Once or twice: Corrina Corrina performed live by Bob Dylan, April 1962, but dating back long before….

A look into some of the songs Bob Dylan performed just once or twice but then set aside for ever more…

By Tony Attwood

Bob Dylan performed Corrina Corrina just the once, on April 16 1962 in New York

Now it is alleged in some sources that Bob is not singing Corrina Corrina at all but in fact “Sones in My Passway” written by Robert Johnson.

I am not at all convinced by this argument, for although “Stones” has the lyrics…

I have a bird to whistle
And I have a bird to sing
Have a bird to whistle
And I have a bird to sing

… I am not sure there is too much else to connect the songs, aside from the fact that they are both 12 bar blues – and since there are millions of 12 bar blues around that in itself doesn’t seem enough of a link for me.  But of course you can make up your own mind…

I’ll come back to “Stones” at the end with another recording, but for now let’s accept that the song dates back to 1928 with antecedents before that, although often not sounding remotely like the version Bob adopted.   His version is a variant 12 bar blues, and that was a version which was not copyrighted until 1932 by the performer Bo Carter.  Here’s the original Bo Carter version.

Bob made several studio recordings of the song…

Which of course ended up as the album version

I find it fascinating how, not just here but quite often, Bob changes which key he wants to perform individual songs in, and this is another example of this.  Bob appears to have a different feel for each key – something that can be found in a few other performers, probably because the music played on the keyboard or guitar really does “feel” different in each key, even if it is still the same piece of music.

Listening to these recordings for the first time in a number of years I’m taken once more by the gentleness of the performance by Bob.

But of course when doing a little digging around in order to write a brief review like this one can often find something a little unexpected, and this time the unexpected was the song “Has anybody seen my Corinne” which is a different song, of course, but the name and the theme of Corinne needing to come back home is the same throughout.  This dates from 1918.

There are even earlier songs about Corrina not being here, but the further back we go the further away they are from the song that Dylan picked up on, but if you really want to go searching there is a Blind Lemon Jefferson recording of Corrina Blues, but by that far back we really have no relationship with the song Dylan recorded.

HoweverI am going to finish by going back to the start because I do want to include this recording.  It is Eric Clapton performing Stones in my Passway, the song from which most authorities agree, was the start of the journey that ended with Corrina.   Now that is the blues…

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
• North Country Blues
• Only a hobo
• Restless Farewell
• Roll on John
• Sally Sue Brown
• Spanish Harlem Incident
• Stage Fright
• Talking New York
• You Angel You