By Tony Attwood
This series looks as the way Bob Dylan evolved from being a man who would arrange older folk songs, and on occasion, take existing melodies and write his lyrics around them, into an extraordinarily effective composer of both lyrics and music.
Previously in this series I’ve looked at…
- Blowing in the Wind and No More Aucion Block
- Bob Dylan’s Dream How the most subtle of musical changes gave the song a totally different meaning
- Masters of War How Bob Dylan became a poet first and a songwriter second
- Girl from the north country, Farewell, All Over You, The Death of Emmett Till
- Davey Moore and Joni Mitchell’s complaint
- Walls of Red Wing and New Orleans Rag
- Seven Curses and With God on Our Side
- Dylan 1963, the era of other people’s songs: From talking blues to eternal circle
- North Country Blues and the evolution of the equality of lyrics AND music
Bob Dylan released two songs overtly about the North Country in 1963 (overtly in the sense that they each had “North Country” in the title): Girl from the North Country and North Country Blues). And the links in those two cases were traced to some degree in my original articles considering the songs).
In both of these cases, there have been suggestions that the music was derived in part at least from earlier traditional ballads – Scarborough Fair for “Girl from the North Country” and “Red Iron Ore” for North Country Blues. Such links (and others noted in the articles) are indeed very possible, and we should also note Bob’s own testimony that he was (at least at this time) listening to multiple folk songs and might well not have been aware of any link between his song and any antecedent.
Or, and I think this is much more likely, Bob would know of the previous versions of the songs and merely see himself as a person carrying on an exciting and valuable tradition of taking older songs and updating them lyrically for the current audience or situation.
So, continuing with our series on Bob’s early songs, the next song Bob recorded was Gypsy Lou, a song which he first wrote (or perhaps adapted from another source) in around 1961 or 1962. But the song was not recorded until 1963, and given the way Bob would manipulate his own songs it is quite likely that the version that we have from 1963 is not exactly that which he wrote a couple of years earlier. After all, it was his song, and he could do what he wanted with it!
This is fundamentally a two-chord song (although a third chord does creep in occasionally), and the melody of the first two lines of each verse sounds (annoyingly) familiar but writing today I can’t place it. If you know, please add a comment below or if you prefer write to me at Tony@schools.co.uk
And as I noted in my previous review of this song, Bob does play tricks with “the way the melody subtly changes between the first and second verse.” The lyrics are light and silly, although the song does seemingly deal with a suicide.
If you getcha one girl, better get two Case you run into Gypsy Lou She’s a ramblin’ woman with a ramblin’ mind Always leavin’ somebody behind Hey, ’round the bend Gypsy Lou’s gone again Gypsy Lou’s gone again
As for the music, my mind seems to be out of phase today as I write this, because I do know this melody, but I can’t place that either. However, the rhythm is infectious and has been used everywhere. In what follows, the speed is different, but the rhythm of the lyrics is very similar…. The content of course is about as far away from Gypsy Lou as it can be and the, but still there is a similarity.
But even Wikipedia doesn’t want to get involved in debating the source of “Gypsy Lou” and their engagement with Gypsy Lou vis a vis “Bootleg Volume 9” goes no further than listing the title. And maybe I am wrong – maybe it doesn’t come from anywhere else, but I still have that nagging feeling. (If you know please put me out of my misery.)
After that song, Dylan wrote Troubled and I Don’t Know Why, a song on the theme of everything is wrong
Now this time the source of the song is much easier to trace, for the song is based on a well-established folk song, “What does the deep sea say”
And indeed, Woody Guthrie made a recording of the song which could well have been Bob’s source.
The point that links these songs is that they are lively sing-a-longs from years before. Indeed, the first recording of this song goes right back to 1929 – I don’t have access to that recording, but in 1937 it sounded like this…
Now my point here is that Bob was probably very aware of these songs mutating over time – they were indeed part of his country’s musical heritage, and so for him, I suspect, all he was doing was continuing this mutation of songs in keeping with the issues of the day. He wasn’t seeing himself as going out and taking other people’s songs, he was continuing a tradition.
For Bob, “Troubled and I don’t know why” was just another song from the past which he could play with. And playing with it he was, for Joan clearly doesn’t know what Bob is doing with the verses – she is there doing her bit for the chorus. I suspect (but can’t prove) that at least some of the verses are Bob’s originals. Especially the verse about the TV, which the audience clearly appreciated.
The series continues.