By Tony Attwood
Three times and out: Songs that Dylan performed just three times. Previously we have looked at…
According to the official site, Bob played “Walls” three times between 12 April 1963 and 17 May 1964, and the song was issued on the Bootleg Series 1-3.
But as we are so often finding, everything is not quite as straightforward as we might wish because there is a 1962 recording of the song on the internet, but it is really so poor in quality I wouldn’t want to force it on you but if you really want to go there it is here. But don’t blame me – particularly if you conclude it is actually not Walls of Red Wing.
But we do have this which is a good quality live performance from 1963 – and as I’ve now discovered in series such as this, Bob really does like to explore performing some of these songs in different keys. I’d love to know why he does that – is it a deliberate policy, or just something that happened? (Obviously, in more recent times it has to happen by arrangement since the band need to know (although even then I wouldn’t put it past Bob to change keys without telling the band, just to keep them on there toes – but with these solo performances it is of course just up to Bob).
and this is the studio outtake
And because it is a Bob song, and because the original aim of this site was to contain a piece about every song Bob wrote (which we have done) I wrote a little piece about the song about seven years ago.
But I think I missed out the point that Bob attempted this song for two separate albums – “Freewheelin'” and “Times”, and I think the lyrics and deliberately repetitive approach of the accompaniment shows that although Bob really felt it was an important song, it just isn’t commercially viable.
Indeed as a song it is unusual – have many people written songs about a reform school?
Perhaps the problem is that the song needs the highly repetitive formulaic accompaniment to emphasise the message of the lyrics – but that doesn’t really make for entertaining music. It’s a hard balance to get with songs about such topics.
The music itslef comes from the late 19th century / early 20th century song, “The Road and the Miles to Dundee”.
What strikes me is that Bob loses quite a lot of the essence of the song in his transformation of the song – and again maybe that was why in the end it didn’t make the album and only got three outings on stage.
As quite often happens there is not just a Scottish version of these 19th / 20th century songs but also an Irish version, and it is hard to know (at least for a non-specialist like me) just which one proceeds the other. Here is the Irish version: Sweet Carnlough Bay.
Bob’s song was covered by Ramblin Jack Elliott who also has the problem of keeping the message of monotony within the lyrics balanced against the need to make the song something we want to listen to.
But this set of links does gives me a chance to put up this video. Jack, another of the folk singers who was influenced by Woodie Guthrie is, I think, still with us, aged 93. In earlier times Jack Elliott often sang Bob Dylan songs, and quite often referred to Bob as “my son Bob Dylan”.
So there we are – another song that Bob performed three times, and then let go.
A song similar, Dylans’s “Ballad of Donald White”, written before the death sentence of the actual black man got removed, has its lyrical roots based in a true story. Joan Baez protested the death sentence given the mentally ill Washington youngster, later released …. “I landed in the old Northwest/Seattle, Washington, an omitted verse.” That song draws on the Canadian/ New Brunswick ballad “Peter Amberley.”