My recent articles on the issue of Bob Dylan’s songs about gambling also raised a few questions about Bob and money, not least because this was a topic Bob covered in the “Theme Time Radio Hour” shows. And since just recently we touched upon Bob’s radio shows and started to look at some of the songs he selected, I thought we might merge the two ideas.
One of the key episodes is series three, in this regard, was on the theme of money and I must say, looking it up, the collection of songs took me by surprise, not least because I thought I knew my way around the “Theme Time Radio Hour” (hence my recent article celebrating it). But I wasn’t quite ready for this many references to money. Although of course, Bob’s knowledge of American music is infinitely superior to mine, and money is a central theme in many songs from the 1920s and 1930s.
Take for example, “Greenbacks” either written by Reginald Richard and Ray Charles (although the actual spelling of the first named does vary depending on your source of information). It is a song that appeared on the Ray Charles album “The Birth of Soul”, and as a single in 1957 or theeabouts.
What fascinates me is that Bob is not just familiar with such songs but likes them enough to put them on his radio show, even though they bear no relationship to his own songs.
But carrying on my search for Dylan and his relationship with gambling that I explored recently, I was reminded of the song”Delia,” which you may know is one of my favourites. It appears on “World Gone Wrong” and Bob performed it occasionally between 1960 and October 2012. As I have mentioned before I think it is a stunning piece of work but Dylan played this song just a dozen times in public. And I would really love to know why. It is a classic song, performed to utter perfection, with a total understanding of the lryics and the music. This is the 1993 version which to me is a classic version of a classic traditional song.
There are only a very limited number of songs that Bob has played and recorded in this style – I just wish there were more.
The most commonly held view is that the song is about actual events, although there is no agreement as to which events. Certainly Bob loved the song enough to create an amended version 19 years later on…
The point about the song “Delia” is that it is a celebration of friends now gone – but what it is not is a morality tale about how we should live. As such we can enjoy the sound of the music and lyrics, with or without the words. We know that Delia was a gambling girl, and she is no longer with us, but the singer holds her memory in his heart for all time, as the delicacy of the song proves to us.
Even though I find the lyrics on this recording hard to follow, I can still absolutely love both these recordings. And that proves to me, even if to no one else, that although Bob’s lyrics are of course of major importance, they work not least because of his care about the overall sound of his songs in relation to the lyrics.
Of course there are many songs My point is that there have been many popular songs about money, and these clearly influenced Bob and were mentioned and played by him in the Theme Time Radio Hour. And I must many of them were songs I didn’t know. But the subject is of course of vital interest to all of us – and indeed for many people there is interest in finding the best online crypto casino
Since that recording of Delia in 2012 Bob has moved on considerably, but that recording above still haunts me. Maybe it is the issue of getting old, and the inevitable consequence for those who live longer lives that their earlier friends are gone. Maybe it is something quite different, but either way, I have that song eternally with me.