A Dylan Cover a Day: What good am I?

By Tony Attwood

Slow songs are often difficult to cover, as they tend to encourage singers to add lots of extra bits to the spaces that have deliberately been left as spaces by the composer seeking to make a point.  Arrangers and producers don’t like spaces.

But this is a highly reflective song, the lyrics of which don’t lend themself to massive self-expression or indulgence by instrumentalists or vocalists.    However, take out all the emotion and that can mean what is a beautiful, deeply caring, song can become just another bit of self-reflection.   There needs to be a balance – and Bob got that in his recording of the song.

Although Jimmy LaFave’s version is sensitive, I find it to contain a trifle too much extra sugar in the accompaniment, without any new insights.  I guess I think the female chorus is just one step too far away from the original conception of the piece.

Jimmy LaFave

The Pines

There are several bands around, or which have been around called “The Pines” and I honestly don’t know which one this is.  If you can fill in the details, please do respond.

Musically their view in this recording is that the song can exist with a beat – which indeed it can, but all of that angst that Dylan put into the original, and which is within the essence of the lyrics, is then destroyed.

It is as if someone said, “hey let’s do it with a beat” and no one thought, “but what about the meaning?”   For meaning to be expressed, the music, the lyrics and their meaning must be co-ordinated, as they were so perfectly in Bob’s original.

Jill Johnson

Ms Johson takes us right back to Bob’s original conception of the song, and I am so grateful for that.   There is maybe a little bit too much emotion in the third line (If I shut myself off so I can’t hear you cry) but much of the time the piece remains restrained, as I think it should.

The lyrics are not full of self- indulgence, or indeed self-pity, but a realisation of what one has to do to be a real person.   And sadly this is lost in the middle section – and this more expressive notion returns in the last verse.

I know many performers, and most of all arrangers, love contrast in songs, but that’s just because of the view that the modern audience won’t pay attention otherwise.  Bob knows that if you hold them with the words they will be there and so that is what he does in his version.

Yet curiously the instrumental coda in this version is much more restrained, but I guess the arranger and singer still felt there ought to be a bit of showing off the high notes, whatever the music was about.  In the end my view is the performance is about the song: lots of performers think the performance is all about them.  That’s the difference between us.

Solomon Burke

The rhythm at the start tells us it all, and destroys much of my feeling that this should be a delicate song.  And Mr Burke takes it on from there.   It’s ok as a performance if one doesn’t think about the deep meaning within the lyrics.   How can they possibly justify the “foolish things” middle eight, within the context of the whole song?

Barb Jungr

But thank goodness for Barb Jungr who doesn’t just sing Dylan, but actually understands the songs Dylan has created and thus performs Dylan.  For she shows that yes she can use the range of her wonderful voice in such a song, without destroying the original conception.

Play this, but maybe if you are at all prone to appreciating the emotion that can reside within beautiful music, have a handkerchief ready to dab your eyes.  And say thank you to the arranger AND the vocalist for showing everyone else, it is possible to retain the full meaning of the original without just repeating it.

Previously in the series

1. The song with numbers in the title.
2. Ain’t Talkin
3. All I really want to do
4.  Angelina
5.  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
6. As I went out one morning
7.  Ballad for a Friend
8. Ballad in Plain D
9. Ballad of a thin man
10.  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
11. The ballad of Hollis Brown
12. Beyond here lies nothing
13. Blind Willie McTell
14.  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
15. An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
16. Blowin in the wind as never before
17. Bob Dylan’s Dream
18. BoB Dylan’s 115th Dream revisited
19. Boots of Spanish leather
20. Born in Time
21. Buckets of Rain
22. Can you please crawl out your window
23. Can’t wait
24. Changing of the Guard
25. Chimes of Freedom
26. Country Pie
27.  Crash on the Levee
28. Dark Eyes
29. Dear Landlord
30. Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
31. Dignity.
32. Dirge
33. Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
34. Don’t think twice
35.  Down along the cove
36. Drifter’s Escape
37. Duquesne Whistle
38. Farewell Angelina
39. Foot of Pride and Forever Young
40. Fourth Time Around
41. From a Buick 6
42. Gates of Eden
43. Gotta Serve Somebody
44. Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
45. Heart of Mine
46. High Water
47. Highway 61
48. Hurricane
49. I am a lonesome hobo
50. I believe in you
51. I contain multitudes
52. I don’t believe you.
53. I love you too much
54. I pity the poor immigrant. 
55. I shall be released
56. I threw it all away
57. I want you
58. I was young when I left home
59. I’ll remember you
60. Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
61. If not for you, and a rant against prosody
62. If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different
63. If you see her say hello
64. Dylan cover a day: I’ll be your baby tonight
65. I’m not there.
66. In the Summertime, Is your love and an amazing Isis
67. It ain’t me babe
68. It takes a lot to laugh
69. It’s all over now Baby Blue
70. It’s all right ma
71. Just Like a Woman
72. Knocking on Heaven’s Door
73. Lay down your weary tune
74. Lay Lady Lay
75. Lenny Bruce
76. That brand new leopard skin pill box hat
77. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
78. License to kill
79. Like a Rolling Stone
80. Love is just a four letter word
81. Love Sick
82. Maggies Farm!
83. Make you feel my love; a performance that made me cry.
84. Mama you’ve been on my mind
85. Man in a long black coat.
86. Masters of War
87. Meet me in the morning
88. Million Miles. Listen, and marvel.
89. Mississippi. Listen, and marvel (again)
90. Most likely you go your way
91. Most of the time and a rhythmic thing
92. Motorpsycho Nitemare
93. Mozambique
94. Mr Tambourine Man
95. My back pages, with a real treat at the end
96. New Morning
97. New Pony. Listen where and when appropriate
98. Nobody Cept You
99. North Country Blues
100. No time to think
101. Obviously Five Believers
102. Oh Sister
103. On the road again
104. One more cup of coffee
105. (Sooner or later) one of us must know
106. One too many mornings
107. Only a hobo
108. Only a pawn in their game
109. Outlaw Blues – prepare to be amazed
110. Oxford Town
111. Peggy Day and Pledging my time
112. Please Mrs Henry
113. Political world
114. Positively 4th Street
115. Precious Angel
116. Property of Jesus
117. Queen Jane Approximately
118. Quinn the Eskimo as it should be performed.
119. Quit your lowdown ways
120. Rainy Day Women as never before
121. Restless Farewell. Exquisite arrangements, unbelievable power
122. Ring them bells in many different ways
123. Romance in Durango, covered and re-written
124. Sad Eyed Lady of Lowlands, like you won’t believe
125. Sara
126. Senor
127. A series of Dreams; no one gets it (except Dylan)
128. Seven Days
129. She Belongs to Me
130. Shelter from the Storm
131. Sign on the window
132. Silvio
133. Simple twist of fate
134. Slow Train
135. Someday Baby
136. Spanish Harlem Incident
137. Standing in the Doorway
138. Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
139. Subterranean Homesick Blues
140. Sweetheart Like You
141. Tangled up in Blue
142. Tears of Rage
143.  Temporary Like Achilles. Left in the cold, but there’s still something…
144. The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar
145. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
146. The Man in Me
147. Times they are a-changin’
148. The Wicked Messenger
149. Things have changed
150. This Wheel’s on Fire
151. Thunder on the mountain
152. Till I fell in love with you in the north of Norway
153. Time Passes Slowly – just sit down and close your eyes
154. To be alone with you
155. To Ramona: unexpectedly yes!
156. Tombstone Blues
157. Tonight I’ll be Staying Here With You
158. Too much of nothing
159. Trouble as you have never been troubled before
160. Tryin’ to get to Heaven
161.  Unbelievable
162. “Up to Me” and a return to earlier days
163. Visions of Johanna
164. Walking down the line
165. Whatcha gonna do
166. Well Well Well
167. Went to see the Gypsy.