Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (1965) part III

By Jochen Markhorst

III         Annie & Melinda

In the studio Dylan does, by his standards anyway, put on quite a struggle to capture the right atmosphere, the je ne sais quoi. It is a hardworking day, 2 August 1965, but a very productive one too; the final versions of “Ballad of A Thin Man”, “Queen Jane Approximately” and “Highway 61 Revisited” are recorded this day. But the lion’s share of the recording day goes to Tom Thumb. Not until the sixteenth take (!) do the musicians succeed in capturing that feeling of detachment and loneliness to Dylan’s satisfaction. Questionable, by the way: the first takes are slower, more tired and more lounge-like – which actually suits the detached narrator, who hazily wanders exotic places, disoriented and all.

Anyway, knowing that Dylan struggled so much, the paradoxical interpretation is tempting: the poet expresses here his exhausting toil with failing take after failing take in the studio. Negativity don’t pull you through, my fingers are all in a knot, I don’t have the strength to get up and take another shot, she takes your voice, you must pick up one or the other, though neither of them are to be what they claim – well, I’ll just go back into town, I think I’ve had enough. All of them frustrated sighs of a hard-working studio musician who, take after take, cannot find the right tone.

Tempting, and it would yield a fresh, Inception-like understanding of the song, attributing prophetic gifts to Dylan. But hardly serious, obviously. The lyrics, as we can hear on the twelve takes on The Cutting Edge 1965-1966 (2015), have been more or less fixed from the first recording; there are only minor textual differences between take 1 and the final take 16.

More striking lyrically, or at least leaving more lasting impressions than those intertwined fingers, are the ladies in the second and third verses. In these mercurial years, it is almost a stylistic feature of Dylan’s songs; somewhere in the song two ladies are introduced, whose characters are not or only sketchily explored. Miss Lonely and the Princess on the steeple, Belle Starr and Jezebel the nun, the graveyard woman and the soulful mama, the fifth daughter and the second mother, Ophelia and Cinderella… And on Blonde On Blonde this goes on for a while (Johanna and Louise, the Queen of Spades and the chambermaid, Mona and Ruthie, and so on).

In “Just Like A Tom Thumb’s Blues”, we are superficially introduced to one Saint Annie and one Melinda. Again, without much background. “Saint Annie” has – of course – a religious connotation, a connotation that is reinforced by the ambiguous “my fingers are all in a knot”, which might suggest praying. However, the suggestion is undermined by that banal “Annie”; a respectful, serious Christian would, of course, have called her Saint Anne. But then again – the appearance of Saint Anne, Mary’s mother and thus the grandmother of Jesus, pushes the song to unintended and undesirable extremes, to a protagonist in a crisis of faith, or something like that.

The faction of Dylanologists who delve into Dylan’s private life, in the apparent conviction that Dylan’s lyrics are laboriously encoded diary entries, also have to back out here. A first inclination to see, say, a Joan Baez in Saint Annie, is immediately dashed; the words simply offer too few handles, are too exotic and not at all coherent – even the most inventive codebreaker cannot find more than half a hint.

In these days, August ’65, Robert Shelton has a telephone interview with the poet for the New York Times. It is, of course, not very enlightening:

“If anyone has imagination, he’ll know what I’m doing. If they can’t understand my songs, they’re missing something. If they can’t understand pornographic ashtrays, green clocks, wet chairs, purple lamps, hostile statues, charcoal… then they’re missing something, too… It’s all music, no more, no less.”

And a little further on, the quotation that later, distorted, is usually placed in the context of John Wesley Harding (among others by Wikipedia): “What I write is much more concise now than before. It’s not deceiving.”

At second glance, Dylan’s “explanation” is less absurd than this accumulation of catachreses, of incompatible concepts such as pornographic + ashtray, would suggest. “I paint pictures,” the poet actually says here. Just as you don’t try to “understand”, say, a Cézanne or a Míro – the images do touch you, or don’t touch you, just like the way much of Dylan’s mercurial lyricism does; it evokes feelings, an atmosphere or a mood. And in the finale of Dylan’s excursion there is actually a deeper layer: “It’s all music, no more, no less.”

That, music and songs, indeed seem to be at least as influential sources as Kerouac. “Come Away Melinda” has been dancing in the back of Dylan’s mind since 1963, ever since Harry Belafonte recorded the song for Streets I Have Walked. And certainly since Dylan put Judy Collins’ third record, with the catchy title Judy Collins 3 (1963), on his turntable – that’s the record on which, apart from a very rootsy “Come Away Melinda”, Collins also sings the format for Dylan’s “Seven Curses”, the cruel “Anathea”;

Lazlo Feher stole a stallion,
Stole him from the misty mountain
And they chased him and they caught him,
And in iron chains they bound him.

And especially the record with which the then still young, relatively unknown troubadour scores recognition; Collins records both his “Farewell” and his “Masters Of War” – it’s safe to say that Dylan has played Judy Collins #3 more than once and has therefore heard “Come Away Melinda” more than once.

Moreover, the hook “Melinda” had been in the musical part of Dylan’s brain since his teenage years, ever since the young Little Richard fan wore the single “Long Tall Sally” out. On the B-side thereof is another rock ‘n’ roll monument, “Slippin’ And Slidin'”:

Oh, Malinda
She's a solid sender
You know you better surrender
Oh, Malinda
She's a solid sender
You know you better surrender
Slippin' 'n' a-slidin'
Peepin' 'n' a-hidin'
Won't be your fool no more

 

which in terms of harmony is a nicer source anyway; on side 1 of Highway 61 Revisited, the echoes of “Long Tall Sally” can be heard in “Tombstone Blues” – an echo of “Long Tall Sally’s ” B-side on side 2, would bestow upon us a poetic, subtle reverence indeed.

Coincidence, of course – but still a nice coincidence.

Through that same opened floodgate of Dylan’s stream of consciousness, “Annie” presumably floats to the surface. From the antique folk song “Willie Moore” then, from

Sweet Annie was loved both far and near,
Had friends most all around;
And in a little brook before the cottage door,
The body of sweet Annie was found.

… the melodramatic story of Sweet Annie, who is forbidden by her parents to marry Willie and then throws herself into the water like an Ophelia. Dylan probably knows the song thanks to Joan Baez, who has the song on her repertoire these days, or else Doc Watson, but most of all: the song is featured on Harry Smith’s 1952 Anthology Of American Folk Music, the six-album compilation that Dylan plundered from front to back and top to bottom.

It’s all music, no more, no less.

 —————-

 To be continued. Next up: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues part IV: Charlie Rich… he’s a good poet

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

 

 

 

 

 

10 Comments

  1. Dylan can be saved from the Dylanologists, like Attwood and Markhorst, who belong to the “it’s-all-music-no-more-no-less” school of thought, ie, that Dylan’s words are just there for the way they sound; so futile it be to search for any meaning in his song lyrics because they have no connection to the human condition.

    It’s not that difficult to demonstrate that such thoughts and musical rhythm can co-exist together, and so they do in Dylan songs.

  2. Fear not, Larry. Dylan’s best work is, of course, like all Very Great Poetry, Rhyme AND Reason. No serious fan would deny that Dylan’s best work tells stories, paints pictures, expresses feelings and evokes moods.

    That said, Dylan, like all Very Great Poets, can very well lose himself in his love of playing with language – and produce Rhyme WITHOUT Reason.

    Nothing wrong with that. As Dylan seems to acknowledge too. Throughout his sixty-year career, he keeps repeating it like a mantra. “They are just songs.” “Words don’t interfere with it. They… they… punctuate it.“ “It just sounds good.” “They mean nothing.” “I don’t know what it means either.”

    Inveterate hidden-message seekers and deep-layers finders choose to ignore that. And if they don’t ignore it, they put, for some reason, a lot of energy into explaining that Dylan is clouding the waters. Why Dylan would lie for sixty years about the possible presence of “deeper meaning” in some of his songs is yet another question – one that remains unanswered and unexplored, conveniently.

    No, every letter of Dylan’s output, the cryptanalysts insist, must be and will be meaningful on a deeper level, must have a cleverly hidden reference or a secret message.

    Nothing wrong with those scavenger hunts, either. It keeps you off the streets and it doesn’t hurt anybody. Still, it is a bit naive. Besides being a brilliant poet, Dylan is also a musician. A musician who might decide to write praise be to Nero’s Neptune – just because it sounds good.

  3. To an extent, so says Dylan, but words have a structure of their own in which the he is trapped, and from which there is no escape….there’s no fiddling with Nero!

  4. Side-saddle these Dylanologists ride on the Deconstructionist Cafe, and when they humble themselves and mention a possible “message” of a piece if they find a line they think does not fit in….well it’s there just for the sound – scoundrels!!!!

  5. Tony, I’m being polemic to make a point but I’ve read most of your articles and that dismissive theme of the lyrics pops up more than you may realize even unto suggesting that his lyrics are really a painting without pointing out, they be so only in certain aspects….yes, the Mona Lisa smiles, but she don’t talk.

    Can’t hurt to stir up the Untold chaudron a bit (lol) ….

  6. While I agree with the Cezanne / Miro comparison, it’s worth noting that an Anglo visitor to almost any Mexican border town in the 1950s & 60s would have encountered pornographic ashtrays (literally), green clocks, wet chairs, purple lamps, hostile statues & charcoal.

  7. On the Cezanne Miro topic, for quite some time, I’ve perceived Bob’s aesthetic as an attempt to translate the major art movements of the 20th c to popular song. Whether they be Surrealism, Cubism, cinema, Pop art, folk art, there are analogues in his lyrics to each of them. I also find it helpful, when I see a couplet that strikes me as nothing more than filler or “I need a rhyme,” to think of the background of a painting or the way a painter will bring out a particular cover by the colors he or she surrounds it with.

    Last, from TooM onward, most songs remind me of Joseph Cornell’s boxes.

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