From A Buick 6 part 6: Boy, this is love

by Jochen Markhorst

VI         Boy, this is love

Well, she don't make me nervous, she don't talk too much
She walks like Bo Diddley and she don't need no crutch
She keeps this four-ten all loaded with lead
Well, if I go down dyin', 
        you know she's bound to put a blanket on my bed, c'mon

 It is an intriguing portrait that the narrator paints of “she” in this third verse. Should we want to see something like a continuous storyline in the song – debatable – then at first glance the graveyard woman would be the subject of the portrait. At least, the opening line describes a quiet lady who radiates tranquillity, certainly not the qualities of a soulful mama or a junkyard angel, in any case. Qualities, incidentally, that are usually attributed to Sara Lownds, much to the delight of the inevitable biographical interpreters. “Sara was kind of a quiet type, with a mystical side,” says Robbie Robertson, for example, about his very first encounter with Sara in 1965 (Testimony, 2016). Or, also thinking back to her first meeting with Sara in 1965, Marianne Faithfull: “Sara was as solid as marble. Sara didn’t say much; she didn’t need to.”

All completely in sync with she doesn’t make me nervous, she doesn’t talk too much, and she doesn’t need no crutch. But more difficult to reconcile with the other qualifications: She walks like Bo Diddley and She keeps this four-ten all loaded with lead.

She walks “like Bo Diddley”? We all know Chuck Berry’s duck walk, we can evoke Elvis’ swagger, and when Christina Aguilera sings “Moves Like Jagger” (2011), the images enter the mind. But Bo Diddley’s walk is not part of our collective memory; it is not cultural heritage – if there are any moving images of Diddley with iconic status, then at most it is from his performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1955, in which he does little more than take a few admittedly swinging, but only minimal sideways steps. Or else from his performance on The Big TNT Show (1965), Phil Spector’s concert film with antiquarian value and a remarkably incoherent line-up, including The Byrds. The Ronettes, Roger Miller, Ray Charles, Donovan, Ike & Tina Turner, Joan Baez and more. In it, we also see Diddley doing a few steps (swinging shuffling, with exuberantly bobbing knees), but the show is mainly stolen by the Bo-ettes and the enchanting Duchess on guitar. And anyway: that concert is at the end of November 1965, so Diddley’s dance moves there are unrelated to the images Dylan tries to evoke when he sings walks like Bo Diddley in July 1965.

No, at most, the mere mention of the name Bo Diddley brings to mind associations with the Bo Diddley beat, with that characteristic syncopated 3-2 rhythm. So the lady might take three normal steps, and then two short, quick steps to keep up with the pace of her husband with his longer legs, or something like that. She walks the Bo Diddley beat.

The other weird character description, the possession of the loaded .410, is strange as well, but still easier to trace:

“Let’s get another shotgun off the rack and hear what Tennessee Ernie Ford has to say about it. Tennessee Ernie was known as “The Ol’ Pea-Picker” ‘cause he always used to say “Bless your pea-pickin’ heart!” He recorded fifty singles during the early Fifties, a lot of them making the pop charts. Some of them were straight country. Like this one he wrote, about a hunter going out after rabbits. Here’s Tennessee Ernie with “The Shotgun Boogie”…

… says DJ Dylan in his Theme Time Radio Hour, episode 25 “Guns” (18 October 2006). “The Shotgun Boogie” is one of those “fifty singles” and also one of the singles “making the pop charts”; it is Tennessee Ernie’s biggest hit, even bigger than “Sixteen Tons” (a stunning fourteen weeks at No. 1 in the Rockabilly & Western Swing Charts, “Sixteen Tons” spent “only” ten weeks at No. 1 in the Country Charts and seven weeks in the Pop Charts). Not entirely justified; the indestructible “Sixteen Tons” has an eternal value. The somewhat corny, cabaretesque “Shotgun Boogie” really does not, but that’s how it goes. Anyway, in 2006, DJ Dylan hears again what he heard hundreds of times in the early 1950s and echoes in 1965 in “From A Buick 6”:

Well, I met a pretty gal, she was tall and thin
I asked her what she had, she said, “a Fox four-ten”
I looked her up and down, said, “Boy, this is love”
So we headed for the brush to shoot a big fat dove

Tennessee Ernie Ford – Shotgun Boogie: 

… the “four-ten”, referring to the Fox .410 shotgun, the “working man’s gun”, a light and inexpensive hunting rifle for hunting birds and small game. Far less impressive than the firearms brandished by macho blues musicians; the 32-20 with which Robert Johnson shoots his mistress in half; Howlin’ Wolf who wreaks havoc with his forty-four; Skip James losing himself in bloody fantasies about what his 22-20 and his .44 and his 32-20 will do to his adulterous wife (his buddy’s 44-40 would do the job just as well, but the .38 Special, buddy, hits most too light); Big Joe Williams’ .38 and .45; Sunnyland Slim’s Johnson Machine Gun; Dupree shooting two officers with a .30… all heavier calibres and tougher firearms than the somewhat childish Fox .410 in any case. There is actually only one song in which a .410 appears: Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “The Shotgun Boogie”. Used by – enforcing the stereotype – the woman. Which, in all likelihood, triggered Dylan to arm his graveyard woman with that very same gun.

All right, so maybe not all that impressive, that four-ten, but for ordinary mortals, it should still be enough to make me nervous. Our narrator, however, remains cool: Well, if I go down dyin’, you know she’s bound to put a blanket on my bed.

To be continued. Next up From A Buick 6 part 7: The steam shovel and the dump truck

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Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
• Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
• Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
• Bob Dylan’s 1971
• Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door
• It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry b/w Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Bob Dylan’s melancholy blues
• Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side A