A version of Boots that will make you stop walking, and just listen

By Tony Attwood

Foreword: this piece starts yet again with Tell old Bill, but I promise you, it isn’t about that song.   Honest.  That’s just the starter.

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In the past on this site I speculated on “The greatest Dylan songs that Dylan never played on tour,” which sort of merged into “The greatest Dylan song that has never appeared on an album.”

And whatever category I am thinking up I tend to nominate “Tell Ol Bill” for inclusion although sometimes forgot to put in a link to the recording on the song.   Clearly old age is creeping up on me.   But if you are even 10% as keen as I am on the song, or if you don’t want to bother with the full recording above, here’s the closest we have to a full recording.

But moving on, as I have noted before there are some odd things to ponder as we do meander around Bob’s history.  As for example why Bob called an album John Wesley Hardin but then never once played that song live.

I was discussing this with a couple of pals when the idea came up of considering the songs that Bob has performed but didn’t write.   And immediately two of us both came up with the same one at once, which surely means it needs noting here.

But before I could I was directed to this wonderful reworking of Bob’s version of the song.   With a bit of luck this link might work

And of course that makes the point, that there are thousands of musicians of whom many of us have never heard, who have made wonderful re-workings of Dylan arrangements.

But then, if you wanted something quite different, we have

Now this raised a thought.   We are used to talking about Bob doing different versions of his songs over time, and I think perhaps I have suggested that this is a Dylan thing.   What of course I should have been saying is that Bob, in varying the way he performs his own songs, is simply following the way of folk singers across the centuries.

And indeed I think I have often had the view that the first version is the best – which of course isn’t true all the time, by any means.  But just sometimes it is.

Now it is still the case that pop and rock artists generally want to find new songs to sing or they like to copy the arrangements of those who have gone before.   But there is nothing wrong with re-working older songs.  We are fortunate to live in a time in which there is a long and varied history of songs which have been preserved, and I for one certainly think many of them are worth preserving and re-working.

Of course this isn’t always going to work.  I can’t actually imagine a radically changed version of “Rock around the clock” performed in any way other than the way Bill Hayley did it, but what about reworkings of Dylan’s songs; re-arrangements that are not by Dylan, but which do change the way the music sounds and offer us extra insights.

Now it turns out that Wikipedia has a list of artists who have covered Bob Dylan songs which in my meanderings around the internet I had never seen before starting this article.  That of course is totally my problem – but I give the link here in case you are interested in this topic.  Basically it is a case of looking for slightly more obscure cover versions of songs, and indeed looking out for the occasional one that quite extraordinarily add to our understanding of and insights gained from, the original.

I am picking just one here, and even if the rest of the presentation in the concert covered below, were of no interest (which is absolutely not the case) it would be worth hearing, for the counter melody in the opening verses, and the exquisite instrumental break.

I do know there are many people who feel that really Bob’s version of each song is THE definitive version, and yes sometimes I would go along with this view.   But then when I come across performances and recordings such as that above, my thought changes.

And I do hope that in the years to come when, inevitably, Bob is no longer able to offer us his presence on stage, we will still have hundreds of performances such as this, to keep us going.

If you want to know more about the band you can find it here.   But whether you click that link or not, please do listen to the recording above.