The Covers We Missed: “Baby, Stop Crying”

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

For more details on this new series on cover versions of Dylan songs that were not considered in the last series, please see the intro to the first article in this series. An index to this series is at the end of the article. A list of all the cover reviews from the previous series can be found at the end of the final article in that series.

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by Jürg Lehmann.

Baby, Stop Crying

“It sounded like something that Aretha Franklin should have recorded”, writes Elvis Costello in his autobiography ‘Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink’.

He is talking about “Baby, Stop Crying”, the song that Dylan recorded just two weeks before. Costello is not the only one who is touched. It is the third time that Dylan plays the song and it is, like that other new song from Street Legal (“Señor”), warmly welcomed. The master then seems reasonably pleased with the song. It is among the first songs on the playlist (as number three) and it stays there during the European tour. And it is a big hit on the old continent. Number thirteen in England, in other countries even higher.

Jochen Markhorst is one of the few who can take something positive from Baby, Stop Crying. It is one of the songs on Street Legal that Greil Marcus said was “simply impossible to pay attention to for more than a couple of minutes at a time.”

For Jochen however this disregard is incomprehensible: “Just like most of the songs from that album, the beautiful “Baby, Stop Crying” is forgotten, covered up in dust, has been kicked into the long grass, dumped into the wells of oblivion, shares the fate of the Norwegian Blue, but we can blame it partly on the troubadour himself: he never plays the song and even does not select it for Greatest Hits Vol. 3 (1994)… although it really is one of his very few, real, actual hits.”

As far as covers is concerned, however, even Jochen he states briefly and concisely: “Noteworthy covers there are not. And it is too late now. Aretha Franklin has passed away in…2018.”

Jochen is right, there is no cover that one could recommend with a clear conscience. It remains a mystery why nobody – who is capable of doing it properly – has any desire to cover the song since Baby, Stop Crying is a very coverable song with catchy tune qualities.

As one critic noted, “the lyrics are pretty direct here, as the narrator implores a girl in a world of hurt to quit her tears. What really sells this song is the thoughtfulness of the arrangement and the songcraft, how it builds from Dylan’s low drone in the verses to the impassioned singing of the chorus. Little things like that can carry a song a long way, especially when you’re operating in the more contemporary idiom Bob chose for Street Legal.”

So where does that leave us? Should we wait for a reborn Aretha Franklin or just forget about the song? For my part, I have the feeling that something can be done with this song. Although no cover is really convincing, some interesting ideas and approaches do appear. Maybe someday someone will pick up these ideas and bring them to a convincing result.

The history of Baby, Stop Crying covers begins the same year Dylan released the song (1978) with a proper, correct cover, a smooth pop version which stays close to the original. Jennifer Kemp, whose real name is Helga Schütz, was a German singer in the band Juwel at the time. After her departure, she released her first solo single in English, “Baby, Stop Crying”, followed a year later by an LP with the same title. After that, she was never heard from again.

After that the song was quiet for more than 30 years. It can’t be ruled out that it was played live from time to time, but as far as we know there are no audio recordings of it. It wasn’t until 2011 that the song resurfaced in a jazz cafe in Copenhagen, performed by the Aske Jacoby Trio.

In 2018 Californian Dave Tilton covered the entire Street Legal album (“Street Legal Revisited”).

Coming next are Muddy What (2019), a Munich-based blues band. Winner of the German Blues Challenge 2021, they are obviously an established part of the blues community and among the busiest touring musicians in Germany. As a matter of fact the band is not lacking in talent, the way they interpret the song is creative and gives new insights, especially the lead guitarist Ina Spang does a great job with her dreamlike mandoline play. Unfortunately, the singer ruins what could have been a nice cover with his unmotivated shouting.

Robbie Fulks might be familiar to you. The Chicago resident has released 15 albums over a career spanning more than 30 years. His 2016 record Upland Stories was nominated for a Grammy for Best Folk Album. His live performance of Baby, Stop Crying in 2019 is professional, although rather conventional and not very surprising.

Bocephus King is an Indie artist from Vancouver, Canada. His discography includes 6 albums released between 2000 and 2020. Bocephus King is a pseudonym of Jamie Perry, who is described “as an eccentric Americana troubadour who carved out a bit of a cult following in the first decades of the 21st century. Bocephus King dabbled in a great variety of sounds over the course of his career” (Stephen Thomas Erlewine on allmusic.com).

The scenery in the music video appears to be in Italy – in fact, Perry has covered a number of Italian songs on his 2020 album The Infinite & The Autogrill, which he has translated into English. He has also won several awards at the prestigious Premio Tenco. In his latest musical incarnation, Bocephus King combines the influences and traditions of Sufi music, Berber, Mali, Rajasthan and flamenco with North American folk, rock and roll and analogue electronic music. You should therefore not be surprised when you hear tablas in Perry’s cover. To get an unbiased impression of the music, you can simply ignore the rather wacky video.

Trifle is an Adelaide trio of musicians who play original contemporary jazz and work with singers and other musicians to create new versions of classic songs as you can find out on their website. For this cover (2021) they meet Australian singer-songwriter Jessica Luxx.

There are a dozen other covers on the internet (for example Bob Dylan Experience or Dante Mazzetti), all of which still have a lot of room for improvement. And no, there’s no new Aretha Franklin around. But yes: it’s still worth a listen.

Previously in the “Covers we missed” series…

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