The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar
by Jochen Markhorst
The song leads a rather obscure existence. Dylan himself hardly ever plays it (twice, both times in ’65), there aren’t too many covers, and the film world ignores the song as well. With one exception, that is: the captivating, charming social drama Kisses, an Irish film from 2008. Two young adolescents in love run away and experience a wild, frightening and enchanting night in Dublin. The boy is called Dylan and Bob Dylan is (therefore) a recurring theme in the film. “From A Buick 6” is chosen as the soundtrack for the scene in which the two, after sharing half a bottle of beer, run rowdily and riotously across the city– the choice for Dylan’s wild, rattling song is a successful one.
Fortunately, among the few covers there are a couple of particularly successful ones.
The remastered version of Johnny Winter’s Still Alive And Well (1973) includes the song as a bonus track, performed in a manner one would expect from the albino guitar god: vicious, raw, and without any nonsense. Comparable to the macho, dirty performances of veteran Mitch Ryder, who has had the song on his set list for decades, and comparable to most of the covers; garage rock with screeching bottlenecks, pumping basses and driving drums.
Renovations are more fun, though. The talented Chuck Prophet writes beautiful songs (for Solomon Burke, Heart and Kim Carnes, among others), enjoyed success in the 1980s with his band Green On Red, and is not afraid to experiment as a solo artist. “From A Buick 6” has been on his set list for years, always highly enjoyable, but most remarkable when he performs it almost entirely on his own; carried by a particularly attractive guitar lick, accompanied by a rhythm box and more reciting than singing through a voice distorter. In the background, his wife Stephanie Finch searches the keys of her wonder organ – which could have been pushed a little further into the background, to be perfectly honest.
One of the best covers is credited to veteran Gary U.S. Bonds, thanks to Bruce Springsteen, who, together with Steven Van Zandt, orchestrated Gary’s resurrection. The duo wrote songs, selected covers, played along and produced Bonds’ comeback album Dedication (1981), one of the most successful comeback albums in pop history. Bonds, Little Steven and The Boss approach “From A Buick 6” as a venerable, monumental pop classic, which works well; Dylan’s interlude suddenly has the allure of “Susie Q” or “Twist And Shout”. The cover can also be found on the very nice tribute album How Many Roads; Black America Sings Bob Dylan (2010).
The most respectful is also the most idiosyncratic one: the cover by Canadian master guitarist Ken Hamm. Respectful, not so much because of the performance (which is beautiful and unconventional), but because of the setting. In 1998, his remarkable “solo blues” album Galvanized! was released, and it is a gem. Hamm manifests himself as the missing link between Ry Cooder and Leo Kottke, playing solo with only his 1930s metal National Duolian Resonator Guitar, filling the record with twenty great renditions of blues classics: the record opens with the Bo Diddley medley “Can’t Judge A Book / Who Do You Love”, honours Robert Johnson with spot-on versions of “From Four Until Late”, “Come On In My Kitchen” and “32-20 Blues”, Muddy Waters with “She Moves Me” and “I Can’t Be Satisfied”, Willie Dixon, Lead Belly, Mississippi John Hurt and Charley Patton’s “Shake It And Break It”… Ken Hamm’s Galvanized! truly ís Highway 61 revisited.
And among all those blues gods, Ken’s rendition of Dylan’s “From A Buick 6” shines with casual self-evidence, nestled between Skip James’s “Crow Jane” and “Duncan And Brady” and all those other monuments, implicitly acknowledging that for Ken, the song ranks alongside “Bourgeois Blues”, “Come in My Kitchen” and “Who Do You Love”, implicitly stating that Dylan has his place in a line-up with Bo Diddley, Charley Patton and Robert Johnson – that Dylan is one of the milestones along Highway 61.
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Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle: 
- Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
- Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
- Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
- Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
- Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
- Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
- Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
- John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
- Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
- Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
- Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2nd Big Bang
- Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
- Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
- Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
- Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
- I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
- Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
- Bob Dylan’s 1971
- Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door
- It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry b/w Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Bob Dylan’s melancholy blues
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side A