by Jochen Markhorst
XXVII A tapestry of rich and royal hue
We are distracted by the cat, the soft, grazing light and Carole’s bare feet, but the needlepoint tapestry in question can also be seen on the cover; in her right hand. “A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold,” sings Carole King in the title track of her immortal masterpiece Tapestry from 1971. A metaphor, of course, but the origin is indeed prosaic, as Carole explains in her conversation with her producer Lou Adler, in 1972 at A&M Records Studio B in Hollywood, where they had recorded the legendary album a year earlier:
“Just sort of happened, that I had started a needlepoint tapestry, I don’t know, a few months before we did the album, and I happened to write a song called ‘Tapestry,’ not even connecting, you know, the two up in my mind. I was just thinking about some other kind of tapestry, the kind that hangs and is all woven, or something, and I wrote that song. And, you being the sharp fellow you are [giggles], put the two together and came up with an excellent title, a whole concept for the album.”
It is a metaphor that we can easily apply to Rough And Rowdy Ways in general, and to “Key West” in particular: an artfully woven, complex combination of diverse elements.
The central theme of Dylan’s tapestry, from the album, is: songs. He has taken us on a journey along the songwriter, the inspiration, the magic, the performer, along influences and the audience, and ends with paradise itself, with the source that nurtures all beauty and lovingly spreads it: the radio. The K and the W, the letters with which all the call signs of American radio stations begin, seem to have inspired Dylan to call radioland “Key West”, to “encode” it, so to speak, and then the associations flow in. Island, sea, Truman’s White House, bougainvillaea, the 1950s, Amelia Street, Margaritaville and David Allan Coe… the fourteen verses, 634 words, pay tribute to more than 30 songs, performers and artists, artfully weaving diverse elements into the tapestry:
- Jimmy Buffett
- “White House Blues” – Charlie Poole (1926)
- “Goin’ Down Slow” – St. Louis Jimmy (1941) / Howlin’ Wolf (1961)
- “In The Days Before Rock ‘N’ Roll” – Van Morrison (1990)
- “Down In The Boondocks” – Joe South / Billie Joe Royal (1965)
- “King Cry-Baby” – Doc Pomus (1990)
- “Louie Louie” – The Kingsmen (1963)
- Buddy Holly
- James Dean (or Jimmy Reed)
- Gladiator – Ridley Scott (2000)
- Satires – Juvenal (100–127 A.D.)
- “Raglan Road” – The Dubliners (1971)
- “En Te Quittant Tahiti” – Jean Sablon (1958)
- “Les Feuilles Mortes” – Yves Montand (1949)
- “Beyond The Sea” – Bobby Darin (1959)
- “Truckin’” – Grateful Dead (1970)
- “The Battle of New Orleans” – Johnny Horton (1959)
- “Seven Mile Bridge” – David Allan Coe (1979)
- “She’s A Mystery To Me” – Roy Orbison (1989)
- “Try A Little Tenderness” – Frank Sinatra (1960) / Otis Redding (1966)
- “Amelia” – Joni Mitchell (1976)
- “Jambalaya” – Hank Williams (1952)
- “Bougainvillea” – Dickey Betts (1977)
- “The Bare Necessities” – Baloo the Bear (Phil Harris) (1967)
- “Mystery Street” – Alma Corgan (1953)
- “When Will They Shoot?” – Ice Cube (1992)
- “A Day In The Life” – The Beatles (1967)
- “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss” – New Lost City Ramblers (1961)
- “I Don’t Love Nobody” – Elizabeth Cotten (1958)
- “A Kiss To Build A Dream On” – Louis Armstrong (1951)
- “Down In The Bottom” – Howlin’ Wolf (1962)
In the autumn of his life, the grand old man of song thus weaves a monumental work of art, a memorial to and tribute for the source of all that beauty, of his life’s happiness – the radio;
Key West is the place to be If you’re looking for immortality Key West is paradise divine Key West is fine and fair If you lost your mind, you’ll find it there Key West is on the horizon line
Or, as Carole King would say: “A tapestry of rich and royal hue, an everlasting vision of the ever-changing view, a wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold – a tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold.”
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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 looking 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
- Bob Dylan takes Highway 61 – Seven mercurial songs