Once or twice: Two Dylan performances of North Country Blues

By Tony Attwood

According to the official Bob Dylan site North Country Blues was only performed live by Bob Dylan on 26 July and 26 October 1963.

But there is a recording of “An Evening for Salvador Allende” concert from May 1974 which says Bob is on it performing.  I’ve listened to it, and found the track which is at the 1 hour 10 minute mark or thereabouts, and there is a performance of the song, but I really don’t think that is Bob Dylan – not in the slightest.  In fact I would not even suggest you go looking for it.  It is someone performing a Dylan song, and not very well, in my view.

But we do have the 1963 Norfolk Folk Festival recording

And also the Carnegie Hall performance.  It is interesting that within this year Dylan is making one or two tiny changes to the performance to make it even more haunting.

Where the sad, silent song made the hour twice as long

What an utterly extraordinary line that is.  Poignant beyond belief, it defines the entire song of desperation – in just one line

North Country Blues came from a year in which Bob composed 31 songs that he kept, and came from a period in that year in which he wrote With God On Our Side, Only a Pawn, When the Ship comes in, Times they are a changing, Hattie Carroll, Lay down your weary tune, One too many mornings and Restless Farewell… they just came pouring out one after the other.

For most songwriters such a list would be the highlights of a lifetime.  For Bob they are the highlights of just one year.

Perhaps that explains why he only performed the song twice, with so many other new songs to offer.  Which just makes the fact even more profound: what an utter masterpiece to write and then put away.

Joan Baez also recorded it …

Here are the other articles from this series

• A satisfied mind
• Caribbean Wind
• The girl on the Greenbriar Shore
• Highway 61 revisited
• Lay Down your weary tune
• Lily, Rosemary and Stage Fright
• Meet me in the morning and From a Buick 6
• Only a hobo
• Restless Farewell
• Roll on John
• Sally Sue Brown
• Spanish Harlem Incident
• Stage Fright
• Talking New York
• You Angel You