume that ‘These Hands’ is the song written by Eddie Noack and recorded by Hank Snow. It is also rumoured that Dylan sang this song after dinner at Johnny Cash’s home (May 1, 1969). Tracks 7, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17 & 20 were released on the album “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970). For further details on the “Self Portrait” sessions see appendix 1:62.
(66) Studio B, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 5th “Self Portrait” Album Session 4 March 1970 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Went To See The Gypsy (Dylan) Went To See The Gypsy (Dylan) Went To See The Gypsy (Dylan) Went To See The Gypsy [fragment](Dylan) Went To See The Gypsy (Dylan) Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen) Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen) Thirsty Boots [fragment] (Eric Andersen) Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen) Unidentified Song (unknown) Railroad Bill (trad.) House Carpenter (trad.) Tell Old Bill (trad.) Days Of ’49 (trad.) Annie’s Going To Sing Her Song (Tom Paxton) Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot) Wigwam [instrumental] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [fragment] (Dylan)
Only three of the eleven songs attempted at this session would make it onto the finished album. Dylan returned to Columbia Studio ‘B’ late on the next afternoon to wrap things up. The recording sheet for this session lists take ten as ‘Tattle O-Day’. This song is usually credited by Dylan chroniclers as being written by Eric Andersen. Although an obscure
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Appendix 1 traditional song with that title does exist, I have been unable to find ‘Tattle O-Day’ credited to Eric Andersen. Clinton Heylin states that take ten is in fact the traditional song ‘Little Brown Dog’. This popular trad. song has been recorded many times, including the Judy Collins adaptation that was released on her 1962 album “Golden Apple Of The Sun” (Elektra, EKL-222). This song does not circulate among collectors so it is not possible to come to a definitive conclusion. Tracks 14, 16 & 17 were released on the album “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970). For further details on the “Self Portrait” sessions see appendix 1:62. (67) Studio B, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 6th “Self Portrait” Album Session 5 March 1970 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Alberta [fragment] (trad., registered as Bob Dylan) Alberta o. 2 (trad., registered as Bob Dylan) Little Moses [fragment] (Bert A. Williams / Earle C. Jones) Alberta (trad., registered as Bob Dylan) Alberta o. 1 (trad., registered as Bob Dylan) Come a Little Bit Closer (Tommy Boyce / Bobby Hart / Wes Farrell) Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (trad.) My Previous Life [fragment] (unknown) My Previous Life [fragment] (unknown) My Previous Life [fragment] (unknown) Gotta Travel On (Paul Clayton / Larry Ehrlich / David Lazar / Tom Six) Went To See The Gypsy [fragment] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [fragment] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [fragment] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly (Dylan) Come a Little Bit Closer [fragment] (Tommy Boyce / Bobby Hart / Wes Farrell) Come a Little Bit Closer (Tommy Boyce / Bobby Hart / Wes Farrell) All The Tired Horses (Dylan)
Even though the final three sessions produced fourteen of the songs that would be included on “Self Portrait”, the total number of rejected songs exceeded those that were used. Although ‘Went To See The Gypsy’ and ‘Time Passes Slowly’ were attempted at the final “Self Portrait” session, both songs would have to wait to be successfully recorded later in the year for inclusion on the “ew Morning” album. The likelihood is that, by the time this session took place, Dylan was already thinking about his next project. In any event, within two months he would be back in the studio. Almost immediately after the final recording session the tapes were dispatched from New York down to Nashville to receive a head to toe makeover that would include new rhythm
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Appendix 1 tracks, backing vocals, guitar, dobro, piano, violin, viola, sax, clarinet, trombone, bongos and congas. Even some of the harmonica on “Self Portrait” was not the real “McCoy”. Correction; it was the real “McCoy”, Charlie McCoy! Dylan’s disinterest in “Self Portrait” is apparent by his failure to involve himself in these extensive overdub sessions. As if to compound the perversity of the “Self Portrait” album, Dylan decided to include four songs from his August 31, 1969 bill-topping appearance at the Isle of Wight festival. Although the song does not circulate among collectors, I have assumed that ‘Come a Little Bit Closer’ is the 1964 Number Three hit for Jay & The Americans. The origin of tracks 8 to 10 (three takes of ‘My Previous Life’) can not be identified. Tracks 2, 5, 11 & 18 were released on the album “Self Portrait” (Columbia C2X 30050, June 1970) For further details on the “Self Portrait” sessions see appendix 1:62.
(68) Studio B, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 1st “ew Morning” Album Session May 1, 1970 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Sign On The Window (Dylan) Sign On The Window (Dylan) Sign On The Window [fragment] (Dylan) Sign On The Window (Dylan) Sign On The Window (Dylan) If ot For You [fragment] (Dylan) If ot For You (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [fragment] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly (Dylan) Working On a Guru (Dylan) Went To See The Gypsy (Dylan) If ot For You (Dylan) If ot For You (Dylan) If ot For You (Dylan) Song To Woody (Dylan) Song To Woody (Dylan) Song To Woody (Dylan) Mama, You Been On My Mind (Dylan) Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right [instrumental] (Dylan) Yesterday (Lennon / McCartney) Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Dylan)
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Appendix 1 24 Da Doo Ron Ron (Barry / Greenwich / Spector) 25 One Too Many Mornings [instrumental] (Dylan) 26 One Too Many Mornings (Dylan) 27 Ghost Riders In The Sky (Jones) 28 Cupid (Sam Cooke) 29 All I Have To Do Is Dream (Boudleaux Bryant) 30 Gates Of Eden (Dylan) 31 I Threw It All Away (Dylan) 32 I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) (Dylan) 33 Matchbox (Carl Perkins) 34 Your True Love (Carl Perkins) 35 Telephone Wire / Las Vegas Blues (Dylan) 36 Fishin’ Blues (Henry Thomas) 37 Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Henry Thomas / Dylan) 38 Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35 (Dylan) 39 It Ain’t Me, Babe (Dylan) Just two months after the final “Self Portrait” session and one month before the album’s release, Dylan was back in the studio for another bout of recording. This lengthy session, which was broken into three, began at 2:30 pm on May 1, 1970 and ran until 1:30 am on the morning of May 2. The total recording time was almost five-and-a-half hours. This investment in time gives the impression that this session was entered into in earnest. However, the choice of songs seems to tell a different tale. The session was made up of seemingly random tryouts of some of Dylan’s back catalogue:‘Song To Woody’, ‘Mama, You Been On My Mind’, ‘Don’t Think Twice’, ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’, ‘One Too Many Mornings’, ‘Gates Of Eden’, ‘I Threw It All Away’, ‘I Don’t Believe You’, ‘Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance’, ‘Rainy Day Women’ and ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’. The purpose of these recordings remains a mystery to me. This session, which included some new songs, ‘If ot For You’, ‘Sign On The Window’, ‘Time Passes Slowly’, ‘Working On a Guru’ and ‘Went To See The Gypsy’, also contained a strange assortment of covers including ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’, ‘Cupid’ and ‘Ghost Riders In The Sky’. Track thirty-five is a short seemingly aborted blues, which masquerades under various titles including ‘Telephone Wire’, ‘Las Vegas Blues’ and ‘Wonder When My Swamp’s Gonna Catch On Fire’, which is how it is listed on the studio sheet. All of the above phrases appear in the song. This song appears to be a Dylan original. However, it is not registered in the Federal Copyright files, at least under any of the titles listed above. The prime reason for this session may have been George Harrison’s presence in town. This was Harrison’s first visit to the States since he and Patti Harrison had been found guilty of processing cannabis – one hundred and twenty joints to be precise – in March 1969. There is some evidence that after this session with Harrison, Dylan intended to organize further sessions with Ringo Starr, Johnny Cash and even with The Byrds. However, none of these sessions came to fruition.
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Appendix 1 Track 15 was released on the album “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3” (C3K 47382, March 26, 1991).
(69) Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 2nd “ew Morning” Album Session June 1, 1970 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
Alligator Man (Jimmy ‘C’ Newman / Floyd Chance) Alligator Man (Jimmy ‘C’ Newman / Floyd Chance) Alligator Man [fragment] (Jimmy ‘C’ Newman / Floyd Chance) Alligator Man (Jimmy ‘C’ Newman / Floyd Chance) Alligator Man [fragment] (Jimmy ‘C’ Newman / Floyd Chance) The Ballad Of Ira Hayes (Peter La Farge) Oh Lonesome Me [fragment] (Don Gibson) Oh Lonesome Me (Don Gibson) Oh Lonesome Me (Don Gibson) Alligator Man (Jimmy ‘C’ Newman / Floyd Chance) Mary Ann (trad.) Mary Ann [fragment] (trad.) Mary Ann [fragment] (trad.) Mary Ann [fragment] (trad.) Mary Ann (trad.) Mary Ann (trad.) Mary Ann (trad.) Sarah Jane (trad.) Sarah Jane (trad.) Sarah Jane [fragment] (trad.) Sarah Jane [fragment] (trad.) Sarah Jane (trad.) Sarah Jane [fragment] (trad.) Sarah Jane [fragment] (trad.) Sarah Jane (trad.)
A month had passed since the first “ew Morning” session. Dylan now entered Columbia’s brand new Studio E for the first of five sessions over five consecutive days. This session seems to reinforce the notion that Dylan was working on another album of cover songs; a “Self Portrait II”. No original compositions were attempted during the five hours of recording. Instead, Dylan worked his way through multiple takes of ‘Alligator Man’ (probably the Jimmy ‘C’ Newman song), Don Gibson’s ‘Oh Lonesome Me’, two traditional numbers, ‘Mary Ann’ and ‘Sarah Jane’, and the Pete La Farge song ‘The Ballad Of Ira Hayes’. Tracks 6 & 22 were released on the album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973).
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Appendix 1 (70) Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 3rd “ew Morning” Album Session June 2, 1970 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33
Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Charles Badger Clark) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Charles Badger Clark) Mary Ann (trad.) Mr Bojangles (Jerry Jeff Walker) If ot For You (Dylan) Mr Bojangles [fragment] (Jerry Jeff Walker) Mr Bojangles [incomplete] (Jerry Jeff Walker) Mr Bojangles [incomplete] (Jerry Jeff Walker) Mr Bojangles [incomplete] (Jerry Jeff Walker) Mr Bojangles (Jerry Jeff Walker) If Not For You (Dylan) Mary Ann [incomplete] (trad.) Mary Ann [incomplete] (trad.) Mary Ann [incomplete] (trad.) Mary Ann [incomplete] (trad.) Mary Ann [incomplete] (trad.) Mary Ann (trad.) Mary Ann (trad.) Mary Ann (trad.) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) Time Passes Slowly (Dylan)
This day’s split sessions run for a total of six hours during which time Dylan attempted five songs including Charles Badger Clark’s ‘Spanish Is The Loving Tongue’. This song had remained with Dylan since Big Pink (see appendix 1:60), and had already been committed to tape at two of the “Self Portrait” sessions. The traditional ‘Mary Ann’ is tried nine times (seven attempts had been made on the previous day). The lovely Jerry Jeff Walker song, ‘Mr Bojangles’, is successfully captured at the sixth time of asking.
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Appendix 1 ‘If ot For You’ is again attempted. Dylan had already had several run-throughs of this new song on May 1, 1970 (see appendix 1:68). It would be August before he got the performance he wanted. Another new composition, ‘Time Passes Slowly’, which had been attempted at two “Self Portrait” sessions, was tried no fewer than fourteen times today. ‘Mr. Bojangles’ aside, this day was spent going over old ground. Tracks 10 & 17 were released on the album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973). Track 2 was released on the album “Masterpieces” CBS/Sony 57AP-875/6/7, March 1978).
(71) Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 4th “ew Morning” Album session June 3, 1970 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Jamaica Farewell (Burgess) Can’t Help Falling In Love (Weiss / Peretti / Creatore) Can’t Help Falling In Love [fragmant] (Weiss / Peretti / Creatore) Can’t Help Falling In Love (Weiss / Peretti / Creatore) Long Black Veil (Danny Dill / Marijohn Wilkin) Lily Of The West (trad., arr. E. Davies / J. Peterson) Lily Of The West (trad., arr. E. Davies / J. Peterson) One More Weekend (Dylan) One More Weekend (Dylan)
During this session Dylan concentrated on yet more covers. ‘Jamaica Farewell’, ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’, ‘Long Black Veil’ and ‘Lily Of The West’ were all attempted. Only one Dylan original, ‘One More Weekend’, got an outing. Track 9 was released on the album “ew Morning” (Columbia KC 30290, October 1970). Tracks 4 & 7 were released on the album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973).
(72) Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 5th “ew Morning” Album session June 4, 1970 1 2 3 4
Bring Me Water (unknown) Bring Me Water (unknown) Three Angels (Dylan) Three Angels [fragment] (Dylan)
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Appendix 1 5 Three Angels (Dylan) 6 Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Dylan) 7 Tomorrow Is a Long Time [fragment] (Dylan) 8 Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Dylan) 9 Big Yellow Taxi [incomplete] (Joni Mitchell) 10 Big Yellow Taxi) [fragment] (Joni Mitchell) 11 Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell) 12 Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell) 13 Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell) 14 Big Yellow Taxi [fragment] (Joni Mitchell) 15 Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell) 16 ew Morning (Dylan) 17 ew Morning [fragment] (Dylan) 18 ew Morning (Dylan) Due to a lack of information it is not possible to identify the first song attempted at this session. The song is listed on the studio Tape Identification Sheets (notorious for inaccuracies) simply as ‘Bring Me Water’. I do not know of a song with that title. Bobby Darin’s ‘Jailer, Bring Me Water’ comes to mind, as does the Led Belly song ‘Sylvie’, which is commonly known as ‘Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie’. The inclusion of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ seems very reminiscent of “Self Portrait”. However, two new Dylan originals, ‘Three Angels’ and ‘ew Morning’, were also successfully recorded. There was also an attempt at recording a re-arranged ‘Tomorrow Is a Long Time’! Tracks 5 & 18 were released on the album “ew Morning” (Columbia KC 30290, October 1970). Track 15 was released on the album “Dylan” (Columbia PC 32747, November 1973).
(73) Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 6th “ew Morning” album session June 5, 1970 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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If Dogs Run Free (Dylan) If Dogs Run Free [fragment] (Dylan) If Dogs Run Free (Dylan) Went To See The Gypsy (Dylan) Went To See The Gypsy (Dylan) Went To See The Gypsy [fragment] (Dylan) Went To See The Gypsy (Dylan) Sign On The Window [fragment] (Dylan) Sign On The Window [fragment] (Dylan) Sign On The Window [fragment] (Dylan) Sign On The Window [fragment] (Dylan)
Appendix 1 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Sign On The Window (Dylan) Sign On The Window [fragment] (Dylan) Sign On The Window (Dylan) Sign On The Window (Dylan) The Man In Me (Dylan) The Man In Me (Dylan) Ahoooah (Owau)[instrumental] Father Of ight (Dylan) Father Of ight (Dylan) Father Of ight [fragment] (Dylan) Father Of ight [fragment] (Dylan) Father Of ight [fragment] (Dylan) Father Of ight [incomplete] (Dylan) Father Of ight (Dylan) Father Of ight [incomplete] (Dylan) Father Of ight [incomplete] (Dylan) Father Of ight [incomplete] (Dylan) Father Of ight (Dylan) Winterlude [fragment] (Dylan) Winterlude [fragment] (Dylan) Winterlude [incomplete] (Dylan) Winterlude (Dylan) Winterlude (Dylan) I Forgot To Remember To Forget (S. Kesler/C. Feathers) I Forgot To Remember To Forget (S. Kesler/C. Feathers) Lily Of The West (trad., arr. E. Davies/J. Peterson) Lily Of The West [fragment] (trad,. arr. E. Davies/J. Peterson) Lily Of The West [fragment] (trad,. arr. E. Davies/J. Peterson) Lily Of The West (trad., arr. E. Davies/J. Peterson)
June 5, 1970 was the final session of a five day recording marathon. This last day consisted almost entirely of Dylan songs and was by far the most successful “ew Morning” session to date. ‘If Dogs Run Free’, ‘Went To See The Gypsy’, ‘Sign On The Window’, ‘The Man In Me’, ‘Father Of ight’ and ‘Winterlude’ were all successfully captured. Tracks 3, 7, 15, 17, 29 & 33 were released on the album “ew Morning” (Columbia KC 30290, October 1970).
(74) Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios ew York City, ew York 8th “ew Morning” Album Session. August 12, 1970 1 If ot For You (Dylan) 2 If ot For You [fragment] (Dylan)
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Appendix 1 3 If ot For You (Dylan) 4 If ot For You (Dylan) 5 If ot For You (Dylan) 6 Time Passes Slowly [fragment] (Dylan) 7 Time Passes Slowly [fragment] (Dylan) 8 Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) 9 Time Passes Slowly [fragment] (Dylan) 10 Time Passes Slowly [incomplete] (Dylan) 11 Time Passes Slowly [fragment] (Dylan) 12 Time Passes Slowly (Dylan) 13 Time Passes Slowly (Dylan) 14 Day Of The Locusts (Dylan) 15 Day Of The Locusts [fragment] (Dylan) 16 Day Of The Locusts [fragment] (Dylan) 17 Day Of The Locusts [incomplete] (Dylan) 18 Day Of The Locusts [fragment] (Dylan) 19 Day Of The Locusts (Dylan) 20 Day Of The Locusts (Dylan) More than two months after the conclusion of his five day June stint at Columbia Studios, Dylan returned to Studio ‘E’ to complete what would become “ew Morning”. With his obsession with cover songs now firmly behind him, Dylan attempted three more original compositions. After several run-throughs he nailed all three songs. The final song, ‘Day Of The Locusts’, recounts Dylan’s June 9, 1970 acceptance of his honorary doctorate in music at Princeton University. Having spent a large amount of his recent studio time working on covers, the resultant album, “ew Morning”, contained only original compositions! This may of course always have been Dylan’s intention. If so, he seems to have gone a long way around the houses to get there. Tracks 5, 13 & 20 were released on the album “ew Morning” (Columbia KC 30290, October 1970).
(75) Acme Recording Studios Chicago, Illinois “Good As I Been To You” Album Sessions Early/Mid June 1992 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Hey Joe [incomplete] (Billy Roberts) Mobile Line (Hull / Reed) Just Because (J Shelton / S. Robin / B Shelton) Field Of Stone (Would You Lay With Me) (David Allan Coe) Annie’s Song (John Denver) ? Jugband Song (David Bromberg)
Appendix 1 7 Rock Me Baby (B.B King) ? 8 Send Me To The ‘Lectric Chair (George Brooks) 9 Gotta Do My Time (unknown) 10 Su Su’s Got a Mohawk (unknown) 11 ortheast Texas Women (Willis Alan Ramsey) 12 Sail On (unknown) 13 Can’t Lose What You ever Had (McKinley Morganfield) 14 World Of Fools (David Bromberg) 15 Everybody’s Crying Mercy (Mose Allison) 16 Tennessee Blues (Charles) 17 Summer Wages (Tyson) 18 Casey Jones (trad.) 19 Morning Blues (unknown) 20 Young Westley (Mary McCaslin) 21 The Lady From Baltimore (Tim Hardin) 22 The ew Lee Highway Blues (David Bromberg) 23 Rise Again ((Dallas Holm) 24 Duncan And Brady (trad.) 25 The Main Street Moan (David Bromberg) 26 obody’s Fault But Mine (Blind Willie Johnson) 27 Miss The Mississippi And You (Bill Halley) 28 Polly Vaughan (trad.) 29 Kaatskill Serenade (David Bromberg) 30 Sloppy Drunk (David Bromberg) From the beginning of what would become known as the “Never Ending Tour” (June 7, 1988), Dylan was performing one or two traditional songs at all of his shows. ‘The Lakes of Pontchartrain’, ‘The Two Soldiers’, ‘Barbara Allen’, ‘Eileen Aroon’, ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ and ‘The Trail Of The Buffalo’ all appeared in the first few weeks of the tour, and although the initial frequency had decreased by the end of August 1988, the likes of ‘Barbara Allen’ and ‘Eileen Aroon’, plus new additions such as ‘The Waggoner’s Lad’, continued to make sporadic appearances until around the time of the departure of guitarist G.E Smith. However, by the beginning of 1992, the traditional “folk standards” were back in favour. Dylan was still performing ‘Barbara Allen’ plus another popular “Child ballad” ‘The Golden Vanity’, but by the end of the year he had added some obscure songs like ‘Female Rambling Sailor’. After several years of performing these traditional songs in concert, it was not a complete surprise when Dylan released an album of this type of material in 1992. What was a surprise, was the fact that he failed to include any of the songs which he had been performing in concert on the album and instead released thirteen other songs! “Good As I Been To You” probably began life as a contractual filler (though that statement is in no way meant to diminish the quality of the final product). The process began when Dylan reacquainted himself with David Bromberg. Dylan had caught one of Bromberg’s late shows at the Bottom Line (a Greenwich Village club) after attending one of Neil
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Appendix 1 Young’s Beacon Theater concerts (second week in February 1992). Dylan talked with Bromberg after his Bottom Line set and presumably Bromberg’s appointment as producer came from that meeting. Bromberg scheduled two weeks at Chicago’s Acme Recording Studio sometime in June 1992 and Dylan laid down some thirty songs, some of which were said to have been mixed down by Bromberg for possible inclusion on the album. ‘Miss The Mississippi And You’, ‘Polly Vaughan’, ‘Kaatskill Serenade’, ‘Sloppy Drunk’, ‘Lady From Baltimore’, ‘obody’s Fault But Mine’, ‘Rise Again’, ‘Casey Jones’, ‘Duncan And Brady’, ‘Polly Vaughan’ and ‘World Of Fools’ may have been the main candidates. It seems that this release was intended to be much more than a solo acoustic album. Some of the songs were said to be acoustic (guitar, fiddle and mandolin), whilst others contained horns, and two songs featured a twenty-piece black gospel choir. According to engineer Blaise Barton, there were six songs either written by or associated with David Bromberg. In actual fact, the count is nearer ten. It seems that Dylan was the instigator of all of this Bromberg material, which was almost enough for a “Dylan sings Bromberg” album. With or without the surfeit of Bromberg songs, these intriguing sessions would have made a fascinating album. Shortly after the sessions, Dylan left town for eleven concert dates in Europe and, soon after he returned home, he went into the garage studio at his Malibu house and began recording the solo acoustic numbers that became “Good As I Been To You”. Why Dylan rejected the Bromberg / Acme sessions is something of a mystery. Tracks 24 & 27 were released in October 2008 on the rarities compilation album “The Bootleg Series o. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006”, (2008). For details about the garage sessions see appendix 1:76.
(76) Bob Dylan’s Garage Studio Malibu, California “Good As I Been To You” Album Session Probably Late July – Early August 1992 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
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Frankie & Albert (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Jim Jones (trad., arr. Mick Slocum) Blackjack Davey (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Canadee-i-o (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Sittin’ On Top Of The World (Bo Carter / Walter Jacobs) Little Maggie (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Hard Times (Stephen Foster) Step It Up And Go (Blind Boy Fuller) Tomorrow ight (Sam Coslow / Will Grosz) Arthur McBride (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) You’re Gonna Quit Me (Mance Lipscomb) Diamond Joe (Tex Logan)
Appendix 1 13 Froggie Went A-Courtin’ (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) 14 You Belong To Me (Pee Wee King / Redd Stewart / Chilton Price) The producer at these sessions was Debbie Gold for The Gold Network and the recording engineer was Micajah Ryan. No other details exist for these “garage sessions”. It is unlikely that the above song-list constitutes the entire session(s). However, because the session tapes were recorded in Dylan’s studio and remain the property of Bob Dylan, they are unlikely to come into circulation. For details about the first, aborted “Good As I Been To You” sessions, see above (appendix 1:75). Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13 were released on the album “Good As I Been To You” (Columbia, 472710 2, 1992). Track 14 ‘You Belong To Me’ featured in the film “Natural Born Killers” and was also included on the soundtrack album (United Artists ITSC-92460, 1994). This track was also released in 2008 on the CD bootleg “GBS 4 – Fourth Time Around”.
(77) Bob Dylan’s Garage Studio Malibu, California “World Gone Wrong” Album Session May 1993 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
World Gone Wrong (Jacobs) Love Henry (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Ragged And Dirty (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Blood In My Eyes (Chatmon) Broke Down Engine (Blind Willie McTell) Delia (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Stack A Lee (trad., arr. Hutchison) Two Soldiers (trad., arr., Bob Dylan) Jack-A-Roe (trad., arr. Bob Dylan) Lone Pilgrim (B.F. White / Adger M. Pace) Twenty-One Years (unknown) 32-20 Blues (Robert Johnson) Hello Stranger (A. P. Carter) Goodnight My Love (unknown) Mary And The Soldier (Traditional)
Dylan decided to follow “Good As I Been To You” with another album of traditional covers. However, this collection of songs had its roots firmly in the blues rather than the folk tradition. No details exist for these “garage sessions”. Bob Dylan is credited with producing these sessions but it is possible that Debbie Gold assisted him. As was the case with “Good As I Been To You”, the recording engineer was Micajah Ryan.
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Appendix 1 It is unlikely that the above song-list constitutes the entire session(s). However, because the session tapes were recorded in Dylan’s studio and remain the property of Bob Dylan, they are unlikely to come into circulation. In 2008, two of the above tracks, Robert Johnson’s ‘32-20 Blues’ and the traditional ‘Mary And The Soldier’, were released on the official rarities collection 3-CD boxed-set “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8”. The four minute plus ‘Mary And The Soldier’, which is often associated with Paul Brady, has some lovely acoustic guitar and is also well sung. The way Dylan holds the notes at the end of some of the lines is very effective. The overall sound is, as one might expect, typically “World Gone Wrong”. However, the song itself is possibly more in keeping with “Good As I Been To You”. By contrast, as the title suggests, ‘32-20 Blues’ is an out-and-out blues, and one that Dylan has plundered several times for his own compositions. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10 were released on the album “World Gone Wrong” (Columbia, 474857 2, 1993). Tracks 12 & 15 were released in October 2008 on the rarities compilation album “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006”, (2008). Supplementary Appendix (78, 79, 80) Recording sessions for the albums “Empire Burlesque”, “Knocked Out Loaded” and “Down In The Groove” are quite problematical. Information regarding some of these sessions is rather vague, a situation made worse by the large number of overdubs carried out for the “Knocked Out Loaded” album. Overdub sessions are not listed in this Appendix. Unfortunately, many of the songs listed in these sessions do not circulate among collectors, and because of this it is not possible to identify all of these songs with any degree of certainty. Whilst these unconfirmed songs are listed in this Appendix for the sake of completeness, not all of the songs are included in the main body of this book. (78) Empire Burlesque Sessions Various Dates December 1984 - June 1985 Recording for what would become “Empire Burlesque” began on July 26, 1984 at Delta Sound Studios, New York. The early sessions all appear to contain Dylan-penned compositions and are therefore omitted from this listing. It total, only two or three sessions appear to have contained cover songs. Freedom For The Stallion (Allen Toussaint) Freedom For The Stallion (Allen Toussaint) Freedom For The Stallion (Allen Toussaint) Instrumental (unknown) Instrumental (unknown)
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Appendix 1 Instrumental (unknown) Instrumental (unknown) Instrumental (unknown) Instrumental (unknown) In The Summertime (Ray Dorset) In The Summertime (Ray Dorset) In The Summertime (Ray Dorset) The above session has been given variously as taking place in November 1984 and June 12 & 16, 1985. If this later date is correct, then this is not an “Empire Burlesque” session. Something’s Burning, Baby (Dylan) The Girl I Left Behind (trad.) This recording session, which contained the traditional song ‘The Girl I Left Behind’, took place at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, CA. on December 14, 1984. Too Hot To Drive (unknown) As Time Passes By (unknown) These two songs were recorded at Cherokee Studios, Hollywood, California on April 17, 1985. It is not clear to me if this was a late “Empire Burlesque” session (probably) or an early “Knocked Out Loaded” session (possibly). The songs are not in circulation among collectors and it is therefore not possible to identify whether these are Dylan songs or covers. Although they are quite likely to be cover songs they are not listed in the main body of this book due to the identification problem. (79) Knocked Out Loaded Sessions Various Dates April 28, 1986 – May 23, 1986
Skyline Recording Studios Topanga Park, California April 28, 1986 You’ll ever Walk Alone (Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein II) Driftin’ Too Far From Shore (Dylan) The Beautiful Life (unknown) Without Love (Clyde McPhatter) Look On Yonder Wall (Clark) Rollin’ And Tumblin’ (trad., McKinley Morganfeld) Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache (W. B. Thompson / L May) Rock With Me Baby (Billy Lee Riley) Rock With Me Baby (Billy Lee Riley)
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Appendix 1 The final five tracks from the above session have generally been reported as being recorded on April 28, 1987. This error appears to have arisen because of a misinterpretation by Clinton Heylin of an interview given by Dave Alvin to Peter Doggett, during which Alvin mentioned playing on tunes that were not previously documented. Information about this session is sparse. However, guitarist Dave Alvin stated that the session “... lasted about thirteen hours”. He is also reported to have said that the session was quite productive. If so, then the listing above is a country mile short of definitive. Alvin continued; “We did everything from Elmore James’ ‘Look On Yonder Wall’ to ‘Rollin’ And Tumblin’’. Then it got pretty funny–Bob was playing acoustic, and I joined him on electric, and he said, ‘You know this song?’ And he started singing this old Warren Smith tune [‘Red Cadillac And a Black Moustache’]. Then we cut Johnny Carroll’s ‘Rock With Me Baby’”. Without a circulating tape, it is not possible to establish the accuracy of these comments. Furthermore, I have no knowledge of a Johnny Carroll song with the title ‘Rock With Me Baby’. However, nine months before this studio session, Dylan had played Billy Lee Riley’s ‘Rock With Me Baby’ six times in concert. Dylan, seemingly a massive fan of Billy Lee Riley, had tracked the singer down and visited him at his home in Arkansas in 1991. Dylan also invited Riley on stage to perform when he played a concert in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1992. See entry for ‘Rock With Me Baby’ in the main body of this book.
Skyline Recording Studios Topanga Park, California April 29, 1986 You’ll ever Walk Alone (Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein II) Unchain My Heart (James Freddy / Agnes Jones)
Skyline Recording Studios Topanga Park, California April 30, 1986 You’ll ever Walk Alone (Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein II) New Danville Girl / Brownsville Girl (Bob Dylan / Sam Shepard) Unchain My Heart (James Freddy /Agnes Jones) Lonely Avenue (Doc Pomus)
Skyline Recording Studios Topanga Park, California May 1, 1986 Without Love (Clyde McPhatter) Unchain My Heart (James Freddy /Agnes Jones)
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Appendix 1 Skyline Recording Studios Topanga Park, California May 2, 1986 Unchain My Heart (James Freddy/Agnes Jones) Skyline Recording Studios Topanga Park, California May 5, 1986 Without Love (Clyde McPhatter) They Killed Him (Kris Kristofferson) You Wanna Ramble (Herman Parker Jr.) ‘They Killed Him’ and ‘You Wanna Ramble’ were released on the album “Knocked Out Loaded” (Columbia, 40439). Skyline Recording Studios Topanga Park, California May 6, 1986 Without Love (Clyde McPhatter) Too Late She’s Gone (She’s Gone) (Chuck Willis) Precious Memories (J. B. F. Wright, arr. by Bob Dylan) ‘Precious Memories’ was realised on the album “Knocked Out Loaded” (Columbia, 40439). Skyline Recording Studios Topanga Park, California May 7 - 13, 1986 Under Your Spell (Dylan / Carole Bayer Sager) Come Back Baby (One More Time) (Billy Lee Riley) Wild & Wicked World (J. D. Miller / George Sherry) Skyline Recording Studios Topanga Park, California May 14 - 23, 1986 Maybe Someday (Dylan) So Good (unknown) I eed Your Lovin’ (unknown)
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Appendix 1 It is possible that the song listed as ‘I eed Your Lovin’’ is actually ‘Baby, I eed Your Lovin’’ by (Holland / Dozier / Holland), which was a hit for The Four Tops and was also recorded by Dylan favourite, Johnny Rivers. ‘Maybe Someday’ was released on the album “Knocked Out Loaded” (Columbia, 40439).
(80) Sunset Sound Studios Hollywood, California Down In The Groove Various Dates March – June, 1987 Street People (unknown) Sidewalks, Fences, and Walls (Solomon Burke) Sidewalks, Fences, and Walls (Solomon Burke) Sidewalks, Fences, and Walls (Solomon Burke) Sidewalks, Fences, and Walls (Solomon Burke) Shake Sugaree (Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia) My Prayer (Kennedy / Boulanger) The above session took place on March 5, 1987.
Sally Sue Brown (Alexander / Montgomery) Wood And Steel (unknown) When Did You Leave Heaven? (Whiting / Bullock) Shake Your Money Maker (Elmore James) Chain Gang (Sam Cooke) If You eed Me (Bateman / Pickett / Sanders) The above session took place on March 27, 1987. It is possible that the track listed as ‘Shake Sugaree’ is the Elizabeth Cotten song. ‘Sally Sue Brown’ was released on the album “Down In The Groove” (Columbia, OC 40975).
Just When I Needed You Most (Randy Vanwarmer) Important Words (Gene Vincent) When Did You Leave Heaven? (Whiting / Bullock) Willie And The Hand Jive (Johnny Otis) Twist And Shout (Phil Medley / Bert Russell) The above session probably took place on April 3, 1987. ‘When Did You Leave Heaven?’ was released on the album “Down In The Groove” (Columbia, OC 40975). Also see below.
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Appendix 1 Branded Man (Merle Haggard) Chain Gang (Sam Cooke) If You eed Me (Bateman / Pickett / Sanders) inety Miles An Hour (Down a Dead End Street) (Robertson / Blair) Making Believe (Jimmy Work) Darkness Before Dawn (unknown) The above session(s) probably took place between April 3 & 11, 1987. ‘inety Miles An Hour (Down a Dead End Street)’ was released on the album “Down In The Groove” (Columbia, OC 40975). Almost Endless Sleep (unknown) Barefootin’ (Robert Parker) Let’s Stick Together (Harrison) Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby (Johnny Cash) Important Words (Vincent / Davis) Listen To Me (Buddy Holly / Norman Petty) The above session probably took place on May 1, 1987. ‘Let’s Stick Together’ was released on the album “Down In The Groove” (Columbia, OC 40975). You Can’t Judge a Book By The Cover (Ellas McDaniel) Tioga Pass (unknown) Ugliest Girl In The World (Dylan / Hunter) Making Believe (Jimmy Work) Rank Strangers (Brumley) Silvio (Dylan / Hunter) Shenandoah (trad) Pretty Boy Floyd (Woody Guthrie) The above session took place on June 16, 1987. ‘Ugliest Girl In The World’, ‘Rank Strangers’, ‘Silvio’ and ‘Shenandoah’ were released on the album “Down In The Groove” (Columbia, OC 40975). ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ was recorded for and released on the Folkways tribute album “Folkways: A Vision Shared – A Tribute To Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly” (Columbia, OC44034). The exact date of this recording is not known for certain, but it is likely to have taken place sometime in April 1987 at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, CA. The numerous recording sessions that went to make up the “Down In The Groove” album took place from the beginning of March to the middle of June 1987. A number of the song
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Appendix 1 titles, which originate from the studio sheets, appear to be the sound engineer’s best guesses; either that or they are abbreviated titles. I have tried to interpret some of what I believe to be the more obvious titles, i.e. the often quoted ‘Bear Foot In’ is surely the Robert Parker composition ‘Barefootin’’, while ‘Look On Yonder Wall’ is doubtless the Elmore James song. I have also had a stab at one or two others including ‘Making Believe’ and ‘Rollin’ And Tumblin’’. However, the details that are available to me only give a fragmentary picture of the events. Bob Dylan 2004
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Appendix 2
Appendix 2
An Abridged Listing Of Bob Dylan Bootleg CDs Featuring Cover Songs Throughout this book I have written about recordings “circulating among collectors” and I therefore felt that it would be prudent to provide the reader with some basic information about CDs which contain these songs. This appendix is a selected listing of bootleg CDs that contain a vast array of the songs written about in this book. This selection attempts to cover all periods of Bob Dylan’s career in as few releases as possible. The four-CD set “I Was So Much Younger Then” contains more than eighty cover songs from the early 1960s, and although only eleven of the May and December 1961 “Minnesota” recordings are included here, these fifty plus songs can be found on the threeCD set “The Minnesota Tapes”. Five CDs featuring the renowned 1967 “Basement Tapes” sessions, containing 103 songs of which circa fifty are covers, are available as “Genuine Basement Tapes” Vols 1–5. The most ambitious collection of all, however, is without doubt the “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Released in 2001 by maker Scorpio, this nine-CD boxed set gathers together 162 performances of cover songs played over the first twelve years of Bob Dylan’s prolific “Never Ending Tour”. In total, this handful of CD titles collects together almost 350 cover performances and the extended listing below covers virtually all of the songs contained in this book.
“I Was So Much Younger Then” (Dandelion 075) This four-disc set is a must for anyone interested in Dylan’s early cover performances. Needless to say, a good deal of this material, especially the Karen Wallace tapes, is in rather poor quality. John Bucklen Tape Buzz Buzz Buzz
Minnesota Party Tape Red Rosey Bush Johnny I Hardly Knew You Jesus Christ Streets Of Glory K.C. Moan Blue Yodel No. 8
Roving Gambler Talking Columbia Talking Merchant Marine (Talking Sailor) Talking Hugh Brown Talking Inflation Blues
Gerdes Folk City San Francisco Bay Blues
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The Great Divide
Appendix 2 Cynthia Gooding’s Apartment Tape Ballad Of Donald Wichita (Going To Louisiana) Acne
White Rocks And Gravel Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad Rangers Command
Madhouse On Castle Street Blowin’ In The Wind
Ballad Of The Gliding Swan
Karen Wallace Tapes The Two Sisters Pastures Of Plenty
Blue Yodel No. 8 Payday At Coal Creek
Karen Wallace Tape Excerpts: Fragments Only One Eyed Jacks Go Down You Murderers This Land Is Your Land Saro Jane Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out Great Historical Bum Mary Ann
Sinner Man Abner Young Blue Yodel No. 8 One Eyed Jacks Columbus Stockade Blues Go Down You Murderers This Land Is Your Land
Karen Wallace Armpit Tape Gotta Travel On Every Night Roving Gambler The Two Sisters Go Away From My Window (Rockabye) My Saro Jane Blue Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out Great Historical Bum Mary Ann
When The Sun Goes In Sinner Man Abner Young 900 Miles Yodel No. 8 One Eyed Jacks Columbus Stockade Blues Payday At Coal Creek
Various McKenzie Tapes Hard Times In New York Town Wayfaring Stranger Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle Blues Baby Of Mine Baby Let Me Follow You Down San Francisco Bay Blues You’re No Good House Of The Rising Sun Instrumental Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms
Highway 51 This Land Is Your Land Instrumental See That My Grave Is Kept Clean Ballad Of Donald White Hard Rain James Alley Blues I Rode Out One Morning Instrumental Don’t Think Twice Instrumental
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Appendix 2 The Bells Of Rhymney Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms The Bells Of Rhymney
Long Time Gone Only a Hobo House Of The Rising Sun Cocaine (Inst.)
Indian eck Folk Festival Talking Columbia Hangknot Slipknot
Talking Fish Blues
Oscar Brand’s Folk Song Festival Sally Gal
The Girl I Left Behind
Oscar Brand Show Girl From The North Country
Only a Hobo
Steve Allen TV Show Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
Les Crane Show It’s All Over Now Baby Blue
It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
“The Dylan Root” (Skeleton 1001, 1990) This CD contains all of the songs from the February / March 1961 Gleason Tape, plus seven of the eight available Carnegie Chapter Hall songs. Highly Recommended. Gleason Tape, East Orange, J, 1961 San Francisco Bay Blues Jesus Met The Woman At The Well Gypsy Davey Pastures Of Plenty Trail Of The Buffalo
Jesse James Car, Car Southern Cannonball Bring Me Back My Blue-Eyed Boy Remember Me
Carnegie Chapter Hall Pretty Peggy-O In The Pines (Black Girl) Gospel Plow 1913 Massacre
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Backwater Blues A Long Time A-Growin’ Fixin’ To Die
Appendix 2 “Rare Live Performances Of The Sixties Vol. II” (Magic Music 31009, 1991) This single CD is collectable only for the September 1961 Gaslight songs. The other material is available in a more complete form elsewhere. Gaslight Café, ew York City, October 1962 Handsome Molly John Brown
Ballad Of Hollis Brown Kindhearted Woman Blues
Gaslight Café, ew York City, September 1961 Man On The Street He Was a Friend Of Mine Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Blues
Song To Woody Car, Car Pretty Polly
Finjan Club, Montréal, 1962 Two Trains Runnin’
Ramblin’ On My Mind
“Gaslight Tapes” (Laser 76025, re-released 2001) One of the first bootleg CDs ever to be released (re-released in 2001), the “Gaslight Tapes” contains seventeen songs from Dylan’s September 6, 1961 show at the Gaslight Café, New York City. These tracks are also available on the CDs “Gaslight Tapes 1962” (Rattlesnake RS 068, 2001) and “Second Gaslight Tapes” (Wild Wolf WW10/62, July 2002). Eleven of the seventeen songs have now been officially released on the CD “Live At The Gaslight 1962” (Columbia / Legacy A 96016, USA). This CD was released in 2005 by Columbia Records in the USA only. Gaslight Café, ew York City, October 1962 Hard Rain Black Cross No More Auction Block Rocks and Gravel Don’t Think Twice Barbara Allen Moonshine Blues Motherless Children Handsome Molly
John Brown Ballad Of Hollis Brown Kindhearted Woman Blues See That My Grave Is Kept Clean Ain’t No More Cane Cocaine Cuckoo Is a Pretty Bird West Texas [incomplete]
“Hard Times In ew York City” (RZ 001) This rather mixed up single CD features songs from Carnegie Chapter Hall, Gerdes Folk City, NY, Sept 1961 and April 1962, Cynthia Gooding’s NY apartment 1962, and the Finjan Club, 1962.
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Appendix 2 Rangers Command San Francisco Bay Blues The Great Divide Pretty Peggy-O In The Pines (Black Girl) Gospel Plow 1913 Massacre Backwater Blues A Long Time A-Growin’
Fixin’ To Die Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance Talkin’ New York / Talkin’ Folklore Corrina, Corrina Deep Ellum Blues Blowin’ In The Wind Wichita (Going To Louisiana) Rocks And Gravel Blues Yodel No. 8 (Muleskinner Blues)
“The Minnesota Tapes” (Wanted Man WMM 033, 1994) “Same place, different performance” is the best way to sum up this three-CD collection. The second Minnesota recording, December 1961, is one of the most circulated of all the Dylan tapes. This is a good quality recording of a very good performance. In contrast, the May 1961 tape is quite a poor quality recording of a rather indifferent performance. Minnesota Party Tape, May 1961 Ramblin’ Round Death Don’t Have No Mercy It’s Hard To Be Blind This Train Is Bound For Glory Harmonica Solo Talking Fish Blues Pastures Of Plenty Railroad Bill Will The Circle Be Unbroken
Man Of Constant Sorrow Pretty Polly Railroad Boy James Alley Blues Bonnie, Why’d You Cut My Hair? This Land Is Your Land Two Trains Running Wild Mountain Thyme
Minnesota Party Tape, May 1961, cont. Howdido Car, Car Don’t You Push Me Down Come See
I Want My Milk (I Want It Now) San Francisco Bay Blues A Long Time A-Growin’ Devilish Mary
Minnesota Hotel Tape, December 1961 Candy Man Baby Please Don’t Go Hard Times In New York Town Stealin’, Stealin’ Poor Lazarus
I Ain’t Got No Home It’s Hard To Be Blind Dink’s Song Man Of Constant Sorrow Story Of East Orange
Minnesota Hotel Tape, December 1961, cont. Omie Wise Wade In The Water I Was Young When I Left Home In The Evening, When The Sun Goes In
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Cocaine Blues VD Blues VD Waltz VD City
Appendix 2 Baby Let Me Follow You Down Sally Gal Gospel Plow Long John
VD Gunner’s Blues See My Grave Is Kept Clean Ramblin’ Round Black Cross
“Folksinger’s Choice” (Yellow Dog 017, 1992) This radio show broadcast, which is present here in almost perfect quality, is quite a little gem and is well worth collecting. Cynthia Gooding Radio Show, January 13, 1962 (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle Blues Fixin’ To Die Smoke Stack Lightning Hard Travelin’ Death Of Emmett Till Standing On The Highway
Roll On John Stealin’, Stealin’ Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad Baby Please Don’t Go Hard Times In New York Town
“Live Finjan Club” (Yellow Dog YD010, 1991) This Yellow Dog release is the best presentation of a truly excellent concert. A must in every collection. Finjan Club Montreal, Quebec, July 2, 1962 Death Of Emmett Till Stealin’, Stealin’ Hiram Hubbard Blowin’ In The Wind Rocks and Gravel Quit Your Lowdown Ways
He Was a Friend of Mine Let Me Die In My Footsteps Two Trains Runnin’ Ramblin’ On My Mind Blues Yodel No. 8 (Muleskinner Blues)
“Banjo Tape & YC Town Hall” (Yellow Dog YD 058, 1994) This Yellow Dog release contains the entire Gerdes Folk City, “Banjo Tape”, February 8, 1963, plus nine songs from the April 12, 1963, Town Hall, New York. The New York songs, which are all Dylan compositions, are not listed here. Lonesome River Edge Back Door Blues Bob Dylan’s Dream You Can Get Her Farewell All Over You
Masters Of War Instrumental Keep Your Hands Off Her Honey Babe Goin’ Back To Rome Stealin’, Stealin’
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Appendix 2 “Genuine Basement Tapes” Vols 1–5 (No Label) These five CDs contain all of the available historic Basement Tapes tracks. This collection, which documents one of the most creative periods in Dylan’s career, is essential to any serious collector. The full track list can be found in Appendix 1:59 and 1:60. “Dylan / Cash Sessions” (Spank SP 106) This CD features tracks from the Nashville Skyline Sessions, Dylan / Cash at the Ryman Auditorium, and five quadraphonic mixes from the “ashville Skyline” album. The Dylan / Cash sessions are also available on the CD “ashville 1969” (Yellow Dog YD 049). ashville Skyline Session, February, 1969 One Too Many Mornings Good Ol’ Mountain Dew I Still Miss Someone Careless Love Matchbox That’s Alright Mama Big River Girl From The North Country
I Walk The Line You Are My Sunshine Ring Of Fire Guess Things Happen That Way Just a Closer Walk With Thee Blue Yodel #1 Blue Yodel #2
Ryman Auditorium I Threw It All Away Living The Blues
Girl From The North Country
Quadraphonic Album Mixes Nashville Skyline Rag I Threw It All Away Peggy Day
Country Pie Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You
“Possum Belly Overalls” (Gold Standard NASH105) This CD provides us with a selection of the material recorded during the “ew Morning” album sessions. Another very similar collection is “Yesterday” (Winged Wheel WW9420). “ew Morning” Session, May 1, 1970 Ghost Riders In The Sky Cupid All I Have To Do Is Dream Gates Of Eden I Threw It All Away I Don’t Believe You
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Matchbox Your True Love Telephone Wire / Las Vegas Blues Fishin’ Blues Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
Appendix 2 ew York, 1970 Song To Woody Mama, You Been On My Mind Don’t Think Twice [inst] Yesterday
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues Da Doo Ron Ron One Too Many Mornings [inst] One Too Many Mornings
Bonus Tracks: Folsom Prison Blues
Ring Of Fire
Assorted .E.T. Covers Collections from 1988 onwards: “Golden Vanity” (Wanted Man WMM 002, 1992) This single CD contains eighteen covers from the beginning of the “Never Ending Tour” (1988) until 1992. The venues for these performances are not listed on the CD but from audio comparisons made with other circulating tapes the locations listed below are believed to be correct. Roving Blade (Parc des Expositions, Reims, France July 1, 1992) Girl On The Greenbriar Shore (Kursaal, Dunkirk, France, June 30, 1992) Little Moses (State University, San Jose, May 9, 1992) Golden Vanity (Waikiki Shell, Hawaii, April 24, 1992) 20/20 Vision (Palmer Auditorium, Austin, Texas, October 25, 1991) Barbara Allen (Schlosshof, Bad Mergentheim, Germany, June 22, 1991) When First Unto This Country (Kisstadion, Budapest, Hungary, June 12, 1991) Roving Gambler (Morris Civic Auditorium, South Bend, Indiana, November 6, 1991) That Lucky Old Sun (Memorial Coliseum, Dane County, Madison, November 5, 1991) Two Soldiers (Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, November 2, 1991) Dark As a Dungeon (Odeon, Hammersmith, London, England, February 6, 1990) Trail Of The Buffalo (Grugahalle, Essen, Germany, June 18, 1991) Female Rambling Sailor (Palais Theatre, Melbourne, Australia, April 3, 1992) Man Of Constant Sorrow (Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, CA June 11, 1988) Eileen Aroon (Fiddler’s Green, Denver, Colorado, June 15, 1988) Wild Mountain Thyme (Riverbend Music Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 22, 1988) Wagoner’s Lad (Tower Theater, Upper Darby, PA, October 14, 1988) Lakes Of Pontchartrain (The Muny, St. Louis, Missouri, June 17, 1988)
“20/20 Vision” (Red Sky 1016/1017, 1995) This double set contains “Never Ending Tour” covers from the years 1989 and 1991. The tracks are taken from thirteen shows and presented in chronological order. Disc One And It Stoned Me (Baldwin Pavilion, Rochester, MI July 6, 1989) Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Baldwin Pavilion, Rochester, MI July 6, 1989) Tears Of Rage (John F. Savage Hall, Toledo, OH August 8, 1989)
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Appendix 2 In The Mood For Love (John F. Savage Hall, Toledo, OH August 8, 1989) Early Morning Rain (Marcus Amphitheater, Milwaukee, WI July 3, 1989) In the Pines (Marcus Amphitheater, Milwaukee, WI July 3, 1989) The Harder They Come (Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA September 3, 1989) I Want You (Greek Theater, Berkeley, CA September 3, 1989) Baby Let Me Follow You (Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA September 3, 1989) Queen Jane Approximately (Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA September 3, 1989) Rank Strangers To Me (Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA September 3, 1989) You Don’t Know Me (Starplex Amphitheater, Dallas, TX August 27, 1989) When Did You Leave Heaven? (Santa Barbara County Bowl, CA. Sept. 5, 1989) Pretty Peggy-O (Performing Arts, Saratoga Springs, NY July 26, 1989) Legend In My Time (Performing Arts, Saratoga Springs, NY July 26, 1989) Visions Of Johanna (Starlight Bowl, San Diego, CA September 6, 1989)
Disc Two Homeward Bound (Holman Stadium, Nashua, NH July 6, 1991) Lakes Of Pontchartrain (Holman Stadium, Nashua, NH July 6, 1991) On The Trail Of The Buffalo (City Coliseum, Austin, TX October 25, 1991) It’s All Over Now Baby Blue (City Coliseum, Austin, TX October 25, 1991) 20/20 Vision (City Coliseum, Austin, TX October 25, 1991) Friend Of The Devil (City Coliseum, Austin, TX October 25, 1991) Confidential (Memorial Hall, Dayton, OH November 9, 1991) When I Paint My Masterpiece (Memorial Hall, Dayton, OH November 9, 1991) Boots Of Spanish Leather (Memorial Hall, Dayton, OH November 9, 1991) The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (Memorial Hall, Dayton, OH November 9, 1991) One Too Many Mornings (Memorial Hall, Dayton, OH November 9, 1991) Roving Gambler (Memorial Hall, Dayton, OH November 9, 1991) One Irish Rover (Morris Civic Center, South Bend, IN Nov. 6, 1991) Simple Twist Of Fate (Iowa State U. Ames, IA November 2, 1991)
“Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000” (Scorpio NET 1-9, 2001) This massive nine-CD box-set collects together many cover song performed over the first twelve years of the “Never Ending Tour”. Amateur recording equipment progressed tremendously over this period, and as a consequence the sound quality is variable. Scorpio has listed their original source for each track as either analogue, DAT, or CD. This set is an absolute must for any collector who is interested in Bob Dylan’s live cover interpretations of contemporary and traditional songs. This set renders all of the other NET covers CDs obsolete. Disc One, Rehearsing On Stage Walk a Mile In My Shoes (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) Trouble No More (Worried Life Blues) (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) I’ve Been All Around This World (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) Paid The Price Of Lovin’ You (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) Help Me Make It Through The Night (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) Dancing In The Dark (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990)
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Appendix 2 So Long, Good Luck & Goodbye (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) Key To The Highway (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) In The Pines (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) Everybody’s Movin’ (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) Oh Babe, It Ain’t No Lie (Toad’s Place, New Haven, CT, January 12, 1990) Real, Real Gone (The Edge, Fort Lauderdale, FL, September 23, 1995) It’s Not Too Late (The Edge, Fort Lauderdale, FL, September 23, 1995) Willing (The Edge, Fort Lauderdale, FL, September 23, 1995) That Lucky Ol’ Sun (The Edge, Fort Lauderdale, FL, September 23, 1995) West LA Fadeaway (The Edge, Fort Lauderdale, FL, September 23, 1995)
Disc Two, Trad. Arr. Dylan Eileen Aroon (Park City, CO, June 15, 1988) Wild Mountain Thyme (Cincinnati, OH, June 22, 1988) San Francisco Bay Blues (Canandaigua, NY, June 28, 1988) Barbara Allen (Canandaigua, NY, June 28, 1988) Waggoner’s Lad (Upper Derby, PA, October 14, 1988) Pretty Boy Floyd (Mountain View, CA, December 4, 1988) Lakes of Ponchatrain (Madrid, Spain, June 15, 1989) In The Pines (Black Girl) (Milwaukee, WI, July 3, 1989) Baby Let Me Follow You Down (Berkeley, CA, September 3, 1989) Dark As a Dungeon (London, England, February 6, 1990) When First Unto This Country (Budapest, Hungary, June 12, 1991) 20/20 Vision (Austin, TX, October 25, 1991) Two Soldiers (Munich,Germany, June 21, 1991) Golden Vanity (Evanston, IL, November 4, 1991) Roving Gambler (South Bend, IN, November 6, 1991) Female Rambling Sailor (Sydney, Australia, March 24, 1992) Lady of Carlisle (Sydney, Australia, April 14, 1992) Little Moses (Melbourne, Australia, April 5, 1992) Girl On The Greenbriar Shore (Gothenburg, Sweden, June 28, 1992) Roving Blade (Reims, France, July 1, 1992)
Disc Three, Rock Of Ages Man Of Constant Sorrow (Mountain View, CA, June 11, 1988) Rank Strangers (Bristol, CT, September 4, 1988) Peace In The Valley (Frejus, France, June 13, 1989) House Of Gold (Madrid, Spain, June 15, 1989) Precious Memories (New York, NY, October 13, 1989) Stand By Me (Merryville, IN, August 28, 1990) Across The Borderline (Ames, IO, November 2, 1991) That Lucky Ol’ Sun (Madison, WI, November 5, 1991) I’ll Not Be a Stranger (Columbus, OH, November 7, 1997) You’re Too Late (Daytona Beach, FL, January 29, 1999) Pass Me Not (Amherst, MA, February 24, 1999) Hallelujah I’m Ready To Go (Hollywood, June 19, 1999) I Am The Man Thomas (East Rutherford, NJ, November 13, 1999) Rock Of Ages (Atlantic City, NJ, November 19, 1999) Satisfied Mind (Philadelphia, PA, November 9, 1999)
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Appendix 2 Somebody Touched Me (Ithaca, NY, November 15, 1999) This World Can’t Stand Long (Anaheim, CA, March 10, 2000)
Disc Four, Contemporary Competition Hallelujah (Hollywood, CA, August 4, 1988) Pancho & Lefty (Cava Dei Terreni, Italy, June 21, 1989) Early Morning Rain (Milwaukee, WI, July 3, 1989) And It Stoned Me (Rochester Hills, MI, July 6, 1989) The Harder They Come (Bonner Springs, KS, August 22, 1989) Nowhere Man (Edmonton, Alberta, August 12, 1990) Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay (George, WA, August 18, 1990) Friend Of The Devil (Merillville, IN, August 27, 1990) Willing (Mesa, AR, September 12, 1990) My Head’s In Mississippi (Oxford, MS, October 25, 1990) Homeward Bound (Rome, Italy, June 6, 1991) People Putting People Down (Rome, Italy, June 6, 1991) One Irish Rover (Ames, IO, November 2, 1991) Dolly Dagger (Perth, Australia, March 18, 1992) Hazy Shade Of Winter (Reims, France, July 1, 1992) Alabama Getaway (Philadelphia, PA, December 16, 1995) I’m Not Supposed To Care (Anaheim, CA, May 23, 1998) The Lady Came From Baltimore (Peoria, IL, April 13, 1994) Moondance (Erie, PA, November 19, 1991)
Disc Five, Folk-Rot The Water Is Wide (Dublin, Ireland, June 3, 1989) Trail Of The Buffalo (The Hague, Netherlands, June 10, 1989) Pretty Peggy-O (London, England, February 3, 1990) Little Maggie (Perth, Australia, March 18, 1992) Black Muddy River (Melbourne, Australia, April 6, 1992 ) Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down (Gothenburg, Sweden, June 28, 1992 ) Farewell To The Gold (Youngstown OH, November 2, 1992 ) Jim Jones (New York, NY, November 17, 1993) Jack a Roe (New York, NY, November 17, 1993) Blackjack Davey (Vienna, VA, September 8, 1993) Shake Sugaree (incorrectly listed as ‘I’ve Got a Secret’) (Berlin, Germany, June 17, 1996) Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie (Tokyo, Japan, February 11, 1997) Cocaine (Bournemouth, England, October 1, 1997) Duncan And Brady (Reno, NV, March 17, 2000) House Of The Rising Sun (George, WA, June 18, 2000)
Disc Six, Crooning ‘eath The Moon We Three (My Echo, My Shadow And Me) (Carlsbad, CA August 6, 1988 ) Hey La, La (Stockholm, Sweden, May 28, 1989) Confidential (Helsinki, Finland, May 30, 1989) When Did You Leave Heaven (London, England, June 8, 1989) Don’t Pity Me (Joliette, QC, Canada, July 31, 1989) I’m In The Mood For Love (St. Louis, MO, August 9, 1989)
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Appendix 2 Lonesome Town (Doswell, VA, August 12, 1989) More And More (Houston, TX, August 26, 1989) Let’s Learn To Live And Love Again (Berlin, Germany, July 5, 1990) Moon River (Merillville, IN, August 27, 1990) Answer Me, My Love (Evanston, IL, November 4, 1991) You Don’t Know Me (Madison, WI, November 5, 1991) Hey Joe (Antibes, France, July 12, 1992) Tomorrow Night (London, England, February 8, 1993) Hard Times (Louisville, KY, April 12, 1993) Times We’ve Known (New York, NY, November 1st 1998) Across The Borderline (Montreux, Switzerland, July 9, 1990) My Blue Bonnet Girl (Indianapolis, IN, January 11, 2000) The Heart That You Own (West Palm Beach, FL, Sept 2, 1999)
Disc Seven, A Mingle O’ Rhythm & Blues Dust My Broom (Detroit, MI, November 12, 1991) Sally Sue Brown (Sydney, Australia, April 16, 1992) I Can’t Be Satisfied (Youngstown, OH, November 2, 1992) You’re Gonna Quit Me (Vienna, VA, September 8, 1993) Delia (Supper Club, New York, NY, November 17, 1993 – Late Show) Weeping Willow (Supper Club, New York, NY, November 17, 1993 – Late Show) Blood In My Eyes (Supper Club, New York, NY, November 17, 1993 – Early Show) Ragged And Dirty (Supper Club, New York, NY, November 17, 1993 – Late Show) New Minglewood Blues (Differdange, Luxembourg, June 24, 1996) Viola Lee Blues (Sapporo Japan, February 24, 1997) Hootchie Cootchie Man (East Rutherford, NJ, November 13, 1999) Nadine (St. Louis, MO, June 17, 1988) Around And Around (Leysin, Switzerland, July 10, 1992 ) Matchbox (Adelaide, Australia, August 24, 1998 ) Not Fade Away (Atlantic City, NJ, November 19, 1999) Money Honey (Ithaca, NY, November 15, 1999) Blue Suede Shoes (New York, NY, January 21, 1998 ) She’s About a Mover (Portland, OR, June 15, 2000 )
Disc Eight, Country Cousins Give My Love To Rose (Canandaigua, NY, June 28, 1988) I’ll Be Around (Hollywood, CA, August 4, 1988) Big River (Santa Barbara, CA, August 7, 1988) Nothing But You (Old Orchard Beach, ME, July 15, 1989) Legend In My Time (Atlantic City, NJ, July 20, 1989) No More One More Time (Montreal, QC, Canada, May 29, 1990) I’ve Been All Around This World (Toronto, ON, Canada, June 6, 1990) Old Rock And Roller (Hamburg, Germany, July 3, 1990) Hey Good Lookin’ (Tuscaloosa, AL, October 26, 1990) Detroit City (East Lansing, MI, November 12, 1990) I’m Moving On (Utrecht, Netherlands, February 16, 1993) Folsom Prison Blues (Eindhoven, Netherlands, February 17, 1993) Long Black Veil (Wheeling, WV, April 28, 1997) Stone Walls And Steel Bars (Beverly Hills, CA, May 21, 1997)
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Appendix 2 White Dove (New York, NY, December 8, 1997) My Blue Eyed Jane (Birmingham, AL, February 7, 1999) Honky Tonk Blues (Grand Rapids, MI, February 15, 1999) Searching For a Soldiers Grave (Portland, OR, June 15, 2000) Making Believe (Istanbul, Turkey, June 24, 1989) (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle (State College, PA, January 14, 1990 ) Blue Bonnet Girl (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, November 1, 2000)
Disc ine, Alternates & Retakes I’m In The Mood For Love (Toledo, OH, August 8, 1989) When Did You Leave Heaven? (Saratoga Springs, NY, July 26, 1989) The Water Is Wide (Edmonton, AL, August 12, 1990) Trail Of The Buffalo (West Point, NY, October 13, 1990) Answer Me My Love (Seville, Spain, October 17, 1991) You Don’t Know Me (Rome, Italy, June 20, 1989) One Irish Rover (Peoria, IL, July 1, 1989) When First Unto This Country (Norfolk, VA, November 7, 1989) Confidential (Indianapolis, IN, November 10, 1991) Delia (Sydney, Australia, April 15, 1992 ) Pretty Peggy-O (Albany, NY, April 18, 1997) Roving Gambler (Hartford, CT, April 19, 1997) Rank Strangers To Me (Rome, Italy, July 5, 1998) Roving Blade (Belfast, Ireland, June 19, 1998) Dark As a Dungeon (Melbourne, Australia, August 19, 1998) Folsom Prison Blues (New Haven, CT, November 10, 1999) Big River (Santa Cruz, CA, March 16, 2000)
Other CDs Containing Worthwhile Cover Songs The two double-CD sets “Toad’s Place Vol 1” and “Toad’s Place Vol 2” contain all of the songs that Dylan played at the historic concert venue on York Street in New Haven, Connecticut, on January 12, 1990. However, twelve of the covers performed here are also available on disc one, “Rehearsing On Stage”, of the Scorpio “Genuine ever Ending Tour Covers Collection 1988-2000”. Other collections, which are not specifically dedicated to cover songs but might be worth your consideration, are the Scorpio releases commonly know as “The Genuine Bootleg Series”. So far there have been four releases, “The Genuine Bootleg Series”, “The Genuine Bootleg Series Take 2”, “The Third One ow” and “Fourth Time Around”. These four, three-CD sets, all contain rare live performances and studio outtakes from across Dylan’s career. Another interesting set of releases are from the maker Hollow Horn. This series of nicely packaged double CDs contains rare studio recordings in chronological order. The eight titles in the series are: “Walk Like a Duck Smell Like a Skunk”, “ow Your Mouth Cries Wolf”, “A Dog That Talks, A Fish That Walks”, “Blood On Your Saddle”, “Where The Monkey Dances”, “One More Layer Of Skin”, “A Man With o Alibi”, and “Park It Where The Sun Don’t Shine”.
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Bob Dylan 1965
Appendix 3
Appendix 3
otes: Significant People, Places and Artefacts frequently quoted in the main text of this book are elaborated upon here.
Anthology Of American Folk Music – Smith, Harry Everett: Issued by Folkways Records in 1952, the album “American Folk Music”, as it was originally titled, is a six-record collection of eighty-four American folk recordings from 1926 to 1934. The compilation was the brainchild of the avant-garde filmmaker, folklorist and anthropologist, Harry Smith (May 29, 1923 – November 27, 1991). In 1997, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings reissued the collection on six compact discs. The three double CDs were presented with Smith’s original notes, which over time have become almost as legendary as the music itself, and a further large-format sixty-eight-page book containing a new set of notes. These items were housed in a red cloth-covered LPsize box and for the first time the album, which had long been referred to as the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” was officially titled thus. In 2000, Revenant Records released a fourth collection (also compiled by Smith), which included union songs and songs recorded as late as 1940. For further details about Harry Smith and the “Anthology Of American Folk Music” see the entry for ‘Fishing Blues’.
Appalachian Music: The Appalachian Mountains, more commonly known simply as the Appalachians, stretch into eighteen US States, reaching from Maine to Georgia. The Central Appalachians are in the north-eastern USA and the Northern Appalachians stretch up as far as Quebec, Canada. The Southern Appalachians, the home of “hillbilly” or “old-time music”, include three hundred counties covering most of West Virginia and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. The Appalachians, which are made up of a series of steep, often four thousand feet high ridges, were massively difficult to cross and therefore formed a natural barrier along which many immigrants settled. The soil along the Appalachians was extremely poor and therefore attracted poorer people seeking cheaper or unwanted land. During the 17th century the largest group of immigrants to this area were from England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1750 an opening known as the Cumberland Gap was discovered, which led some of these immigrants through to the fertile bluegrass country of Kentucky. The communities that sprang up along the Appalachians were mostly isolated geographically, so musical traditions from home became cherished links to the past that were passed down from one generation to the next, and the roots of much of the early Appalachian folk music can therefore be traced to ballads sung in the British Isles.
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Appendix 3 However, because much of this land was practically worthless it was also later settled by black Africans, and as a consequence African rhythms became embroiled in the music of the Appalachians. Folk song collector Cecil Sharp arrived in Appalachia in 1916. He was able to identify and collect around sixteen hundred versions of five hundred songs from two hundred and eighty-one singers. Almost all of these songs had their origins in the British “Child Ballads”. Sharp’s work was later published in the book “English Folk Songs From The Southern Appalachians”. This magnificent piece of work contained one hundred and twenty-two Songs and Ballads, and three hundred and twenty-three Tunes. Some of the songs that would be familiar to Dylan enthusiasts include ‘The Two Sisters’, ‘Lord Randal’, ‘Sweet William’, ‘The Gypsy Laddie’, ‘The Daemon Lover’, ‘The Golden Vanity’, ‘The Brown Girl’ or ‘Black Girl’, ‘In Seaport Town’, ‘Shooting Of His Dear’, ‘The Lady And The Dragoon’, ‘Pretty ancy Of Yarmouth’, ‘Jack Went A-Sailing’, ‘The Dear Companion’, ‘Rain And Snow’, ‘The Wagoner’s Lad’, ‘Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies’, ‘Poor Omie’, ‘Pretty Saro’, ‘Pretty Peggy O’, ‘Pretty Polly’, ‘Loving Reilly’, ‘Sweet William’, and even the nursery song ‘A Frog He Went A-Courting’. Regardless of the amount of time and effort that went into collecting these songs and tunes it is inevitable that the work is both selective and subjective. For every song collected in these isolated rural backwaters one must wonder how many more were overlooked. One interesting fact that is reprehensive of the collected works is that most of the one hundred and twenty-two variations found in the American tradition are connected to the plight of females and are most often of a sexual nature, a great many dealing with pregnant young women who are murdered by uncaring men, ‘Pretty Polly’, ‘Poor Omie’, etc. The term “Appalachian Music” is a relative recent label. Before this, the term “Hillbilly Music” was used to describe Appalachian and Southern fiddle music. A little later, this rather disparaging term was dropped in favour of “Old-Time Music”. Eck Robertson was probably the first “Old Time” performer to be recorded in 1922. Other notables, of which there are far too many to mention here, include Clarence Ashley, Buell Kazee, Dock Boggs, Henry Thomas, Gid Tanner, and the Carter Family. Broadsides: For almost three hundred years, until the mid-19th century, broadsides filled the place occupied today by newspapers. Broadsides were originally single sheets of paper, printed on one side only. They were designed to be read unfolded and were sometimes used as handbills or posters. Printed song lyrics were extremely popular from the 16th century until the early 20th century and these lyrics, which were printed on single sheets of paper, were also commonly known as broadsides. These sheets only included the words but sometimes the name of a popular
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Appendix 3 tune would appear below the title. Music was not included for various reasons. To begin with most of the population could not read music, so it was far more practical for them to sing the words printed on the broadsheets to one of the popular tunes that they already knew. Also, for a time there was a monopoly on music publishing which had been granted by Queen Elizabeth to two court musicians. At first, broadsides were hand-written, but the invention of the printing press meant that the sheets could be mass-produced and sold more cheaply, and because of this their popularity rocketed. Most broadsides cost one penny and were just about within the means of most working people. Some ballads cost as little as a halfpenny. Broadside ballads appeared in shops and on market stalls but they were sold mainly by itinerant sellers like “chapmen” and peddlers. Broadsides were sometimes folded into pamphlets called “chapbooks”. The collections of songs contained in the chapbooks were known as garlands. Many of these broadsides have survived and have now become indispensable tools for researchers. Broadsides should not be confused with the American folk music magazine “Broadside” which was founded in 1962 by Agnes “Sis” Cunningham and her husband, Gordon Friesen. Charters, Samuel Barclay: Sam Charters (August 1, 1929 – ) is a an American music historian, writer, musician, record producer and poet. He has written extensively about blues and jazz music and his books include “The Country Blues” (1959), “The Poetry of the Blues” (1963), “Jazz New Orleans” (1963), “The Bluesmen” (1967), “The Legacy of the Blues...” (1975) and “The Roots of the Blues” (1981). His first book, “The Country Blues” (Rinehart, 1959, reprinted by Da Capo Press, 1975) was published in connection with an influential record album also entitled “The Country Blues” (RBF 1, 1959). Also of note is the various artists LP “The Rural Blues: A Study Of The Vocal And Instrumental Resources” (RF 202, 1960). For further information about Sam Charters see entry for‘Stealin’, Stealin’ . Child Ballads: The “Child Ballads” are a collection of 355 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) in the late 19th century. This large collection of songs was published between 1882 and 1898 by Houghton Mifflin in a ten volume series (later in five quarto volumes) entitled “The English and Scottish Popular Ballads”. Although these ballads, which vary greatly in age, are mainly from 17th and 18th century, some can be dated back beyond the 13th century. Also see the entry for “Appalachian Music”.
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Appendix 3 Greenwich Village: Greenwich Village occupies a small patch of land near the southern tip of Manhattan Island and a sizable slice of emotional space for Dylan fans everywhere, as it is the spot where he launched his spectacular career during the stormy winter of 1961. Cheap lodgings, inexpensive places to eat and numerous speakeasies have made Greenwich Village, known by many simply as “The Village”, a haven for artists and bohemians since the mid-19th century. Although the cheap lodgings and inexpensive places to eat have mostly disappeared, “The Village” remains an art, music and literary colony today. The limits of Greenwich Village run north-south from Fourteenth Street to Houston Street and east-west from Broadway to the Hudson River. However, from Sixth Avenue to the Hudson is a more sedate West Village, an area of brick houses and tree-lined streets. Washington Square had been a venue for a plethora of musical expressions, including folk music, throughout the fifties. However, by the middle of the decade the folk singers were beginning to come indoors, invading the Greenwich Village Jazz clubs, and by the turn of the decade folk music was flourishing in The Village, especially at the many coffee houses on and around MacDougal and Bleecker. Coffee houses with compelling names such as The Limelight, Kettle Of Fish, Café Au Go Go and The Fat Black Pussycat, all encouraged folk musicians to play, not only because they brought in more customers, but also because the musicians were often prepared to play for no payment. The clubs where the artists’ only form of payment was from audience tips, were known as “basket houses”, so named after the practice of passing a wicker basket through the audience to collect money that would be shared by the entertainers at the end of the evening. Among the first basket houses were the Commons, Gaslight, Figaro and Café Wha?. It seemed that anyone could open a coffeehouse simply by renting a storefront and putting in a coffee machine. Moreover, it was not only the musicians that worked for no payment, most of the waitresses also worked only for tips. Another added bonus for the club owners was that the clubs did not require a music licence in order to operate. Cabaret licences were only necessary if amplification or drums were used. In addition, the local bars were required by law to close by two a.m. but, because most of the Village coffee houses chose not to serve liquor, they were able to remain open longer, with some venues remaining open and providing entertainment until four or even six a.m. Between 1963 and 1968 it seemed every third storefront along Bleecker and MacDougal was a club or coffeehouse. At any one time, there could be as many as forty coffeehouses operating in the Village. The streets became so crowded at weekends that wooden barriers were erected between Bleecker and West Third on MacDougal to prevent traffic from entering the area. As more tourists flooded into The Village bad feeling started to rise within the local community, which resulted in residents’ groups like the Village Board and the Minetta Street Organization applying pressure to the authorities to close down any unlicensed clubs.
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Appendix 3 At the time of Dylan’s arrival on the scene in early 1961 a campaign of harassment had already begun, and for a time the Gaslight and other clubs on MacDougal and Bleecker were being raided nightly. The Village Gaslight, or Gaslight Café as it was better known, and Gerdes Folk City were probably the two clubs most responsible for giving Bob Dylan his early breaks. Another massively important “venue” in The Village was Israel “Izzy” Young’s Folklore Center at 110, MacDougal Street. The centre, a narrow two-room shop that sold books, folk records and other musical paraphernalia, was also an important meeting place for folk musicians. Over the years Young would also help to run a folk club and work for very little money as a concert promoter. Handy, William Christopher: Born in Florence, Alabama, William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a blues composer and a musician. Often known as the “Father of the Blues”, Handy, whose first instrument was the cornet, was the son of former slaves. From the age of twenty, Handy toured with various bands and taught music at Alabama A&M in Huntsville. In 1903 he moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, to lead the Colored Knights of Pythias, a band that performed for both whites and blacks. Handy would always tailor his sets to whichever audience he was playing to. However, during the interval at one of his concerts he noted that the “black music” being played by three local black musicians gained an enthusiastic reaction and Handy decided to reconsider his band’s repertoire. Shortly after his Clarksdale gig and while waiting for a delayed train at the depot in Tutwiler, in the northern part of the Mississippi Delta, Handy overheard someone singing a song about “goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog”. Handy, who had never heard anything quite like this before, got up from his seat and looked around the corner to where a young black man was singing. Handy recalled “it was the weirdest music I’d ever heard”. He thought it sounded as though the man’s singing was being answered by a crying sound from the guitar, which was being played by sliding the back of a knife along the metal strings. The influence of this rural sound on the classically trained Handy would soon find its celebrated outlet in his published work. The phrase “where The Southern crosses The Yellow Dog” has been used by several blues artists including Charley Patton and Big Bill Broonzy. The phrase also appears in Bob Dylan’s song ‘ettie Moore’ from his album “Modern Times”. The Southern and The Yellow Dog are US railways and the site where they cross is at Moorhead, Missippi. Handy joined forces with Harry Pace and together they operated the Pace & Handy Music Co. on Beale Avenue from 1913-1918. The company published many popular blues tunes including ‘St. Louis Blues’, ‘Beale Street Blues’ and of course ‘Yellow Dog Blues’. W.C. Handy acknowledged that he did not invent the blues but merely transcribed and presented them. However, it was partly through his pioneering work that blues music reached a much wider audience. Today, the W.C. Handy Award is a prestigious prize reserved for blues musicians.
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Appendix 3 Koerner, John (and early influences): John Koerner (August 31, 1938 – ) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. “Spider” Koerner, who got his nickname because of his long, gangly arms and legs, enrolled in 1956 at the University of Minnesota as an engineering student. However, by early 1958 he became a student of the burgeoning Minneapolis folk music scene. He is best-known as a guitarist and vocalist for Koerner, Ray & Glover, but has also made albums as a solo performer and has collaborated with others, including Willie Murphy. Dylan met Koerner when he also attended the University of Minnesota in September 1959. Dylan had enrolled in an arts program with music as his major, but like Koerner he soon abandoned his studies to persue folk music. Dylan wrote at length about Koerner in his memoir “Chronicles Volume One”: “We hit it off right away. We already knew a few of the same songs like ‘Wabash Cannonball’ and ‘Waiting For a Train’. Koerner had just gotten out of the Marine Corps … I learned a lot of songs off of a guy named Harry Webber–mostly street ballads … [Koerner and I] sat around and I played my Odetta songs and a few by Lead Belly, whose record I had heard earlier than Odetta. John played ‘Casey Jones’, ‘Golden Vanity’… [He] was an exciting singer, and we began playing a lot together. Koerner had some other key records, too, mostly on the Folkways label– “Foc’sle Songs And Sea Shanties” (sic) [“Foc’sle Songs And Shanties” (Folkways FA 2429)] was one that I could listen to over and over again ... Another record he had was the Elektra folk songs Sampler … That’s where I first heard Dave Van Ronk and Peggy Seeger, even Alan Lomax himself singing the cowboy song ‘Doney Gal’, which I added to my repertoire. Koerner had a few other records ... on the Arhoolie label ... [that’s] where I first heard Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Charlie Patton and Tommy Johnson. I listened a lot to a John Jacob Niles record, too … Niles was otherworldly and his voice raged with strange incantations. I listened to ‘Maid Freed From The Gallows’ and ‘Go Away From My Window’ plenty of times ... Koerner [introduced me to] Harry Webber ... I learned one called ‘Old Greybeard’… I used to sing another one, too, called ‘When a Man’s In Love’ … ‘Roger Esquire’ [was] another song I learned from Webber. ... The songs had beautiful melodies and were filled with everyday leading players … Beneath it I was into the rural blues as well; it was a counterpart of myself. It was connected to early rock and roll and I liked it because it was older than Muddy and Wolf. Folklorist singers came through the Twin Cities also and you could learn songs from them, too-old-time performers like Joe Hickerson, Roger Abrams, Ellen Stekert or Rolf Kahn. Authentic folk records were as scarce as hens’ teeth. You had to know people who had them [like] Koerner ... Performers like Koerner and myself would go anywhere to hear one by anybody we thought we hadn’t heard. ... I always thought that “A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop-bam-boo” had said it all until I heard Darby and Tarlton doing ‘Way Down In Florida On a Hog’”.
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Appendix 3 Lomax, Alan Alan Lomax (January 15, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was one of the most important field collectors of folk music of the 20th century. Alan Lomax was the son of pioneering musicologist and folklorist John A. Lomax, with whom he worked helping to record songs sung by sharecroppers and prisoners in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Beginning at the age of eighteen he would go on to record thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain and Ireland as well as the West Indies, Italy and Spain. From 1936 to 1942 Alan Lomax was Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress to which he and his father, along with many other field collectors, contributed more than ten thousand recordings. Alan Lomax’s work was of great importance not only for the songs he collected but also for the many invaluable interviews he conducted with legendary folk and blues musicians, including Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Jelly Roll Morton, Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy and the lesser known but extremely important Irish folk singer Margaret Barry. During the 1950s Alan Lomax based himself in London where he worked editing the eighteen-volume “Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music”. Lomax returned to the United States in 1959 and immediately embarked on two years of recording tours throughout the South. Material collected on these expeditions helped to produce the book “Folk Songs of North America”. In 1962, Lomax made a six-month field trip to the West Indies where he recorded traditional musics from the English, French and Spanish-speaking people of the Caribbean. Along with a colleague at Columbia University in the 1960s, Lomax developed a number of methodologies designed for analyzing song, dance and speech, cross-culturally. In 1967, Lomax wrote the book “Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People” with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and edited another book, “Folk Song Style and Culture”. Other books by Alan Lomax include “Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads”, “The Land Where the Blues Began” and “Folk Songs of North America”. Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, Rounder records released / reissued a 100CD series showcasing many of Lomax’s legendary field recordings. Alan Lomax retired from work in 1996, and died in 2002 at the age of eighty-seven. His own archive, consisting of three hundred and thirty thousand sheets of manuscript material, more than seven thousand sound recordings, five thousand photographs, and upwards of three thousand moving images, now resides in the Library of Congress. The Alan Lomax database is now available online at www.lomaxarchive.com. Bob Dylan refers to Lomax on a number of occasions in his memoir “Chronicles Volume One”, introducing him as “the great folk archivist”. Dylan also said of Lomax: “[He] used to have parties twice a month where he’d bring folksingers to play ... You might see Roscoe Holcomb or Clarence Ashley or Dock Boggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Pete Williams
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Appendix 3 or even Don Stover and The Lilly Brothers – sometimes, even real live section gang convicts that Lomax would get out of state penitentiaries on passes and bring to New York to do field hollers in his loft. The invitees to these gatherings would most likely be local doctors, city dignitaries, anthropologists, but there’d always be some regular folk there too. I’d been there once or twice…” Dylan himself was tape recorded by Lomax at this apartment sometime in early 1963. This item was only added to the online Lomax database in late 2005.
Lomax, John Avery John A. Lomax (September 23, 1867 – January 26, 1948) was a ground-breaking musicologist and folklorist. After teaching in rural schools, Lomax entered the University of Texas at Austin in 1895, specializing in English literature, and in 1903 he accepted an offer to teach English at Texas A&M University. In 1907 he attended Harvard University as a graduate student where he gained a Master of Arts degree. He returned to teaching and was soon awarded a Sheldon grant to research and collect cowboy songs. The resulting anthology, “Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads”, was published in 1910. In the summer of 1932 Macmillan Publishing accepted Lomax’s proposal for an anthology of American ballads and folksongs and in preparation he went to Washington to review the holdings in the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. However, Lomax found the recordings held there to be woefully inadequate for his research and as a consequence he made an arrangement with the Library whereby it would provide recording equipment for him to make “field trips” around the United States and he would deposit the recordings in the Library Archive. John Lomax was paid the princely sum of one dollar per year for his work, which included fund-raising for the Library! John Lomax’s ten-year association with the Library of Congress involved not only John but the entire Lomax family, including his second wife, Ruby Terrill Lomax. All four of John’s children assisted with their father’s research, including Alan Lomax, who accompanied John on field trips. Through a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, John Lomax, along with son Alan, embarked in June 1933 on the first of his recording expeditions under the Library’s auspices. Lomax’s predecessor at the Library, Robert Winslow Gordon, had previously written that “Nearly every type of song is to be found in our prisons and penitentiaries”. Folklorists Howard Odum and Guy Johnson had written that “If one wishes to obtain anything like an accurate picture of the workaday Negro he will surely find his best setting in the chain gang, prison, or in the situation of the ever-fleeing fugitive”. It was with these comments in mind that John and Alan Lomax installed a state-of-the-art 315-pound acetate phonograph disk recorder in the boot of a Ford sedan and on one of
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Appendix 3 their first “field trips” headed for Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola where they would find one Huddie Ledbetter, aka “Lead Belly”. These prisoners, some of whom had been locked up since the mid to late 19th century, were an invaluable resource to Lomax. These correctional facilities were living laboratories for musical purity. Lomax wrote “Thrown on their own resources for entertainment ... still sing, especially the long-term prisoners who have been confined for years and who have not yet been influenced by jazz and the radio, the distinctive old-time Negro melodies”. John A. Lomax’s autobiography “Adventures of a Ballad Hunter” (Macmillan) was published in 1947. Other works by John A. Lomax include “Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads”. John Lomax also wrote a number of books with his son, Alan. These include “American Ballads and Folk Songs”, “Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly” “Our Singing Country” and “Folk Song: USA”. John Avery Lomax died of a stroke in January 1948. He was aged eighty.
Roud (Roud Folk Song Index) The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 143,000 references to traditional Englishlanguage songs collected in Britain, Ireland, North America and Australia, by indexing published books, journals, broadsides, chapbooks, songsters, recordings and unpublished manuscripts. The index does not recognise tunes but is solely based on the textual content of the songs. For each version of each song, the index records the source, song title, song first line, singer’s name, collector’s name, place and date of collection, “Child” and “Laws” numbers, song author (if known), and keywords and phrases from the text. The Roud Folk Song Index is compiled by Steve Roud. Roud, formerly Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society, is the Local Studies Librarian in Croydon, London. Since 2006 the index can be found at Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Online. http://efdss.org/library.htm
Sandburg, Carl August – The American Songbag Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American writer who is best known for his poetry. Born in Galesburg, Illinois, Sandburg also collected American folk songs and published several books of these songs: “The American Songbag” (1927) and “The New American Songbag” (1950) being the most well known. “The American Songbag” is a collection of 280 songs from all regions of the United States. It was first published in 1927 by Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York. “New American Songbag” was published in 1950 by New York Broadcast Music Co. (it contains around 170 new songs not in the first American Songbag).
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Appendix 3 Sandburg also recorded many traditional folk songs himself. “Carl Sandburg Sings His American Songbag” was a double album which Sandburg recorded in the early 1950s. This album was released in 1967. Carl Sandburg makes an appearance in Bob Dylan’s ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’ as performed at Philharmonic Hall, New York City on October 31, 1964 in the lyric “Now all of the people can be all right part of the time, and some of the people can be part right all the time, and even all the people can be all right part of the time, but not all the people can be all right all the time. Carl Sandburg said that”.
Sharp, Cecil James: Cecil James Sharp (November 22, 1959 – June 23, 1924) was the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early 20th century. Sharp, born at Denmark Hill, London, graduated from the University of Cambridge with a B.A. in 1882. In order to find work, he went to Australia, arriving there in November 1882. Despite attaining success in Australia he returned to England, arriving in January 1892. Sharp became interested in traditional English dance after seeing a group of Morris dancers perform in the village of Headington Quarry, Oxfordshire on Boxing Day 1899. In 1901 he joined the Folk-Song Society and a year later published “A Book of British Song”. In 1911, Sharp founded the English Folk Dance Society which, together with the Folk-Song Society, forms the basis of the English Folk Dance and Song Society today. During the First World War Sharp again found work hard to come by, and this time headed out to the United States. While in the United States, Sharp undertook a number of field trips gathering many English folk songs that had survived in the more remote regions of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Cecil Sharp died in 1924. Although a relative latecomer to the folk revival, Cecil Sharp became the most high profile and certainly most prolific folk music and dance collector of all his contemporaries. He noted 4977 tunes including nearly 3000 songs from England and over 1500 on his four collecting trips to the Appalachians. Sharp’s copy manuscripts reside with Clare College, University of Cambridge. All other manuscripts, including his field notebooks and photographs are kept in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regents Park Road, London, NW1 7AY.
Taking Blues: Bob Dylan covered a number of talking blues in the early 1960s and his interest in the genre lead him to write several compositions that style– ‘Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues’, ‘Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues’, ‘Talkin’ ew York’, ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’ and ‘Talkin’ Hava egiliah Blues’.
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Appendix 3 Talking blues is a sub genre of the blues that harks back to a West African “sing-song” style in which speech and song are virtually one and the same. The form typically consists of a repetitive guitar utilizing the same three-chord progression as in the blues. Early folk and blues collectors of the 1920s viewed talking blues as a minor form of the genre; some even thought of it purely “novelty” music, and therefore chose mainly to ignore the form whilst collecting music from around the USA. However, by the 1930’s, a slightly more enlightened attitude prevailed and Alan Lomax began collecting recordings of talking blues for the Archive of American Folk Song. Even so, most of these talking blues were performed by white artists, and although very few if any black talking blues recordings exist, there is no doubt that the form was originally black American. One reason for the absence of black recordings of the form may lie in the possibility that the talking blues were first performed by blacks for blacks as a vehicle of anti-white satire and as such these songs would not have been performed for white audiences let alone white music collectors. The talking blues first gained prominence in 1927 when Columbia Records released a single by Christopher Allen Bouchillon (1893 - 1968) entitled ‘Talking Blues’ (Columbia 15120-D). The single, issued in February 1927, quickly became one of the year’s biggest hits and over the next three years would achieve sales figures approaching 100,000 units. The record defined, at least for a white record industry, a new type of genre, and other companies quickly began cultivating their own “talking comedians”, like Red Henderson and Lonnie Glosson. The talking blues form was re-popularized by Woody Guthrie when he began recording in the early the 1940s, and an avalanche of talking blues records was released just before and after World War II. Another extremely influential interpreter of the talking blues, at least as far as Bob Dylan is concerned, is Dr. John Greenway (1919 – 1991). Greenway’s 1958 Folkways Records’ album, simply entitled “Talking Blues” (Folkways FW05232), appears to have been a major source of inspiration for Dylan, who must have picked up on it during the latter part of 1960. For further information about this album and its undoubted influence on Bob Dylan, see entry for ‘Talking Columbia’.
Theme Time Radio Hour With Your Host Bob Dylan: Producer: Eddie Gorodetsky; Associate Producer: (Season One) Sonny Webster; (Season Two) Ben Rollins; Editor: Damien Rodriguez; Supervising Editor: Rob Macomber. The show is broadcast on XM Satellite Radio. Syndicates: BBC Radio 2; BBC 6 Music; Phantom FM. “Theme Time Radio Hour With Your Host Bob Dylan” is an award-winning radio programme hosted by Bob Dylan. The first show in Season One was broadcast on May 3, 2006 on the Deep Tracks channel of the American subscription-based radio station, XM Satellite Radio. This first season finished on April 18, 2007. In total there were fifty shows of which forty-seven were one hour in duration. Of the remaining three, the show which
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Appendix 3 aired on October 11, 2006 exceeded the usual one hour by seventeen minutes. This overrun was clearly meant as a joke; after all, the theme of that night’s show was “Time”. The other two shows, themed “Christmas and New Year” (aired December 20, 2006) and “Spring Cleaning” (aired April 18, 2007), were both two-hour-long specials. Each of the shows was an eclectic mixture of genres and in total 828 tracks were played. Season Two of “Theme Time Radio Hour With Your Host Bob Dylan” ran from September 19, 2007 to April 2, 2008. There were twenty-five new shows in total. Show eighteen, “President’s Day”, was a two hour special. Three further shows were aired during Season Two, (“Halloween”, “Leftovers” and “Christmas and New Year”) which were repeats from Season One. In total 369 tracks were played during Season Two. During the shows Dylan did not play any of his own songs, nor did he refer to them. He did, however, play a large number of songs that he has covered either on record or in concert. “Theme Time Radio Hour With Your Host Bob Dylan” is unlike any other 21st Century radio show. The shows not only reflect Bob Dylan’s profound interest in and knowledge of music, but they also recreate a down-home vibe that has sadly long since disappeared from our airwaves. The songs are often punctuated with vintage radio station promos and jingles, snippets of information about the featured artist, corny one-liners, tall tales and fond recollections that are reminiscent of the stories found in Dylan’s excellent memoir “Chronicles Volume One”. All of this is delivered in Dylan’s unique and welcoming, growly, time-weathered voice. Bob Dylan 1969
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Bob Dylan on the set of “Hearts of Fire”
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