Goodbye Jimmy Reed: Bob Dylan and the random-abstract song.

By Tony Attwood

From our 2015 review of “If you ever go to Houston”

David Hildago, who played accordion on the album, is quoted in Uncut magazine as saying of this song that, “It started out like a Jimmy Reed tune and it ended up… Bob was playing organ, he started this riff, and it went from this completely other thing, to what it is now. It was fun to be in the room when it happened.”

From Jimmy Reed to “Houston” is really quite a journey.  Here’s Jimmy in 1961…

It is a classic “lost love” song – and as we’ve seen on this site, “lost love” is Bob Dylan’s second favourite topic for lyrics (beaten only by love itself).

Bright lights big city, gone to my baby’s head
I’d tried to tell the woman, but she don’t believe a word I said …

So this is a 12 bar blues, which not only got into the R&B charts but the pop charts too.  Every band that ever played R&B through the 60s and 70s played this song.   It is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list of “500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll”.

OK so far so good – we know Jimmy Reed.  But Jimmy Reed died on 29 August 1976, so isn’t it a bit late to say goodbye?

And isn’t it a bit odd to write a song called “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” which has musical constructions that would never ever come from a Jimmy Reed song?  I don’t mean that if Bob wants to do this he can’t – of course he can – but it’s just unexpected, not least because Bob himself has written so many classic 12 bar blues.

Take the opening guitar solo which then has a couple of drum beats behind it before the song proper begins – and it sounds like it is going to be a 12 bar blues of  the type Jimmy Reed wrote.  BUT that opening guitar solo is three beats long – something you will never find in R&B.

And we do find the three beat bar happening again before each verse – it really trips us up and would make it impossible to jive to, unless one knew it was coming and with one’s partner worked out how to jive a three beat bar.  Of course Dylan has played with unexpected length bars before – Jochen and I had great fun disentangling a similar trick in Not Dark Yet (although with a different number of beats) so Dylan knows what he is up to and has form here.  But in a song called Goodbye Jimmy Reed????

And then there is the opening verse.

I live on a street named after a Saint
Women in the churches wear powder and paint
Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray
I can tell a Proddy from a mile away
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Jimmy Reed indeed
Give me that old time religion, it’s just what I need

So we are getting a lot of religion here – but I am sure that’s not connected with the Jimmy Reed whose music I know (and in my own limited way, played in R&B bands in my youth).  Jimmy and religion?  No, not a thing.  The man was a drinker not a Christian.

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory
Go tell it on the Mountain, go tell the real story
Tell it in that straight forward puritanical tone
In the mystic hours when a person’s alone
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Godspeed
Thump on the bible - proclaim the creed

And so it goes on – and now I am getting really worried because I simply don’t get the connection between Jimmy Reed and religion.   Unless, rhythm and blues is the bible, (Matthew 6:31, I got that) and come to that the creed.

You won’t amount to much the people all said
‘Cause I didn’t play guitar behind my head
Never pandered never acted proud
Never took off my shoes and threw them into the crowd
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - goodbye and goodnight
I’ll put a jewel in your crown - I’ll put out the light

OK I am sinking fast here, because Bob has never played the guitar behind his head and nor did Jimmy Reed, at least not in the films I have seen.  Charley Patton did, and we’ve had a song about him, but not Jimmy Reed.  The Jimmy Reed guitar did have a jewel in the crown illustration on it though.  Confusing isn’t it?

Now the lyrics I am quoting here come directly from the official Bob Dylan site (I’m hoping they don’t mind) and what is interesting is that the final verse is written…

G-d be with you, brother dear
If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you here?
Oh, nothing much, I’m just looking for the man
I came to see where he’s lying in this lost land
Goodbye Jimmy Reed and with everything within ya
Can’t you hear me calling from down in Virginia

Now that “G-d” is a bit odd isn’t it?  Jimmy Reed died aged 50, in 1976, and is interred in the Lincoln Cemetery, in Worth, Illinois.  And I say again with all the certainty I can muster, he was not a religious man.