A Dylan Cover a Day: Someday Baby

By Tony Attwood

This series is supposed to be simple: a look at a few of the cover versions of Bob Dylan’s songs, picking out a few highlights along the way. But what is one to do when Dylan’s “original” song is itself a cover – as is the case here?

I guess the easiest thing to do is to start with the original recording

But then where do we go? The problem is that it is a 12 bar blues, and Bob did make some remarkable changes to the way the song can be performed. And although I don’t normally come back to Bob’s version (as this is obviously a series about covers) I think it is worth doing so to remind ourselves just how far he took it in his re-written version.

There is a gentle feel to this rocking blues, with all the instrumentation completely under control. So what have others done, either by starting from the original or going on from Bob’s version?

I feel Peter Poirier tried to get a midway point between Bob and the original, and it makes a nice rocking jazzy blues feel – which of course is a complete contradiction, but I can’t find a better way of describing what he has done.

Homesick James however will have none of this, and takes us back to the traditional blues version. A straight 12-bar blues – except it isn’t, for liberties are taken with the rhythm and what we actually have is an 11 bar blues (or is that a 10 and a half bar blues – it is so unexpected, what the singer does, coming in with his vocal line half a bar too early on various occasions that I got totally taken by surprise. It must have been a nightmare to play.)

Scott Biram gives us the “one man and an amp” treatment, which is interesting …. for about 30 seconds in my case, but maybe you feel it is worthy of the whole song. I’m never sure about this type of treatment. Does it give me anything new? Not really. Although an amusing end.

Duke Robillard stays with the blues, complete with strummed acoustic guitar, harmonica, and a banjo playing from time to time behind both of them. It’s got a bounce too.

So by now you are completely excused for thinking, “what more can be taken from this song?” And I guess that is my point – for the answer is far more than one might imagine. RL Burnside goes somewhere utterly and completely different with the same simple origins. Even if by now you’ve now got into the habit of just playing the first few bars of each track and moving on, I would urge you to give this a full listen. I am not saying this is great music, but it is highly inventive, and inventiveness is what all the arts need all the time otherwise they turn into nothing beyond being endless repeats of the past.

“Is there much more of this?” you may ask. It is after all a 12 bar blues. How often do we have to hear it? And actually, I was planning to stop with the Burnside version above, but as you are still here, here’s another variant that is fun.

The key point I take from all this is that Bob did come up with a completely original version of the song in a crowded field. His version, for me, really does stand out. And believe me there are hundreds of other versions of this classic.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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