Untold Dylan

By Tony Attwood

Love songs, lost love songs and hate songs… when it comes to pop and rock, love and lost love songs win hands down.  I suspect there are a million songs in each genre to every song of hate or utter disdain, and most of those hate / disdain songs will hardly have made it above the waterline.

Except of course for “Positively 4th Street” – and indeed in 1965 Dylan wrote, or at least made known, four such songs

• Can you please crawl out your window?
• Positively Fourth Street
• Like a Rolling Stone
• Why do you have to be so frantic (Lunatic Princess). 

He then laid off the subject, coming back to it only occasionally with pieces such as “I don’t believe you (She acts like we never have met).”  It is after all a hard subject to turn into a song, and requires an audience that is ready to spend cash on engaging with repeated negative emotions – which is a pretty dispiriting thing to do, at least after a while.

Dislike, hatred, disdain… they can all be used as the themes of popular songs but they don’t seem to sit easily within the genre – if one wants to write negatively, protest against the current situation, and politicians in general are far more popular than pointing out the horrible attributes of an individual.  Thus “Masters of War” is of course about the whole weapons industry, and even on that score, although I used to agree this was a good target, I think maybe I’ve changed my mind since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.   I want Ukraine to be able to defend itself against the invader, which means having weapons.   (Oh to be able to regain the naivety of youth!)

And as for songs against a group of individuals, I guess one could have a bash at politicians as a class (maybe “You’re all self-seeking bastards” would be a decent working title), economists (“You never once got it right” has possibilities for an as yet unwritten example  of the genre), and of course ex-lovers.  But then most ex-lovers’ songs focus primarily on sadness and regret, not an expression of downright disdain or even hatred.

So “Positively Fourth Street” remains an outsider in terms of content – and yet it has had a large number of covers – although sadly (in my estimation, and as ever of course this is just me pontificating on my own thought patterns as I write), not many are that good.

And all this led me to wonder what artists and arrangers actually think when they tackle a Dylan song.   Is it, “hey we might sell a few extra copies when people realise it’s a Dylan” or “it must be good, Dylan wrote it,” or… well, I don’t know.

The covers of this song I really don’t like are the ones in which the arranger simply copies the Dylan recording, complete with the distinctive organ part, and there are dozens of these.   Which is why I start with Lucinda Williams.  Personally I am not 100% ok with the voice, because I don’t like that much vibrato, but the simplicity of the approach gives me the deep sense of sadness rather than absolute anger, that is, if not refreshing, then at least something I can come out of after the piece finishes.

There is something here about the continuity of the two guitar parts which adds to the sadness and sense of desolation, and the sudden arrival of vocal harmonies in the “come out once and scream it” line, really is a great touch.  And a great idea to bring it back for “And just for that one moment”.   It makes the “what a drag” line really work.

Paul Westerburg choose a rocking beat and this works with the meaning of the song, in the sense that the singer is bouncing along, happily throwing out insults as he saunters past.  It’s a clever idea, and it maintains interest through what is, after all, nothing but two lines of music repeated over and over and over again.  But sadly, the instrumental verse is really not very inspiring when it could be and indeed needs to be.   After all that lead guitar is doing interesting things thereafter.

Mary and Jay of Bitter Sweet show us from the start that they are at least going give us a guitar part that does something else.   There are slight changes of nuance in the vocals as well.  But entertaining though the instrumental verses are, in the end, we are still just left two lines repeated over and over and over.

All of which makes Sharon Mcnally refreshing (sorry that just came out like that, it wasn’t meant to be a pun on Coldwater).  Suddenly I want to listen again.  Yes suddenly again I can feel the pain as well as the disdain – and for a song of disdain really to work it needs to bring in some of the pain too, in my view.   That voice is utterly suited for the song, so congratulations to the band, and to the arranger for keeping the band behind the singer.   No one else has ever got the “such a fool” line so perfect.  I feel it utterly, each time I replay this version.  Same with “and scream it”.   Brilliantly played and sung.

So moving on from the sublime to the … well yes the Persuasions version is ridiculous.  All the meaning is retained by the exquisite lead vocalist and destroyed by the bom bom boms and other accompanying lines.   These are quality, quality vocalists.  Did they think this is funny, or did they not think?  Or were they just told “you need to do a Dylan”?

Brian Ferry knows his Dylan of course and knows what he is doing.   He once said that if he met Bob he’d say, “I hope you don’t mind”, and how could Bob ever mind this gorgeous rendition which understands and interprets every single word, as does the accompaniment?

Brian makes us feel he really does know the reason why she talks behind his back.  He feels that she is taking him as a fool.   He really wishes she could stand inside his shoes.   He really does want her to know what a drag it is to have to see her.   And the band invent a new approach to an instrumental verse – whatever else you do, I beg you, listen to this all the way through.

Absolutely not for the first time I am so utterly indebtedly to Mr Ferry and the musicians and arrangers with whom he works.  This is staggering.

And then I find there is nothing more to be said.  There is nothing more that can be said.    Of course Brian Ferry won’t ever read my rambling words of tribute, but I do wish that just one time he could hear his own work as I do and realise what an amazing contribution he has made to this song, and indeed to my life.   Dylan of course created the piece.   Brian Ferry gave it the realisation that the composition deserved.

If anyone who has contact with Brian Ferry ever reads this, tell him thank you from me.

• The Dylan Cover a Day series
  1. The song with numbers in the title.
  2. Ain’t Talkin
  3. All I really want to do
  4.  Angelina
  5.  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
  6. As I went out one morning
  7.  Ballad for a Friend
  8. Ballad in Plain D
  9. Ballad of a thin man
  10.  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
  11. The ballad of Hollis Brown
  12. Beyond here lies nothing
  13. Blind Willie McTell
  14.  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
  15. An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
  16. Blowin in the wind as never before
  17. Bob Dylan’s Dream
  18. You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
  19. Boots of Spanish leather
  20. Born in Time
  21. Buckets of Rain
  22. Can you please crawl out your window
  23. Can’t wait
  24. Changing of the Guard
  25. Chimes of Freedom
  26. Country Pie
  27.  Crash on the Levee
  28. Dark Eyes
  29. Dear Landlord
  30. Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
  31. Dignity.
  32. Dirge
  33. Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
  34. Don’t think twice
  35.  Down along the cove
  36. Drifter’s Escape
  37. Duquesne Whistle
  38. Farewell Angelina
  39. Foot of Pride and Forever Young
  40. Fourth Time Around
  41. From a Buick 6
  42. Gates of Eden
  43. Gotta Serve Somebody
  44. Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
  45. Heart of Mine
  46. High Water
  47. Highway 61
  48. Hurricane
  49. I am a lonesome hobo
  50. I believe in you
  51. I contain multitudes
  52. I don’t believe you.
  53. I love you too much
  54. I pity the poor immigrant. 
  55. I shall be released
  56. I threw it all away
  57. I want you
  58. I was young when I left home
  59. I’ll remember you
  60. Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
  61. If not for you, and a rant against prosody
  62. If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different
  63. If you see her say hello
  64. Dylan cover a day: I’ll be your baby tonight
  65. I’m not there.
  66. In the Summertime, Is your love and an amazing Isis
  67. It ain’t me babe
  68. It takes a lot to laugh
  69. It’s all over now Baby Blue
  70. It’s all right ma
  71. Just Like a Woman
  72. Knocking on Heaven’s Door
  73. Lay down your weary tune
  74. Lay Lady Lay
  75. Lenny Bruce
  76. That brand new leopard skin pill box hat
  77. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
  78. License to kill
  79. Like a Rolling Stone
  80. Love is just a four letter word
  81. Love Sick
  82. Maggies Farm!
  83. Make you feel my love; a performance that made me cry.
  84. Mama you’ve been on my mind
  85. Man in a long black coat.
  86. Masters of War
  87. Meet me in the morning
  88. Million Miles. Listen, and marvel.
  89. Mississippi. Listen, and marvel (again)
  90. Most likely you go your way
  91. Most of the time and a rhythmic thing
  92. Motorpsycho Nitemare
  93. Mozambique
  94. Mr Tambourine Man
  95. My back pages, with a real treat at the end
  96. New Morning
  97. New Pony. Listen where and when appropriate
  98. Nobody Cept You
  99. North Country Blues
  100. No time to think
  101. Obviously Five Believers
  102. Oh Sister
  103. On the road again
  104. One more cup of coffee
  105. (Sooner or later) one of us must know
  106. One too many mornings
  107. Only a hobo
  108. Only a pawn in their game
  109. Outlaw Blues – prepare to be amazed
  110. Oxford Town
  111. Peggy Day and Pledging my time
  112. Please Mrs Henry
  113. Political world

by Tony Attwood

Untold Dylan started in 2008 – so we have been at it for approaching 15 years.  Indeed in a short while we’ll publish our 3000th article.  I’ve no idea how many of these articles I have written, but it is quite a few, since it took a year or two of publication for Untold Dylan to get known widely enough for others kindly to offer articles for publication on the site.  (Details of some of those who have written for the site are published here, and I’m still always keen to receive pieces from anyone who has something to say on Dylan that has not been said before.  Just email Tony@schools.co.uk).

Anyway, across the decade and a half of the site I’ve noted a few Dylan performances that stay in my mind as absolute gems, and I thought I would dig one out for today’s piece in the “Absolute Highlights” series.

It is a 1980 performance of When He Returns, and I have remembered it particularly, not just for its re-invention of the song and the power of its delivery, but because it is quite unusual for myself as an atheist, to enjoy music which celebrates a religion.  It happens, but when it does it tends to be in relation to the less overt religious pieces than this.

I guess there is nothing unusual in this.  Few of my friends who hold a religious belief are particularly attracted to songs which deny the existence of the Almighty, any more than I am drawn toward pieces of music that express in their lyrics an approval of any aspect of, for example, right-wing politics.

It was these thoughts that led me, just for this article, to jump away from the recordings that Mike Johnson has given us in his series reviewing the tour and turn back to the 1980 recording of When He Returns

In my original review which I wrote six years ago, I said, “If there were a Dylan Christian song that could convert me I guess it could only be “When He Returns”.  But it is not the album version that moves me, for there I find the piano part horribly overdone – so much so that all the twiddles, the quick arpeggios, the sudden introduction of bass notes, then scampering away to the high trebles – it is all the work of Beckett showing off, and of the producers saying, ‘hey look Bob can write a piece like THIS!!!’

“But fortunately there exists a totally different live version – and this is the piece which if I were convertible to Christianity could be used to convert me.”

And yet playing it again today, for perhaps the first time in maybe four years I didn’t hear it like this.  Indeed I found myself sitting here and wondering what all the fuss was about – which is pretty alarming since I was the one making all the fuss.

Maybe it was the sheer surprise of the musical arrangement of piano and organ duet – which is fairly unusual, maybe it was the power of Bob’s singing and his absolute commitment to the piece which influenced me.   But hearing it again, I had doubts.

And yet, and yet, now playing it for the fourth time (which of course is what those of us who listen to Dylan rarely do – we mostly play one song after another, but which I find necessary when writing an article like this) I begin to see again what made me so excited about this recording.

Now, this is odd, or at least unusual, for me.  My feelings about a recording tend not to meander around very much.  And yet now as I start playing it for the fifth consecutive time, I am again hearing what I heard when I first found this recording and thus wrote the “song that could convert me” piece.

As to what it is that draws me to this piece, I think I can get a little closer.   The balance of the piano and organ both in terms of volume and musical interaction is perfect, as is Bob’s verse over the top.   Vocally his conviction of the truth of the lyrics shines through in every line.  I don’t care that I don’t believe a word of it – it is the musical integrity which overwhelms me.

But there is one more thing – coming back to this version of this song yet again I also find myself once more noting what appear to be contradictions in the words – or perhaps simply lyrics that are constructed to fit the rhyme and the beat.

In the official lyrics we find

Can I cast it aside, all this loyalty and this pride?
Will I ever learn that there’ll be no peace, that the war won’t cease
Until He returns?

But in fact what we really ought to have and what is delivered in musical terms is

Can I cast it aside, 
all this loyalty and this pride?
Will I ever learn... 
That there’ll be no peace, 
that the war won’t cease
Until He returns?

It makes much more sense when the lyrics are re-written according to the rhyme and rhythm of the song.

And so now having played this version through multiple times as I have contemplated and then written this little piece, I am back to loving the performance.

I’m rather pleased I took the time.

The Absolute Highlights series

• 1: John Brown 1987
• 2: Desolation Row. 1990.
• 3: She Belongs to Me
• 4: Tangled up in Blue
• 5: I and I – power without meaning
• 6: It ain’t me babe – go lightly.
• 7: Perfection in desolation
• 8: Girl from the North Country.

• 1: Tarantula
• 2: The Tarantula Crawls Across The Circus Floor and 3: Arachnida Is Dead
• 4: The Bride and 5: The Return of Tarantula
• 6: Everybody loves a critic and  7: Hopalong Bob
• 8: Mad, Bad, And A Stranger To Know and 9: Miss Lucy And Mr. Jinx
• 10: A Madder Piece From Ginsberg Street and 11: The Long Dark Stranger

12:  More Mixed Up Confusion

by Larry Fyffe

A William Blake-influenced, postmodernist poet joins artist-pilgrims on their way along the Yellow Brick Road.

This time, meets up with a land-dwelling Tarantula:

(A)nd molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and
may came home with a smooth round stone
a small as the world and large as a stone
For whatever we lose (like you or me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
(EE Cummings: Maggie And Milly And Molly And May)

No Artemis she, the Moon Goddess below is not that crazy about Cummings’ poetry; prefers muscle-bound movie stars instead:

Mona - she resembles a sexy Buddah
& always looks like she's standing over the Golden Gate
she don't dig e.e. cummings - she digs Fernando Lamas
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Fernando stars in “Dangerous When Wet” with swimmer/actress Esther Williams, along with cartoon cat and mouse Tom and Jerry:

Lady Esther is the cleaning lady
& she was mopping up the floor
when I woke up
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Allegory and satire, open to more than one interpretation, be good literary devices to use when a writer is out to question the sacred beliefs of a strongly-bound mother land ~ be warned, the gates of Hades are guarded by a three-headed dog called Cerberus  – stops souls condemned thereto from escaping.

Thus spake Taranthustra:

& Cupid can now kick over the kerosene lamp
Bob Dylan, killed by a discarded Oedipus
who turned around to investigate a ghost
& discovered that the ghost too
was more than one person
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Cupid forbids mortal Psyche from looking at him, she lights a candle, and off flies the God of Desire into the night.

Oedipus unknowingly screws his own mother.

The (holy) ghost, part of a Trinity, with father God and son Jesus.

Blasphemy! above ~ Christianity equated with Ancient Roman/Greek mythology.

Might say God is compared to a Dog, goodness me.

Better to kick out the lamp, blow out the candle, and remain blind, than be sent down  to the hot pits of Hell.

Marksist Twain is at the gate!

The Tarantula orders some Fried Rich; Old Testament Yahweh gets it too:

Oh, God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe said, "Man, you must be putting me on"
God said, "No"; Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me coming, you better run"
(Bob Dylan: Highway Sixty-One)

Lord Buckley drops by holding a slave-driver’s whip while Christ, and some black Muslims, protest for civil rights, and against the Vietnam War:

(B)lack betty, black betty, blam de lam
betty had a loser, blam de lam
i spied him on the ocean
with a long string of muslims
blam de lam, going quack quack
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

God, He say " Don't bame me, blame Adam":
Nothing can hold you down, nothing that you lack
Temptations not an easy thing, Adam given the devil reign
Because he sinned, I got no choice, it run in my vein
(Bob Dylan: Pressing On)

Blame it on the stones.

13: Oval Faubus

It’s not all over between Al Capp, and Li’l Abner’s Dog Patch:

(Y)esterday I talked to Abner for forty minutes
he Abner cursed out East Texas, tomatoes
&  tin pan alley, he didn't talk to me 
he talked in a mirror
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

You don’t need a weatherman to know that East Texas is humid and rainy; and besides Patty’s from there:

Born in 'Liz Texas timber
Up where the eagles fly
Then makes him tell'im never
But she don't cry

(Tony Attwood: Patty’s Gone To Laredo ~ Bob Dylan)

Films like ‘Ace In The Hole’ and ‘Little Foxes’ are just too dark, you see.

So Sandy Bob’s keeps on looking for a balance between Fatty Aphrodite and Sandy Slim.

But he just can’t find it:

I never could guess your weight baby
Never needed to call you my whore
I always thought you were straight baby
But you're drifting too from shore
(Bob Dylan: Drifting Too Far From Shore)

https://youtu.be/lJPDvKIELY4

Already questioned in “Tarantula”, is the cozy relationship of the cowboy angels Hopalong Cassidy with Topper, and Roy Rogers with Trigger:

(M)ore or less like a roy rogers
& trigger relationship of which
under present standards is an impossibility
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Before this a flood has wiped out the Witchita falls; Tennessee Williams writes about dead-end “Camino Real”.

Sings Sands on the Sullivan Show:

More than you'll know, more than you know
Girl of my heart, I love you so
Lately I find, you're on my mind
More than you'll know
Whether you're right, whether you're wrong
Girl of my heart, I'll string along
(Tommy Sands: More Than You'll Ever Know ~ Elisu, et. al.)

The  Rolling Stones appear on the Sullivan Show, and Jack-Be-Nimble so not to be censored.

Back from the Mad House on Castle Street returns Sandy Bob ~ on a mission to save the day for the peewee music stations of Babylon America.

Peewee the Ear, whose mouth looks like a credit card
him and Jake the Flesh
along with Sandy Bob from Pecos
they're leading the white elephant to water
somewhere between witchita falls & el camino real
it's late in the day & no word from Saigon is in yet
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

It’s all more than enough to want the scales of justice to tip all the way over to the other side ~ to make a red-blooded man want to rule in hell, rather than serve in heaven.

To find an Eve before she’s kicked out of Eden, to find one with a Nietzschean “slave morality”:

I am so Sick of Biblical people
they are like castor oil
like rabies
& now I wish for
Your eyes - you who doesn't talk business
& supplies my eyes with blankness
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Ah, there must be some way outta here ~ a middle path between the two extremes of earthy materialism and heavenly spiritualism.

But nay, the strict sexual teachings of the oh-so popular Christian televangelist Oral Roberts get in the way:

(O)ne of the men, he asks, "anything bothering you?"
jenny replies,  "yes - whatever happened to Oval Faubus?"
& the man quickly drops the subject
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

• Country Pie (1969) part 1: People try and read so much into songs
• Country Pie (1969) part 2: Slap that drummer with a pie that smells
• Country Pie (1969) part 3:  I’m your wicked Uncle Ernie
• Country Pie (1969) part 4: Sugar and spice and all things nice
• Country Pie (1969) part 5: It’s weird, man
• Country Pie (1969) part 6: “A clear statement of Dylan’s present credo”

by Jochen Markhorst

VII        I thought it was just a regular peach tree

Shake me up that old peach tree
Little Jack Horner’s got nothin’ on me
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie

“I see you’ve found the Sacred Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom,” says Master Oogway shortly before his demise, as he catches Po eating emotionally.

“Is that what this is? I’m so sorry,” says an honestly startled Po with a mouth full of comfort food, full of peach that is, “I thought it was just a regular peach tree.” Screenwriters Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris have done their research, it seems; the peach tree, under which Master Oogway will leave this world moments later, dissolving in a cloud of peach blossom, symbolises immortality in China.

A peach tree, in short, is never just a peach tree – even in Kung Fu Panda (2008), it is a “Sacred Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom”. It is a family film, so the peach here – obviously – has a family-friendly connotation. Safe and at the same time old-fashioned; in the Middle Ages, peaches symbolised the Trinity (because a peach is flesh, stone and germ), but from the Renaissance onwards at the latest, the metaphorical quality shifts to lust, love, female body parts or “woman” at all (because of the soft skin).

Dylan knows that too, of course, when he sings “Shake me up that old peach tree”. Peaches, and fruit anyway, have lost all innocence in twentieth-century songwriting. Thanks mainly to Bo Carter, the foremost ambassador of dirty blues, who alternates educational gems like “Pussy Cat Blues”, “Please Warm My Wiener” and “My Pencil Won’t Write No More” with fruity ambiguities like “Banana In Your Fruit Basket” or “Let Me Roll Your Lemon”. And to a pioneer like Blind Lemon Jefferson, who starts filling the fruit basket with songs like “Peach Orchard Mama” (1929, Peach orchard mama, you swore wasn’t nobody gonna use your peaches but me).

But at the time of the Basement, Dylan presumably was mainly singing along with Sonny Boy Williamson II, who also has “Peach Orchard Tree” in his repertoire, who sings “Until My Love Come Down”, in which the harmonica master serves up a complete fruit cocktail;

I like yo' apple in your tree
I'm crazy 'bout yo' peaches, too
I'm crazy about your fruit, baby
'Cause you know just how to do

And otherwise with Yank Rachel’s “Peach Tree Blues” from 1942, on which Sonny Boy plays along:

Don’t them peaches look mellow, hanging way up in your tree
Don’t them peaches look mellow, hanging way up in your tree
I like your peaches so well, they have taken effect on me

… of which, incidentally, Big Joe Williams then makes “Don’t Your Plums Look Mellow Hanging On Your Tree”. But both variants owe their euphoniousness, of course, to the inspiration of others; to Kokomo Arnold’s “Milk Cow Blues” (Don’t that sun look good, going down, 1934) or to Leroy Carr’s “Alabama Woman Blues” (Don’t the clouds look lonesome across the deep blue sea / Don’t my gal look good when she’s coming after me, 1930), which Dylan lovingly copied on to “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry”.

The comrades in the Basement, The Band, experienced “the most magical day of our lives” (Levon Helm’s autobiography This Wheel’s On Fire, 1993) in the spring of ’65 when they spent an afternoon spontaneously jamming with Sonny Boy in Helena, Arkansas, shortly before his death, so the line from Sonny Boy Williamson II to the Basement to Dylan’s “Country Pie” is pretty short. Yielding, in all likelihood, Dylan’s familiarisation with the association peach tree = female body.

But: Dylan is Dylan. So, unambiguous it seldom is, and a Dylan in Basement-mood most certainly isn’t. Each dirty blues squares an ambiguity like Shake me up that old peach tree with a subsequent, equally piquant metaphor. “Squeeze it the whole night long”, for instance, “I’m gon’ climb up on your top limb” or “You gotta give me some of it ‘fore you give it all away” or endless variations with grabbing, picking, shaking, snatching, or rattling and more obvious allusions to lovemaking. But hardly any dirty bluesman would have the nerve to follow up his ding-a-ling‘s desire for pie, peach, lemon, poodle or sugar bowl with a children’s verse like “Little Jack Horner’s got nothin’ on me”, so with an unequivocal reference to:

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating his Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, "What a good boy am I!"

… the eighteenth-century nursery rhyme in which an apparently not too savvy smug gobbler demonstrates utterly misplaced pride after performing a totally pointless act. Unknown in pop music, though, Little Jack is not. Shortly before Nashville Skyline, Stevie Wonder’s “Do I Love Her” does occasionally pop up on the radio (Bees love honey, banks love money / Birdies love to fly / Little Jack Horner in the corner loves his Christmas pie), and in the Basement days, Dylan undoubtely is familiar with Skip & Flip’s 1959 Top Twenty hit, the unpretentious sing-along “Cherry Pie”;

Like Little Jack Horner sat, sat, sat in the corner
Eating his cherry, cherry pie
I didn't put in a thumb
I didn't pull out a plum
I guess I'm not as great as he, whoa-oh, whoa-oh

… in which – coincidence, presumably – the associative leap from cherrie pie to country pie is even smaller than the one from Christmas pie to country pie. But anyway, still closer under Dylan’s skin is that one bluesman who has little hesitation about larding obscene allusions with quotes from nursery rhymes, one of the giants we’ve been hearing resonating in Dylan’s oeuvre for sixty years now:

My sister's name is Puttentang,
If you ask me again I'm gonna tell you the same,
My brother's name is Little Jack Horner
Mama told to watch the baby he didn’t wanna.

Putt told papa when he got home,
Papa, papa, he sassed and moaned,
Papa looked at brother with fire in his eyes,
Brother started doin’ the hand jive.

… “Nursery Rhyme” from Bo Diddley’s first LP with a funny cover, 1959’s Have Guitar Will Travel. On the 1966 collector The Originator, the song is renamed “Puttentang” – the peculiar name seems an obvious mutilation of the French noun putain, but most online fans suspect a corruption of an alleged slang word for vagina, “pootang”. Either way: slightly obscene. And the nod to Johnny Otis’ “Willie And The Hand Jive” (1958) is less debatable, of course. On the other hand: this Jack Horner has the decency of refraining from poking his fingers in any pie. Or squeezing any peaches.

To be continued. Next up Country Pie part 8: Nine words that changed my life

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic

• 1: Tarantula
• 2: The Tarantula Crawls Across The Circus Floor and 3: Arachnida Is Dead
• 4: The Bride and 5: The Return of Tarantula
• 6: Everybody loves a critic and  7: Hopalong Bob
• 8: Mad, Bad, And A Stranger To Know and 9: Miss Lucy And Mr. Jinx

10: A Madder Piece From Ginsberg Street

by Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan’s “Tarantula” by itself justifies his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The humorous, semi-coded book records Bob’s pilgrimage to New York State with his pen pals that include, among others, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, and Alice B.Toklas:

(T)o South Duchess County comes Them
& Woolworth's Fool
& triumphant alice toklas 
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Influenced by William James’ “stream of consciousness” concept; Emanuel Swedenborg’s concept of “correspondences”; images from Picasso’s Cubist paintings; and th eating of Mary Jane cookies, Toklas hops along casually down the Yellow Brick Road.

She plays with words to produce images that depict the material world sidesattled on emanations flowing forth from the mysterious and timeless spiritual realm:

Godiva was tired, and old Gertrude Stein
in spring bought a new car 
(Alice B. Toklas: The Alice B.Toklas Cookbook)

Meanwhile, satirist Lord Byron comes and goes on Rue Morgue Avenue, speaking with Edgar Allan Poe:

(C)ompared to the big day
when you discover lord 
byron shooting craps 
in the morgue
with his pants off
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

With them too, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his wife Zelda Sayre, the archetypical southern belle.

After they stop at an inn for a cup of coffee, Zelda scampers off into the woods, and has a knotty affair with a French pilot:

(Z)elda rat asks for a black 
mongrel - please make it hot
& one of the men dangles a watch
in front of her face 
"it's late - zeld babe - it's late"

The troupe’s led by Friedrich Nietzsche, the Wiseman of the State:

Nietzsche tells a story about the resentful, metonymic Tarantula who preachers that all humans are equal; he’s the nemesis of metonymic Superman, those who contol the State. Tarantula, in desperation, plays the death card – says it makes everybody happy.

Bob relates a tale that turns Friedrich around; in it, Tara-Man carries a case that contains a Kryptonite guitar; he tempts Superman to defy it ~ the electric power of song, music, and poetry exposes Superman’s mortal weakness, his Achilles’ heel ~  his love for the Golden Calf; that is, his desire for money, and material things.

One song that Bob sings quotes from ‘The Monk’s Tale’ by Geoffrey Chaucer:

One of these days, I'll end up on the run
I'm pretty sure she will make me kill someone
(Bob Dylan:  My Wife's Home Town)

11: The Long Dark Stranger

Ìn “Thus Spake Zarathustra, the tarantula’s a fuzzy friend of Christian preachers who declare that all members of the human race will be treated equally at the pearly gates; there, St. Peter gives them either a thumbs-up, or a thumbs-down.

Looking up, the metonymic Overman on Earth is not that concerned because it’s the good life, not death, that he’s after.

Now, there’s a dualistic conundrum begging to be satirized.

No one’s willing to accept the blame when things go wrong.

In the song below, metonymic Eve gets the blame – maybe even murdered:

Black Betty had a baby ...
Bam a lam, little thing went crazy ...
Bam a lam, little Tiny went blind ...
Bam a lam, l said he was none of mine ...
What about it, Black Betty
(Lead Belly: Black Betty ~ Ledbetter/traditional)

In the burlesque below, sea-walker Christ, the “Lamb” ~ according to St. John ~ takes the blame; i.e.,”blam’ de lam’ “:

(B)lack betty, black betty, blam de lam
betty had a loser, blam de lam
i spied him on the ocean
with a long string of muslims
blam de lam, all going quack quack
(Bob Dylan: Black Betty)

Nietzsche’s figurative “tarantula” classifies human behaviour in terms of “good” and “evil”; be nice to your fellow man, including your rulers, and St. Peter will open up the gates for you; the Overmen, those in power, think in terms of “good” and “bad”; those they rule are considered weak – flawed in character – in need of guidance, if not outright punishment that includes death.

Accordingly, on the micro-level, those with a ‘slave morality’, woman for example, resentful though they may be, all they can do to exercise their ‘will for power” is to provide men with comfort in one form or another; though careful they must be.

Such sentiments, not so cut and dried (indeed ambiguously so), expressed in the following song lyrics:

You give something to think about, baby
Every time I see you
Don't worry, I don't mind leaving
I'd just like it to be my idea
(Bob Dylan: Never Gonna Be The Same Again)

A line drawn from a western movie that takes place in wide-open Wyoming country filled it is with sunshine. The times they are a-changing ~ Shane (Alan Ladd), handy with a gun, is hired as a ploughman by a farmer who has a wife and son; they’re concerned about the gunman’s effect on their kid. Says Shane, guns are just a tool, neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’.

Which side is Shane on?

First encounter with the farmer involves a misunderstanding:

Farmer: What’s the difference? You’re leaving anyway”

Shane: “I’d like it to be my idea”

Later Shane goes into town to a bar, and orders a soda-pop:

“What’s it be? Lemon, strawberry,  or lilac, sodbuster?”

Apparently,  the bar has no raspberry or lime.

At the end of the movie, Shane, wounded, rides off into the sunset after helping the struggling homesteaders in the valley hold their own against a greedy cattle baron, and his hired guns ~ most of them depicted on the screen as clearly ‘evil’.

In Bob Dylan’s “Tarantula”, the Lead Belly spoof is placed under the title: “Having a Wierd Drink With The Long Tall Stranger”.

The movie “The Tall Stranger” stars Joel McCrea as an ex-Civil War officer reluctant to use a gun; he’d rather negotiate in an effort to resolve a conflict.

The film messes with a western story written by Louis L’Amour.

The movie about an attempted arranged range war in Colorado, not only jams in too many subplots, but it turns the original story that’s similar to that of ‘Shane’, into a confusing shoot’em-upper in the middle of the night.

Better for the movie had “Ned” more lead for his tongue.

By Tony Attwood

Bob Dylan’s music is known for many things, one of which is the interesting chord changes that he incorporates into some of his songs.   But Political World turned that upside down by giving us a song that stayed on one chord all the way through.

And when that happens one needs something else to keep the momentum – such as rhythm and an exquisite lead guitar part, which this recording by Dylan demonstrates perfectly.

I’ve cited that version above because it does show what a challenge anyone wanting to cover the song has – how do you keep up the momentum and excitement without any chord changes at all?

Betty Lavette and co decide to give us an introduction and then add a reggae rhythm without any reference to the chord at all – the melodic instruments are playing their own melodies as a counterbalance to the vocal.  Thus rather than have one chord there are no chords until…. the instrumental section, which just suddenly changes key.

Now a sudden key change is often an utterly naff thing to do since it basically says “sorry can’t think of anything else to do” but here, making it the instrumental section in contrast to no overt chord playing before, it works.  A clever idea and one that really does add to the whole piece, rather than just being a clever idea.

Tuomo and Markus are not names I know – or at least didn’t know until this moment.  And that is simply because I am not totally au fait with Finnish soul and jazz.  But judging by this I ought to be.  It once again is highly inventive and as a way of illustrating the lyrics really worth hearing – unless of course you only like music that keeps to the beat.

Which brings us to the Chimes of Freedom version by Carolina Chocolate Drops which I have raved over before in relation to an article written in liaison with Aaron.   The vocal harmonies are magnificent, the violin playing is a perfect foil for the vocal verses – oh what a joy this version is.

• The Dylan Cover a Day series
  1. The song with numbers in the title.
  2. Ain’t Talkin
  3. All I really want to do
  4.  Angelina
  5.  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
  6. As I went out one morning
  7.  Ballad for a Friend
  8. Ballad in Plain D
  9. Ballad of a thin man
  10.  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
  11. The ballad of Hollis Brown
  12. Beyond here lies nothing
  13. Blind Willie McTell
  14.  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
  15. An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
  16. Blowin in the wind as never before
  17. Bob Dylan’s Dream
  18. You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
  19. Boots of Spanish leather
  20. Born in Time
  21. Buckets of Rain
  22. Can you please crawl out your window
  23. Can’t wait
  24. Changing of the Guard
  25. Chimes of Freedom
  26. Country Pie
  27.  Crash on the Levee
  28. Dark Eyes
  29. Dear Landlord
  30. Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
  31. Dignity.
  32. Dirge
  33. Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
  34. Don’t think twice
  35.  Down along the cove
  36. Drifter’s Escape
  37. Duquesne Whistle
  38. Farewell Angelina
  39. Foot of Pride and Forever Young
  40. Fourth Time Around
  41. From a Buick 6
  42. Gates of Eden
  43. Gotta Serve Somebody
  44. Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
  45. Heart of Mine
  46. High Water
  47. Highway 61
  48. Hurricane
  49. I am a lonesome hobo
  50. I believe in you
  51. I contain multitudes
  52. I don’t believe you.
  53. I love you too much
  54. I pity the poor immigrant. 
  55. I shall be released
  56. I threw it all away
  57. I want you
  58. I was young when I left home
  59. I’ll remember you
  60. Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
  61. If not for you, and a rant against prosody
  62. If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different
  63. If you see her say hello
  64. Dylan cover a day: I’ll be your baby tonight
  65. I’m not there.
  66. In the Summertime, Is your love and an amazing Isis
  67. It ain’t me babe
  68. It takes a lot to laugh
  69. It’s all over now Baby Blue
  70. It’s all right ma
  71. Just Like a Woman
  72. Knocking on Heaven’s Door
  73. Lay down your weary tune
  74. Lay Lady Lay
  75. Lenny Bruce
  76. That brand new leopard skin pill box hat
  77. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
  78. License to kill
  79. Like a Rolling Stone
  80. Love is just a four letter word
  81. Love Sick
  82. Maggies Farm!
  83. Make you feel my love; a performance that made me cry.
  84. Mama you’ve been on my mind
  85. Man in a long black coat.
  86. Masters of War
  87. Meet me in the morning
  88. Million Miles. Listen, and marvel.
  89. Mississippi. Listen, and marvel (again)
  90. Most likely you go your way
  91. Most of the time and a rhythmic thing
  92. Motorpsycho Nitemare
  93. Mozambique
  94. Mr Tambourine Man
  95. My back pages, with a real treat at the end
  96. New Morning
  97. New Pony. Listen where and when appropriate
  98. Nobody Cept You
  99. North Country Blues
  100. No time to think
  101. Obviously Five Believers
  102. Oh Sister
  103. On the road again
  104. One more cup of coffee
  105. (Sooner or later) one of us must know
  106. One too many mornings
  107. Only a hobo
  108. Only a pawn in their game
  109. Outlaw Blues – prepare to be amazed
  110. Oxford Town
  111. Peggy Day and Pledging my time
  112. Please Mrs Henry

By Tony Attwood

High Water 2007 

I would imagine that performing a song about a flood, indoors, on stage, requires quite a bit of re-thinking.  But doing it with a song that has already been rethought so much that as I’ve noted elsewhere, it really has little if anything to do with the original that Dylan cites as his source, is doubly hard going.

And yet here, in this live performance, Bob does manage to portray the desolation, and somehow link us back to the cited Charley Patton, while taking us on a journey into the horrors of flooding, without actually making it a horror show.

Which when put like that makes the performance sound pretty amazing, which it is.

In fact, this recording operates at so many contradictory levels that it is neigh on impossible to write about (not that this is going to stop me).

For way beyond any attempt to link these lyrics to reality, this version of High Water really attracts me not because of Bob’s singing but particularly because of the re-arrangement of the music.   Just listen to the start before Bob’s voice comes in – and then hear the way he sings against this minimal accompaniment.   And then the full accompaniment hits us at “Nothing Standing There”.   This really is inventiveness within a minimalist musical construction based on just one chord until we get to the short chorus lines which give us two chords more.

And if the technicalities of the music are not of interest to you, just think of the sound and the images of flooding.  At that level too, this performance is a masterpiece.

For the notion of flooding from which one cannot escape is enough to bring a total sense of panic to most people, but Bob manages through this arrangement to deliver not so much panic, as a sense of desolation and desperation.   There is also a type of sparceness in the musical arrangement that has me thinking of being in the roadway above the water but watching the flood rise and rise on both sides, and there being no way out.

Besides this, the way Bob sings gives the sense of trying to escape, but at the same time the accompaniment gives the sense of water everywhere exactly as the lyrics suggest.

With this sort of arrangement, it is very easy for every instrumentalist to get carried away with their own input into the chaos, and as a result the music would become a mess, but this is controlled and indeed at times reduced.   Each instrument is butting into the music of the other but the musical accompaniment itself survives, representing the water everywhere no matter what else happens.

Somehow we just don’t know what is going to happen as each instrument juts in at odd times often playing the repeated two note theme, one instrument echoing another.  (Just listen to the instrumental break halfway through.)

Plus one has to remember the lyrics.   Maybe some of the students of literature who study Dylan’s words have made sense out of verses like…

Well, the cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies
I'm preachin' the word of God
I'm puttin' out your eyes
I asked Fat Nancy for something to eat, she said, "Take it off the shelf
As great as you are a man,
You'll never be greater than yourself"
I told her I didn't really care
High water everywhere

… but I haven’t – not in the slightest.   Yet hearing this version of the song it didn’t matter – they became just lines of chaos, jutting out on occasion from the destruction and havoc caused by the flood.

The song ends

I just can't be happy, love
Unless you're happy too
It's bad out there
High water everywhere

and with this performance, I don’t care that this doesn’t make any sense, for flooding doesn’t make any sense.  In fact in its nonsense it does makes sense, except that this very statement makes no sense.  And yet that seems right as we head to the end.

Generally speaking I’m not one for chaos, but I love this arrangement.

• A Dylan Cover a Day 43: High Water
• The re-writing of High Water – Bob’s experimental meander

The Absolute Highlights series

• 1: John Brown 1987
• 2: Desolation Row. 1990.
• 3: She Belongs to Me
• 4: Tangled up in Blue
• 5: I and I – power without meaning
• 6: It ain’t me babe – go lightly.
• 7: Perfection in desolation
• 8: Girl from the North Country.

This series looks at recordings Bob Dylan has made of songs he did not write.  A list of previous episodes in the series can be found at the end.  As ever in the series, Aaron selects the songs and makes his own comments, and then Tony replies.

by Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: “Mr. Bojangles” is a song written by country music artist Jerry Jeff Walker for his 1968 album of the same title.

Wikipedia tells us: “Walker was inspired to write the song after an encounter with a street performer in a New Orleans jail. While in jail for public intoxication in 1965, he met a homeless man who called himself “Mr. Bojangles” to conceal his true identity from the police. Mr. Bojangles had been arrested as part of a police sweep of indigent people that was carried out following a high-profile murder. The two men and others in the cell chatted about all manner of things, but when Mr. Bojangles told a story about his dog, the mood in the room turned heavy. Someone else in the cell asked for something to lighten the mood, and Mr. Bojangles obliged with a tap dance.”

Tony: I’m very grateful to you Aaron; I’d didn’t know the origin of all this, even if it might be apocryphal.   I find in listening to this I’m much more taken by the music than the lyric although actually, I don’t care much for the way that the arranger tries to add something extra to the chorus.

Musically it is very adventurous for a pop song – the line before the chorus modulates twice, which is probably not unique for a piece of pop but is certainly unusual.   In fact I had to listen to it twice (which I know is cheating) I was so surprised at what the music does.  The piece is in C but it flirts with being in A minor and G, which is what gives the unusual effect in the “jumped so high” line.

Aaron: In the first few years after release it was covered by the likes of Harry Nilsson, Neil Diamond, Lulu, John Denver, Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone, Sammy Davis Jr., and most successfully by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who’s version hit #9 in the US charts.

Tony: I don’t like the emphasis on the drum to give us the 1-2-3 effect of a fast waltz; musically it is in 6/8 not 3/4 – and yes there is huge difference (which I won’t bore everyone with now).  They’ve done this I’m sure to emphasise the notion of the dancer, which for me isn’t what the “jumped so high” and “clicked his heels” is all about.   It’s beautifully sung, but the arranger should be severely punished for what he/she has done to such a lovely melody and chord sequence.

Aaron: Bob’s version appeared on his 1973 studio album, Dylan. Wikipedia describes it as “a much loved version of the song”.

Tony: Bob took it at a much more stately pace and we back in six beats to a bar.  And although there is the female chorus with its “oooo” behind Bob, the essence of the song is retained and I get a real sense Bob is not only paying tribute to a famous song, but he utterly understands its essence – as of course we would fully expect.   Not too sure about the half shouting out of the title at the end of each verse, and for once I wonder if Bob wasn’t influenced by the arranger or producer rather than his own feeling for the song.  I guess he is emphasising the anguish of the old man, but for me it is far, far, far too false and very un-Bob.

Aaron: After Robbie Williams included it on his “Swing When You’re Winning” hit album it became something of a swing standard – I debated about including this on a Bob Dylan website, but here we are!

Tony:  It is always your choice Aaron as to what to put in these articles, but I found this something of a relief, hearing a sparse accompaniment at the start here after Bob’s version. Indeed I do think Robbie Williams has a real understanding of what the song is about.   Now I know this is a bit of an odd thing to say, after all there are not many lyrics and how could one not understand, but arrangers do tend to get carried away by the music and forget the meaning expressed in the lyrics, on occason.

And yet even here we get into the bizarre – the full orchestration followed by a bit of imitation scat… it is almost as if there was a feeling that everyone else has recorded the song and so one can’t just simply perform it.  What hasn’t been done?  Oh I know…

And why do arrangers so often want whistling on their productions?

Aaron: Eventually Steve Earle got his hands on it in 2022 and give us this fine version.

Tony: Of course I have no idea how many readers actually do work their way through all the examples selected, and my ramblings thereafter, although where I have been able to have conversations it appears that a lot of people who are kind enough to follow the series do read in full, even if they disagree.

But to you, dear reader, I’m glad you’ve made it to here and that you will be playing this in full.   It is the best version of the song you are likely to find, not least because it uses some of the tricks that producers and arrangers feel the need to include, but for once keeps them under control.   I thought the strings were particularly effective as a way of accompanying the two-part harmonies of the voice toward the end.   And although the percussion does give us the regular 1-2-3 we still get the feel that this is 6/8 and not a ludicrously fast waltz.

And above all this version keeps everything under control and let’s the song be itself.  And that more than anything is what needs to happen.  Full marks to Steve Earle and co for resisting everyone else’s extras, and just doing it.  Lovely end too.

Previously in this series…

1. Other people’s songs. How Dylan covers the work of other composers
2. Other People’s songs: Bob and others perform “Froggie went a courtin”
3. Other people’s songs: They killed him
4. Other people’s songs: Frankie & Albert
5. Other people’s songs: Tomorrow Night where the music is always everything
6. Other people’s songs: from Stack a Lee to Stagger Lee and Hugh Laurie
7. Other people’s songs: Love Henry
8. Other people’s songs: Rank Stranger To Me
9. Other people’s songs: Man of Constant Sorrow
10. Other people’s songs: Satisfied Mind
11. Other people’s songs: See that my grave is kept clean
12. Other people’s songs: Precious moments and some extras
13. Other people’s songs: You go to my head
14. Other people’s songs: What’ll I do?
15. Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle
16. Other people’s songs: Belle Isle
17. Other people’s songs: Fixing to Die
18. Other people’s songs: When did you leave heaven?
19. Other people’s songs: Sally Sue Brown
20. Other people’s songs: Ninety miles an hour down a dead end street
21. Other people’s songs: Step it up and Go
22. Other people’s songs: Canadee-I-O
23. Other people’s songs: Arthur McBride
24. Other people’s songs: Little Sadie
25. Other people’s songs: Blue Moon, and North London Forever
26. Other people’s songs: Hard times come again no more
27. Other people’s songs: You’re no good
28. Other people’s songs: Lone Pilgrim (and more Crooked Still)
29. Other people’s songs: Blood in my eyes
30. Other people’s songs: I forgot more than you’ll ever know
31.  Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
32. Other people’s songs: Highway 51
33. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
34. Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
35. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
36. Other people’s songs: Highway 51 Blues
37. Other people’s songs: Freight Train Blues
38. Other People’s Songs: The Little Drummer Boy
39. Other People’s Songs: Must be Santa
40. Other People’s songs: The Christmas Song
41. Other People’s songs: Corina Corina

• 1: Tarantula
• 2: The Tarantula Crawls Across The Circus Floor and 3: Arachnida Is Dead
• 4: The Bride and 5: The Return of Tarantula
• 6: Everybody loves a critic and  7: Hopalong Bob
• 8: Mad, Bad, And A Stranger To Know and 9: Miss Lucy And Mr. Jinx

By Larry Fyffe

Tarantula Island

In a secret “Untold Dylan” vault is locked a copy of the first edition of ‘Tarantula’ ~ a short book by Bob Dylan, entitled ‘Tarantula Island’.

Exclusive to our readers is a quick summary of the original pulp novelette.

 * * * * *

The book opens at a play where Prince Hamlet is addressing the skull of a court jester:

"Where be your gibes now?
Your gambols?
Your songs?"
(William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act V, sc.i)

The Prince is compared to gospel singer Lady Aretha Franklin:

(P)rince hamlet - he's somewhere on the totem pole
he hums a shallow tune
"oh, killing me by the grave"
Aretha - lady godiva of the migrants
she sings too

(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

The “Tarantula Island” version simply says that Hamlet’s song lyrics get stolen.

Note: sometime later additional lyrics, claimed to be intended for the first edition, are bootlegged under the label of “The Pig”:

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

(Roberta Flack: Killing Me Softly ~ Fox, Gimble, Lieberman)

A reference to a poet who’s admired by another poet (apparently not a very good one) appears in both the new and older editions of the novelette:

(F)ox eyes from abilene
garbage poet from the
greyhound circuit
& who has a feeling for the most lost
pieces of frost

(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

That poet wrote the following poem:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep

(Robert Frost: Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening)

That poet later alluded to again in the song lyrics quoted beneath:

The evening sun is singing low
The woods are dark, the town is too

(Bob Dylan: Tell Old Bill)

Then there’s the big chapter in the first edition ~ a story about a hard-drinking pirate named Shirley Temple – goes by the nom de plume

“JC Penny”; gets arrested after stealing a big diamond necklace from a Danish ship; it’s hidden around the neck of her long-haired teddy bear.

Mentioned but a bit in the second edition:

(A) water logged pen & a bunch of old Shirley
temple pictures
with her neck in a noose was all I could find

(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Things get interesting right about now in the first edition ~

the curly-haired pirate is hanged, and her shack in the woods falls down.

Detailed later in the song lyrics below:

Now the chimney is rotten
And the wallpaper's torn
The garden in the back
Won't grow no more corn
(Was Brothers: Shirley Temple Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Dylan et.al)

Hanged she is, but not before Shirley tells her three-fingered boyfriend that she stashed the teddy bear with the necklace in a casket, and there’s a map hidden in the shack that’s in the back of the woods that shows the way to the treasure.

The name of Pirate Penny’s mysterious boyfriend is Jerry Day, but, honour bright, he says his name is Jerry Night.

Three-fingered Jerry hooks up with one the many former lovers of pirate Penny, with one who calls himself “Billy Bones”; says he’s from Key West, but he’s really from Key East.

Off they go hunting together for the treasure:

I was thinking about turquoise
I was thinking about gold
I was thinking about diamonds
And the world's biggest necklace
(Bob Dylan: Isis ~ Dylan/Levy)

Not to be  spoiler, I’ll just conclude my review by saying that the casket’s found, but the teddy bear’s gone!!

• This article continues from NET 2010 Part 2.1 Mostly Padova: Fires on the Moon

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

Net 2010 Part 2.1 concluded with a version of Cold Irons Bound.  Good as that is, it might not, however, be the best performance of the year for that song. I’m leaning towards this one from Clemson, also number 9 on the setlist, as a suitable rival for the ‘best ever’ stamp I gave a 2009 performance (See NET, 2009 Part 2). It’s partly the harp break; the soaring opening few notes, starting at 3.19 mins. Also, the recording is sharper though the sound is not as rich as Padova.

Cold Irons Bound (B)

For the fourth song in a row, Dylan keeps the harp, which he plays with one hand while playing the organ with the other, for ‘Under the Red Sky.’ These duets between harp and keyboard characterize this era, running from 2003 to 2012, when Dylan switches to the grand piano. Somewhat more upbeat than most performances of this song, it skips along with a bit of a swing. A ‘best ever’? Must be pretty close.

Under the Red Sky

‘Highway 61 Revisited’ often comes about three quarters of the way through a concert and is always good for kicking the energy level up. In 2009 we saw how Dylan used these fast songs to take us back to the good ol’ days of rock n’ roll, at least in spirit, but here with that ripping organ, the song is pushed towards the jazzier end of rock.

As with ‘Levee’s Gonna Break’ we hear Dylan using a few organ notes and his exquisite timing to create a mighty eight and half minute epic. We’ve never heard the song done quite like this – hypnotic and ecstatic.

Highway 61 Revisited

Number 12 on the setlist is ‘Can’t Wait’ which I covered in the last post. For readers who didn’t catch that remarkable performance, I can only urge you to go back to part 1, 2010 and listen to it. It’s a kicker.

Number 13 on the Padova setlist is ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ the opening track from Modern Times. This upbeat song is a great outpouring of words and a celebration of Dylan’s eclectic lyric writing. It leaps about all over the place, wherever the music’s coming from – ‘there’s hot stuff here and everywhere I go.’

Thunder on the mountain, rolling like a drum
Gonna sleep over there, that's where the music coming from
I don't need any guide, I already know the way
Remember this, I'm your servant both night and day

I can’t help thinking that that last line refers to us, his audience. Now fully in command of his material (‘I don’t need any guide’), he can serve us, as he’s always done, with this great storm of music. There’s a neat backing riff from Sexton and Kimball. Another enthusiastic vocal from Bob, but it pays to have the lyrics on hand. Note how the song quietens down in the middle for a minimal but rocking organ break. Dylan sounds more like Freddie Roach than ever here. Mr Jazz struttin’ his stuff. Try to keep your feet still!

Thunder on the Mountain

We swoop back to the sixties now to catch ‘Ballad of a Thin Man,’ a NET favourite. While few live performances have captured the eerie spookiness of the album version, this one comes close with a gutsy vocal and a gentle jazzy tooting harp. In 2011 Dylan will add an echo to his voice, but I think I prefer this heartfelt performance.

 Ballad of a Thin Man

Perhaps in recognition of its iconic status, Dylan likes to present his famous ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ towards the end of a concert, usually the third to last, as in this case where it’s number 15 on the setlist. A rousing song sure to energize the faithful for a penultimate burst of enthusiasm. This is a solid performance, but a little too much of the old dumpty-dum for me; instead of swinging, it bounces, but that doesn’t seem to bother the enthusiastic audience.

Like a Rolling Stone

‘Jolene,’ one of the ‘slighter’ songs from Together Through Life, often turns up near the end, number 17 on the setlist, as it is a swinging, crowd-pleasing number with a good old fashioned rock ‘n roll feel to it. Some fancy guitar work from Sexton and some scintillating organ from Bob. The kind of performance that leaves the audience wanting more.

Jolene

Before launching into his final number, ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ Dylan does an energetic introduction of the band. As it’s one of the few times he talks to the audience, it’s cool to listen to.

Band introductions

Finally, ‘Watchtower’ which hardly needs an intro from me at this stage. What is interesting here is that Dylan again moves to centre stage with the guitar. He ain’t no Jimi Hendrix, but the whole band have a lot of fun going out on this one. Wish I’d been there.

 Watchtower

So we leave Padova behind, but not 2010. There’s plenty more to come. See you soon.

Kia Ora

A full index of the 100+ Never Ending Tour articles appears here.

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

Every year of the NET we can find outstanding concerts, and some are memorable beyond their particular year. We remember Prague of 1995, Berlin 1996, Glasgow 2004 and Brixton 2005 as important milestones along the way. For 2010, the ‘best ever’ concert would have to be Padova, Italy, 15^th June, notable for Dylan’s swirling, bluesy-jazz organ playing and overall energy. Dylan and band are on fire.

I’m going to work my way through that concert, with some comparisons to other performances. We’ll hear some great sounds, but also have a chance to see how Dylan was structuring his concerts at this stage of his performing career.

He likes to start with a warm up, something fast and familiar to his audiences, usually an early song like ‘Maggie’s Farm,’ ‘Rainy Day Woman’ or, in Padova, ‘Leopard-skin Pill-box Hat.’

Leopard-skin Pill-box Hat (A)

It pumps along and gets the blood moving but there’s not a lot to distinguish it from this one a few days later in Dornbirn, 19^th June.

Leopard-skin Pill-box Hat (B)

Dylan likes to follow up the opener with something quieter and more reflective, also from his early years.

The Padova number 2 was ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ which we heard in the previous post, where I also covered number 3 on the setlist, ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,’ one of Dylan’s warmest songs, and one which he’s still performing. I’m going to replace that with this mystery recording of ‘The Man In Me.’ My sources have this as coming from Belgrade, June 6^th, but it does not appear on the setlist for that concert. It’s a fine version of the song, however, another centre stage performance, this time with harmonica.

The Man in Me

As he did at Linz (see previous post) he stays centre stage for ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ at number 4 on the setlist, which, in 2010, he tends to play without the harp, focusing instead on the guitar.

Tangled Up In Blue

Only when we get to number 5 on the setlist do we find a more recent song, in this case ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ from Modern Times. It’s a chuggy blues. With the first line repeated, it’s the third line that does the hard work:

Well, I look in your eyes, I see nobody other than me
I look in your eyes, I see nobody other than me
I see all that I am and all I hope to be

There’s a lot packed into that last line.

When Dylan switched from piano to organ in 2006, the keyboard sound was very much in the background, almost subliminal, and he rarely attempted an organ break, but 2008/9 saw Dylan increasingly confident of his organ sound and, while his playing would never be as melodically complex as, say, the rich jazz sound of Freddie Roach on his Hammond, by staying within his vamping, tempo-driven, ‘primitive’ style, he was able to deliver an exciting, jazzy, pulsing, organ break in ‘Levee.’ This must come close to a ‘best ever’ performance, rocking along for an epic eight minutes.

The Levee’s Gonna Break

That really got the joint jumpin’, while the next up number, the ominous ‘Masters of War,’ takes us back to the old ‘protest’ Bob without any loss of intensity from ‘Levee.’ Since 2003 Dylan has been playing a slow, funereal ‘Masters’ that can chill the blood. This Padova performance is just one in a long line of outstanding performances. The perfect song for the circus barker. Note how he repeats the last line of each verse, adding a chord. (For my ‘best ever’ version of the song in this style, check out the Berlin performance of 2005, see NET 2005 Part 5).

Masters of War

For number 7 on the Padova setlist, ‘I Don’t Believe You,’ Dylan pulls out the harmonica for the first time that evening, and once more goes centre stage. The sound is weighed towards the bass and Dylan’s voice is pure gravel.

 I Don’t Believe You

Dylan returns to the keyboard, but keeps his harp handy for a moving performance of his elegiac masterpiece, ‘Workingman’s Blues #2.’ Interesting to note that of the eight songs delivered so far, this is only the second from his later work, another from Modern Times. All the rest, except ‘Tangled’ have been sixties classics. You have to be in the mood for ‘Workingman’s Blues.’ Coming close to the middle of the concert, it’s the slowest song of the evening, and the most contemplative. The Padova audience is happy to welcome it, however. Wonderful vocal from Bob, with whimsical harp interjections.

Workingman’s Blues #2

Number 9 on the Padova setlist is a relentless, pounding performance of ‘Cold Irons Bound,’ from ‘Time Out Of Mind.’ This blistering rocker, a total change of pace from ‘Workingman’s Blues,’ might well be the stand-out performance of the evening.

Cold Irons Bound (A)

NET 2010 Part 2.2 will follow shortly.

A full index of the 100+ Never Ending Tour articles appears here.

by Tony Attwood

OK, so I am getting old, but looking at the title “Please Mrs Henry” it took me a few moments to recall how the song went.   I did get there, but it shows that as a Dylan composition, its impact on me hasn’t been that great.

And I was honestly surprised to be reminded that anyone had bothered to do a cover version: after all it is not a particularly inspiring song – at least not to me.  And that despite the fact that we have covered the piece before on Untold Dylan.  Obviously, my memory is fading.

But Jochen did find matters of interest therein in his review and suitably gave me a wrap over the knuckles noting a  “disgruntled Tony Attwood hears ‘quite a bit we don’t need to know’ and dismisses the song with some disdain.”  So that’s me put in my place.

Jochen found several covers that he took to be of interest – and there being a shortage of covers I found the same collection, and a few more.  Go to Jochen’s review for a different opinion.

“Marquee Mark” was the Crust Brothers only album I think, and it is not for me, primarily because it is not my type of music.  Quite simply it simply doesn’t do anything for me.  Maybe it does for you, in which case maybe you’ll enjoy that version above.

Cheap Trick does give us an entertaining opening which is taken at a speed that allows the music to make its mark, but once again musically I am a bit lost – which undoubtedly is a reflection of my age.   As above, I wouldn’t really want to play this twice.

Manfred Mann treat the song as a piece of music more than a set of sounds, which is how I hear the first two versions above.  And the chorus does come across as a chorus, distinguished from the verses, and that is, I guess, helpful.  As a result, I am inclined to focus more on the lyrics, although I am not sure they tell me too much.

Yes, “down on my knees I ain’t got a dime” is a good line, and they do give it some focus with an interesting backing, especially just after the two-minute mark.   Although I am not sure if this number of repeats to fade is quite worth it.

Trials and Tribulations also recorded (if I remember aright) “Open the Door Homer” and I’d say they made a decent fist of not very much material, giving us a pleasant rendition of the repeated rhyme, which fits in with but contrasts with the verse.    Given what I feel is the paucity of the original material, it’s a really good effort.

Just saying the lyrics is ok given the variation of the backing instrumentation, but I think by this stage I’ve listened to what I still find are uninspiring lyrics too often to find much of great interest in the song.   The instrumental verse sounds like it was going somewhere but then retreats into things we’ve heard before.

Nope, I have really tried take note of Jochen’s comments from four years ago, but I still can’t get anything out of this song.  Sorry – I hope you fare better.

• The Dylan Cover a Day series
  1. The song with numbers in the title.
  2. Ain’t Talkin
  3. All I really want to do
  4.  Angelina
  5.  Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
  6. As I went out one morning
  7.  Ballad for a Friend
  8. Ballad in Plain D
  9. Ballad of a thin man
  10.  Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
  11. The ballad of Hollis Brown
  12. Beyond here lies nothing
  13. Blind Willie McTell
  14.  Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
  15. An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
  16. Blowin in the wind as never before
  17. Bob Dylan’s Dream
  18. You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
  19. Boots of Spanish leather
  20. Born in Time
  21. Buckets of Rain
  22. Can you please crawl out your window
  23. Can’t wait
  24. Changing of the Guard
  25. Chimes of Freedom
  26. Country Pie
  27.  Crash on the Levee
  28. Dark Eyes
  29. Dear Landlord
  30. Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
  31. Dignity.
  32. Dirge
  33. Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
  34. Don’t think twice
  35.  Down along the cove
  36. Drifter’s Escape
  37. Duquesne Whistle
  38. Farewell Angelina
  39. Foot of Pride and Forever Young
  40. Fourth Time Around
  41. From a Buick 6
  42. Gates of Eden
  43. Gotta Serve Somebody
  44. Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall.
  45. Heart of Mine
  46. High Water
  47. Highway 61
  48. Hurricane
  49. I am a lonesome hobo
  50. I believe in you
  51. I contain multitudes
  52. I don’t believe you.
  53. I love you too much
  54. I pity the poor immigrant. 
  55. I shall be released
  56. I threw it all away
  57. I want you
  58. I was young when I left home
  59. I’ll remember you
  60. Idiot Wind and  More idiot wind
  61. If not for you, and a rant against prosody
  62. If you Gotta Go, please go and do something different
  63. If you see her say hello
  64. Dylan cover a day: I’ll be your baby tonight
  65. I’m not there.
  66. In the Summertime, Is your love and an amazing Isis
  67. It ain’t me babe
  68. It takes a lot to laugh
  69. It’s all over now Baby Blue
  70. It’s all right ma
  71. Just Like a Woman
  72. Knocking on Heaven’s Door
  73. Lay down your weary tune
  74. Lay Lady Lay
  75. Lenny Bruce
  76. That brand new leopard skin pill box hat
  77. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
  78. License to kill
  79. Like a Rolling Stone
  80. Love is just a four letter word
  81. Love Sick
  82. Maggies Farm!
  83. Make you feel my love; a performance that made me cry.
  84. Mama you’ve been on my mind
  85. Man in a long black coat.
  86. Masters of War
  87. Meet me in the morning
  88. Million Miles. Listen, and marvel.
  89. Mississippi. Listen, and marvel (again)
  90. Most likely you go your way
  91. Most of the time and a rhythmic thing
  92. Motorpsycho Nitemare
  93. Mozambique
  94. Mr Tambourine Man
  95. My back pages, with a real treat at the end
  96. New Morning
  97. New Pony. Listen where and when appropriate
  98. Nobody Cept You
  99. North Country Blues
  100. No time to think
  101. Obviously Five Believers
  102. Oh Sister
  103. On the road again
  104. One more cup of coffee
  105. (Sooner or later) one of us must know
  106. One too many mornings
  107. Only a hobo
  108. Only a pawn in their game
  109. Outlaw Blues – prepare to be amazed
  110. Oxford Town
  111. Peggy Day and Pledging my time

• Tarantula
• The Tarantula Crawls Across The Circus Floor and Arachnida Is Dead
• The Bride and the Return of Tarantula
• The Tarantula Files parts 4 and 5

By Larry Fyffe

Part 6: Mad, Bad, And A Stranger To Know

(C)ompared to the big day
when you discovered lord
byron shooting craps
in the morgue
with his pants off
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Byronic Man stays down in a dark hole most of the time.

‘Cept when he comes out to bite someone he wants to digest.

Said it might be that when atop his doghouse – wearing his “Tarantula” cape -, singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan is a self-centred Rimbaudian Poe-it, shooting popguns at everyone but himself.

But no…praise be to Neptune ~ though critical, the narrator also places himself on Desolation Row.

Below, lines about the protest songs of the day –  mocked be one because it’s a traditional lullaby that’s supposed to stir up the masses.

Snappy Snoopy is out for blood:

(I) gave my love a cherry
sure you did
did you ask her how it tasted
fool
you also gave her a chicken
n wonder you want to start a revolution

(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Watered-down rhetoric surfaces as protest against the bourgeois establishment:

I gave my love a cherry
That has no stone
I gave my love a chicken
That has no bone
I gave my love a story that has no end
And I gave my love a baby
That has no crying
(Pete Seeger: The Riddle Song ~ traditional)

“Crying-in-your-beer” country-and- western songs of the run-down members of the industrial working class, drawn away from their green romantic pastures, be another target of the bowman’s arrows:

(T)hrew away all of my lefty frizzell records
also got rid of my parka
you can keep my cow as I am now
on my road to freedom
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

An example beneath of a hard-drinking city man:

If I only knew where to find her
I'd crawl there on my hands and knees
Each tick of the clock's a reminder
She's one second farther from me
She's gone, gone, gone
Gone, gone , gone
(Lefty Frizzell: She's Gone Gone Gone ~ Howard)

Time passes slowly so the Tarantula puts his cynical time-machine in obverse – at least for a while, he does:

I've been hanging onto threads
I've been playing it straight
Now, I've just got to cut loose
Before it's too late
So I'm going
I'm going
I'm gone
(Bob Dylan: Going, Going, Gone)

For him, Christian hymns be not the opiate of the masses, but, hiding in the hemlock, the poisonous snake that curbs the desire that flows trough the heart of lonely individuals.

At the singer below stones are thrown, but she’s unsinkable – her Ship of Souls moves on (Franklin was torn between Jupiter and Apollo):

(A)retha
pegged by choir boys
& other pearls of mamas
as too gloomy
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Part 7: Miss Lucy And Mr. Jinx

Said it could be that the pilgrims in Bob Dylan’s “Tarantula, on their way to New York City, are joined by one-legged satirist Al Capps, creator of the cartoon “Li’l Abner”;

From a Jewish background, the cartoonist becomes rich and famous ~ mocks Vietnam War protesters.

Further said it could be that Dylan burlesques Capp because the cartoonisrt becomes so mean-spirited.

Dylan writes the following antiwar lyrics:

Oh, his face was all shot up, and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waste
He whispered kind of slow in a voice she did not know
While she couldn't even recognize his face
(Bob Dylan: John Brown)

In “Tarantula”, there’s Brown Dan who’s obversely given the the initials BD. Unable to go off to a foreign war where he could get his face blown off, Brown Dan sure knows how to deal with those anti-war protesters in America whom he claims support the Viet Cong.

When they come down to “Tex’s-ass”, that is:

(O)nward then when Brown Dan, the creep cop
who likes to kill bullfrogs
& whose boss keeps saying "he's got a bad knee but
you oughta see him run, babe
you oughta see'm run & chase them little chink
lovers when they come down the river"
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Dylan’s living in Hibbing, Minnesota, with his Jewish parents, when the Suez Crisis happens; and the Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel automobile.

Anti-Israel president Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal with the rhetorical support of Britain’s American cousins who criticize the Israeli, French, and British invasion of Egypt. A bit later, the American-made car Edsel turns out to be a ‘lemon’, not so the British-made Jaguar.

History obviously burlesqued in “Tarantula”.

“Peewee” therein perhaps the personification of America:

Peewee drops his cookies
as up drives an XKE with Sandy Bob's cousin, Sandy
Slim, who shows everybody his pictures of Nasser
& says " hold it boys, I know all about these things
- I used to work at the edsel factory"
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

As Dylan’s book is ‘bootlegged’ before being officially published, conjectured it can be that ‘Peewee’ becomes the name of Al Capp’s cartoon character who’s a spoof of ‘wishy-washy’ Charlie Brown (from “Peanuts’, the newspaper cartoon by Charles Schultz).

In “Peanuts”, Lucy is always pulling away the football when Charlie Brown runs to kick it; in “Li’l Abner”, Joe Btfsplk, with a black cloud always over his head, is “The world’s worst Jinx!!”.

The two bathe in Jungian waters:

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy,
They jumped in the lake
I'm not that eager to make a mistake
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

• Country Pie (1969) part 1: People try and read so much into songs
• Country Pie (1969) part 2: Slap that drummer with a pie that smells
• Country Pie (1969) part 3:  I’m your wicked Uncle Ernie
• Country Pie (1969) part 4: Sugar and spice and all things nice
• Country Pie (1969) part 5: It’s weird, man

by Jochen Markhorst

VI         “A clear statement of Dylan’s present credo”

I don’t need much and that ain’t no lie
Ain’t runnin’ any race
Give to me my country pie
I won’t throw it up in anybody’s face

 Rolling Stone reviewer Paul Nelson thinks Nashville Skyline “could well be what Dylan thinks it is, his best album,” and writes a corresponding jubilant review, 31 May 1969. It’s a particularly friendly song-by-song review, and Nelson thus also dwells on “Country Pie”. And has an original opinion on the lyrics of this second bridge: Ain’t running any race/Get me my country pie [sic]/I won’t throw it up in anybody’s face is “a clear statement of Dylan’s present credo.”

Leaving aside the naive premise that the first-person narrator in the song is Dylan himself, which besides by common sense should by now have been adequately disproved by Dylan’s mantra, “credo” if you will, je est un autre, it is also puzzling what the reviewer considers a “clear statement”. None of those three verse lines is unambiguous. In fact, the third, I won’t throw it up in anybody’s face, is downright puzzling. From the overall tenor of the review, it can be deduced that Nelson qualifies the LP as a testament to Dylan’s “new-found happiness and maturity”, and elevates to “credo” then the arguably weakest verse line of the entire album, Love is all we need/It makes the world go round, from the bridge of “I Threw It All Away” (which Nelson, as if to illustrate the facile superficiality of his article, after the rattling quote of the give to me my country pie line from this second middle eight, again misquotes; it’s Love is all there is).

Content-wise, this second bridge falls a bit out of tune, here in “Country Pie”. No eccentricities such as giant geese, marathon violinists, Saxophone Joe with his hogshead or a pie assortment, but still Basement-style bollocks. Only the opening line I don’t need much and that ain’t no lie is untainted by this, with Basementesque humour. But Basementesque nonetheless; after all, filler lyrics that Dylan plucks here and there from his vast working memory, we also know from the Big Pink. Throwaways like “One For The Road” and “I’m Alright” consist entirely of rock and country clichés, and in gems like “Odds And Ends” or “This Wheel’s Of Fire”, the impovising song poet, as here in “Country Pie”, glues up the gaps between the frenzies with whole and half quotes from the canon.

Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions, then, would be an educated guess. In Basement songs like “I’m Alright” and especially “All You Have To Do Is Dream”, we have already heard more echoes of Curtis’ best Chicago soul records of the 1960s, People Get Ready (1965) and Keep On Pushing (1964), the record we also see on the cover photo of Bringing It All Back Home. Robbie Robertson, especially, is a fan, judging by the many Curtis guitar licks he sneaks into Dylan’s basement songs. And snippets of lyrics can be heard everywhere – like this “I don’t need much”, from People Get Ready‘s delightful opening track, the modest hit “Woman’s Got Soul”;

Now I'm just a regular fellow
I don't need much
I don't need a Cadillac car
Or diamonds and such
But the woman that I hold
She's got to have soul

Of course, “I don’t need much” is far too generic to attribute to one unique source – but if “Country Pie” is a Basement relic, which seems more than likely by now, Curtis is an obvious candidate. Just as, say, Chuck Berry’s “I Got To Find My Baby” (1960) can be designated as the obvious purveyor of the subsequent rock ‘n’ roll cliché that ain’t no lie – especially since we hear as many Chuck Berry echoes as Curtis Mayfield fragments in those same Basement songs;

I got to find my baby
I declare that ain't no lie
I ain't had no real good loving
Since that girl said goodbye

Well, technically not a Chuck Berry song, actually. But “I Got To Find My Baby” or “Gotta Find My Baby”, though written by Peter Clayton in 1941, is more or less confiscated by Berry – when The Beatles play the song (live at the BBC, 1963) they also seem to think they are covering a Chuck Berry song. With, incidentally, a splashy harmonica contribution by Lennon, which Dylan will also appreciate (although the 1956 version by the “King of the Harp” Little Walter probably is one step higher up in his gallery of honour).

Anyway, Dylan’s I don’t need much and that ain’t no lie is the remarkably unremarkable stepping stone to the terzet that the Rolling Stone critic considers “a clear statement of Dylan’s present credo”, to Ain’t running any race/Give to me my country pie/I won’t throw it up in anybody’s face.

That last line is of course the most striking, and especially for that peculiar “throw up in a face”. No mistake; that’s how it is published in the official Lyrics, and that’s how we hear Dylan sing it in both the official release on Nashville Skyline and in “Take 2” on The Bootleg Series 15 – Travelin’ Thru (the outtake released on The Bootleg Series 10 – Another Self Portrait is cut short a few seconds before this passage of text).

Weird; it’s admittedly conceivable that a playful Dylan, a certified slapstick fan, would want to do something with pie-in-the-face-throwing. “Daydream”, the 1965 Lovin’ Spoonful hit from his mate John Sebastian, is still in the air (A pie in your face for bein’ a sleepy bulltoad), and apart from that, any entertainer who has already sung thirteen pies, like Dylan at this point in “Country Pie”, will start throwing them, preferably in faces. But it takes a particularly villainous kind of humour to infect such an innocuous classic with the ambiguous “throw up”… and in particular “throw up in a face” is of a student-like nastiness that is miles away from all the homeliness and family happiness that reviewers like Paul Nelson see in it – bizarrely enough.

To be continued. Next up Country Pie part 7: I thought it was just a regular peach tree

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic

By Tony Attwood

Aaron (with whom, as you may know, I have been writing the “Other People’s Songs” series) recently emailed me pointing out an article in Far Out Magazine from way back in August 2022, based on an interview given to HuffPost back in 2009.  In it Bob reveals his favourite songs from his favourite songwriters.

There are 14 songs covered and Aaron has suggested that we (by which he means I) might have a look at them.

So, having been totally ignorant of the article until this moment, but always willing to pick up a challenge, here we go with song number one. Jimmy Buffett: ‘Death of an Unpopular Poet’

This song was released in 1973.   The music is simple with the accompaniment being added to in the second verse, and then the broader orchestration in the middle 8.

But of course such an academic look at the music doesn’t convey the emotion of the song, following the theme of the ignored genius who is recognised only after he has passed away.

And indeed history is packed with such people; people as diverse as Bach and Turing, people who are either shunned because of what they are, or because they simply carried on creating or inventing, and were seemingly not that worried that they were not recognised, or who really were “before their time”.

And indeed history’s excuse for not recognising genius at the time is neatly encapsulated in the last line of the song, “He was just a poet who lived before his time”.  Although I must admit I have never been happy with that “before his time” notion, as it really does seem like a very poor excuse to me.  A way of excusing not making an effort to understand something that is different.

Thus, what it’s worth, my own view is that throughout the history of humankind, the defining what is good, worthwhile, honourable, etc etc has been used as a tool of power.  The “good” and “great” in artistic terms are often defined as a way of bolstering those in power.   Dylan himself, of course, has generally been an exception.

Thus Dylan’s choice of this song though is interesting in a different way; he has not suffered from the “ignored genius” syndrome, for he was recognised from the moment Freewheelin was released, if not with the first album, and he’s never looked back.  Indeed you only have to think not only of songs like “Masters of War” but also of the number of times that he has changed directions and ignored both the critics and the conventions of the day, to see that this is not an issue for Dylan.

Even the bile thrown at him as he moved from being a solo performer to having an electric band behind him did not make him succumb to the pressure of others, no more than does the occasional ultra-negativity of critics like Heylin (who as far as I know has not composed many, if any, songs) who set themselves up as arbiters of what is, and what is not, a great composition.

There’s also an interesting musical twist in that there is a temporary modulation in the sixth line (at the word “cry” in the first verse); a technique that Bob does not ever use (as far as I can remember).   Which combined with the musical arrangement and the way the melody works is very un-Dylan.   Bob has in fact chosen a song, that he would never write – at least not in this way.

In short, Dylan lavishes his praise (which personally I do agree, is absolutely due) on a song that he probably could not have written, at least musically, and I suspect lyrically (although Bob has ventured so far and wide lyrically one can never be quite sure that he hasn’t mentioned his pet dog somewhere – I am sure if he has someone will quickly point that out to me and I’ll feel utterly stupid for having forgotten.)

Bob has however touched on the topic of the lost hero, but he has done it in an utterly different way.  I’m thinking of “John Brown”, and one can’t get further from “Death of an unpopular poet” than “John Brown”, but the theme of the forgotten hero is the same.  (If you want to be reminded of John Brown there is a recording from the Never Ending Tour which I totally recommend, on this site).

so, overall, this is a moving and beautiful piece of music, and I can immediately see why Bob has put it at the top of his list.  Here are the lyrics…

I once knew a poet
Who lived before his time
He and his dog Spooner
Would listen while he'd rhyme
Words to make ya happy
Words to make you cry
Then one day the poet 
Suddenly did die

But he left behind a closet
Filled with verse and rhyme
And through some strange transaction
One was printed in the Times
And everybody's searchin'
For the king of undergound
Well they found him down in Florida
With a tombstone for a crown

Everybody knows a line
From his book that cost four ninety-nine
I wonder if he knows he's doin'
Quite this fine

'Cause his books are all best sellers
And his poems were turned to song
Had his brother on a talk show
Though they never got along
And now he's called immortal
Yes he's even taught in school
They say he used his talents
A most proficient tool

But he left all of his royalties
To Spooner his ol' hound
Growin' old on steak and bacon
In a doghouse ten feet 'round
And everybody wonders
Did he really lose his mind
No he was just a poet who lived before his time
He was just a poet who lived before his time

You’ll find more about our series on the home page

• 1: Tarantula
• 2: The Tarantula Crawls Across The Circus Floor and Arachnida Is Dead
• 3: The Bride and the Return of Tarantula

By Larry Fyffe

Part 4: Everybody loves a critic

The writer of the ‘novelette’ “Tarantula” mentions a number of interesting characters whom he meets along the road to New York Town.

Robert Burn’s there

Luther begins to whistle
Coming thru the Rye
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Martin Luther, who’s also on the pilgrimage, apparently doesn’t realize it’s a dirty ditty:

O, Jenny's a-wet, poor body
Jenny's seldom dry
She dirtied her petticoat
Coming through the rye
(Robert Burns: Coming Through The Rye)

Author JD Salinger tells his ‘growing-up’ story; Burns’ title he deliberately quotes incorrectly:

The genre's gets a good scolding:

(Y)ou could start with a telephone book
- wonder woman - or perhaps catcher in the rye
they're all the same
& everybody has their hat on backwards
thru the stories
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Below, on the journey, a Christian meets a Jew. “I come in peace”, the Christian claims.

Apparently, falsely accuses the Hebrew of sacrificing Christian children ~ like the little Simon of Trent

The Christian’s words mocked beneath:

(T)rip into the light here Abraham
What about this boss of yours ...
we can learn from each other
just don't try to touch my kid
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

The boss, the Almighty Himself, not left unscathed either; albeit humorously, in the song below:

Oh, God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe said, "Man, you must be putting me on"
(Bob Dylan: Highway Sixty-One)

Riding along with the troupe, Clayton Moore from the TV series “The Lone Ranger” and  Richard Boone from “Have Gun Will Travel” get theirs too:

The good-guy-gunmen from the Old West both be silent on the issue of segregation; they’re sure TV comedy shows will come along, and fix up such social problems in no time:

(W)hile kemosabe & mr paladin
spend their off hours remaining separate but equal
& anyway why not wait for laughter to
straighten the works out meantime
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

In the following song lyrics, on a subject not considered that serious, humour abounds:

Well, the Lone Ranger and Tonto
Were riding down the line
Fixing up everybody's troubles 'cept mine
Somebody musta told'em
That I was doing fine
(Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan Blues)

But hold your horses, Huddie Ledbetter’s back, and he’s black:

(He) pulls a train
& makes love to Miss Julie Anne Johnson
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Compares a gal to an axe (ie, “Miss Julie Anne Johnson”); as he does another to a slave driver’s whip lash (ie, Black Betty):

Good-bye Julie Ann Johnson, ahhh, oh Lord, ahhh
Good-bye Julie Ann Johnson, ahhh, oh Lord, ahhh
Gonna leave you, ahhh, oh Lord, ahhh
Gonna leave you, ahhh, oh Lord, ahhh
(Lead Belly: Miss Julie Ann Johnson ~  (Ledbetter/traditional)

—————–

Part 5: Hopalong Bob

William Boyd and Andy Clyde star in the western movie “Hoppy Serves A Writ”.

Milk-drinking black-clad, white-horsed, hard-riding lawman Bill “Hopalong” Cassidy, and his slapstick-sidekick “California” Carlson ride into Bob Dylan’s kaleidoscopic montage of movie stars acting as though they’re in the unfenced Old West – here supposedly located in Texas and Oklahoma.

The times they are a-changing.

“Talkies” take over. Silent movies are dead.

Nor do printed words talk:

(T)he audio repairman stumbles
thru the door with "sound is sacred
so come in and talk to us"
written on the back of his shirt
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Louis L’Amour grabs the opportunity to make money by writing noveletts about Hopalong’s adventures:

Into the Valley of Burlesque the cowboy angels ride.

Mocked be that any sexual activity is pretty well outlawed in those Hoppy Days whether in stories, at the movies, or on tv:

(O)ut of his past appears Insanely Hoppy
screaming and dancing
(Bob Dylan; Tarantula)

He holds up a stagecoach, and takes the strongbox that contains a nursery rhyme:

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner
Eating his Christmas pie
He put in his thumb
And pulled other a plum
And said, " What a good boy am I"

Exchanges the nursery rhyme for a night of sex:

Listen to the fiddler play
When he's playing 'til the break of day
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie
(Bob Dylan: Country Pie)

Sometimes things don’t go that well:

(E)xcept that I can't do anything with with my finger
& it's already beginning to smell
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Onward, onward rides Hoppy, with his sidekick, into New Babylon.

In pursuit of the Golden Calf:

(T)he american flag turned green
& andy clyde kept pestering about a back paycheck
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

They’re not alone, don’t forget:

& all the rest of these people
that would make leadbelly a pet
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

The series continues…

by Jochen Markhorst

• Country Pie (1969) part 1: People try and read so much into songs
• Country Pie (1969) part 2: Slap that drummer with a pie that smells
• Country Pie (1969) part 3:  I’m your wicked Uncle Ernie
• Country Pie (1969) part 4: Sugar and spice and all things nice

V          It’s weird, man

Saddle me up my big white goose
Tie me on ’er and turn her loose
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie

 The second most famous goose rider of all time is probably Nils Holgersson, the hero of Selma Lagerlöf’s irresistible 1906 children’s book. But then again, he does not ride a “big white goose”. First, Nils himself is magically reduced to the size of Tom Thumb by an angry gnome, and the goose he subsequently mounts, Mårten, is anything but “big”; he is the smallest and youngest gander on the farm. No, for that “big white goose” we will have to go to the most famous goose rider of all, to the other side of the world.

The Hindu gods all have their own vahana, an animal of their own that is their companion and means of transport, usually blessed with supernatural qualities. Vishnu has his eagle, Bhairava a dog, and Lakshmi travels on her own owl. And the God-Creator himself, the Supreme Being who created all these animals, fish and birds, Brahma, chooses for himself a big white goose – because geese can separate water from milk. Brahma sees this as a metaphor for being able to distinguish fact from fiction, lie from truth – which makes the goose good company.

We could even, with some creative wishful thinking, find a source, or rather: an inspiration for this, for the identification of Dylan’s protagonist with Brahma. Hermann Hesse’s Siddharta is obvious, and confidant Allen Ginsberg, too, is quite fascinated by Eastern wisdom and Hindu philosophy in these years, larding his poetry with Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma, Vedic mysticism and Sanskrit;

Parallels: in Montmartre Rousseau
                                daubing or Rimbaud arriving,
                                                the raw Aether
                shines with Brahmanic cool moonshine
                                aftertaste, midnight Nostalgia

… he writes, for instance (“Pertussin”, June 1968) – Brahma and his colleagues are regulars anyway in Ginsberg’s oeuvre between, say, 1960 and 1970. But a third possible source of inspiration, though anecdotal, is even more likely.

Assuming that “Country Pie” is indeed a forgotten relic from the Basement, we could then date the lyrics around the Bauls Of Bengal’s visit to Woodstock and to Big Pink, to Dylan, manager Grossman and the boys from The Band in the autumn of 1967. Dylan is said to be quite enamoured with the Bengali musicians, whom we also see standing next to him on the cover of John Wesley Harding. And that those itinerant storytellers have told Dylan why Sarasvatī is sitting on a swan, and that Suka, the parrot of the green god of lust and love Kamaveda, sometimes turns into four women – quite imaginable.

Images and stories to which Dylan is all too receptive; “Traditional music is based on hexagrams,” an impassioned Dylan argues to Nat Hentoff for a Playboy interview in autumn 1965. “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 people’s brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels – they’re not going to die.” He seems to mean it. Shortly before this outpouring, he is equally inspired in another interview, the interview with Nora Ephron and Susan Edmiston for the New York Post (September ’65), stating in much the same words:

BD: Folk music is the only music where it isn’t 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.
E/E: Like what songs?
BD: 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 Nottamun Town, that’s like a herd of ghosts passing through on the way to Tangiers. Lord Edward, Barbara Allen, they’re full of myth.

Dylan improvises on the spot a lyric variation on the ancient, frenzied “Little Brown Dog”, which he probably learned about through Judy Collins (on Golden Apples Of The Sun, 1962):

I buyed me a little dog its color it was brown
Taught him to whistle to sing and dance and run
His legs they were fourteen yards long his ears they were broad
Round the world in half a day on him I could ride
Sing terry’o day

… which Dylan himself will record as “Tattle O’Day” in March 1970, a year after “Country Pie”, again with producer Bob Johnston. In which, by the way, he sticks to Judy Collins’ version of the lyrics – frenzied enough by itself, so no Turkey bound flying bottles.

At the Basement, we have already been able to hear how much those “far out, out of sight” songs then feed his creativity. “Don’t Ya Tell Henry”, “The Mighty Quinn”, “Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread”… songs with simple, catchy melodies, with word games and rhyme fun and above all: with exuberant tattle. Exactly, in short, what we hear here in “Country Pie”, and very much so in this particular verse, in which the protagonist admittedly does not ride around the world on a little brown dog in half a day, in which no dove-luring Eskimos loiter by, no forty-nine bats linger under an apple suckling tree, and in which no herd of moose flies to Tennessee (“Lo And Behold”) – but in which, at least as frenziedly, a protagonist does have his big white goose saddled, is tied on it rodeo-style, and will try to stay on when this big white goose is let loose.

A single tenacious Freudian might still manage to see veiled allusions to sexual intercourse even here, but then risks making himself a little ridiculous. After all, a scabrous interpretation implies comparing our poultry rider’s female counterpart to a “big white goose”. Any erotic expressiveness is thus definitely evaporated, unfortunately.

No, after Saxophone Joe and the toe-crushing hogshead, the nocturnal fiddler, the nine kinds of pie, and now this goose rider, we may finally say goodbye to both the – increasingly hard to follow – “domestic country song” proponents and the “bawdy pub ditty” subscribers. We truly are in the Basement. It’s weird, man, full of legend, myth, bible and ghosts.

To be continued. Next up Country Pie part 6: “A clear statement of Dylan’s present credo”

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

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic

by Larry Fyffe

Singer/songerwriter Bob Dylan ~ well known for adopting and adapting themes from traditional romantic ballads, from the Holy Bible too, about gamblers, outlaws, human nature, and hypocrisy:

Now Brennan being an outlaw
Upon the mountain high
With the calvary and infantry 
To take him they did try
He laughed at them with scorn
Until at last 'twas said
By a false-hearted woman 
Brennan cruelly was betrayed
(Brennan On The Moor ~ traditional)

Such traditional tales spoofed in the song  below:

So all you rambling gamblers, wherever you might be
The moral of this story is very plain to see
Make your money while you can, before you have to stop
For when you pull that dead man's hand, your gambling days are up
(Bob Dylan: Rambling Gambling Willie)

In the song beneath, for listeners who do not like unhappy endings, the songwriter gives a supposedly straight-shooting outlaw a faithful girlfriend:

It was down in Chaynee County
A time they talk about
With his lady by his side
He took a stand
And soon the situation there 
Was all but straightened out
For he was always known 
To lend a helping hand
(Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding)

Not so in the movie in which Kirk Douglas stars as Jack Burns, a modern-day, horse-riding cowboy with a brave heart. A left-over romantic from days gone by, he doesn’t like to fenced-in; tries to help his friend Paul who’s in jail for helping ‘wetbacks’.

The ending of the movie is not a happy one. Jack and his faithful horse end up severely injured by traffic on a busy highway.

Says Paul’s wife near the beginning of the movie:

Men are idiots
You're an idiot
Paul's an idiot
You're all idiots
('Lonely Are The Brave')

Now there be words in need of wider wings:

Idiot win
Blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots, babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

Seems the chaos of old Babylon is back again. With tongue-in-cheek, and straight-faced, the authors of the following song romanticize what happens to an actual mobster-king of New York City ~ who apparently reforms – finds Christ – only to get shot down in cold-blood.

Believe it or else:

But Joey stepped right up, he raised his hand
Said, "We're not those kind of men
It's peace and quiet that we need
To go back to work again"
(Bob Dylan: Joey ~ Dylan/Levy)

It’s back-to-the-bible time:

My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace
I am for peace, but when I speak
They are for war
(Psalm 120: 6,7)

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Intro from Tony:  I should explain, in case you have not come across any of our joint articles before, that Aaron and I play a little game which keeps us amused, in which Aaron in the States selects the songs and simply sends them to me (in the UK) with only an occasional thought or spot of background by way of commentary.  I then set myself the of writing the commentary while the track is playing, largely to avoid me going off into some ludicrously boring musical analysis which interests me but no one else.

But I’ve doubled back this time to write this intro having written the article, because this collection is such, such fun.  You may of course be here just to read about and listen to Bob’s music, but I would urge you, if you have ten minutes, to play the musical examples Aaron has selected, in the order they are here.  It really does make for an enjoyable interlude in life – whatever your life is doing at the moment.

Aaron: Corrina, Corrina was first recorded by Charlie McCoy & Bo Chatman in 1928.

Tony: Wow, I knew it was an old song but I would have put it as being written at least ten years later.   One learns something every day!   (Actually, did you know there is a movie called Corrina Corrina?   I can’t say any more about it as I’ve never seen it, but I throw it in as a useless fact).   Anyway come to think of it, it was the Mississippi Sheiks that did a version and that would have been in the early 1930s – unfortunately, I seem to have the ability to retain useless bits of knowledge but not have the ability to tie them together into a meaningful unified package.

One more bit of information: the song seems to have eight verses (unless I lost count part way through) which is inordinately long for a song that just has two lines in the 12 bar format.  And especially for a song that actually doesn’t say very much other than “My baby left me”.

The B side of the recording above was called “In the gutter” I do remember that, but have no idea what it sounded like.  Just one more piece of useless information.

Aaron: The song has been recorded in a number of musical styles, including blues, jazz, rock and roll, Cajun, and Western swing.

Here is Cab Calloway’s jazz version from 1932.

Tony: I love the way the vocalist holds back by a fraction of a beat from the musical accompaniment all the way through, emphasising the fact that she’s gone and left him (he’s left behind, the vocals are a fraction of a beat behind, if you see what I mean).

But the real fun is in the instrumental break – I really do hope you have a moment to play this all the way through.   This was from the days when the vocals were just a warm up for the band and its arranger to show what they can do – including throwing in a verse in a minor key, before the vocalist comes in once more.   And just listen to that final instrumental break after that – that is musical fun and a half.  Absolutely love it.

Aaron: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan version incorporates lyrics from the Robert Johnson song Stones in My Passway: “I got a bird that whistles, I got a bird that sings”

Tony:  Of course as I noted above it is Aaron who chooses not just songs we look at but also the order in which the songs come – and wow, wow and thrice wow, what a fantastic contrast between the previous version – and how wonderful it is to hear Bob’s version again.  I can hear it in my head anytime I wish, but to take on the original once more after what must be a number of years is something else.   And to play it straight after the Cab Calloway version is just extraordinary.  I can honestly say I was not ready for it.  Great move Aaron!

Aaron: Joni Mitchell covered the song in 1988 on her album Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, with the title “A Bird That Whistles (Corrina Corrina)”, Wayne Shorter adds a wonderfully evocative soprano sax solo.

Tony: Fabulous guitar introduction and accompaniment too, for a complete re-working of what is of course musically nothing more than a 12 bar blues.  And this shows us why the 12 bar format (A A B in musical terms) has been so popular for so long.

And that extraordinary voice of Ms Mitchell allows the accompaniment to be explored to the full – after all if the voice is going to fly why not the instrumentalisation?  Maybe the attempted move into bird song at the end is a bit too much to make we want to listen to this over and over, but if I had a copy without that conclusion I’d place it on my eternal play-list with the instruction, “play this at the wake.”

Aaron: Jumping forward to 2012, Beck recorded his cover for the charity compilation Every Mother Counts 2012.

Tony: One of the great things about this series is that it is even now after 40 episodes it can be full of surprises, and I’ve been surprised all the way through this selection – and here I am once again stunned.    Slowing the music down this far is quite a gamble given the format with the second line being a repeat of the first.   It requires musicality of the greatest level to be able to put that simple arrangement together and hold the listener’s attention – as it certainly did mine.

And yet it works.  Just pause (or go back and play it again) and listen to the guitar – it is so simple and yet it holds the song together – even though the words too are so utterly simple.

Oh my, what a fantastic collection.   I owe you for that, Aaron.

Previously in this series…

1. Other people’s songs. How Dylan covers the work of other composers
2. Other People’s songs: Bob and others perform “Froggie went a courtin”
3. Other people’s songs: They killed him
4. Other people’s songs: Frankie & Albert
5. Other people’s songs: Tomorrow Night where the music is always everything
6. Other people’s songs: from Stack a Lee to Stagger Lee and Hugh Laurie
7. Other people’s songs: Love Henry
8. Other people’s songs: Rank Stranger To Me
9. Other people’s songs: Man of Constant Sorrow
10. Other people’s songs: Satisfied Mind
11. Other people’s songs: See that my grave is kept clean
12. Other people’s songs: Precious moments and some extras
13. Other people’s songs: You go to my head
14. Other people’s songs: What’ll I do?
15. Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle
16. Other people’s songs: Belle Isle
17. Other people’s songs: Fixing to Die
18. Other people’s songs: When did you leave heaven?
19. Other people’s songs: Sally Sue Brown
20. Other people’s songs: Ninety miles an hour down a dead end street
21. Other people’s songs: Step it up and Go
22. Other people’s songs: Canadee-I-O
23. Other people’s songs: Arthur McBride
24. Other people’s songs: Little Sadie
25. Other people’s songs: Blue Moon, and North London Forever
26. Other people’s songs: Hard times come again no more
27. Other people’s songs: You’re no good
28. Other people’s songs: Lone Pilgrim (and more Crooked Still)
29. Other people’s songs: Blood in my eyes
30. Other people’s songs: I forgot more than you’ll ever know
31.  Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
32. Other people’s songs: Highway 51
33. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
34. Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
35. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
36. Other people’s songs: Highway 51 Blues
37. Other people’s songs: Freight Train Blues
38. Other People’s Songs: The Little Drummer Boy
39. Other People’s Songs: Must be Santa
40. Other People’s songs: The Christmas Song

By Larry Fyffe

‘Drifting Too Far From Shore’ is a masterpiece of sarcasm, and a murder ballad to boot.

Movies impact how Bob Dylan writes his songs; he’ll take on the persona of one or more characters from famous films.

In the ‘Ace In The Hole’ movie, Kirk Douglas plays a hard-hearted reporter who seizes the opportunity to make lots of cash by cynically dwelling on the ‘human interest” aspects of the plight of an entombed individual named Leo Minosa, and sending the stories off to major newspapers.

Chuck Tatum’s goal is to attract a wide readership and a large crowd of paying customers to the site of the cave-in.

He meets his match – Leo’s wife. Lorraine’s willing to go along with the devilish scheme, but finds it difficult to play the part of a sweet wife; she’s not satisfied with the marriage, it’s boring.

No servile servant to Leo is she willing to be. Lorraine was going to leave town, but now has the chance to make some big bucks before she takes off on the bus. She’s an Eve archetype who’s bitten into Satan’s apple, and sees no problem tempting Adam with it.

The New Adam of the New Babylon is the movie’s unscrupulous reporter. He’s angry at Eve because she sees right through him. He makes sure that she knows he’s upset by asserting his physical prowess. He scares Lorraine, smacks her, to show he’s rightfully the boss at top of the hill, and it is he who is to be obeyed, not betrayed.

The sassy reporter also brags that he’s made sure, with the help of the corrupt local sheriff, that he’s in charge of the news-boat while other reporters flounder in the water.

Lorraine he’s concerned about. It’s she who could ruin the whole scene by drifting too far away from the biblical tale about paradise being regained in small-town New Mexico when Leo returns.

Take what you gather from coincidence:

Never no more do I wonder
Why you don't never play with me anymore
At any moment you could go under 
'Cause you're drifting too far from shore
(Bob Dylan: Drifting Too Far From Shore)

The following verse of the song lyrics could easily be inserted at the end of ‘Ace In The Hole’, a dark morality tale:

You and me had completeness
I gave you all of what I could provide
We weren't on the wrong side, sweetness
We were the wrong side
(Bob Dylan: Drifting Too Far From Shore)

In the movie, Chuck receives a phone call from New York City. It’s his old boss, a sensationalist newspaperman, and the cave-side scriptwriter now has his old boss over a barrel, demands a big raise, and his old job back; gets both. But not before the big-city man (like small-town Lorraine does) attempts to out-sass the smart-ass:

"Come on, Tatum.  How much for the Minosa story? Exclusive!
What? Don't you know there's a war on - somewhere"
(Ace In The Hole)

Similar to the sarcasm below that could just as well been hurled by ‘auteur’ Tatum at Lorraine for not properly emoting the words that he authors:

I've already ripped out the phones, honey 
You can't walk the streets in a war
I can finish this alone, honey
You're drifting too far from shore
(Bob Dylan: Drifting Too Far From Shore)

In the aforementioned movie, Leo’s father insists that the reporter take his and Mama’s comfortable room because he believes Chuck is sincerely doing all he can in an effort to save his son. Even brave enough to crawl into the dangerous tunnel to communicate with Leo.

Chuck’s not about to flirt with Leo’s supposed-to-be devoted servant Lorraine, for now anyway, because kind-hearted Papa Minosa is impressed by the reporter’s efforts; the sincere Christian treats Chuck like a son.

In the lyrics below the narrator thereof, similar to Chuck in the movie, makes himself out to be real tough, and at the same time, a real gentleman:

I ain't gonna get lost in this current
I don't like playing cat and mouse
No gentleman likes making love to a servant
Especially when he's in his father's house
(Bob Dylan: Drifting Too Far From Shore)

In the end, the Devil has the last laugh.

Lorraine survives; Chuck dies.

Perhaps he leaves a love letter for Lorraine (quoting from the James Stewart movie ‘Bend Of The River’):

I didn't know that you'd be leaving
Or who you thought you were talking to
I figured maybe we're even
Or maybe I'm one up on you
(Bob Dylan: Drifting Too Far From Shore)

The reporter in ‘Ace In The Hole’ realizes that, intended or not, he’s responsible for the death of Lorraine’s husband – as far as Chuck is concerned, he “murdered” Leo; might as well have hit him over the head with a stone.