Untold Dylan

by Larry Fyffe

At an early age Bob Dylan hears the voice of the God of Thunder commanding him to:

Write the things which thou hast seen
And the things which are
And the things which shall be hereafter

(Revelation 1:19)

Aiming to please, Dylan takes matters into his own hands, and adds the music of  Zeus’ son, Apollo:

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children ....
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world

(Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall)

Dylan helps to save a Gothic poet from the waters of oblivion in the process; the songster writes down the things that remain. The song above is an updated version of the biblical apocalypse, as well as a tribute to the poem below:

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore ....
Oh God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?

(Edgar Allan Poe: A Dream Within A Dream)

Dylan repeats more than once the rather Gnostic view, and modernistic dark Existentialist view of the aforementioned poet:

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down in the dim West
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest

(Edgar Allan Poe: The City In The Sea)

Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, let them. Below, along with the nearly direct quote, there’s the Dylanesque “rhyme twist” of ~ ‘best’/’rest’, and ~ ‘rest’/’best’:

In the dark illumination
He remembered bygone years
He read the Book of Revelation
And filled his cup with tears
When the Reaper's task had ended
Sixteen hundred had gone to rest
The good, the bad, the rich, the poor
The loveliest and the best

(Bob Dylan: Tempest)

As do some other writers, Dylan finds such a dark view of human condition hard to take:

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned

(Edna St. Vincent Millay)

The poet above has hope that though the physical body of an individual decays that his or her works, done well, will live on. Like the writers of Romantic Transcendentalist poems, and of Christian gospel songs, Dylan grapples with the notion that an individual’s life has meaning beyond its earthly existence.

Following is a set down traditional song from the dark lumber woods of New Brunswick, Canada – previously referenced by Dylan -to which a Christian verse gets added:

There's danger on the ocean where the waves roll mountains high
There's danger on the battlefield where the angry bullets fly
There's danger in the lumber woods for death lurks sullen there ....
Near the city of Boisetown where my mouldering bones do lay
A-waiting for my Savior's call on that great Judgement Day

(Peter Emberly ~ Calhoun/Munn)

Likewise, Dylan revises one of his own songs – the original quite Christian Gnostic in tone while the revision cleans up the monkey-like sexual imagery. Nevertheless, it’s again rather ambiguous:

I'm stepping out of the dark woods
Tying to jump on the monkey's back
Yes, I'm all dressed up ....
Every day you've got to pray for guidance
Every day you've got to give yourself a chance
There's are storms on the ocean
Storms out there on the mountains too
Storms on the ocean
Storms on the mountains too
Oh Lord
You know I have no friend without you

(Bob Dylan: Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking)

Seems Charles Darwin’s monkey man is still breathing. 

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

This article is part of the Why does Dylan like… series. The other articles in the series can be found via the link.

By Tony Attwood

When introducting this song on one of his “Theme Time” programmes Bob called this “One of the great blues songs of all time, one of the great car songs of all time, one of the great chauffer songs of all time! Sung by one of the great old ladies of all time.”

Here it is

https://youtu.be/UDrhVTSCdtk

It was also one of the songs mentioned by Bob Dylan in an interview with Scott Cohen and what makes this song even more interesting is the fact that Bob then took it and turned it into Obviously Five Believers.

Here’s the version by Memphis Minnie on her own…

It’s a variant on the classic blues format – but the way the variant works, with the added line of music after the repeat of the second line – plus the highly distinctive melody – really makes it stand out from the rest of the blues.  I’m not enough of a blues historian to claim that the song kicked blues in a new direction, but I have a feeling this might have been the case.

The song later turned up in another variant form with Good Morning Little School Girl by Sonny Boy Williamson, also performed by Chuck Berry – not lyrics one would particualarly want to perform today but seemingly a lyric that no one got too worried about at the time.

So, moving onto the performer.  Memphis Minnie (1897 to 1973), is said to have recorded around 200 songs, and this is probably the best remembered of all of them.

Although her life was very tough – as it was for all young female performers at the time, there are elements of that could be turned into a sanitised Broadway musical if anyone had a mind to (and assuming it hasn’t been done) – running away from home aged 13 with a guitar she was given for her 10th birthday, playing on street corners, joining the circus, and then playing in the blues clubs before being discovered by a record company talent scout playing with her husband in front of a barber shop.   It was he who called her “Memphis Minnie”.

My Chauffeur Blues is also reported (differently by different sources) to have won a competition, the prize being a bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin.  Another scene for the musical maybe.

The song was originally released as “Me and My Chauffeur Blues” on 21 May 1941, and this recording credits Ernest Lawlar (Minnie’s husband) as the composer, but in the subsequent 1953 release this credit was changed to Minnie herself and most commentators seem to feel she was the actual composer.

Here are the lyrics…

Won’t you be my chauffeur?
Won’t you be my chauffeur?
I wants him to drive me
I wants him to drive me downtown
Yes, he drives so easy
I can’t turn him down

But I don’t want him
But I don’t want him
To be ridin’ these girls
To be ridin’ these girls around
So I’m gonna steal me a pistol
Shoot my chauffeur down

Well, I must buy him
Well, I must buy him
A brand new V8
A brand new V8 Ford
Then he won’t need no passengers
I will be his load

Yeah, take it away

Going to let my chauffeur
Going to let my chauffeur
Drive me around the
Drive me around the world
Then he can be my little boy
Yes, I’ll be his girl, yes, I’ll be his girl

And then as we know Bob took it on a journey of his own.  Here’s Bob doing Five Believers – and introducing the band.

https://youtu.be/Eng6xhp8B54

There’s a clear link between the two songs musically, but not in the lyrics.  Here’s Bob’s version.

Early in the mornin’, early in the mornin’
I’m callin’ you to, I’m callin’ you to
Please come home
Yes, I could make it without you
If I just didn’t feel so all alone

Don’t let me down, don’t let me down
I won’t let you down, I won’t let you down
No, I won’t
You know and I know honey but
But honey, please don’t

I got my black dog barkin’
Black dog barkin’
Yes it is now, yes it is outside my yard
Yes, I’ll tell you what he means
If I just didn’t have to try so hard

Your mama’s workin’, your mama’s moanin’
She’s cryin’ you know, she’s tryin’ you know
You better go now
Well, I’d tell you what she wants
If I, but I just don’t know how

Fifteen jugglers, fifteen jugglers
Five believers, five believers
All dressed like men
Tell your mama not to worry because
They’re just my friends

Early in the mornin’, early in the mornin’
I’m callin’ you to, I’m callin’ you to
Please come home
Yes, I could make it without you
Honey, if I just did not feel so all alone

So why did Bob like it so much that he wanted to put it play it on his radio show, having re-used the song as one of his own?

It certainly is lively, and an outstanding song of its time, with a real entertaining element to it in terms of the lyrics – plus it is unusual in the way that it changes the standard blues format to make a song that is so lively and with so much energy.   Plus the fact that it is a classic in the genre – one of the songs that everyone into the history of the blues after the original classic 12-bar composers, must know.

In short it is a song that really gave the blues a kick away from the poverty of the south songs, and really has fun with the lyrics and the whole concept of female power, many, many years before it became the everyday.  But what is also interesting (to me at least if no one else) is what Dylan did with the lyrics in his version of the song: what exactly are they all about?

I can’t really find a meaning, and I am left with the notion that he simply put words in to fit with the music.  Nothing wrong with that of course – but not something that those who believe everything Dylan writes has a meaning, really want to think about.

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

by Jochen Markhorst

On Monday, February 11, 1963, The Beatles record all the songs (plus another, “Hold Me Tight”) for their debut album Please Please Me in 585 minutes. Straightforward, as a live performance, as they also play the songs in the Cavern Club.  Just as Dylan records his first albums and as Dylan and The Band will record their songs in the Big Pink basement. The fun, the zest is evident, the increasing attrition of the vocal cords is audible and the album is just as exciting, fresh and infectious more than half a century later as when it was released on March 27, 1963.

The record is obviously deep in Robbie Robertson’s system. When Dylan, in that mythical summer of ’67, week after week pushes The Band back to the roots, to old blues, folk and country and then somewhere halfway comes up with “Odds And Ends”, the levee breaks. That pace, the rhythm, that chord scheme … we have arrived at Chuck Berry, at Mersey Beat and “Mystery Train”. The rocker Robertson wakes up and automatically the intro splashes out of his guitar: a perfect mash-up of “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Twist And Shout”, of the first and the last song on Please Please Me. In the same flow Robertson inserts the solo: not quite a copy, but still very much à la George Harrison on track 5, on “Boys”.

It speaks for Robertson that, unlike in other memories, he remains modest in his autobiography Testimony. “Meanwhile, Bob ripped off another gem on the typewriter called Odds and Ends and we tore that one up in the basement before Bob had to go home for dinner.” Levon Helm, who not yet has joined the men, has on return the distance to recognize the unusual class of the song:

I could tell that hanging out with the boys had helped Bob to find a connection with things we were interested in: blues, rockabilly, R&B. They had rubbed off on him a little. There was a great rock and roll song called “Odds and Ends“.

(Levon Helm, Wheels On Fire, 1993)

Helm is right, it is a great rock ‘n’ roll song, but most commentaries pay little attention to it. They mainly stay with the text. In general, there is agreement that Dylan shakes from his trouser leg some loose relational wailing and some vague sexual ambiguities, plus one poetic, Dylan-worthy one-liner: Lost time is not found again.

The vast majority of the lyrics indeed seem little inspired and even less thought-out, but then again: the narrative perspective is original. A male blues singer singing from the perspective of the cheated woman is not that common.

Spilling the juice has been an established metaphor for sexual intercourse since Robert Johnson’s “Traveling Riverside Blues” (1937):

You can squeeze my lemon 'til the juice run down my
('til the juice run down my leg, baby, you know what I'm talking about)

… from which Dylan, as part of that same action, paraphrases that you know what I’m talking about (‘You know what I’m sayin’ and you know what I mean’).

But the protagonist in “Odds And Ends” is the receiving party of the juice, so if we assume for the sake of convenience that the poet does not have a sudden outpouring of gay-emancipatory fighting spirit, that narrator is a woman. A woman who venomously blames the man for not living up to his promises, for only using her for the satisfaction of his physical needs, and who now, in the third, last verse, advises him to pull up his pants again without having accomplished his mission and to seek his relief elsewhere.

Memphis Minnie emerges. The song fits effortlessly into her repertoire, somewhere between “I Don’t Want That Junk Outa You”, “Keep On Goin’” and “Hoodoo Lady”. Only that Dylanesque Lost time is not found again would be alienating.

Not in Dylan’s catalogue, obviously. In the very nice commercial video for IBM, Dylan talks to ‘Watson’, the computer that claims that he has analyzed all Dylan songs and has been able to filter out two recurring themes: the Passing of Time and the Fading of Love. In the video an amused Dylan does not contradict (“That sounds about right”), and a spokeswoman (Laurie Freedman of IBM) claims that it is really true; Watson really has analyzed Dylan’s entire oeuvre and really distilled these two Big Themes.

Superficially browsing through Dylan’s catalogue supports it – the word time is high up in the Top 10 of most used nouns. And especially in the songs that were written just before the motorcycle accident on June 29, 1966, when Dylan’s life is approaching the centre of an exhausting vortex of performances, recordings, drug use and sleep deprivation. The poet does not have to dig too deeply; time is a thing, these days. The word emerges in nine of the fourteen songs on Blonde On Blonde, for example, and in the rejected “I’ll Keep It With Mine” the I-figure even seems to be begging for the time he spent in “Pledging My Time” so generously:

But if I can save you any time
Come on, give it to me
I’ll keep it with mine.

The beautiful, aphoristic Lost time is not found again, although it may have been thoughtlessly shaken out of Dylan’s sleeve, and even though it is somewhat misplaced in those otherwise little poetic lyrics, does build a bridge between Blonde On Blonde and the sense of displacement on John Wesley Hardin.

Poetic force the aphorism owes not only to the seeming familiarity and the recognizable beauty of the expression, but also to its literary roots. After all, it varies, not too different, on the title of Proust’s magnum opus, on À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu.

The last part of it, Le temps retrouvé (‘Time regained’) is a comforting reply to Dylan’s dispirited one-liner. The bard seems susceptible to it: from the nineties onwards he actively searches for the lost times and starts recovering, re-creating, retrieving the temps perdu. First by digging up old songs and recording them again, without modern fuss (Down In The Groove and Good As I Been To You), then by recreating the sound of the first half of the twentieth century more and more fanatically (“Sugar Baby” on “Love And Theft” is a good example) and finally, like the storyteller in Proust’s novel, when he puts down his memories on paper: in October 2004 the first volume of his autobiography, Chronicles, is published.

Therein, the influence of Proust is detectable. Like that great French novel, Dylan’s work is an associative work about an I-person whose intellectual and artistic growth is documented on the basis of a mosaic of memories. The truly identifiable connection, however, lies within a bit of cut and paste work by the Nobel laureate, as Dr Edward M. Cook from Washington has shown. In part 2, À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Dylan apparently has marked two phrases (‘I caught a glimpse of the sea through the leafy boughs of trees’ and ‘I was no longer near enough to the sea which seemed to me not a living thing now, but fixed; I no longer felt any power beneath its colours’), and transfers them to Chronicles:

Walking back to the main house, I caught a glimpse of the sea through the leafy boughs of the pines. I wasn’t near it, but could feel the power beneath its colors.

(Chronicles, Chapter 4 ‘Oh Mercy’)

Illustrating that Dylan is serious about the verse that he sings about nine hundred times, most of all, in the twenty-first century. That is the core phrase from “Summer Days” (which is relatively, taking into account the song’s age, Dylan’s most played song – on average 51,1 per year since 2001):

She says, “You can’t repeat the past.” I say, “You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t? Of course you can.”

A line that, entirely in style, in itself is a repetition of the past, regained from the lost time: it comes from The Great Gatsby of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925.

Interesting, the relevance that such a single, carelessly written down line from a throwaway song appears to have half a century later, but it does detract from the real strongholder of the song: the pure rock ‘n’ roll fun of a relaxed club thoroughbred musicians. Although not infectious or inspiring enough, apparently; hardly any covers have been produced.

Apart from the usual, and usually hardly uplifting, versions of tribute artists, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Usual suspects Coulson, Dean, McGuinness, Flint are the first, on their unsurpassed Dylan tribute Lo And Behold! (1972). Producer Manfred Mann clearly also heard The Beatles in the song and lets the men, even more than The Band, turn it into a Beatles rocker. Ringo-like drums, handclapping and a sax solo of the type that Paul McCartney loves to insert, a bathroom reverberation over the vocals à la John Lennon and as icing on the cake Harrisons guitar solo from “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”.

The English Italian Emanuele Fizzotti is less adventurous, but no less fun – an old-fashioned blues rocker with an iron stomp, sparkling harmonica and the obligatory guitar and piano solo, which makes the song last almost twice as long – and that’s no problem at all (Manny’s Blues, 2012).

The best cover comes from Dylan’s native region, from the neighbourhood of Minneapolis, and is from The Gated Community, a band that stands out with infectious cowpunk and joyous country folk. From “Odds And Ends” they make a speedy, dynamic country swing with – very bold – a self-written, very fitting bridge (on Country Hymn, 2016).

Exciting and fresh like good old Please Please Me, actually.

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

by Tony Attwood

This article is from the series “Why does Bob Dylan like?” – there is an index to all the songs in this series 

“Lucille” was record by Little Richard in late 1956 or early 1957 and became an instant hit getting to the top of the Billboard R&B chart, number 10 in the UK pop chart, and 21 in the US pop chart.   It was supposedly written by Albert Collins and Little Richard – although there is some contention about this and there is also the suggestion that Albert Collins wrote it and Little Richard bought 50% of the royalties from him.

The problem here is “who is Albert Collins?”  This is certainly not the blues guitarist Albert Collins – and I have no information on this composer at all beyond the suggestion that he wrote this song and that maybe he spent time in prison.

https://youtu.be/u0Ujb6lJ_mM

Lucille, you won’t do your sister’s will?
Oh, Lucille, you won’t do your sister’s will?
You ran off and married, but I love you still.

Lucille, please, come back where you belong.
Lucille, please, come back where you belong.
I been good to you, baby, please, don’t leave me alone.

I woke up this morning, Lucille was not in sight.
I asked my friends about her but all their lips were tight.
Lucille, please, come back where you belong.
I been good to you, baby, please, don’t leave me alone.

However what is sometimes forgotten, and what makes the claims about who wrote it more confusing, is that the song is actually based around another Little Richard composition “Directly From My Heart to You” recorded by Little Richard in 1955 for an album, but then dropped from the LP and simply released as a B side on a single.

And here I am going to divert (just because I can, and because we know that Bob did go to Frank Zappa and suggest they make an album together) I’m going to include a tribute version to this song by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, not least because I get so few opportunities to slip Zappa into this blog.

https://youtu.be/z6bCRqEA_NI

Direct
Directly from my heart to you
Direct
Directly from my heart to you
Oh, you know that I love you
That’s why I feel so blue
Oh, I pray
Our love would last away
I pray
That our love would last away
Yeah, we’d be so happy together
But you’re so far away
Well, I need
(Oh, baby, need you baby)
I need you by my side
Well, I need
Yes, I need you by my side
Oh, I’d loved you little darlin’
Your love I could never hide

At the time of the recording Little Richard was one of the top selling songwriters and performers, and it is reported that in 1956 and 1957 alone over 32 million copies of songs written by him were sold.

Indeed “Lucille” was recorded by and became a hit for The Everly Brothers who managed to squeeze most of the energy out of the song (which was odd since it was the energy that made it work) but still had a hit.

Of course in one of his most famously quotable quotes, Bob Dylan once said, “I don’t think I’d even started out without listening to Little Richard” – one of a number of tributes he has slipped into the commentaries when talking about his musical background.  And Little Richard has also spoken of his love for Dylan and his music…

“Bob Dylan is my brother. I love him same as Bobby Darin is my baby. I feel Bob Dylan is my blood brother. I believe if I didn’t have a place to stay, Bob Dylan would buy me a house. He sat by my bed; he didn’t move for hours. I was in pain that medicine couldn’t stop. My tongue was cut out, leg all tore up, bladder punctured. I was supposed to be dead. Six feet under. God resurrected me; that’s the reason I have to tell the world about it.”
– Little Richard (to John Waters, 1987)

It has also been reported that Bob Dylan played Little Richard songs on the piano while at high school while in his high school year book he is reported to have written that his goal in life was “To join Little Richard”.

So what did this song mean to Bob?

Certainly the energy is infectious as is the piano playing – endlessly hitting the chords twice on every beat so you get the same chord played eight times to a bar – except occasionally Little Richard then plays the chords as triplets (he does it at the start and near the end) so instead of getting four beats to the bar with the chord played eight times you get four beats to the bar with the chord played 12 times.   A very unusual effect that adds to the sense of speed and urgency.

And there are those meaningless words.

Lucille, you won’t do your sister’s will?
Oh, Lucille, you won’t do your sister’s will?
You ran off and married, but I love you still.

And we are left thinking simply, “What????????”

It is the sheer incomprehensibility of this combined with the excitement of the vocals and the pounding of the piano with its diversion into triplets that makes this simple song so incredibly powerful and all-encompassing, leaving the listener who appreciates it simply needing to play it over and over and over and over.

Plus one more thing: it was different.  In fact very, very different.  Below is a list of the 20 biggest selling singles in the US in 1957

When you look at that list what else is there to excite a hot blooded teenager?  Only two songs in that list of 20 could be possible rivals to Little Richard’s approach to music – “Hound Dog” and “Blue Suede Shoes”.  But Little Richard went so much further.

Of course Bob worshipped Little Richard.  In this style of music, who else was there?

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

Bob Dylan: Lady Lou, Jim McGroo, And The Ace Of Spades

By Larry Fyffe

Besides  the movie ‘Rose Marie’, another Canadian-situated source of Bob Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts” is the narrative poem “The Shooting Of Dan McGrew” by Canadian versifier Robert Service, “The Bard of the Yukon”:

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute Saloon
The kid that handles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew
And watching his luck was his light-o'- love, the lady that was known as Lou

(Robert Service: The Shooting Of Dan McGrew)

Bob Dylan mixes up the medicine:

Backstage the girls were playin' five-card stud by the stairs ...
Big Jim was no one's fool, he owned the town's only diamond mine ...
It was known all around that Lily had Big Jim's ring
And nothing would ever come between Lily and the king
No, nothin' ever would, except maybe the Jack of Hearts

(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

The Canadian poet draws the Ace of Spades, a symbol of death:

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house ....
And I turned my head, and there watching him was the lady known as Lou

(Robert Service: The Shooting Of Dan McGrew)

The American singer/songwriter shuffles the deck before he deals:

He was standin' in the doorway, lookin' like the Jack Of Hearts
He moved across the mirrored room, "Set it up for everyone", he said ....
Then he moved into the corner, face down like the Jack of Hearts ....
Lily called another bet, and drew up the Jack of Hearts

(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary,  And The Jack Of Hearts)

All hell breaks loose in the Malamute Saloon:

Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark
And a woman screamed, the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou .....
The lady that kissed him, and pinched his poke, was the  lady that's known as Lou

(Robert Service: The Shooting Of Dan McGrew) 

And in the Cabaret too – except, this time round, it’s the Jack of Hearts who pinches the gold:

No one knew the circumstance, but they say that it happened pretty quick
The door to the dressing room burst open, and a cold revolver clicked ....
Big Jim lay covered up, killed by a penknife in the back ....
The only person on the scene missing was the Jack of Hearts

(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

A famous satirist is at Robert’s service; uses hip-jive to burlesque “The Shooting Of Dan McGrew”:

There's a bunch of the studs was swingin' it up In the old Red Dog Saloon .....
And hung back at the bar in a solar game Stood Swingin' Danny McGroo
And diggin' his takes was his main day charge The stallion known as Lou

(Lord Buckley: The Shooting Of Dan McGroo)

You might also enjoy

Bob Dylan and Lord Buckley

• Bob Dylan and Lord Buckley 
• Bob Dylan And Lord Buckley (Part II)

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

by Jochen Markhorst

In March 2015, Dylan’s publisher Simon & Schuster publishes Shane Dawson’s I Hate Myselfie, a memoir in which the popular YouTube vlogger dwells on eighteen of his most embarrassing events. It is a bit of a juvenile, sophomoric work, but still (or: therefore) a success, a New York Times bestseller and the umpteenth example in a long, long line of authors who exploit self-loathing literarily.

That Italian poet from the fourteenth century, Petrarca, composes in Canzoniere 134 “ho in odio me stesso, e amo altrui, I hate myself and love another,” Kafka’s oeuvre is one long exercise in self-hatred, with Brief an den Vater (‘Letter To His Father’) as a climax (or low point, depending how you look at it), the posthumously published Journals by Kurt Cobain can only be read as a run-up to his suicide and even Erasmus thinks that self-love is a moral sin; the true Christian is characterized by self-hatred (Handbook of  a Christian Knight, 1503).

And a prominent place in Dylan’s record collection is occupied by Tampa Red, the blues wizard who records “I Hate Myself” in 1936, with the opening lines that inspire:

I hate myself for falling in love with you
'Cause you wrecked my life
And you broke my heart in two

From this perspective, Dylan joins a long tradition when he opens “Dirge” with I hate myself for loving you. But there is a big difference: with Petrarca, Kafka and Cobain, one does not doubt the sincerity of the words; the narrator really dislikes himself.

That is not the case with Dylan and that is due to his performance. Unambiguous the emotion is not. We hear some assertiveness, reproach and hurt, but self-hatred… no. Likewise, already the second line lacks any hint of self-reflection. ‘You were just a painted face on a trip down Suicide Road‘ is a good old-fashioned Dylanesque put-down, completely in line with the vitriol of “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?”, “Positively 4th Street” and “She’s Your Lover Now”, in line with the most vicious songs from 1965. The degrading ‘you were just a painted face‘ is a variant of the equally villainous ‘you just happened to be there, that’s all‘ from “One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)”, Suicide Road most likely being a side street of Desolation Row.

And not at all in line with the rest of the songs on this album, Planet Waves, an album on which, just as on predecessor New Morning, life-affirmation, joys of love and contentment are predominant.

That missing connection to the rest of the songs on Planet Waves does not stand alone; text internally “Dirge” is not very coherent either. Apart from maybe “Never Say Goodbye”, the other nine songs stay, verse line after verse line, decently true to one theme, varying on one message, staying neatly within the lines. “Forever Young” ties together fifteen interchangeable blessings, “You Angel You”, the most wordy song of the album, repeats the same message six times in six stanzas, just like “Going, Going, Gone” does in four verses.

“Dirge”, on the other hand, seems to be an exercise of free association and écriture automatique, in the vein of “Farewell Angelina” or “Tombstone Blues”, the surrealist masterpieces from that artistic peak in the mid-1960s. Or, looking in the other direction, a taste of the songs Dylan will write for Street Legal a few years later, idiomatic processions like “Changing Of The Guards” and “No Time To Think”.

Cold statistical data confirm this observation; “Dirge” is by far the most eloquent song of Planet Waves. Only “Wedding Song” has more words, but a much poorer ratio of words/unique words than “Dirge” (169 different words in a 275-word song).

Besides the similarity with the eloquence and the cryptic qualities of Street Legal, the lyrics of “Dirge” also have a matching ‘colour’. Verses have a self-standing, aforistic power and have no further relationship with the previous or following line.

And they are beautiful lines, by the way. ‘That hollow place where martyrs weep and angels play with sin‘ and ‘Like a slave in orbit, he’s beaten ’til he’s tame‘ for example, or ‘In this age of fiberglass I’m searching for a gem‘. Especially the latter has such an atypical, clinical metaphor, at best recalling ‘that trainload of fools bogged down in a magnetic field‘ in “Señor” from – again – Street Legal, just like the next line (‘The crystal ball up on the wall hasn’t shown me nothing yet‘) would fit in “Señor” instinctively, stylistically and intrinsically, but never in “Something There Is About You” or any other song on Planet Waves.

The conclusion that “Dirge” is such an odd duck out, provides new fuel to the admittedly apocryphal but amusing creation myth, as recorded by Clinton Heylin, among others. That story starts with the question of who this Martha is, from the original title “Dirge For Martha”. She is then said to be a friend of Dylan’s childhood friend Lou Kemp and would have triggered the creation of the song by saying to Dylan, after hearing the test recordings of “Forever Young”: “Are you getting mushy in your old age?”

Everything indicates that “Dirge” indeed was written last-minute in the studio, towards the end of the recording sessions for Planet Waves. Guitarist Robbie Robertson, who improvises the tasteful Spanish ornaments, also remembers in his autobiography Testimony the rather spontaneous, unannounced birth:

“As Rob [Fraboni, the producer] and I were setting up to mix the album, Bob came into the control room and asked me to play on one more song. He sat at the piano and I picked up an acoustic Martin D- 28. He played through one verse to give me the flavor and then we cut it. This was “Dirge for Martha,” and I think we only did one take. That session reminded me of late nights eight years earlier, Bob and me playing music in our hotel rooms.”

Whether or not we owe “Dirge” to that empty-headed tease from some Martha, Robertson does not mention. It does not seem very credible, though. It is hard to imagine that the hardened Dylan after all these years full of poisonous reproaches and aggrieved criticism from nitwits, journalists and disappointed fans really could be affected by some clumsy insult from an insignificant girl.

Still, producer Fraboni also remembers a ‘Martha’ incident and states how Dylan considers to skip the album highlight “Forever Young”, which eventually leads to that strange compromise to put a second, less mushy version on the album.

So maybe it is true after all; perhaps the remarkable eruption “Dirge” is provoked by some silly lass.

The exegetes have a field day. Predictably often Sara is brought in and with the comfortable benefit of hindsight, a faction of both professional Dylanologists and excited bloggers analyze that the song is a run-up to Blood On The Tracks, to the ‘Divorce Album’ of the bard. And solely regarding the style of the lyrics, there is some argument to be found; the same fragmented, associative labyrinth as “Up To Me”, content likewise in minor, in farewell mode and true, the song is incomparable to the colour of the other songs on this album. But then again, the divorce from Sara is not until four years later and anyway, as those unimaginative Sara-exegetes have to admit, it is pretty impossible to squeeze the rest of the lyrics into that mould.

Most other exegetes also search for the key by framing the you from the opening line ‘I hate myself for loving you‘. ‘Heroin’ is a popular candidate, ‘Joan Baez’ comes along (because of that one line ‘Heard your songs of freedom’), ‘a mistress’, ‘fame’, ‘Albert Grossman’ and even ‘Edie Sedgwick’. And subsequently, just like with the Sara-exegetes, it turns out to be impossible to fit more than two or three verse fragments into such an interpretation.

It is not very surprising. Dylan does not write songs à clef, nor confessional songs, nor lyrics with a hidden, coded ‘actual’ meaning. At best, he lets poetic expressions of private impressions twirl down into his lyrics. I am about t sketch You a picture of what goes on around here sometimes. tho I don’t understand too well myself what’s really happening, as Dylan writes in the liner notes of Bringing It All Back Home (1965) – ‘a sketchy rendering of personal impressions, without pretense of insight’

In that light, with that ‘key’, one would indeed be tempted to trace and check off the images from “Dirge” with biographical knowledge of the man Dylan. ‘A face with a lot of make-up, about to commit suicide?’ – check, Edie Sedgwick. And who is singing those songs of freedom? Joan Baez, obviously. Or perhaps Albert Grossman, who promises him financial and artistic freedom, if Dylan does what he is told. And comme ça, from every image, from every line of verse, a connection to a biographical reality from the author’s life can be drawn.

The poverty of such an approach is the obviousness with which is taken for granted that the I from the song is identical with the author. The lyrics, however, do not give any reason for this assumption, apart from the banal fact that the lyrics are written by Dylan. But that same writer Dylan has repeatedly, and credibly, stated that the I from his songs is not automatically me, Bob Dylan. Je est un autre, after all.

If we can let go of that starting point, the idée-fixe that the poet writes about himself, it also becomes easier to appreciate the song for what it is: a gripping jeremiade of a lost soul, an eloquent variant of a lamentation by Hank Williams (“Take These Chains From My Heart”, for example) or a heart-rending blues by Robert Johnson like “Love In Vain” or “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”; songs about pitiful suckers who are in love with the wrong woman.

Despite all beauty, “Dirge” remains in the shadow. Dylan never plays the song; a further indication that he indeed just pulled the song from his hat, that November day in 1973. The established colleagues ignore the song too.

The living room versions of the fans on YouTube are without exception unbearable, as are those of the tribute bands and beyond that only a few professional artists from the second division are worth mentioning.

The jazz version of the Jamie Saft Trio, on the splendid album Trouble (2006), reduces “Dirge” to a desolate depression, but is spectacularly beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AToDgveg

The duo of Patches & Gretchen from Minneapolis attracts attention because Dylan’s Desire violinist Scarlett Rivera plays along, but their cover is not too distinctive. Gretchen is holding a rolling pin with an attached crib sheet for the lyrics, that has some entertainment value.

The most beautiful cover is on In Between, a 2010 album by Erik Truffaz. The Frenchman is originally a jazz trumpet player, and a particularly good one too, and makes excursions to hip hop, dance and rock. “Dirge” is a highlight on In Between. Guest singer Sophie Hunger is doing well, but overwhelming is the musical skill of the quartet. Beautifully arranged, sparse trumpet, great drumming and assertive, lyrical guitar. Superb Hammond organ, too.

Also not the slightest trace of any self-hatred either, but what the heck.

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

By Larry Fyffe

To assert that singer/song writer Bob Dylan is influenced by traditional lyrics or by the written works of other artists does not mean that he necessarily immerses himself in reading or listening to the lyrics of the poetry, songs, and stories thereof, though he may well have.  

But for sure, as part of the artistic community, he has at least some Jungian ‘collective unconscious’ awareness of their archetypical themes, motifs, images, and symbols – which he often messes with, and sometimes completely turns upside down, and inside out. 

In many cases, the roots of historical sources used by the singer/song writer clearly lie bare. Bob Dylan pens:

"Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?"
"I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways"

(Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall)

Only a mad man thrashing around in the dark would say that Dylan never read the following traditional Anglo-Scottish border ballad:

"Oh where have you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where have you been, my handsome man?"
"I have been to the greenwood, mother, make my bed soon
For I'm wearied with hunting, and want to lie down"

(Lord Randal: traditional)

A  more recent ballad based on the question and answer format of the above  ballad goes:

"What makes the blood on the point of your knife?
My son, now tell me"
"It is the blood of my old grey mare
Who ploughed the fields for me, me, me"

(Sir David Dalrymple, et al: Edward)

‘Edward’ certainly is not Dylan’s direct source, but it’s reminiscent of the ballad below:

There were twa brothers at a school
As they were coming home
Then said one to the other
"John, will you throw a stone?"

"I will not throw a stone, brother
I will not play at the ball
But if you come down to yonder wood
I'll  wrestle you a fall" 

The first fall young Johnie got
It brought him to the ground
The wee penknife in William's pocket
Gave him a deadly wound

(The Twa Brothers: traditional)

Which brings it all back home to the following Dylan song lyric:

Tweedle-dee Dee is a lowdown, sorry old man
Tweedle-dee Dum, he'll stab you where you stand
"I've had too much of your company"
Said Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

(Bob Dylan: Tweedle Dee And Tweedle Dum)

And more obliquely to this song too:

The next day was hangin' day
The sky was overcast and black
Big Jim lay covered up
Killed by a penknife in the back

(Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts)

Below, another ballad  creeps into the chamber of Dylan’s repertoire:

Then came the spirit of fair Margaret
And stood at William's feet
"God give you joy, you two true lovers
In bride-bed fast asleep
Lo, I'm going to my green grass grave
And am in my winding-sheet"

When day has come and night was gone
And all men waked from sleep
Sweet William to his lady said
"My dear, I have cause to weep"

(Fair Margaret And Sweet William)  

Dylan twists around the theme of that traditional ballad:

Scarlet Town in the month of May
Sweet William Holme on his death bed lay
Mistress Mary by the side of the bed
Kissing his face, and heapin' prayers on his head
"So brave, so true, so gentle is he
I'll weep for him as he would weep for me"

(Bob Dylan: Scarlet Town)

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

By Tony Attwood

This article is part of the Influences on Bob Dylan series or articles.

Train of Love is a classic lost love song that Bob Dylan performed as a tribute to Johnny Cash in 1999, and both from the simple fact that Dylan selected the song and because he sang it with a fair amount of vim and vigour, it is clear that he likes this particular track.  Here is the original…

And Bob’s tribute

The recording was made at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City.  Bob says…

“Hey Johnny, I wanna say Hi and I’m sorry we can’t be there, but that’s just the way it is. I wanna sing you one of your songs about trains. I used to sing this song before I ever wrote a song and I also wanna thank you for standing up for me way back when.”

So it clearly is a song from Dylan’s youth – and that means it is something that hit his consciousness probably in 1957 or very soon thereafter.   Bob was born in 1941, so we are talking about a song heard when he was 16 or so.

In terms of Dylan compositions we have When I got troubles by Dylan dated as 1959, the earliest composition we’ve been able to date on this site, so that fits with Bob hearing the song in 1957 or 1958 – before he wrote any songs.

As for the song itself, the single by Johnny Cash reached number one on the “Most Played C&W in Juke Boxes chart” from Billboard.

Here are the lyrics…

by Jochen Markhorst

Samuel Pepys’ diaries reveal that the indestructible evergreen “Barbara Allen” already was a popular song 350 years ago: on January 2, 1666 he tells us about a New Year’s party where one of his mistresses, the actress Elizabeth Kneipp, enchants him with her performance of “a little Scotch song of Barbara Allen.”

Between 1962 and 1991, Dylan plays the song over 60 times on stage. In interviews, he often refers to this song as example the timeless, eternal quality of traditional songs:

A:     I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow. Obviously I’m not a hard-working cat. I played the guitar, that was all I did. I thought it was great music. Certainly I haven’t turned my back on it or anything like that. There is–and I’m sure nobody realizes this, all the authorities who write about what it is and what it should be, when they say keep things simple, they should be easily understood–folk music is the only music where it isn’t simple. It’s never been simple. It’s weird, man, full of legend, myth, Bible and ghosts. I’ve never written anything hard to understand, not in my head anyway, and nothing as far out as some of the old songs. They were out of sight.

Q:     Like what songs?

A:    “Little Brown Dog.” “I bought a little brown dog, its face is all gray. Now I’m going to Turkey flying on my bottle.” And “Nottemun Town,” that’s like a herd of ghosts passing through on the way to Tangiers. “Lord Edward,” “Barbara Allen,” they’re full of myth.

(1965, Nora Ephron & Susan Edminston interview)

Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes about from legends, bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. There’s nobody that’s going to kill traditional music. All these songs about roses growing out of peoples brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels – they’re not going to die.

(1966, Nat Hentoff – Playboy interview)

The song is mentioned by a lot of musicians in autobiographies and interviews. Remarkably many of them seem to feel the same attraction, endow the same value as Dylan does.

Take for example Ralph Stanley (from The Stanley Brothers), in his memoirs Man Of Constant Sorrow, who uses almost identical words to describe his love:

Those songs are about things that did happen and that’s why they’re still around.They come from things that happen to people. I reckon with a lot of the old songs—“Little Mathie Grove,” “Barbara Allen,” “OmieWise,” “Banks of the Ohio” and so many others—those things actually did happen and they got turned into songs, and those songs are still living long after the people in the songs are dead and gone. The songs don’t die.

Or Judy Collins (in her autobiography Sweet Judy Blue Eyes):

I keep returning to these old, classic songs, often bringing them back to find new meaning and fresh interpretations. “Danny Boy,” “The Lark in the Morning,” “Barbara Allen,” “So Early, Early in the Spring,” and “The Gypsy Rover” have lasted for years and will endure for years more. They touch your heart, and for anyone trying to write new and original songs, they stand as an unspoken challenge: make something as good and as timeless as this and you will have won the heart of your listener. You also will have added something to the story of humankind.

Dylan paraphrases, almost recreates, the song in “Scarlet Town”, as does Elvis Costello in “I Want You” (You said “Young man, I do believe you’re dying”), although Costello’s memories of the song are not as fond as those of other artists:

Music lessons at my school had mostly consisted of making scraping noises on the violin, playing tunelessly on the wooden recorder, or lustily singing patriotic songs like “The British Grenadiers” or weird old ballads about dying for love like “Barbara Allen,” but that’s about as far as it went.

(Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink)

Perhaps a British thing; equally unmoved Mike Oldfield reports in his memoirs (Changeling):

One of the few things I enjoyed at St Edward’s was the singing lessons. We would sing traditional old English songs like ‘Barbara Allen’, with the music teacher playing the upright piano. I was in the choir at school, and I had a reasonable soprano voice.

But the timeless quality and the universal significance of the song is perhaps best illustrated by Suze Rotolo, in her book A Freewheelin’ Time:

The gossipy insinuations by the folkies around the Village hit hard. Bob had suffered publicly and as a result I was the villain, the Barbara Allen to his Sweet William.

She does seem to admire the song, though:

“He performed often and well and wrote beautiful songs about many things, including the pain caused by a lover who is far away. A recording from that time of him singing the traditional ballad “Barbara Allen” tears at the heartstrings.”

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

Pearl, who was herself a wildflower
Sprung from the hard clay
Quick to blossom
And early to die

Oh, come with old Khayaam, and leave the wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that life flies
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies
The flower that once has blown for ever dies

In the movie ‘Duel In The Sun’, Pearl (Jennifer Jones), a half-Mexican/half-native American, dresses like a gypsy. Orphaned, she’s sent to live with a relative who has two sons: gentleman Jesse (Joseph Cotton), and lying ladies’ man Lewton (Gregory Peck). She falls for Lewt’s lust rather than Jesse’s love. Lewt kills the man she plans to marry, but refuses to take Pearl when he runs. Lewt wounds brother Jesse, and Pearl, amed with a rifle, goes after the gunslinger. They shoot it out on a mountain, and die in one another’s arms.

An episode of ‘Rocky And Bullwinkle’ centers not on a pearl, but instead on a ruby. The moose finds a toy boat christened ‘Omar Khayyam’ that has rubies on it, and the flying squirrel says, “this must be the Ruby yacht of Omar Khayyam”; the comical cartoon ends with the line, “join us next time for let’s drink to the Ruby, or stoned again.”

A book of verse underneath the bough

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou

(Omar Khayyam)

And from a Bob Dylan song:

(Rainy Day Women, No. 12&35)

It’s a mixed potion that Bob Dylan cannot resist:

Ruby just smiled and said, ‘Ah, you know some babies never learn’

(Bob Dylan: Brownsville Girl)

Then it’s back thinking about ‘The Gunfighter’ and Pearl, the dark-eyed gypsy in ‘Duel In The Sun’:

(Bob Dylan: Brownsville Girl)

(Bob Dylan: Narrow Way)

The moving finger writes, and, having writ
Moves on; nor all your piety nor your wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line

By Tony Attwood

This article is part of a series on songs that Bob Dylan has confessed he likes in interviews, or self-evidently likes because they are among the small number of songs that Dylan has performed in concerts, but has not composed himself (the list of other titles in the series thus far appears at the end).   This piece is about “Friend of the Devil” with music by Jerry Garcia and John Dawson, with lyrics by Robert Hunter.  It appeared on the Grateful Dead’s album “American Beauty.”

We can immediately see some Dylan connections both in Grateful Dead and in Dylan’s own collaborator from time to time, Robert Hunter.

But I think the subject matter is the key – Dylan loves songs of the wanderer, the hobo, the lost soul on the run.  I’ve mentioned quite a few of these on this site a number of times – “Drifter’s Escape”, “One too many mornings”  It aint me babe,  Don’t think twice – perhaps the classic Dylan “song of leaving” with “Look out your window and I’ll be gone – you’re the reason I’m travelling on”.

Beyond the more famous examples we have songs like Someday Baby  which contains all the essential ingredients of the blues, and quite different there is Most likely you go your way.  A touch of disdain, but just a touch.

And of course there is the Restless Farewell…

Friend of the Devil is of course quite different from Restless Farewell – but the theme is the same – it is the need to move on – “I bid farewell and go down the road”.

Here are the lyrics of Friend of the Devil.

 I lit out from Reno, I was trailed by twenty hounds
Didn't get to sleep last night till the morning came around.

Set out running but I take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight

Ran into the devil, babe, he loaned me twenty bills
I spent the night in Utah in a cave up in the hills.

Set out running but I take my time, a friend of the devil is a friend of mine,
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight

I ran down to the levee but the devil caught me there
He took my twenty dollar bill and vanished in the air.

Set out running but I take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight

Got two reasons why I cry away each lonely night,
The first ones named sweet Anne Marie, and she's my hearts delight

The second one is prison, babe, the sheriffs on my trail,
And if he catches up with me, I'll spend my life in jail.

Got a wife in Chino, babe, and one in Cherokee
The first one says she's got my child, but it don't look like me.

Set out running but I take my time,
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine,
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight

The story is put around that the song is based on the affairs and quick departures of Rock Scully the Dead’s road manager.   And although, as I say, it is utterly different from Restless Farewell, the concept is the same – it all comes from the classic Irish folk song of the Parting Glass.

And the concept is captured at the end of that song…

Oh a false clock tries to tick out my time
To disgrace, distract, and bother me.
And the dirt of gossip blows into my face,
And the dust of rumors covers me.
But if the arrow is straight
And the point is slick,
It can pierce through dust no matter how thick.
So I'll make my stand
And remain as I am
And bid farewell and not give a damn.

Musically “the Devil” has a descending bass, and we’ve noted on this site many times how Bob loves the ascending (Like a Rolling Stone) and descending (Sad Eyed Lady) bass lines.  And of course we must note that the song has become exceptionally well known, even by people who would normally not listen to the Dead.   As Robert Hunter said, “that was the closest we’ve come to what may be a classic song.”

It is also a song that was itself on the move from its conception being played at different tempos, and with different solos interspersed – a favourite occupation of Bob Dylan with his own songs.  Indeed even the lyrics change with Robert Hunter later adding a new verse…

"You can borrow from the Devil 
You can borrow from a friend
But the Devil will give you twenty
When your friend got only ten"

I am not saying that extra verse is a particularly profound addition, nor is it Hunter at his best, but it takes the song towards the Dylan concept of the ever-evolving music.

And in the midst of all this let us not forget Dylan’s own desire to keep on moving on, as per the Never Ending Tour.

There is also the fact that the song does suit the musical style that Bob created with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – in particular with the way the harmonies work.  It is a pure Petty approach that we can hear in the chorus of the version in the video above.

But above all it is a song that performers can do so many things with – if you take a moment to listen to Mumford and Sons handling the song, this becomes clear.  I can’t find it as a video, but it is on Spotify if you are interested.  And if you do make the trip there, do listen to the whole piece, even if you don’t take to the opening; it evolves.

My point is that the song lends itself to re-interpretation in so many ways – add that to the fact that the originators of the song were Bob’s mates, and well, yes it is fairly certain he would have a go. 

And there is one other thing that live performers love – the opening is so instantly recognisable…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxf_fGrLzWo&app=desktop

Why does Dylan like these songs?

• Why does Bob Dylan like “Not Fade Away”
• Why does Dylan like “Lonely Avenue” by Ray Charles?
• Why does Bob Dylan really like “Lonesome Town”
• Why does Bob Dylan so adore “So Cold in China”?
• Why and how did “Cottonfields” change Bob Dylan’s life?
• Why does Dylan love “Uncloudy Day”? A bolt straight from the heavens.

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

by Larry Fyffe

Some of our Untold readers might be a little confused concerning the lyrics of the song by Bob Dylan entitled ‘Lay Lady Lay’. The old Dylan notebook lying in the vault of the Archives Department of the ‘Untold Dylan’ offices will clear matters up.  Tony Attwood laid it there many years ago.

Below is the final version of a verse recorded by Bob Dylan, but the notebook reveals that Dylan crosses out the word “yourself” after the last “lay” merely to make the music and lyrics fit together:

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Whatever colours you have in your mind
I'll show them to you, and you'll see them shine

(Bob Dylan: Lay Lady, Lay)

In the margins of the notebook the source-song is given; it refers to a gal as a ‘bedspring’, the object of the verb ‘lay’):

I take it to my room, and lay it 'cross my big brass bed
I take it to my room, and lay it 'cross my big brass bed
I guess I'll be my own singer, neighbours turn cherry red

(Blind Willie McTell: Rough Alley Blues – there doesn’t seem to be a recording of the song freely available on the internet, but it is on Spotify).

Dylan knows the present tense of ‘lay’ goes with the past tense ‘laid’, and that the present tense of ‘lie’ goes with the past tense ‘lay’. In the verse below, ‘lay him low’ would be grammatically incorrect because there’s an object:

"Not me", says the man whose fists
Laid him low in a cloud of mist
Who came here from Cubans door
Where boxing ain't allowed no more

(Bob Dylan: Who Killed Davey Moore)

One might even imagine that Dylan is being spoofed in the following song:

Lie la lie, lie la, la la lie lie
Lie la lie, lie la la la la lie la la lie ....
In the clearing stands are boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries a reminder
Of every glove that laid him down 

(Simon And Garfunklel: The Boxer)

To confuse matters further, the notebook contains other lyrics that indicate Dylan initially intended to write a gospel song:

Lie, lady, lie, lie across my big brass bed
Fly, lady, fly, fly with your man a while
Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile

(Bob Dylan: Ladybird Fly Away Home)

The source of “Whatever colours you have on your mind/I’ll show them to you” ~ In the margins of the notebook, mentioned is a Christian tale of yore that has the Virgin Mary looking like a ladybird beetle – she’s dressed in a scarlet cloak with seven spots that represent her seven sorrows and seven joys. And noted too is another tale that has Mary dropping her golden girdle (belt) to ‘doubting’ Thomas as she flies off to heaven.

On the overleaf, another song is printed in pencil:

Mile by mile, I paddled my old canoe
I'll be in heaven when my journey's over
For the one I admire
Is watching the shore
God's River

(Emmett Miller: God’s River)

In the lyrics below, ‘lay’ is correctly used as the past tense of ‘lie’:

But the frozen smile upon my face
Fits me like a glove
But I can't escape from the memory
Of the one I'll always adore
All those nights when I lay in the arms
Of the girl from the Red River Shore

(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)

Dylan makes reference to the Jordon and/or Mississippi River in the song lyrics below:

Standing by God's River, my soul's beginning to shake
Standing by God's River, my soul's beginning to shake
I'm counting on you to give me a break

(Bob Dylan: Summer Days)

https://youtu.be/TjFnzUgDzbc

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

by Jochen Markhorst

Music is not a small thing, in religious circles. Christians have been debating for centuries about the edifying quality, or the diabolical nature of music as such, and since the nineteenth century the many Christian divisions have been deliberating over which music does, and which music does not please the ears of the Lord. In the Bible there is music throughout, the Psalms have their own book, just like Canticles, the Song of Songs, that is not the point. But the hair-splitters point to Ezekiel 27 and 28, where it is claimed that the king of Tyrus is actually Satan in human form. Significant in the music discussion is 28:13, the verse that describes what a wonderful, beautiful, beautiful angel Satan used to be in the beginning, before his pride causes God to cast off his favourite angel and to condemn him for all eternity to the pool of sulfur and fire, to hell:

Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.

There it is: already with his creation Satan receives ‘tabrets’ (tambourines supposedly) and ‘pipes’ (flutes). That creates a wonderful dilemma for the theologians. Music is indeed satanic, but it is created by God and played by Satan before his fall, when he still is a high placed, holy Angel Of Yahweh in the Garden of Eden.

The parents of Josh Tillman, the drummer of Fleet Foxes who has been soloing since 2012 as Father John Misty, solve it like most less stringent Christians: Josh is allowed to listen to ‘Christian music’. And pop music is Not Christian. But at the end of the 90s, around the age of seventeen, the parents surprise the musical Josh (he has been playing drums and guitar for years) with a legislative amendment: he may listen to secular music, provided it is ‘spiritual’. One of the purchases that Josh does right away is Dylan’s Slow Train Coming, because he can prove that Dylan is a Christian artist, and to his relief the album does indeed pass parental censorship. It is a discovery. He buys New Morning, Nashville Skyline, Oh Mercy, ‘all these other weird Dylan records,’ until he reaches the monuments like The Times They Are A-Changin’. “My life just totally changed and I know everybody says that about their Dylan experience, but it is really true for me, it inspired me to go and do what I do now,” says Tillman looking back (interview with TLOBF, March 2009). In the following months, however, the fundamentalism continues to crumble and he even can buy U2’s The Joshua Tree and Peter Gabriels So.

It leaves its mark, both the oppressive upbringing and the introduction to Dylan. On his breakthrough album I Love You, Honeybear (2015), according to his own words an autobiographical concept album, he paints a reverberant life full of ferocious sex, adultery, alcohol and drugs, and, like most renegades, he needs disproportionately many fucks and goddamns to tell so. It tempts the reviewers to promote the album as ‘Father John’s own Blood On The Tracks‘. But the kicker “Holy Shit” is a Dylanesque word procession à la “No Time To Think” with the consumer criticism from “Slow Train”, as Tillman also copies in the title song Dylan’s stylistic approach to contrast small, private concerns with self-transcending human issues. And in between each time Slow Train Coming idiom pops up, like in the bizarre “Nothing Good Ever Happens In The Goddamn Thirsty Cow”:

I have it all
To pull more women than any two men or a train can haul
But my baby she does something way more impressive than the Georgia crawl

In the first version of Dylan’s “Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking” the Georgia Crawl also is an alienating odd duck out:

I got a God-fearing woman
One I can easily afford
She can do the Georgia crawl
She can walk in the spirit of the Lord

The expression refers to a dance and is coined in 1928 by Henry Williams’ and Eddie Anthony’s hit single. Back then it really is a dance. A ferocious, suggestive, sensual dance, but still: a dance.

Come here papa, look at sis
Out in the backyard just shaking like this
Doin’ the Georgia Crawl, oh Georgia Crawl
You don’t need to buy a thing, do the Georgia Crawl

I can shake it east, shake it west
Way down south I can shake it the best
Doin’ the Georgia Crawl, oh Georgia Crawl
You don’t need to buy a thing, do the Georgia Crawl

Of course it does not take long before the Georgia Crawl becomes a metaphor for sexual intercourse, thanks mainly to Blind Willie McTell. Early on, he records two songs in which the notion gets that explicit charge: “East St. Louis Blues” in 1933 and especially the first version of “Broke Down Engine Blues” (1931), the song Dylan takes up in ’93 for World Gone Wrong and honours as a ‘masterpiece’ in the liner notes. There, among all those blues classics, the Georgia Crawl is not out of tune, but on Slow Train Coming it is a bit less well-embedded – it is a rare erotic reference on that otherwise quite evangelical record.

It is not the only remarkable thing about “Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking”. The last verse, for example, where a ‘kingdom called Heaven’, the Heavenly Kingdom is described as ‘a place where there is no pain of birth’. That is a strange description. In the Bible, Heaven is the abode of God and we do not know much more about it than there is a throne and presumably a bookshelf (John sees in Revelation 20:11 that there are “books”, hence).

Dylan’s description, “a place without pain of birth,” seems more applicable to the Kingdom of God, the paradise that will come down on the renewed and beautified earth when Jesus comes back, When He Returns. But in that case it is rather alienating to use the words with which Buddhists describe Nirvana. In addition, Dylan reveals that the place in question was created “about the same time” when He made the earth. So that really must be the Heaven in Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”), the abode of the Lord Himself. The expression is not Christian anyway, and it does not have any expressive power either. God’s abode has no birth and no pain, obviously. Neither puberty, employment protection nor remittance of pension contributions – but why should be listed what is not there? No, it really seems that the poet did not pay close attention during catechism and a bit dimly confuses the Kingdom in Heaven, God’s throne, with the future Kingdom of Heaven, here on earth. In the descriptions thereof indeed denials are used (there will be no disease, there will be no sin, there will be no war), but that Buddhist ‘no pain of birth’, probably inspired by Genesis 3;16 (‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children’), remains strange.

Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this, the appeal of the song on a budding mind like that of the culturally oppressed Josh Tillman can be felt. The song thrives on a concrete riff, something between “You Really Got Me” and “Sunshine Of Your Love”, stays between the tight boundaries of an ordinary blues progression and there is great ensemble playing by world-class musicians – foremost guitarist Mark Knopfler of course, but organ and horns are quite heavenly, too.

And lyrically there are enough edifying marks to keep the young Josh from dropping out (the Matthew references, in particular) and mysterious expressions to stay fascinated (like the Georgia Crawl), but above all: the adolescent Tillman will experience great affirmation and liberating recognition with the title and the opening verses. “My thinking is going to change”, “so much oppression” and especially: “a different set of rules”!

Like most songs from Dylan’s Christian days of creation, “Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking” is hardly covered by serious artists. Josh Tillman sometimes ventures into a Dylansong (his “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” for the compilation Subterranean Homesick Blues: A Tribute to Bob Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ is beautiful), but he steers clear of the Slow Train Coming songs.

The only really great adaptation is done by the master himself, together with Mavis Staples for the very successful tribute album Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs Or Bob Dylan (2003). The album closes with an exciting, steamy recording of an almost completely rewritten version. The Georgia Crawl has been deleted, the clumsy reference to the Kingdom of Heaven as well, and even the Matthew references to Jesus Dylan omits, a quarter of a century later. Almost, anyway; in the very last line, Staples and Dylan paraphrase Matthew 26:49, “And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him“, the kiss with which Judas betrays Jesus and kills Him – indirectly.

And that surely is devilish again.

Part one of Bob Dylan and Lord Buckley appears here.

By Larry Fyffe

In the following song lyrics, Bob Dylan pays a direct tribute to pre-Beat, stand-up comedian and recording artist Richard ‘Lord’ Buckley: 

Hey Mr. Tambourine, play a song for me
In the jingle-jangle morning, I'll come following you

(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)

The allusion is to Buckley’s parody of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”:

In came a long angular spook
He looked like seventeen gas-lighter stove pipes
Come together with jingle-jangle bells all over

(Lord Buckley: Scrooge)

Below, another tribute to the comedian by the singer/songwriter:

Go to him, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose

(Bob Dylan: Like A Rolling Stone)

The re-arranged line comes from:

To know what it means to have nothing
You must have - nothing

(Lord Buckley: The Gasser)

Many of Dylan’s songs (ie, ‘Desolation Row’) are full of Buckley’s absurdist characters who are unbound from time. Lord Buckley be the master of the low burlesque routine whereby some subject or work of art that’s held in high regard is driven into the ground by the use of comically inappropriate language.

Lord Buckley takes on the persona of a preacher dlivering a sermon about Jesus of Nazareth, the son of a carpenter:

But I'm gonna put a cat on you
Was the coolest, grooviest, swinginest, wailinest
Strumminest, swinginest cat that ever stomped on this green sphere
And they called dis here cat - Da Nazz
He was a carpenter kitty

(Lord Buckley: The Nazz)

Dylan makes burlesque of a sermon concerning an Old Testament patriarch:

Oh, God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe said, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No"; Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want, Abe
But the next time you see me comin', you better run"

(Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited)

Who among us would question that the two works quoted direcly above are low burlesque in nature. 

But what about the lyrics below?:

I was blinded by the devil
Born already ruined
Stone-cold dead
As I stepped out of the womb
By His grace I have been touched
By His word I have been healed
By His hand I have been delivered
By His spirit I have been sealed

(Bob Dylan: Saved ~ Dylan/Drummond)

The hyperbolic language and proudful boasting in the song lyrics give the careful listener pause for thought. The written words of the Holy Bible are subdued in comparison:

Not everyone that saith unto me, "Lord, Lord"
Shall enter into the kingdom of heaven
But he that doth the will of my Father which is in heaven

(Matthew 7:21)

The salvation by ‘faith’ alone or with ‘works’ debate comes to mind. It’s difficult to tell whether Bob Dylan is the jokerman or the thief; only that he certainly doesn’t want to be nailed by a parking meter:

You're a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds
Manipulator of crowds, you're a dream twister
You're going to Sodom and Gomorrah
But what do you care?

(Bob Dylan: Jokerman)

Perhaps Dylan is talking about himself.

I can’t think for you; you’ll have to decide.

You might also enjoy If you see her say “hello”.  From Bob Dylan to Buckley, Italy, Californication and that mandolin

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

by Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

‘The empire never ended.’ (Philip K Dick)

On hearing the news that Donald Trump had declared a state of emergency in order to build his border wall with Mexico, I thought of Bob Dylan and his ‘Pay in Blood’, one the strongest and strangest songs in his 2013 album, Tempest, and that puzzling line in a puzzling song:

 ‘.... I pay in blood but not my own,’

which is what any despot does – the price is always paid in the blood of others. Blood money, I thought, Gangster America. This is the reverse of what Jesus is said to have done, paid for the crimes of others with his own blood. Not so the mafia boss. Not so the slave owner:

‘I'll put you in a chain that you never will break
Legs and arms and body and bone
I pay in blood, but not my own’

In his intriguing book, Why Dylan Matters, Richard F Thomas argues that from the beginning, Dylan has identified America with the Roman Empire, and, since Time Out of Mind in 1997, Dylan has often alluded those three decades leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic, and the founding of the Roman Empire in 27 BC, achieved through bloody civil war, primarily by the general Julius Caesar whose son, Augustus Caesar became the first Roman Emperor. Like America, the Roman Empire was born out of slavery and violence.

‘I’m gonna baptize you in fire so you can sin no more
I’m gonna establish my rule through civil war,’

Bye and Bye

Dylan approaches, this period, and the Homeric period that preceded it, via the poetry of the Roman poets Ovid and Catullus, both outsiders, both outlaws who lived through the turbulent times of the transition from republic to empire. Also Thomas identifies Pay in Blood as a ‘a truly homeric song,’ suggesting that the narrator, one who is completing a long and fraught journey, is Odysseus himself after his return home, after the fall of Troy, another empire:

‘How I made it back home, nobody knows
or how I survived so many blows…’

However, like every framework we devise to understand this song, the Homeric analogy seems only a partial fit, albeit an illuminating one. Tony Attwood, in his post on the song, suggests that it is narrated by an old man (Dylan himself) contemplating revenge against his enemies (those who would call him Judus), another partial fit.  Attwood suggests that in this song Dylan has stretched himself a little too far in the direction of indirection, from a poet who can write very directly when he wants to:

You hide behind walls
You hide behind desks
I just want you to know I can see through your masks

The reference to Masters of War, in contrast to Pay in Blood, appears fortuitous to me, since Pay In Blood could be seen to be dealing with the bloody-minded and contrary will of the despot, the corrupt man of power, and more relevantly, the arms dealer whose profit comes from the blood of others – the Masters of War. Sure, this is another partial fit, but it helps explain what few of the commentaries I have read seem to successfully approach – the air of menace and lurking violence in the song. Taken a whole, it’s an ominous song with a sinister edge. None of the utterances can be taken at face value.

The more I take, the more I give

The more I die, the more I live

So says someone who takes but never gives, and whose greed never dies but only increases. Vampire talk. The empire never ended.

The problem here, as with other songs of the period like Early Roman Kings, is the shifting, uncertain nature of the narrative ‘I’, which on one had seems to speak for one suffering from oppression, personal and political, while on the other hand giving expression to gangster attitudes:

‘I got something in my pocket make your eyeballs swim
I got dogs could tear you limb from limb’

In addition to the ‘I’ we have a ‘they’ and a ‘you’ further mixing up the pronoun medicine making any kind of framework of understanding a bit of a stretch. Our understanding is further challenged by these puzzling lines:

‘I'm circlin' around in the Southern Zone
I pay in blood, but not my own.’

If however, we take Southern Zone to refer to the southern hemisphere, we may have a lead for cracking these lines. One of the Roman poets often evoked by Dylan is Virgil, with the parallels sometimes too obvious to be accidental. These lines from Lonesome Day Blues could well have come from Pay In Blood, the sentiment is that close:

‘I’m gonna spare the defeated
I’m gonna speak to the crowd
I’m gonna teach peace to the conquered
I’m gonna tame the proud’

While Virgil wrote:

‘… to teach the ways of peace to those you conquer
to spare defeated peoples, to tame the proud.’

Of course Virgil was the poet used by Dante as a spirit guide for Dante’s journey through Hell to Purgatory. Emerging from Hell, Dante and Virgil find a ‘hidden path’, leading to an island in the ‘encircling sea’, from which Mount Purgatory rises to the heavens… ‘The thought of what mysterious lands might lie in the southern hemisphere beyond the ocean had a fascination for Dante…’ (see FJE Raby “Some notes on Dante” )

Following these hints, to ‘circle around in the Southern Zone’ suggests being trapped between Hell (‘I’ve been through Hell, what good did it do?) and Purgatory, where the spirit might progress towards Heaven. The spirit of the gangster is therefore doomed to circle forever in the southern zone, unable to move upward.

Be that as it may, the last two verses of Pay on Blood bring us back to the slippery deceptions of the despot, with an implication for the state of union of modern America.

‘How I made it back home, nobody knows
Or how I survived so many blows
I've been thru Hell, what good did it do?
My conscience is clear, what about you?

I'll give you justice, I'll fatten your purse
Show me your moral virtue first
Hear me holler and hear me moan
I pay in blood but not my own.

You get your lover in the bed
Come here I'll break your lousy head
Our nation must be saved and freed
You've been accused of murder, how do you plead?
This is how I spend my days
I came to bury, not to praise
I'll drink my fill and sleep alone
I play in blood, but not my own.’

If, at the start penultimate verse, we are with Odysseus, also a king with a violent agenda, the Sacker of Cities as he was known, and with some special pleading on his own behalf as to what a rough time he’s had, we soon arrive at the classic promises of the dictator:

‘I’ll give you justice, I’ll fatten your purse/Show me your moral virtue first’.

All would be dictators promise justice and a nice flow of dirty money, just show your cards first, your, ha-ha, moral virtue. And while I holler and moan about how hard done by I am, my struggle, I pay for my power with your blood. ‘I pay in blood but not my own’ being the last word in the cynicism of the rich and powerful, the arms dealers and moneylenders.

In the last verse, after a grim promise to smash ‘your’ personal life, comes the next classic claim of the despot –

‘Our nation must be saved and freed.’ On his terms of course, and your blood will be the price.

We could take this line at face value, as if it came direct from the old, protest Dylan, but in the mouth of a greedy gangster, it serves a more cynical purpose. In the next line, ‘you’ve been accused of murder…’ we begin a shift towards Mark Antony’s hypocritical and self-serving speech in Shakespeare’s Play Julius Caesar:

‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them…’

It is Brutus who is accused of the murder of Caesar by the manipulative Mark Antony, and we find ourselves at that crucial moment in Roman history when the republic became the Empire, born in blood. In the final two lines of the song, the vampire lies down alone after having sucked out the blood of the nation, and piously repeats his mantra, I pay in blood but not my own, which has become a source of pride to him.

Who knows if Trump will have to pay for his wall with the blood of others, or America is poised, with this state of emergency he has declared, to morph from a republic into something less savoury, but Bob Dylan can be spine-tinglingly mysterious and prophetic at times. A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall was written just before the Cuba crisis, High Water, which predicts the flooding of New Orleans, was written before Hurricane Katrina. I have a friend who swears that these lines from Angelina,

‘There’s a black Mercedes rolling
Through the combat zone’

foretell the death of Princess Diana. Let’s hope that Pay in Blood, with its gangster talk, and its hint in the last verses of political mayhem, murder and power grabs is not one of those songs. An American Imperium? Feels a bit late in history for that, but where Bob Dylan, who has the blood of the land in his voice, and America is concerned, all bets are off.

‘Another politician pumping out the piss
Another ragged beggar blowing you a kiss.’

Pay in Blood

That just about says it all.

Hope you enjoy this recording from 2016. It’s a powerful performance with some significant changes to the lyric. And can anyone hear what he sings instead of ‘body’ in the line, ‘legs and arms and body and bone…’

Kia Ora

You might also enjoy: Pay in blood: the meaning of the music and the lyrics

By Tony Attwood

In his Nobel Prize Lecture, Bob Dylan paid homage to Buddy Holly, and then immediately after that he added, 

And somebody – somebody I’d never seen before – handed me a Leadbelly record with the song “Cottonfields” on it. And that record changed my life right then and there. Transported me into a world I’d never known. It was like an explosion went off. Like I’d been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me. I must have played that record a hundred times.

Leadbelly – real name Huddie Ledbetter – was both the singer and composer of the song, and it is most likely that this is the version Bob Dylan heard, recorded in 1940.

It is quite fascinating in the way in speeds up – I am not sure if this was deliberate, perhaps signifying the need to work harder and harder in the cotton fields, or it just happened on that recording.   Here are the lyrics…

by Larry Fyffe 

Low burlesque is a literary technique that takes a subject matter – for example, the work of another artist that is esteemed, and presents it in a degraded manner that is often vulgar.  Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan low burlesques Edward FitzGerald’s translation of ‘The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam’, turning the poem into a travesty:

Well, the comic book and me, just us, we caught a bus
The poor little chauffeur though, she was back in bed
On the very next day, with a nose full of puss
Yea, heavy, and a bottle of bread

(Bob Dylan: Yea Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread)

‘Bread’ is metonymical slang for ‘money’. 

Dylan messes with the translated verses:

A book of verse underneath the bough
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
Oh, wilderness were paradise enow

(The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam)

In another song lyric, the singer/song writer mocks the verse quoted below:

There was a door to which I found the key
There was a veil past which I could not see
Some little talk awhile of me and thee
There was - and then no more of thee and me

(The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam)

 Dylan, in a more earthy Sufi mood, dirties things up a bit:

Well, I got the fever down in my pockets
The Persian drunkard, he follows me
Yes, I can take him to your house, but I can't unlock it
You see, you forgot to leave me with the key

(Bob Dylan: Absolutely Sweet Marie)

He borrows the ‘key/me’ rhyme from FitzGerald.

Neither is the Dervish in the ‘Rubaiyat’ an ascetic mystic:

Waste not your hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of this and that endeavour and dispute
Better be merry with the fruitful grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter fruit

(Omar Khayyam)

With the Sufi in the lines quoted above, the singer/songwriter agrees, and heads out for the wilderness of Kansas:

It's a one track town, just brown, and a breeze too
Pack up the meat, sweet, we're headin' out
For Wichita in a pile of fruit
Get the loot, don't be slow, we're gonna catch a trout

(Bob Dylan: Yea Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread)

Debasing the ‘Rubaiyat’ (‘And still a garden grows by the water’), Dylan’s travesty is filled with drugs, and the fishy smell of Rimbaudian sexuality; the rhyme is ~ ”trout’/’out’; not ‘flout’/’without’:

The vine has struck a fibre which about
If clings my being - let the Sufi flout
Of my base metal may be filed a key
That shall unlock the door he howls without

(Omar Khayyam)

 Rather than the Gnostic alchemy of chemistry, it’s the geography of the female form that Dylan surveys:

Now, pull the drummer out from behind that bottle
Bring me my pipe, we're gonna shake it
Slap that drummer with a pie that smells
Take me down to California, baby

(Bob Dylan: Yea Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread)

Bob Dylan loves his country pie.

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

Let’s have a quick look ahead at what’s coming this year in the world of Bob Dylan.

First up is Trapper Schoepp’s album “Primetime Illusion”. The album is already released and came out on January 25th. This album includes the Dylan co-write “On, Wisconsin”. You can read about the track and have a listen to this and another track here.

For those of you who may be interested in this, Michael Bolton also had a new album coming “A Symphony Of Hits” on February 8, 2019. This includes newly recorded versions of his greatest hits with a complete orchestra. The album includes a newly recorded version of “Steel Bars”, his 1985 Dylan co-write. Once again you can read about the track here. It is a song that I always disliked, but after reading Tony’s review of the track I gained a new appreciation of the song’s lyrics (Bolton’s over the top singing and production is another matter entirely). Hopefully this version will improve on some of the tracks short comings.

Coming in March is a new album by Jack Savoretti “Singing To Strangers”. This includes a new Dylan co-write titled “Touchy Situation”. A review of this song will be coming soon as it becomes available. There is a 15 track deluxe edition as well as signed edition exclusive to Amazon.

Savoretti has already recorded a great version of Nobody ‘Cept You on a previous album. Here is a live version of his take on the track:

Another album due out early this year is by Bear And A Banjo. So far the title and release date is unknown. However it will include the Dylan co-written track “Gone But Not Forgetten”.  This was discovered by Untold-Dylan last year and reviewed here. Several articles have sprung up including the original Untold-Dylan lyrics! https://www.consumerwatchfoundation.com/bobs-gone-not-forgotten-remembered/

Coming to Netflix this year is the new documentary movie – “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese”. Whilst there is no official release date yet, it is known that Bob did record a new interview for the film, and there is a rumour that there will be a soundtrack CD available, with the possibility that this will be the next Bootleg Series release.

As I don’t want to speculate on the possibility of a new Dylan studio album that’s about it for now…anyone know of any other interesting releases coming this year please note in the comments below.

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

by Jochen Markhorst

Captain Haddock is not introduced until the ninth album, in The Crab With The Golden Claws (Le Crabe aux pinces d’or, 1941). The character is a golden find from Hergé. The impulsive, physical and upbeat Haddock gives an esprit which the colourless, one-dimensional straight man Tintin simply lacks, much like the bloodless Asterix needs a funny man Obelix , like the upright Dean Martin only becomes amusing thanks to Jerry Lewis.

In that first album with Haddock, Hergé immediately creates an iconic image in an iconic scene. On page 26 the plane with Tintin and Haddock makes a crash landing. In Spain, they think. However, a little later they find the skeleton of a dromedary. But, Haddock deduces, that means we are not in Spain. But in the Sahara. And that animal has died of … he is not capable of saying the horrible word and faints when Tintin finishes his sentence: “… died of thirst, of course.”

The nightmare of the excessive drunk Haddock: The Land of Thirst. The next one-and-a-half pages, the distraught sponge only has one line of text. No matter what Tintin says, whatever happens, Haddock vacantly glazes into the distance and mechanically repeats (five times): “The land of thirst …”

It is too hard, too awful, too much of nothing – and that will make a man feel ill at ease.

Horror vacui, the dismay of the captain is called, the fear of the empty. According to Aristotle, a natural science phenomenon that explains why nature does not allow emptiness, and it was a long accepted explanation until it was refuted in 1614 by Evangelista Torricelli’s experiments with vacuum. The term, however, is too good to be wasted and is maintained, for example for the visual arts (the urge to leave nothing empty on a painting) and philosophy (the drive to find an answer for every question).

Dylan’s lyrics do not seem very eloborate and developed, but if we take it seriously, the approach is: psychological. An excess of nothing makes a person tense, insensitive, vicious, deceitful, turns him, in short, into a particularly unpleasant fellow. But, as mentioned, not very elaborated. Presumably this is also one of those lyrics that Dylan quickly rattles out of his old typewriter in the living room of the Big Pink, while the guys from The Band downstairs prepare the stuff for the next session.

All analysts point to T.S. Eliot, because of those two names in the chorus. Valerie and Vivian indeed are the two women in the life of the Nobel Prize-winning British-American writer. As far as Eliot’s work is concerned, Dylan has been pretty dismissive for a long time. Back in 1965 still distinctly hostile, even:

“You read Robert Frost’s The Two Roads, you read T. S. Eliot – you read all that bullshit and that’s just bad, man, It’s not good. It’s not anything hard, it’s just soft-boiled egg shit.”

In 1966 still not very tolerant:

“Carl Sandburg and T. S. Eliot aren’t poets. Their words don’t sing. They don’t come off the paper. They’re just super-romantic refugees who would like to live in the past. I never did admire them.”

And in 1978 Dylan also regards him one of those poets who ‘assume they know something you don’t know’, he thinks Eliot is presumptuous.

In the years that follow, there is apparently a revaluation. In Chronicles T.S. Eliot is mentioned twice. One time outright positively: I liked T. S. Eliot. He was worth reading, and the other time Dylan refers to a work:

T.S. Eliot wrote a poem once where there were people walking to and fro, and everybody taking the opposite direction was appearing to be running away. That’s what it looked like that night and often would for some time to come.

The revaluation is unexpected and at least as remarkable is the small misleading that Dylan undertakes once again. The Eliot text to which Dylan refers does not come from a poem, but from a little known play, from The Family Reunion (1939):

Agatha:
In a world of fugitives
The person taking the opposite direction
Will appear to run away

This careless assignment fits into a pattern; Chronicles is so interspersed with erroneous references and incorrect assignments that it must be a conscious strategy. Dylan also talks about Pericles’ Ideal State Of Democracy (the statesman and general Pericles never wrote any book at all), Tacitus’ Letters to Brutus (which do simply not exist, in the days of Tacitus Brutus had been dead for two hundred years) and he mentions Sophocles’ book on the nature and function of the gods – Sophocles really only writes tragedies and has never written such a book. (Hesiod did, but he lived about three centuries earlier). And also in interviews he frequently screws up names, titles and works.

Not too important. What is interesting is Dylan’s final recognition of T.S. Eliot, and thus indirectly the recognition of what others have been saying for a long time: that there are really some lines to be drawn between both Nobel laureates. Perhaps not content-wise, although some overlap can be found. The famous ‘in the room the women come and go’ from The Love Song Or Alfred J. Prufrock for example, which echoes in “All Along The Watchtower” and the name-check in “Desolation Row”, of course. But the most striking similarity is the working method, the artistic vision of both literary geniuses.

T.S. Eliot is the mint master of the much-quoted immature poets imitate; mature poets steal and practices it, too. His chef d’oeuvre The Waste Lands is an amalgam of paraphrased quotes from both the ‘high-culture’ and the ‘low-culture’, a cross-border masterpiece in which snippets from among others Shakespeare, Wagner, Dante, the Bible but also from popular schlager music and old folk songs are processed. Indeed: exactly like his soul mate Dylan operates – mature poets do steal.

For the masterly, sketchy miniature “Too Much Of Nothing” Dylan seems to have browsed through his Collected Works of Shakespeare, admitting Bible scraps and reflections from Greek myths in between.

The title echoes Much Ado About Nothing, the overall mood breathes King Lear. The alienating word combination abuse a king can only be found once in the world literature; in Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince Of Tyre (‘Peace, peace, and give experience tongue / They do abuse the king that flatter him’) just like the bizarre to eat fire is unique; the only known corresponding act is Portia’s horrible suicide from the fourth act of Julius Caesar (‘she fell distract and, her attendants absent, swallowed fire’).

Ill at ease is the old-fashioned phrase that Cassio uses in Othello, Leontes in The Winter’s Tale dreads sleeping on a bed of nails, and words like temper, to mock, oblivion and confession have never been used by Dylan before, but are found hundreds of times at Shakespeare.

Only the beautiful line Now, it’s all been done before / It’s all been written in the book does not seem to have been stolen from Shakespeare, but inspired by the Bible: ‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.’ (Ecclesiastes 1: 9). And Shakespeare also mentions those waters of oblivion, but the origin is much older, of course; by that, the Ancient Greeks meant the River of Forgetfullness, the Lethe, in the underworld.

The magical beauty of T.S. Eliot’s and Dylan’s works lies within the coherent, poetic image that rises from all these odds and ends, the fascination within its multifaceted nature.

Here, in this song, a fatigue is worded lyrically, that much is clear – but whereof? Is this narrator fed up with materialism, with our consumption-oriented society? Could be. Dylan writes this in 1967, anti-materialism is in the air and those few more serious songs he so seemingly effortlessly plucks from that same air, these days, all describe emptiness, desolation, dissociation: “I’m Not There”, “This Wheel’s On Fire”, “Tears Of Rage”,”One Man’s Loss” and, in a way, “I Shall Be Released” too.

The chorus with greetings to Valerie and Vivian pushes all surrounding imagery in a different direction: to a blues-like lamento of the bitter lover, of a narrator who is discouraged by the empty-headedness, or the disinterest of his beloved.

Confusing is the use of the preposition in the refrain. ‘Send them all my salary / On the waters of oblivion’? Are Vivian and Valerie forgotten, in the dustbin of history, floating around on the waters of oblivion? But then: how would he remember their names, and some moral obligation to send them money? Now the storyteller seems to sing something like ship my money to them disremembered ladies of bygone days – it is either a paradox or an anacoluthon, an ungrammatical sentence.

Well, apparently, the poet prefers a nicely flowing verse line over syntax.

Just as easily the song poet dashes off, once again, a beautiful melody. Since The Basement Tapes Complete (2014) we know for sure that Dylan in these summer months, like a Mozart, has access to an inexhaustible Source of Beautiful Melodies. All those sketches and shreds that are indifferently left behind on the cellar floor … every other artist would have, like a Salieri, thanked God for ideas like “On A Rainy Afternoon”, “I’m Guilty Of Loving You” or “Wild Wolf”, not to mention “Sign On The Cross” and “I’m Not There” – but Wolfgang Amadeus Dylan chews on it once and spits them out again.

“Too Much Of Nothing” escapes the cornfield. It belongs to the fourteen songs manager Albert Grossman takes to the market and it is the first Basement song to get an official release, as Peter, Paul And Mary record it in the late summer of ’67. They even score a hit with it, in November. Some created legend surrounds that recording. The trio changes Vivian into Marion – the name of my aunt, according to Noel ‘Paul’ Stookey – and that is said to have displeased Dylan, would have led to the final estrangement between the poet and the trio that had once established his name (with their recording of “Blowin’ In The Wind”).

That slightly sensational story is eagerly pumped around, among others by a repentant Stookey himself, in Kathleen Mackay’s Intimate Insights from Friends and Fellow Musicians (2010):

“We blew Dylan’s rhyme scheme of Vivian,” Stookey admitted. “Dylan never said anything. We never copped to it. But as a songwriter myself, I can imagine that you write a chorus with alliteration and poetic quality, and it all hangs on the name Vivian, then you hear Marion and say ‘what’s that?’”

Yeah, well. Maybe so. But not very likely. In general, Dylan does not seem very sensitive to what others are doing to his songs. Manfred Mann only phonetically imitates “Quinn The Eskimo”, female colleagues often change she and him and he and her, even at the expense of rhyme, Joan Baez loses the alliteration of “Mama You Been On My Mind” with “Daddy You Been On My Mind” and Dylan himself is just about the first to disrespect his own lyrics; he changes them continuously and is rarely text-proof when, during concerts, he surprises his audience with some forgotten gem from the lower shelves.

An alleged discomfort with the cover by Peter, Paul And Mary can not be attributed to its quality either. It is actually a surprisingly good, beautifully layered version of a song of which they really only had a rather sketchy example. The usual pitfall of the trio – smoothed out, all too clean covers – is avoided by allowing raffled edges; the drummer as well as the harmonica player and the guitarist are unleashed in the couplets, the contrast with the stillness and the superior harmonies in the chorus causes goose bumps (on Late Again, 1968). It is too short, the only downside. And Marion, well, Marion really is not that important.

Among the colleagues the song is not popular anymore. Following Peter, Paul And Mary, there is a short boom, in 1970. The British folk rockers of around Sandy Denny, Fotheringay, record a nice, but somewhat redundant version for their nameless debut album. The same applies to The New Seekers, on their likewise unnamed debut album, also in 1970; nice, but barely different from Peter, Paul And Mary – including Vivian’s name change.

Distinctive is the slightly psychedelic approach of the obscure British progrock group Five Day Rain (1970, again), whose multicoloured cover resurfaces more than thirty years later, as a bonus track on the CD release of their only, self-titled album – it has a very attractive, very timely charm.

Just as dated, but with an exciting soul injection, is the version by Spooky Tooth, on their underrated debut album It’s All About (1968). For the reissue from 1971, with the new title Tobacco Road, “Too Much Of Nothing” is replaced by a successful cover of “The Weight”, an upgrade, indeed.

After 1970 the song evaporates more or less. A single tribute band on YouTube, the inevitable reverence by Robyn Hitchcock (very nice though, a drawling live version from The Basement in Sydney, 2014), but that does not really count – the song is, just like Vivian, floating away on the Waters of Oblivion, drying up in the Land of the Thirst.

You might also enjoy the earlier review of “Too Much of Nothing” on this site.

What else is here?

An index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page.  You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

There is an alphabetic index to the 550+ Dylan compositions reviewed on the site which you will find it here.  There are also 500+ other articles on different issues relating to Dylan.  The other subject areas are also shown at the top under the picture.

We also have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook which mostly relates to Bob Dylan today.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.

By Tony Attwood, with research by Jochen Markhorst

Of late I have been writing about some of the songs that Bob Dylan appears to have a particular affection for.  There’s a list of the other songs already covered in this series; today it is Uncloudy Day.

In many ways you only have to listen to the opening ten seconds of the recording that Bob Dylan mentions in interviews to realise this is going to be something very different.  And as you listen to this recording below, do remember it was made in 1956 – before the writing (or at least the writing that we still have recordings) of Bob Dylan the song creator, had started.

https://youtu.be/TmBNuNNnGHY

And it is not the lyrics that stop us in our tracks, although they are certainly arresting, for it is quite possible to go through the whole song without considering the words at all.  And in case you just have here is the opening…

Wo oh they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise
Wo oh they tell me of a home far away so far away 
Wo oh they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise
Wo wo they tell me of an unclouded day

Incidentally the lyrics sites that have this song listed tend to give a different version of the lyrics from that on the recording – even when they cite the Staple Singers.  That doesn’t really matter but if you want the exact version of this song – the one Dylan listened to, then these lyrics are not right.

The reason for the lyrical variation is the age of the song – it was written by Josiah Kelley Alwood in 1879 as a hymn.  Alwood was known as one of the “circuit riding” preachers who was later an elder in the North Ohio Conference of the United Brethren Church.  At the end of the century Alwood wrote about the writing of the song in A Rainbow at Midnight and A Song With Morning

It was a balmy night in August 1879, when returning from a debate in Spring Hill, Ohio, to my home in Morenci, Michigan, about 1:00 a.m. I saw a beautiful rainbow north by northwest against a dense black nimbus cloud. The sky was all perfectly clear except this dark cloud which covered about forty degrees of the horizon and extended about halfway to the zenith. The phenomenon was entirely new to me and my nerves refreshed by the balmy air and the lovely sight. Old Morpheus was playing his sweetest lullaby. Another mile of travel, a few moments of time, a fellow of my size was ensconced in sweet home and wrapped in sweet sleep. A first class know-nothing till rosy-sweet morning was wide over the fields.

To awake and look abroad and remember the night was to be filled with sweet melody. A while at the organ brought forth a piece of music now known as “The Unclouded Day.” A Day and a half was bestowed on the four stanzas.

But it was The Staple Singers version of the song from 1956 that turned Bob on, with Mavis Staples providing the lead.  The song was also performed by Phish at Farm Aid – Dylan’s favourite charity it seems, in 1998.

Many others have taken it up since including Johnny Cash, Brenda Lee, and The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Here are what I think are the original lyrics from the composer of the song…

Bob has told the story of hearing the Staple Singers version of the song when he was a youngster:

“..it was the most mysterious thing I’d ever heard. It was like the fog rolling in. I heard it again, maybe the next night, and its mystery had even deepened. What was that? How do you make that? It just went through me like my body was invisible. What is that? A tremolo guitar? What’s a tremolo guitar? I had no idea, I’d never seen one. And what kind of clapping is that? And that singer is pulling things out of my soul that I never knew were there. After hearing “Uncloudy Day” for the second time, I don’t think I could even sleep that night. I knew these Staple Singers were different than any other gospel group. But who were they anyway?

I’d think about them even at my school desk. I managed to get down to the Twin Cities and get my hands on an LP of the Staple Singers, and one of the songs on it was “Uncloudy Day.” And I’m like, “Man!” I looked at the cover and studied it, like people used to do with covers of records. I knew who Mavis was without having to be told. I knew it was she who was singing the lead part. I knew who Pops was. All the information was on the back of the record. Not much, but enough to let me in just a little ways. Mavis looked to be about the same age as me in her picture. Her singing just knocked me out. I listened to the Staple Singers a lot. Certainly more than any other gospel group. I like spiritual songs. They struck me as truthful and serious. They brought me down to earth and they lifted me up all in the same moment. And Mavis was a great singer — deep and mysterious. And even at the young age, I felt that life itself was a mystery….

“…So I had seen this picture of the Staple Singers. And I said to myself,  “You know, one day you’ll be standing there with your arm around that girl.” I remember thinking that. Ten years later, there I was — with my arm around her. But it felt so natural. Felt like I’d been there before, many times. Well I was, in my mind.

Bob returned to this subject when introducing the song again in May 2006, adding

“Tremolo guitar bar – that’s one of the hardest things to master if you’re a singer – the tremolo bar. It’s hardly ever used, you won’t hear anybody use it, because it’s very hard to control. But when you use it the right way, it can be a very beautiful effect, as we can hear from Pop Staples and The Staple Singers, singing “Uncloudy Day.”

But I think we have to remember something else.  Listening today in 2019, I am amazed by this sound, and need to play it over and over again to get the hang it, to understand it, to encompass its meaning.  And after a lifetime of listening to and playing music I know what’s going on here.   But still I was absolutely stopped in my tracks when I listened.

So what must it have been like when Bob heard it in 1956?  No wonder he was totally knocked out.

The Staple Singers could have sung it unaccompanied, or with a standard accompaniment,  and each time it would have been something very special.  But this… this is something else.  Like a bolt from the heavens.

To finish, here are the Blind Boys with their utterly different version.

Why does Dylan like these songs?

• Why does Bob Dylan like “Not Fade Away”
• Why does Dylan like “Lonely Avenue” by Ray Charles?
• Why does Bob Dylan really like “Lonesome Town”
• Why does Bob Dylan so adore “So Cold in China”?