Untold Dylan

Country Pie (1969) part 3: I’m your wicked Uncle Ernie

Posted on December 28, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

III I’m your wicked Uncle Ernie

Listen to the fiddler play
When he’s playin’ ’til the break of day
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie

The interpreters who are so fond of assuming peasant obscenities in “Country Pie” are provided with ammunition from the second verse at the latest. It is 1969, and “playin’ ’til the break of day” is by now well established as concealing language for “making love all night long”. In the decades before the sixties, we could still sing “dance all night ’til the break of day” (“Sleepy Time Down South”, Bill Monroe’s “Uncle Pen”) fairly safely, without ambiguity suspicions, or “we’ll twist ’til the break of day” (Hank Ballard), or “party until the break of day” (Gene Pitney), or “cabaret until the break of day” (“Sleepy Time Gal”), and a hundred more variants, all of which sing of fairly harmless nocturnal, usually public entertainment.

Sexual charge enters – naturally – via the blues. At most, anyway, in the more clandestine blues is captured what should happen around the break of day. Ma Rainey sings as early as the 1920s, in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’s Blues”;

Early last morning 'bout the break of day
Grandpa told my grandma, I heard him say
Get up and show your old man your black bottom
I want to learn that dance

… which already doesn’t leave too much to the imagination. Or like Lightnin’ Slim’s diction does give away what he means by I want to boogie to the break of day (“Just Made Twenty-One”), which The Allman Brothers also seem to understand (Boogie ’til the break of dawn, “Every Hungry Woman”), and even Pete Seeger sings along when Arlo Guthrie enriches the indestructible “Midnight Special”, though basically a prison song, with a spicy extra verse;

Now here comes jumpin' Judy
I'll tell you how I know
You know, Judy brought jumpin'
To the whole wide world
She brought it in the morning
Just about the break of day
You know, if I ever get to jumpin'
Oh Lord, I'll up and jump away

… all of which Dylan knows, of course, when he sings playin’ ’til the break of day in “Country Pie”. After all, he sang rather unambiguously less than a record-side and a half ago, some 20 minutes earlier:

Lay lady lay
Lay across my big brass bed
Stay lady stay
Stay with your man a while
Until the break of day
Let me see you make him smile

Less traditional, then, is the euphemism that Dylan opts for the male lover. When, in their bawdy upgrade of the already-raunchy “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”, the Grateful Dead name a protagonist who dwells til the break of day with the little schoolgirl, it is a chauffeur who wants to ride your little machine. And otherwise, the lover at dawn is a dancer, a stranger or a boogie-woogie boy from the Henry Swing Club (Lightnin’ Slim), a rider or a midnight cowboy – but a fiddler he actually never ever really is.

Perhaps Keith Moon forever smeared the function designation, with his Tommy contribution “Fiddle About” (I’m your wicked Uncle Ernie / I’m glad you won’t see or hear me / As I fiddle about), but “fiddling” has always had dubious connotations anyway. Why Dylan chose it is unknown, obviously, but if he did indeed write the lyrics 1967 in the Basement, it must have been in the spur of the moment, without too much poetic consideration. Maybe this morning at the breakfast table “Wabash Cannonball” came by on the radio in the kitchen, and the poet rewrote the refrain Listen to the jingle into Listen to the fiddler, or the antique cowboy song “Midnight On The Water” buzzed through his head, with the opening words Play me a fiddle tune, sing me a song, or maybe Dylan is again just quoting; from the oldie “Silas Lee From Tennessee”, that is.

Even before Phil Harris achieves immortality as the voice of Baloo the Bear in Jungle Book (1967), Thomas O’Malley in The Aristocats (1970), and Little John in Robin Hood (1973), he has long made a name for himself with his 1950s monster hit, “The Thing” and the 1945 hit that is his signature song, “That’s What I Like About The South”. But Dylan may have been singing along with Harris’ version of “Open The Door, Richard” – the song that will pop up as “Open The Door, Homer” in the Basement this week. (On a side note: Tex Williams’ “Close The Door Richard (I Just Saw The Thing)” is a rather unique double-barrelled answer song to both of Phil Harris’ hits.)

Anyway, in that same novelty song corner is Phil Harris’s cartoonesque “Silas Lee From Tennessee” from 1949, in which we hear Dylan’s imperative from this second verse pass by verbatim a couple of times;

The music's ready to begin
So listen to the fiddler play
Take that carpet off the floor
Leave your shoes outside the door
Come on do your dancing chore

… without the slightest erotic allusion, of course – this is truly a violin player, a fiddler who enchants the whole crowd, from high to low, with his rousing fiddle playing:

Yes from Hollywood to Boston, Mass
Throughout the land the upper class
They’re choosing partners for a jamboree
And now at every swell affair
Who’s calling steps and fiddlin’ there
No-one but Silas Lee from Tennessee

Unpretentious and harmless, just like the other candidates from Dylan’s inner jukebox in which fiddling is performed; The Clancy Brothers’ “Ballad Of St. Anne’s Reel” (There’s magic in the fiddler’s arm), and Bill Monroe’s “Uncle Pen” – although a dirty mind presumably knows how to detect ambiguities in its chorus:

Late in the evening about sundown
High on the hill and above the town
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, lord how it would ring
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing

But then again – a violin-playing maverick is an archetype in Dylan’s output. Einstein plays an electric violin on Desolation Row, the protagonist in “Early Roman Kings” commands Bring down my fiddle, in “Waitin’ For You” it’s a bit sombre (The fiddler’s arm has gone dead), and with the most famous of all, the one from “Vision Of Johanna”, we can go in any direction again, as it should be in a mercurial Dylan song;

The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes

… a fiddler in whom we can read all sorts of things, but a tireless lover fiddling with the missus’s country pie until dawn – no, that does seem a bit far-fetched.

To be continued. Next up Country Pie part 4: Sugar and spice and all things nice

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:

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More On Tennessee Williams

Posted on December 27, 2022 by TonyAttwood

Bob Dylan and Tennessee Williams: there is no escape

By Larry Fyffe

In the movie “Sweet Bird Of Youth”, Adonis-like drifter Paul Newman hooks up with an ageing movie actress. Realizing the clock is ticking, Chance Wayne hopes that the relationship will lead to his gaining fame and fortune for himself in Hollywood.

Chance returns with the alcohol-drinking, pill-popping actress to his hometown where he hopes to re-establish a relationship with ‘Boss’ Finley’s daughter. The drifter has really messed up the image of the daughter (she’s named Heavenly) as a chaste Southern belle; her politically-ambitious father (who keeps a supposedly-secret mistress named Miss Lucy) sees to it that Chance gets beaten up.

With the ageing actress, and the daughter, Chance leaves town, all three in search of the fading American Dream of their youth

The play by Tennessee Williams, on which the movie is based, is much darker. Chance does not leave with the actress who, as it turns out, becomes sought after by Hollywood; the daughter, who inherits her father’s wealth, gets revenge on the womanizing gigolo.

Akin to the theme of an imagined “paradise lost”, mournfully expressed in the song lyrics below:

So I just think I'll take my foolish pride
And put it on a south-bound freight, and ride
And go on back to the loved ones
The ones that I left waiting so far behind
 (Bobby Bare: Detroit City ~ Dill/Tillis)

As depicted by the narrator in the following Williams-influenced song lyrics, construed it can be that though the industrialized North has characteristics that turn it into a kind of a new Babylon, the imagined paradisal South of the defeated regime of the Boss Finleys be actually a living hell for belles and blacks:

I can tell you are torn
Between staying and returning 
Back to the South
You've been fooled into thinking 
That the finishing end is at hand
(Bob Dylan: To Ramona)

As well, Tennessee Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire” is burlesqued in the song lyrics below:

Well, they're going to the country, they're going to retire
They're taking a streetcar named desire
(Bob Dylan: Tweedle Dee And Tweedle Dee)

Both “Streetcar” and “Sweet Bird” likewise in the song lyrics beneath:

I'm in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood ....
Don't get up gentlemen, I'm only passing through ....
Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

And there’s Paul Newman as Brick (saying to his father Big Daddy) in the movie version thereof:

"You don't know what love means. To you
it's just a four-letter word"
(Tennessee Williams: Cat On A Hot Tin Roof)

Echoed in the following song lyrics:

I thought that there was nothing more absurd
Than that love is just a four-letter word
(Bob Dylan: Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word)

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Never Ending Tour: the absolute highlights 8: Girl from the North Country

Posted on December 27, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Dylan’s performances, like his songs, move from the fast, loud and aggressive down to the delicate, fragile and soft.

But this perfectly reasonable variation brings with it a problem, because some members of the audience can find it hard (at least on the occasion of the concert) to accommodate the changes during the gig, and insist on adding their own accompaniment. (Indeed the lack of this audience accompaniment when I saw Bob perform in Nottingham, England, just recently, added enormously to my enjoyment of the event. A more civilised restrained bunch of people, who knew that Bob was the performer, not them, one could not hope to meet).

So the recording I’ve selected as the next item in the “Absolute highlights” series reflects Bob’s performance, but not the overall quality of what you will hear. Not because the recordist got something wrong, but because some of the audience were unable to shut up. Yet Bob’s performance is so good, it is worth hearing again, and again, and not just to hear him singing, but to appreciate the work of those playing with him.

Of course, in many ways the song is hard to appreciate today (as is the case with so many others) because we know the lyrics so well. But just focus, if you can, not only on Bob’s voice but also on the melody – it is subtly different from the album.

Well, if you go when the snowflakes storm
When the rivers freeze and summer ends
Please see if she’s wearing a coat so warm
To keep her from the howlin’ winds

The key point of course is that is Bob just wants to know how she his – he is saying It means “be my eyes”, not “change her”.

The instrumental breaks (ignore the idiots screaming) are delicate and fine, exactly as is the memory that the singer possesses and which he seeks to have refreshed. Thus the guitars entwine with each other to express the delicacy of all that she is.

He is tormented by the memory of her, and that comes over so beautifully in this rendition – aided very much by the instrumental breaks. Just listen to the pedal steel guitar (I imagine this is Bucky Baxter) which is so utterly beautifully delicate and perfectly entwined with rest of the band. Of course I know we would expect nothing else, but it is still such a pleasure to hear it and remember such a brilliant musician.

And when the opening verse returns, one is left wondering, why is it so hard to go back?

So if you’re travelin’ in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

Of course we know, and those contradictory thoughts are expressed perfectly in the final instrumental verse – indeed that is why the instrumental verses are there, for in this version the engaging instruments constantly weave a connection with each other that ends up expressing in its own way as much as the lyrics can express.

This is, in short, a perfect example of music and lyrics working in total harmony expressing the feeling of loss, with the knowledge that no matter what, there is no going back. The singer is trapped in his present, she is free and easy in her present. Oh how he misses her. Oh how he envies her. But does he want to change anything? Seemingly no.

Thus for me, the music perfectly represents this entwining of emotions to an even greater depth than the gorgeous lyrics are able to do on their own. And so this version of the song gives us more than the original, for now the music provides not just an accompaniment but also an additional strand which the lyrics cannot offer.

It is so beautiful it still makes me cry.

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Like A Wagon Wheel

Posted on December 26, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Larry Fyffe

Zeus be the central and immortal God of the Cosmos; however, Greek/Roman mythology is dualistic, composed of both light and dark forces:

... Angelia, daughter of Hermes, might speak ...
Of the shining glory of Olympia
Zeus granted to them and theirs
(Pindar: Olympia, part VIII)

In the following song lyrics, the male narrator gives an ear to Mercury’s immortal female messenger from Mount Olympus.

Delivered from Zeus himself, but with the benefit of hindsight, and with a heavy bite of sarcasm.

Seems neither in Roman/Greek mythology nor in the Judeo-Christian religion does the narrator find that Angelia opens the door wide enough to explain the enigma of human existence:

Precious angel, under the sun
How was I to know you'd be the one
To show me I was blinded, to show me I was gone
How weak was my foundation I was standing upon
(Bob Dylan: Precious Angel)

In the song lyrics beneath, the narrator chooses to ignore Angelia’s advice altogether.

Maybe travel to Greenland:

Call me anything you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
And I must go where it is quiet
(Bob Dylan: Farewell Angelina)

In the following lyrics, the bemused male narrator challenges the female messenger, who’s apparently sent from the immortal ones, to a battle of wits.

His teeth of sarcasm bite deep.

Like himself, the narrator considers Angelina a mortal.

Nevertheless, he offers her a path of retreat up the steps to whatever perfect heaven she’s able to unravel in her mind:

I can see the unknown rider
I can see the the pale white horse
In God's truth tell me what you want
And you shall have it of course
Just step into the arena
(Bob Dylan: Angelina)

From the perspective of earth-bound human individuals, linked to the ‘mystical’ dualism of Ezra Pound’s ‘vortex’, and Yeat’s ‘gyre’ poetry, is depicted the concrete image of the ‘spiral’ stairs ~ human individuals, god-like, at the centre of their own existence whilst the external world spins around them:

I was born here, and I'll die here against my will
I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still
(Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet)

Like a fixed axle upon which a wagon wheel rotates:

Rock me mama through the wind and the rain
Rock me mama like a south-bound train
Hey, mama rock me
Yeah, rock me mama like a wagon wheel
Rock me mama any way you feel
(Bob Dylan: Rock Me Mama)

Einstein disguised as Robin Hood.

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Country Pie (1969) part 2: Slap that drummer with a pie that smells

Posted on December 25, 2022 by TonyAttwood

Country Pie (1969) part 1: People try and read so much into songs

by Jochen Markhorst

II Slap that drummer with a pie that smells

Just like old Saxophone Joe
When he’s got the hogshead up on his toe
Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie

In 1978, in the interview with Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone, he says much the same thing in much the same words: “Then I heard the Clancy Brothers and hung out with them – all of their drinking songs, their revolutionary and damsel-in-distress songs.”

Chapter 2, “The Lost Land”, of the autobiography Chronicles, the chapter set in New York, still before his first record deal in 1961, repeats it pretty verbatim. “I got to be friends with Liam,” Dylan writes affectionately there, “and began going after-hours to the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street.” An Irish bar, full of guys from the old country, and there’s singing all night long. “Drinking songs, country ballads and rousing rebel songs that would lift the roof.” The rebellion songs particularly touch him, he claims, and for another half-page, the autobiographer explains what would attract him to them.

But when we take stock at the end of the decade, the hard numbers and bare facts do reveal that it was mainly the drinking songs and country ballads that got under his skin. “Brennan On The Moor” becomes the blueprint for “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie”, Dylan turns “The Parting Glass” into “Restless Farewell”, “The Leaving of Liverpool” is transformed into “Farewell”, he uses, much to the displeasure of writer Dominic Behan “The Patriot Game” for “With God On Our Side”, “Reilly’s Daughter” comes along in “Seven Curses”, and we could go on and on. “You’re pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy,” as he will say in his Nobel Prize speech – Dylan has grabbed copiously from the repertoire of his pals, the wild Irish Clancy Brothers.

Apart from all those appropriations, he is just as happy to play the songs unedited and unaltered, preferably also á la Clancy Brothers. “Moonshiner”, “The Old Triangle”, “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies “… “They influenced me tremendously,” he tells Bono in 1984, Liam Clancy is “a phenomenal ballad singer.” Indeed: “I never heard a singer as good as Liam ever. He was just the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life – still is, probably” (interview with David Hammond, The Telegraph 18, Winter 1984).

Liam’s version of the old drinking song “Rosin The Bow” (or “Old Rosin The Beau”, or “Ol’ Roison The Beau” – even after the song’s first publication in 1838, variants with different lyrics and titles continue to emerge) was then played by Dylan in 1967 in the Basement with the guys from The Band, and an echo of it descends in this opening chorus of “Country Pie”;

When I'm dead and laid out on the counter,
A voice you will hear from below,
Saying send down a hogshead of whiskey to
Drink with old Rosin the Bow.
To drink with old Rosin the Bow,
To drink with old Rosin the Bow.
Saying send down a hogshead of whiskey to
Drink with old Rosin the Bow.

… that archaic “hogshead” (¼ tun, it’s an old capacity measure for liquor, derived from the Old Dutch oxhooft), which is far too unusual to penetrate into a Dylan song by any other means. Quite possibly Dylan heard A.L. Lloyd’s version “Rosin The Beau” on 1956’s English Drinking Songs, but if so, the Clancy Brothers still made more of an impression; Dylan sings the exact same version in the Basement that The Clancy Brothers sing with Tommy Makem on Come Fill Your Glass With Us (1959, the album with “The Parting Glass” and “The Moonshiner”) and again on The First Hurrah! (1964).

It is a second hint that “Country Pie” is baked up from leftovers from the Basement. The first was that revelation in that 1987 interview suggesting that Dylan wrote the song after he got rid of his toothache and could eat pie again, which must have taken place sometime in early 1967. And another hint is the name choice of the antagonist, “Saxophone Joe”. A name that fits wrinkle-free between Silly Nelly from “Million Dollar Bash”, Missus Henry, Tiny Montgomery, Skinny Moo and Half-Track Frank, Quinn the Eskimo, Minstrel Boy and Sunny Child the Overseer from “Joshua Gone Barbados”, and all those other colourful birds of paradise hopping around down there in the basement under the Big Pink. Again, a theoretical possibility is that the walking music encyclopaedia Bob Dylan is winking at an obscure B-side by The Memphis Five from the 1940s, “Saxophone Joe”, a run-of-the-mill novelty song with, at best, an antiquarian charm;

There’s a boy you ought to know
He’s a boy named Saxophone Joe
He goes bee-do-loo, bee-do-loo, bah-de-loo-doo-tweet 
That big old boy named Joe

… but the nonsensical plot, “Gee, I’m fond of rural pastry – just like Joe was when a keg of whiskey fell on his foot”, is a fourth, overarching clue to the suspicion that Dylan has unearthed an old Basement lyric here. After all, this has a tone and colour similar to the silliness in Basement gems like, say, “Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread” (Now, pull that drummer out from behind that bottle, bring me my pipe, we’re gonna shake it, slap that drummer with a pie that smells), “Tiny Montgomery” (Pick that drip and bake that dough, tell ’em all that Tiny says hello) or “Lo And Behold! ” (Now, I come in on a Ferris wheel, an’ boys, I sure was slick – I come in like a ton of bricks).

Just three fairly random examples of insane mise-en-scenes. There can effortlessly twenty more of this calibre be found on The Basement Tapes Complete – settings and snapshots of bizarre scenes in which Dylan, without any profundity, winks at half-familiar movie scenes, quotes without any relevance from old folk, blues or country songs, and paraphrases offhand from Bible, literature or The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. Like here in this first verse of “Country Pie”, that is;

– the opening line that seems to nod to Louis Jordan’s no. 1 hit from 1946, the irresistible “Jack, You’re Dead” (Just like old man Mose), with Ol’ Louis Jordan playing the saxophone, by the way;
– the eccentric borrowing of hogshead from a Clancy Brothers song;
– and the alienating, weird plottwist Love that country pie, introduced with the equally alienating, übercorny oh me oh my

… yep, we’re back at 2188 Stoll Road, West Saugerties, New York. Open the door, Homer.

To be continued. Next up Country Pie part 3: I’m your wicked Uncle Ernie

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:

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A Dylan Cover a Day: Oxford Town

Posted on December 24, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

I have two versions of Oxford Town that I love so much I don’t really want to go and find anything else – largely because I love listening to these two tracks, and because I don’t want you going in another direction. I want you to focus on these.

I really do like the way the verse is treated in the third line, which combined with the gentle harmonies really make this such an enjoyable listen.

And the sudden end is a surprise. But fortunately, there is more for we also have Crooked Still.

The harmonies and sheer energy of Crooked Still make this enormous fun, but so does the musical ability of everyone involved.

And just in case you would like to hear some more Crooked Still, here you are…. do listen to it all the way through.

That’s not quite all on “Oxford Town” – it doesn’t seem to be a song that people want to cover – at least not in an enterprising and interesting way, although I am sure Jochen will. For although I wouldn’t normally consider a recording made in an artist’s sitting room, I think this deserves a worthy mention. If you want to discover more, I think this is the right link – don’t blame me if not.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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NET: The Absolute Highlights. Gates of Eden – perfection in desolation

Posted on December 23, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

The Gates of Eden is a song about desolation and chaos, which has a remarkable quality within it that means it can be performed in many different ways while still retaining that sense of everything being lost, simply because we are standing outside and not inside the gates.

“Gates” is also one of those Dylan songs in which performers and arrangers have worked together in order to explore the final limits to which the song can be taken – in this case focussing ultimately on the chaos rather than the feeling of personal desolation. If you are a regular follower of my ramblings on the subject you might recall the DM Sith version that I featured in an earlier article.

And then again there is the Totta Näslund version which is (in the UK at least) only available on Spotify, but is worth the subscription to that service on its own if you have no other way of hearing it.

Thus my point here is that “Gates” can take on many forms, and in this recording comes from 2000, Bob seeks out the bleakness within the song in a way that was never achieved on the original recording.

Bob is still performing in the same key as he did on the original LP version, but the whole feeling of the song is utterly different – a lower level, less strained, less urgent, more resigned… On the album he really is pushing himself to put the message across, pushing forward, urgently trying to get through the whole set of lyrics, perhaps worried that we might turn away from such a long track. But now in this live version he knows we will stay and listen, because he knows we are there with him. It is established, he doesn’t need to convince us any more.

Thus the vocal part can be much cooler, much calmer, and the second guitar playing behind the chords is only needed occasionally.

Now the song is a statement of what we know, a reminder of what is, not a first announcement of the doomsday we have all been part of creating. We’ve done it, it is here. We are standing, looking out at the results of our folly. As such the instrumental after the “Aladin and his lamp” verse, is quite different, reflecting in a meaningful way on the fact that no we will most certainly not hear any laughing. But still we await the next lines, even though we know them.

Bob takes it down totally to tell us of how powerless we have all become, and that image of the lonesome sparrow becomes far more potent than ever before.

And the ultimate contradiction of those final lines overwhelm us, for yes, we now know, “All and all can only fall with a crashing but meaningless blow”.

And so when we ge to hearing that

At times I think there are no words but these to tell what's true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden

we know it is true, as it always was.

Yet what is even more miraculous is that the song just plods along through those chord changes and lyrics we know so well, but it delivers a completely new if still utterly incomprehensible meaning.

And on top of all that, the first instrumental break after “you will not hear a laugh” is stunning. So that when Bob sings, “And I try to harmonize with songs the lonesome sparrow sings,” the lonesome sparrow is there in the garden or at the door.

But here’s a further thought. Two verses from the original are missing. Why is that? Because of the instrumental verses? If so why those verses?

I have no answer, and in many ways there is no need for an answer, since the performance is, to my mind, one of the greatest moments in the history of Dylan on stage. But in case you are wanting to ponder this, the two missing verses are

The motorcycle black Madonna, two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom 
    cause the gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey 
    who pick upon his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden

The kingdoms of experience, in a precious winds they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince discuss what's real and what is not
It doesn't matter inside the Gates of Eden

This is not just a performance chosen for this series, this is, for me, one of the all time greatest moments of Bob Dylan on stage. This takes a song I know inside out and upside down, and gives it a totally new life in a performance that is utter perfection.

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Bob Dylan, George Byron And William Blake

Posted on December 22, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Larry Fyffe

The philosophy of a professional pirate ~ a professional pirate does not rob – he steals:

But I being fond of true philosophy
Say very often to myself, "Alas
All things that have been born were born to die ..."
(George Byron: Don Juan, Canto I)

Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying
(Bob Dylan: It's Alright Ma)

But what is to be done? I can't allow
The fellow to lie groaning on the road
So take him up, I'll help you with  the load
(George Byron: Don Juan, Canto XI)

So when you see your neighbour carrying something
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For the home across the road
(Bob Dylan: The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest)

***

Whose frown would put the spheres all out of tune
Whose smile makes all the planets dance with mirth
(George Byron: Don Juan, Canto V)

She looked at me with an irresistible glance
With a smile
That could make all the planets dance
(Bob Dylan: Marching To The City)

***

You are asleep; I won't attempt to wake ye
Sleep on, sleep on, while in you pleasant dreams
Of reason, you may drink of life's clear streams
(William Blake: You Don't Believe)

I was hoping we could drink from
Life's  clear streams
I was hoping we could dream
Life's pleasant dreams
(Bob Dylan: Marching To The City)

***

When He said, "Only believe, believe and try!
Try, try, and never mind the reason why!"
(William Blake: You Don't Believe)

Tell old Bill when he comes home
Anything is worth a try
Tell him that I'm not alone
That the hour has come to do or die
(Bob Dylan: Tell Old Bill)

***

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry
(William Blake:The Tiger)

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
In the forest of the night
Cover'im over, and let him sleep

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Country Pie (1969) part 1: People try and read so much into songs

Posted on December 21, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

I People try and read so much into songs

In 1987, the fanzine Look Back publishes in issue #15, “Fifteen Jugglers”, a funny little interview with Dylan that a subscriber managed to score by pure coincidence.

Reader Phil A. Roddy works at a fitness club in those days. He gets a call one Tuesday from his boss. If Phil could come and open the club the next day after closing time for an unnamed big shot who wants to do his workout in peace. This does occur, every once in a while, so Phil is not too surprised. He is when, much to his excitement, he lets Bob Dylan in the next night.

He keeps his cool, well, up to a point anyway, and quietly observes how the then 45-year-old, muscular Dylan diligently and smoothly works hard for forty minutes on the various fitness machines. Afterwards, Dylan swims a few laps in the pool. When he then switches to the jacuzzi to relax, Phil gathers his courage, and, with tacit permission from the huge bodyguard, approaches Dylan. He confesses to being a fan and asks if he could do an interview for that fanzine Look Back. Dylan is relaxed, and allows it – on condition that Roddy doesn’t record anything, and he has to join him in the jacuzzi. Phil happens – lucky coincidence no. 2 – to have mastered shorthand, quickly grabs a few sheets and a clipboard, takes off his clothes and slips in.

It is a charming but otherwise unexciting interview. “How often do you work out?” and whether he has ever had weight problems, that level. But the latter question does lead the conversation into a remarkable song analysis. Dylan explains that he ate almost nothing in the ’65-’66s because of chronic toothache. But “when I had that motorbike accident, they did some root canal work for the next year and that took me out of pain I’d been in for two fucking years.” Which is a not too well-known, rather startling biographical fact, but Phil seems to miss it. At least, his follow-up question is rather silly; “So, at that time you began to exercise?” Fortunately, Dylan is apparently in a talkative mood, and, unlike Phil, he does stay on track:

“Not really, other than walking. I did one thing though. Man, did I eat. You name it. People try and read so much into songs. You know that song, Country Pie? That’s what it was about. Pie. In fact, for the first time in six years, I began to have a bit of a weight problem.”

Maybe Phil should have checked the calendar. Today is 1 April. And Dylan has a reputation, still in the 80s anyway, for having a penchant for talking complete nonsense with a perfectly straight face, April 1 or not. Still, it is quite surprising that this forgotten song in particular should bubble up in Dylan’s mind. It is almost twenty years ago that he recorded the track in two takes on a Friday night in Nashville, and after that he never looked back at it – and after this ad hoc interview in 1987 it will be another thirteen years before “Country Pie” appears on his set list (10 March 2000 in Anaheim, and then the song’s here to stay for a while: that year Dylan will perform “Country Pie” more than a hundred times).

More surprising though, is Dylan’s song analysis (“it’s about pie”). The introduction is undeniably true: “People try and read so much into songs.” True, plenty of pompous bullshit has been written about this song, yes. Back when the album was released, it took Hubert Saal only five days to crack the code in Newsweek (14 April 1969). The chorus, with all those different pies, is “a kind of declaration of independence,” Hubert explains. And:

“When Dylan talks of eating pies, all kinds, he means writing songs, all kinds. And when he goes on in the song to say “Ain’t runnin’ any race” he seems to be rejecting the musical direction his many admirers have chosen for him in the past or would choose for him in the future.”

Ridiculous enough, but at least kinder than Dylanologists like Mike Marqusee, Clinton Heylin (“embarrassing, un-Dylanesque drivel”) or John Hughes (“almost provocative vapidity”), who qualify the song as a throwaway. Fans, meanwhile, overwhelmingly lean towards Dylan’s own 1987 analysis, defending on the various forums opinions like “Bob Dylan basically just likes pie. I think we all do”. Though among them are some who prefer to milk the double entendre pie = vagina, and even, believe it or not, analysts who can explain that the song is about shooting heroin.

Two camps, then, at two extremes of the spectrum; on the one hand, the lazy interpreters who deny the song any depth or ambiguity, on the other, the overenthusiastic cryptanalysts who even cite Shakespeare to prove the supposed scatological content of the lyrics. Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2 then, of course. The scene where Hamlet wants to put his head between Ophelia’s legs. And assaults poor, dismayed Ophelia with doublespeak;

Ophelia
No, my lord!
Hamlet
I mean, my head upon your lap.
Ophelia
Ay, my lord.
Hamlet
Do you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia
I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet
That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
Ophelia
What is, my lord?
Hamlet
“Nothing.”

… with “country” being pronounced emphatically as cunt-ry, and “nothing” being a common euphemism in Elizabethan times for the female pubic region (“no-thing”, nudge nudge wink wink). And “pie” is established in twentieth-century America as a metaphor for vagina, so there you go, with your “country pie”.

It does seem a bit laborious, but alright, yes indeed: once you are in that tunnel of sexual innuendo, the rest of the lyrics are a treasure trove of ambiguities and obscenities. A second argument for entering that tunnel is the song lyric’s sky-high Basement couleur. One would be tempted to think that Dylan, leafing back through his notebook, has come across an old, unused lyric from the summer of 1967, a leftover pie as it were, a playful scribble from that summer in Woodstock with the guys from The Band in the basement of the Big Pink, carefree playing songs from the Good Old Days, shaking nonsensical songs out of his trouser leg, improvising little masterpieces out of thin air, and merrily shuffling and mixing folk, country and blues classics.

For that’s exactly what we hear already in the opening couplet of “Country Pie”…

To be continued. Next up Country Pie part 2: Slap that drummer with a pie that smells

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:

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The Never Ending Tour: The Absolute Highlights. It ain’t me babe. Go lightly.

Posted on December 20, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

This is a recording I particularly want to include in this series – and I am sorry the volume is so low – I’m just hoping you’ve got enough on your computer or audio system to be able to hear it.

It has always struck me that “It ain’t me babe” can be approached in many ways – the singer can be regretful, annoyed, patronising, tired, whistful, bored… But best of all, for me, the singer and the musical accompaniment needs to be saying the same thing, and sometimes I feel that this is not the case. Indeed although I know it is sacriledge to criticise Bob’s understanding of his own music, I do get the feeling that sometimes on tour he has said to the band, “OK let’s try it like this” with reference back to what his lyrics actually say.

Here I think the meaning is simple and clear: “I am so really, really sorry, but I just can’t help you.” And that is what, for me, the music needs to reflect.

And here in this low volume hard-to-hear recording (sorry about that, but the fact that we have a recording at all, is down to those who smuggle in their recording devices, and Mike Johnson’s perseverance in collecting all these recordings), Dylan gets that absolutely. He really comes over as so sorry for her, but just knows that there is nothing he can do. Not because she is doing anything wrong (although she is), but to quote from “Tangled,” the two of them have started from a different point of view.

So there does seem to me to be a connection here between the two songs; the two people who really do have a lot going for them as a couple, but not quite the right thing, and not enough of a thing to make it work.

I guess most of us end up at some time saying “sorry but this isn’t right” and so ending the affair (although I seem to be one of those people who tends to be on the receiving end rather than on the sending end, so I’ve not got too much experience of saying “it’s over”). But what is so different here is line two: “Leave at your own chosen speed.” For that line to make sense, the song has to be sung like this, and I get the feeling – overwhelmingly getting the feeling in fact – that Dylan has fully grasped the essence of what he has written in these lyrics. It’s just that sometimes in other performances he really wishes he had written “just get out will you?”

For although the opening line of “Go away from my window” is horribly harsh (while at one level sounding rather poetic and gentle), and the woman’s demands in the opening verse are enormous – a total definition of a personality in fact – the singer really is sympathetic. “Go lightly on the ground” is a beautiful, simple sentiment that needs this sort of gentle approach to the song as a whole, for any of it to make any sense.

Thus for all the harshness of the lyrics such as “Everything inside is made of stone” there is a gentility here. The singer will absolutely not be the man to “come every time you call” but he is sympathetic to what she is. He’s not telling her that her attitudes are unacceptable (although we might reach that conclusion on reading the lyrics through).

More than anything he is saying he’s sorry. And in this version with its delicate, gentle accompaniment he really is.

There is a complete index to the 100 plus episodes of the full Never Ending Tour series (without comments from me) on the website.

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The Tarantula Crawls Across The Circus Floor and Arachnida Is Dead

Posted on December 19, 2022 by TonyAttwood

Previously in this series

by Larry Fyffe

(F)atty Aphrodite's mama - I bend to you
& with sex mad eternity at my vegetable show
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Something’s up ~ it’s well known that Aphrodite’s not fat, not at all; said to be the daughter of the sea, the goddess of love is sexually alluring.

Not so well known perhaps is that Greek playwright Euripide’s mama sells vegetables in order to obtain money for her son’s education.

In the ancient Greek satirical play entitled “The Frogs”, according to its author Aristophanes anyway, the degenerate state of contemporary Athenian plays demands a return to the days when art was in the skilled hands of an educated elite rather than audiences having to sit through the works of lesser quality written by less-educated citizens.

Proclaims Aristophanes, it’s better still to have an educated playwright like Aeschylus who strives in his plays to bring out the best in people of all classes ~ rather than one like Euripides who considers human behaviour largely determined by an individual’s social status.

In the satirical play “The Frogs”, Dionysus, supposed a regenerative god, travels across the river to Hades where the demigod oversees a “Judgement of Paris”, so to speak.

On a balance scale, he weighs the content of dramas written by ‘old school’ Euripides, a writer of tragedies who brings the heroes of classical mythology down to earth, but then provides little advice on how to improve the rather stagnated state of the theatre in Athens; other than to spout forth what amounts to nothing more than dribble from the well-ordered Apollonian ‘intellectual’ establishment.

The weight of Aeschylus’ plays compared with those of Euripides demonstrates that the day has come for the latter’s tragedies to die, and be replaced by those written by Aeschylus who models himself after the heroic mythological gods (even a demigod like blunder-prone strongmam Hercules will do); at least offered would be some practical solutions to fix the fallen state of Athenian art; so too, the city’s economic and political woes would be addressed ~ though through the safety of humorous satire, of course.

Below, quoted from the short book ‘Tarantula’ below, lampooned are the critics of the innovative American poet Walt Whitman of modern times:

"(S)o you're out to save the world are you?
you imposter - you freak!
you're a contradiction!
you're  afraid to admit you're a contradiction!
you're misleading!

......

sincerely yours, Froggy

(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

In the following ironic-filled song lyrics, the narrator thereof takes on the persona of a regenerative Dionysus, and mentions characters he’d bring back from the Underworld; brought back in order to improve the comparatively witless state that the modern entertainment industry has gotten itself into:

I study Sanskrit and Arabic to improve my mind
I want to do things for the benefit of mankind ....
I'll bring someone back to life, balance the scales
I'm not gonna get involved in any insignificant details
(Bob Dylan: My Own Version Of You)

Arachnida Is Dead

Do I contradict myself
Very well, then I contradict myself
I am large, I contain multitides
(Walt Whitman: Song Of Myself)

As pointed before, a darker critic of the state of society in modern times also has a big influence on the writings of Bob Dylan:

Welcome, tarantula
Black on thy back 
Is thy triangle and symbol
(Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra ~ translated)

Clearly revealed in the lines beneath:

(A) girl with her back
full of ink
raises her hand
& says "Ernest Tubb"
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

The avenging Tarantula Man dances beneath the diamond sky with one of his eight legs waving free: he’s out of his hole, stinging those who dare tell him that all created humans are equal, and therefore conformity’s the golden rule.

Nay, everyone has his or her own, often hidden, talent; it’s now time to seize the opportunity, to exercise one’s will to power.

Not to wait for a reward way up yonder in a supposed Afterlife:

I've heard you say many times
That you're better than no one
And no one is better than you
If you really believe that
You know you have nothing to win
And nothing to lose
(Bob Dylan: To Ramona)

Friedrich Nietzsche be a spider caught in the web of his own time.

He accidentally stings the archetypical Eve who flees from the dusty pages of the

Judeo-Christian Bible.

The times they are a-changing:

The housewife is not here
She's running for congress
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

The story does not end there, however.

A black nightingale arrives with bad news ~ Arachnida is dead!

The Christians have killed him ~ squashed him with the Holy Bible for breaking the “Great Chain of Being”; thereby releasing Eve’s imprisoned inner soul, Lilith.

With the Big Tarantula dead, Paradise is regained … at least in part:

Covenant woman got a contract with the Lord
Way up yonder great will be her reward
Covenant woman, shining like a morning star
I know I can trust you to stay where you are
(Bob Dylan: Covenant Woman)

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Girl From The North Country (1963) part 4 (final)

Posted on December 19, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

IV À la fille, qui fut mon amour

Dylan’s foray into the Great American Songbook, the triptych Shadows In The Night (2015), Fallen Angels (2016) and Triplicate (2017) is special, but not unique; in this category, Dylan is, for once, not a trendsetter. As it is, any record shop can fill quite a bin with pop and rock stars venturing into the American Songbook, with quite a few Big Names too.

Rod Stewart delivers a whole series (four albums), Bryan Ferry scores as early as 1999 with As Time Goes By, Lady Gaga even reaches the No. 1 position with Tony Bennett (Cheek To Cheek, 2014), and repeats that feat a few years later with Love For Sale (2021), Annie Lennox, Sir Paul McCartney, Cindy Lauper… one bin is probably not enough in this record shop, in any case.

In 2007, record stores can add the next Big Name: Art Garfunkel’s tenth solo album is called Some Enchanted Evening, and is, as the title suggests, Artie’s take on “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”, “I Remember You”, “Someone To Watch Over Me” and 11 more songs from the Songbook, the songs of Gershwin, Arlen/Koehler, Rodgers/Hammerstein, Burke/Van Heusen and Irving Berlin, the songs that rightly enjoy enduring popularity.

All too much Garfunkel cannot add, unfortunately. Well, his still crushingly beautiful, angelic voice, obviously – over which there is now a slight, not unpleasant rustle, by the way. Apart from that, though, the record is another staging post in the slow, gradual degeneration of Garfunkel’s records, which actually started from the first solo album, 1973’s successful Angel Clare: with each record, Garfunkel’s music becomes more sterile, ethereal and muzak-y.

Which, incidentally, is not just down to production; after the second album, the commercially and artistically successful Breakaway (1975), Art’s instinct for good songs seems to abandon him more and more. Breakaway still has only good to exceptional songs: Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)”, a brilliant version of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Waters Of March”, Paul Simon’s gem “My Little Town”, Albert Hammond’s beauty “99 Miles From L.A.” and especially the stratospherical Beach Boys song “Disney Girls” – but after this album, the decline irrevocably sets in.

In both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, Garfunkel is wise enough to let his setlists lean on the Simon & Garfunkel repertoire. Mainly the more light-headed, ethereal songs like “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her”, “A Poem On The Underground Wall” and “Kathy’s Song”, but crowd pleasers like “Sounds Of Silence” and “The Boxer” still keep it balanced. And among the ethereal songs, “Scarborough Fair” has now won a permanent place.

Since 2014, “Scarborough Fair” has not been off Art’s setlist; from the 1970s until 2013, Garfunkel has performed the song some 30 times, since 2014 it has been performed more than 100 times. To which he then usually adds a remarkable coda: after the final words parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, the song gently flows, accompanied only by a single guitar, into

Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

If you go when the snowflakes fall
When the rivers freeze and the summer ends
Please see she has a coat so warm
To keep her from the howlin’ winds

If you’re travelin’ to Scarborough Fair
When the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

… a music-historically perfect coda, of course, but Dylan’s song seems to have fascinated him for some time now anyhow. Back in 1981, Art Garfunkel sings a particularly sterile version of Jimmy Webb’s “In Cars” on his understandably flopped album Scissor’s Cut in which suddenly, again in the coda, we hear Art singing “Girl From The North Country” alienatingly and mixed far, far back, like a ghost in the attic. Too weird and vague to be labelled a cover, but the use of Dylan’s song live, in the coda of “Scarborough Fair” that is, makes up for a lot.

Real covers abound, though. Hundreds, if not thousands. Almost all of them beautiful; the song just cannot be broken. At the very least worth mentioning is Rosanne Cash, who, in 2009, began her late father’s homework. Johnny Cash once gave Rosanne a list of “100 essential songs”, and for her album The List she records the first fourteen of them; classics like “Miss The Mississippi And You”, “Long Black Veil” and “500 Miles”… and “Girl From The North Country”.

Fine, but lacking the intensity of, say, Joe Cocker (with Leon Russel on Mad Dogs & Englishmen, 1970), Rod Stewart (who actually always produces great Dylan covers, this one is on 1974’s Smiler) or – especially – the American guitar beast Walter Trout. The studio version (Prisoner Of A Dream, 1991) is superb, but truly goosebump-inducing are the many live versions, in which Trout seems to get into The Zone every time. Not too surprising; in 2017, when Walter against all odds has survived liver cirrhosis thanks to a liver transplant and has returned to the spotlights, he declares from the stage in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, that he owes everything to three foundations under his work:

The release of Bob Dylan’s first album,
The Beatles’ performance on 9 February 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show, and
Listening to Paul Butterfield for the first time.

… by which he no doubt does not mean Dylan’s actual first album, given his decades-long, unconditional loyalty to the girl from the North, but rather The Freewheelin’. “Girl From The North Country” he usually announces as “my favourite song, a song written by my friend Mr. Bob Dylan” – and always he uses the song to demonstrate his exceptional skill with the pinky-swell technique. Usually in the second solo.

Walter Trout– Girl From The North Country live:

(sound-wise, the live version on No More Fish Jokes, 1993, is much better – but the intensity of this 1991 recording in Holland is irresistible)

Jimmy LaFave, James Last, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Waylon Jennings, Link Wray, Eels, Eddie Vedder… throw blindfolded a dart into the record shop, and you’ll always hit a bin where a cover can be found. And by far the majority of these don’t stray too far from the original -all of them staying close in terms of tempo, instrumentation and elegance. Though one might get some extra goosebumps if the song is sung by a real girl from the north, by the enchanting Ane Brun for example, with a chilling interpretation on the beautiful album Leave Me Breathless (2017).

(Editor’s note: The video Jochen supplied isn’t playing in the UK, so I’ve added a second version below. Hopefully one of these will work for you. This recording is unbelievably moving).

Ane Brun – Girl From The North Country:

For the truly special je-ne-sais-quoi, we will have to look not only across national borders, but across language borders. The song can – of course – be found in all languages, and even dialects thereof, and it might be obvious to go first of all to a North Country to find a perfect cover. Plenty of choice there, too. “Flickan från landet i norr”, “Hvis du reiser nordover”, “Pigen fra det højeste nord”… more than one cover can be found in the national language in every Nordic country. But they, like German, Czech, Hebrew and all the others, have to lose out to the languages that just happen to always sound good: Italian and French.

French wins. There may be plenty Ragazzi del Nord, but none of our Italian friends match the sheer beauty of Francis Cabrel, when he joins forces with Jean-Jacques Goldman in 1999, picking up Hugues Aufray’s translation, and recording a thoroughly elegant, ultimately moving “La Fille du Nord” for the charity project Sol En Si.

Si tu passe la-bàs vers le Nord
Où les vents souffle sur la frontière
N’oublie pas de donné le bonjour,
À la fille, qui fut mon amour

A-t-elle encore ses blonds cheveux si long, c’est ainsi que je l’aimais bien… In retrospect, it’s a shame Echo lived in Hibbing. And not in Quebec, over the borderline.

—————

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:

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The Bride and the Return of Tarantula

Posted on December 18, 2022 by TonyAttwood

See also Tarantula

by Larry Fyffe

The Bride of Tarantula

Humour comes in handy-dandy when waiting around all day for the Messiah to come, but, like Godot, doesn’t show up:

How long can I stay drunk on fear out in the wilderness
Can I cast 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
(Bob Dylan: When He Returns)

Could be construed that in the following song lyrics, His Bride, that is, the followers of Christ, are impatient, if not downright dubious, about His promised return:

Well, if I come back
She said, we'll meet down by the station ...
Our days are bound to go
(Bob Dylan: Down By The Station)

Appears that if He doesn’t return soon, Satan’s standing by with a coat-full of apples:

It ain't easy to swallow, it sticks in your throat
She gave her heart to the man in the long black coat
(Bob Dylan: The Man In The Long Black Coat)

In Greek/Roman mythology, human mortals be barred from Mount Olympus; immortals like Zeus, his son Apollo, and Venus, are the only ones allowed upstairs – plus those who are considered worthy demigods like the violent-prone, though often jolly, wine-drinking dancing-fool known as Dionysus.

Could be a Dionysian archetype who makes the joke below:

(H)e tells me that Shakespeare's relatives killed his ancestors
& that now his brothers won't read Shakespeare
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Rockabilly, another matter:

Give me one hand loose, and I'll be satisfied
Give me a free hand baby 'cause I wanna rock
Turn me loose, and maybe I will blow my top
(Charlie Feathers: One Hand Loose ~ Huffman/Chastain/Feathers)

The lyrics above burlesqued in the Leda-and-the-swan song below:

Saddle me up a big white goose
Tie me on'er,  and turn her loose
Oh, me, oh my
Love that country pie
(Bob Dylan: Country Pie)

With a scat of Lord Buckley’s satirical bells ringing all over:

In the jingle-jangle morning, I'll come following you ....
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
(Bob Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man)

The Return Of The Tarantula

Spiderman has nothing on Tarantula (papa ‘Honest Abe” created his own version of the Cosmos wherein the Afterlife is of little concern).

Hairy Tarantula is like the Raven of North American lore ~ a trickster and a jokester who will do almost anything to obtain a few slices of bread, and a bottle of heavenly whiskey.

Including teaching American history to school children:

(W)ho can tell me the name of the
third president of the United States -
a girl with her back full of ink
raises her hand & says "Ernest Tubb"
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Apparently, the honest electric honky-tonker, endeavours with all his might to hold the Union together:

I'm walking the floor over you
I can't sleep a wink that is true
I'm hoping and I'm praying as my heart breaks in two
Walking the floor over you
(Ernest Tubb: Walking The Floor Over You)

In the lyrics below, however, the Tarantula, a stranger in a strange land, burlesques the sorrowful sentiment that’s expressed above:

Set'em up Joe, play "Walking The Floor"
Play it for my flat-chested junkie whore
I'm staying up late, and I'm making amends
While the smile of heaven descends
(Bob Dylan: Scarlet Town)

That earnest willingness to wait for divine intervention expressed in the song lyrics beneath:

I'm gonna spend the night like every night before
Playing ET, and I'm gonna play him some more
I got to have a shot of them Troubadours
Set'em up Joe, play "Walking The Floor"
(Vern Gosdin: Set'em Up Joe ~ Gosdin, et al)

To be Frank, according to the Tarantula, ET’s just getting too many accolades all over:

It's a quarter to three
There's no one in the place
Except you and me
So set'em up Joe
I got a little story you ought to know
(Johnny Mercer: One For My Baby ~ Mercer/Arlen)

Ready, Freddie – again it’s parody time in the following song lyrics wherein more than the artist’s inkwell is drying up.

Albeit with ambiguous lyrics akin to the gnostic-like “Down By The Station”, it seems the departure of a mere lover be damned; more important is that the supposedly soon-to-come Second Coming of Christ is stretching farther and farther out into the future:

One for my baby
One for the road
This bottle is dried up soon
And I'll be all cried up soon
I can't see no God up soon
It's a long way to go
(Bob Dylan: One For The Road)

A masterpiece of burlesque.

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A Dylan cover a day: Outlaw Blues – prepare to be amazed

Posted on December 17, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

I suspect that those whose minds allow them occasionally to let Dylan songs slip away from their memories, may well have forgotten “Outlaw Blues,” even though it appears on one of the most popular Dylan albums of all time.

Bob only played it once on stage, and it sits on “Bringing it all back home” swamped by “Gates of Eden,” “Tambourine Man”, “Love Minus Zero…” etc etc.

So as I say, it is possible you might have forgotten it, and as an introduction here’s the official Dylan video

Now given just how standard a 12 bar this is, you might suspect the number of covers is very small. And yes thayt is true. Indeed not only is the number small, but some of them are really just straight re-runs of this 12 bar played with the classic R&B chugging accompaniment, with the first line repeated, and then a third rhyming line. Here’s one (but believe me there is better to come).

Indeed from my younger days I also remember Dave Edmunds having a bash at it. It’s ok and there’s an interesting instrumental break, but not much more to say about it. Actually, I remember Dave Edmunds better for “Queen of Hearts” which I recall playing endlessly in my youth, although I am not 100% sure why. Funny to hear it again after all these years – its on the link a couple of lines above in case you are interested.

Anyway, here’s his Outlaw Blues – but please if by now you are thinking that I am really struggling to find anything interesting to offer here, please, please, please keep going…

So to follow my earlier point: is there a cover worth noting here? Well yes there is. And it really, really is good in every sense. As a musical production, it is superb in itself, but additionally, as a re-arrangement of a classic 12 bar it is something very unusual. I do hope you have a moment to listen to it.

The Morning Benders renamed themselves Pop Etc, supposedly after being told that the word “bender” had an unfortunate connotation in the UK. And they have indeed had some success, particularly with the album “Talking through tin cans” (Best indie album of 2008 according to iTunes).

This recording really does show that no matter what the starting point is with a Dylan song, and no matter that hardly anyone else wants to know about it, there is always something else that can be done.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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Other people’s songs: The Christmas Song

Posted on December 16, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Aaron Galbraith (in the USA) and Tony Attwood (in the UK)

(Note: a list of the other articles in this series is published at the end).

Aaron: It’s funny to think that most Christmas songs are written and recorded in summer, “I saw a spiral pad on his (Bob Wells’s) piano with four lines written in pencil”, Mel Tormé recalled. “They started, ‘Chestnuts roasting…, Jack Frost nipping…, Yuletide carols…, Folks dressed up like Eskimos.’ Bob didn’t think he was writing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse himself in winter he could cool off. Forty minutes later that song was written. I wrote all the music and some of the lyrics.”

Nat King Cole recorded this song by Bob Wells and Mel Tormé three times, twice in 1946 and again in 1961. The 1961 version is generally regarded as definitive. In 2022, the recording was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” It is probably my favorite Christmas song.

Tony: He really did have an utterly astonishing and beautiful voice. My dad (who rarely sang although he was a fine pianist and saxophonist) loved this song and this particular version. So it is a recording I knew while living at home with my parents.

Aaron: Here is Bob’s version

Tony: There’s a review of the 2009 album which says that “Dylan’s horse vocals had taken on a timbre so coarse that even the most fearsome Clint Eastwood character would tremble upon hearing him croon…. At times, it even seems like Dylan could’ve written ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ back in 1739 and was simply reanimated by a festive Dr Frankenstein to mark the 270th anniversary of the track…. Perhaps as Leonard Cohen once suggested, Dylan was merely trying, in his way, to be free, ala ‘Bird on the Wire’.”

I’ve always regarded it as Dylan singing the songs he learned in his childhood at Christmas. And in a way I can understand that, as for many years every Christmas I would go to the house of some friends for a party on Christmas Eve and play Christmas songs on the piano and everyone would sing along. The singing was pretty awful (and after a few drinks so was my piano playing) but it was also fun seeing everyone again.

Bob’s recordings by and large aren’t something that I would want to play, and I don’t actually have a copy of the album in any form at home. But, apparently, all the proceeds in the USA went to “Feeding America” (which I am told – as being English I didn’t know – is the largest charity working to end hunger in the USA.) So on that basis the whole project gets a very positive vote from me.

And so, having found that out I feel a bit better about the whole thing. Not that I am going to have this song playing in my house this Christmas but I think I get it.

Aaron: As you can imagine there are literally thousands of covers of this song. So here are just two that I like.

First, Paul McCartney from 2012, recorded with Diana Krall

Tony: I was never a Beatles fan, but here again I am moved to say, the guy had a good voice, which perhaps I had never appreciated, not liking the band’s music very much. Perhaps that is because no matter where I have lived I’ve always thought of myself as a Londoner (which is where I was born and brought up, and where I studied for my research degree).

What can I say of this? It’s gentle, it’s sweet, how can I object to it? I won’t be seeing my youngest grandchild this Christmas (she lives with her father and my daughter in Australia) but yes if I were there and she had woken in the night I can imagine I might have ended up holding her in my arms and singing this to her. It probably wouldn’t have put her back to sleep, but in my dreams it would.

Aaron: The Monkees from the album ‘Christmas Party’ (2018)

Tony: If I didn’t care much for the Beatles, then I certainly cared even less for the Monkees in my youth. I think I’ve had enough of this song by now, and to my utter amazement if I had to say which version was best out of this lot I’d got for McCartney, which is not something I think I have ever said before. The Monkees is the worst one for me.

So, Bob wanted to sing the songs he remembered from his youth. Nothing wrong with that, and I hope it raised a lot of money. Can I listen to something else now?

Previously in this series…

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Girl From The North Country (1963) part 3: Whatever “country” is

Posted on December 15, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

III Whatever “country” is

“John R. Cash was an American country singer-songwriter.” Thus opens the English Wikipedia page on Johnny Cash, and so do the French, German, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and about 90 more Wikipedia pages: Cash was first and foremost a country artist.

The Spanish calls him el Rey de la Música Country, the Portuguese personificação do country, and actually only the Letzenburgische (Luxembourg) does not mention a style of music in the first paragraph, but only mentions it at the end of the second paragraph:

Säi musikalesche Spektrum ass vun den 1950er Jore mat Country, Gospel, Rockabilly, Blues, Folk a Pop bis zum Alternative Country am Ufank vum 21. Joerhonnert gaangen.

… so “country” still does come first. Whereon one could have an opinion, and Johnny Cash himself struggles with it too, in his autobiography. Firstly, with the term itself. “When music people today,” Cash philosophises, “performers and fans alike, talk about being ‘country,’ they don’t mean they know or even care about the country and the life it sustains and regulates.” The way of life depicted by “country” is long gone, he argues, and what remains are empty symbols of bygone culture. “Are the hats, the boots, the pickup trucks, and the honky-tonking poses all that’s left of a disintegrating culture?”

“The “country” music establishment, including “country” radio and the “Country” Music Association, does after all seem to have decided that whatever “country” is, some of us aren’t.”

In any case, he himself does not seem to fully understand either why he was pigeonholed as “country musician” from Day One, and that lack of understanding is palpable. His breakthrough hit “I Walk The Line” (1956) may have been a so-called crossover hit, as it reached No 19 on the pop music charts, but it established Cash’s name by conquering the combined country charts: six weeks at No 1 on the U.S. Country Juke Box charts, one week at No 1 on the C&W Jockey charts, and No 2 on the C&W Best Seller charts. And when Cash looks around, up there, he sees hits like Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog”, Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes”, Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” and Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, all of which rank collegially alongside Hank Snow, Kitty Wells, George Jones and Porter Wagoner and all those other country greats… reviewing the Billboard Top Country & Western Records of 1956, it is indeed a bit puzzling according to which criteria a song is labelled as “country”. At least in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “I Walk The Line” is permanently listed among “The 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll”.

He himself tries to arrange a first audition with Sam Phillips as a gospel singer, but that does not convince the legendary Sun Records producer. No market for it, he thinks. Cash then tries as a C&W singer, ironically (“My next try didn’t work, either – that time I told him I was a country singer”), is allowed to audition and performs some Hank Snow songs, a Jimmie Rodgers song, a couple of Carter Family songs, but that doesn’t please either. Phillips wants to hear a song of his own, so Cash then just plays “Hey Porter” (“Though I didn’t think it was any good”). The producer immediately catches on: rockabilly! And with that, Cash has his first record deal: “Come back tomorrow with those guys you’ve been making the music with, and we’ll put that song down, he told me.”

The stamp “country” is inescapable, though. And Cash conforms to it. For his second album (The Fabulous Johnny Cash, 1958), he writes songs like “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” and “I Still Miss Someone”, and records songs by country greats like Bob Nolan and Cindy Walker. But we can already see the love for folk too: the second track is Cash’s adaptation of the time-honoured “Frankie And Johnny”, in his case “Frankie’s Man, Johnny”. Which again scores crossover; #9 on the Billboard country chart, 57 on the Hot 100. And he confesses this love of folk wholeheartedly in his autobiography: “I was deeply into folk music in the early 1960s”. So he has Dylan in his sights early on:

“I took note of Bob Dylan as soon as the Bob Dylan album came out in early ’62 and listened almost constantly to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in ’63. I had a portable record player I’d take along on the road, and I’d put on Freewheelin’ backstage, then go out and do my show, then listen again as soon as I came off.”

With which he appears to be a true connoisseur; at most 2,500 copies of that first album were sold in 1962. So, by his own account, Johnny Cash did belong to that select club of buyers. More fascinating though, and more moving too, is the second part of his declaration of love, about his obsession with The Freewheelin’. His words are reminiscent of John Lennon’s in The Beatles Anthology (2000):

“In Paris in 1964 was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all. Paul got the record [The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan] from a French DJ. For three weeks in Paris we didn’t stop playing it. We all went potty about Dylan.”

And decades later, looking back, both McCartney and Lennon point to its influence. “Norwegian Wood”, “I’m A Loser”, “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”… “That’s me in my Dylan period again,” analyses Lennon in 1980, just before his death. Which Paul agrees, in 1984: “That was John doing a Dylan… heavily influenced by Bob. If you listen, he’s singing it like Bob.”

Cash – fortunately – does not sing like Dylan, but indeed: from 1962 onwards, when Cash says he is deeply into folk music, and so fond of listening to Dylan, we see a turnaround in repertoire choice. On Blood, Sweat And Tears (1963), which he recorded from June to August ’62, there are songs like “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer” and “Casey Jones”, and in 1964 he records the successful Orange Blossom Special, with no fewer than three Dylan songs (“It Ain’t Me Babe”, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Mama, You’ve Been on My Mind”).

It makes it all the stranger that Cash makes such a mess of the lyrics of “Girl From The North Country” on Nashville Skyline.

If we take him at his word, that he listened almost constantly to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in ’63, before and after every gig on his portable record player, that alone is an impressive number of spins; in 1963, Cash did 61 concerts after the release of The Freewheelin’ (27 May 1963), so with that fact alone, we count 122 spins of “Girl From The North Country”. More than enough to have the lyrics indelibly imprinted on memory, one might say. But it actually goes wrong right from the start.

Alternately, the men apparently agreed. And presumably then the last verse, the repetition of the first verse, together. Dylan, with his new voice, does stay perfectly true-to-text, when he opens. However, when it’s Cash’s turn after that first verse, he does not sing the second verse, but the third. Sort of, anyway;

Dylan’s original Cash on Nashville Skyline

Please see for me if her hair hangs long                  See for me that her hair’s hanging down
If it rolls and flows all down her breast                    It curls and falls all down her breast [“frest”?]
Please see for me if her hair hangs long                  See for me that her hair’s hanging down
That’s the way I remember her best                          That’s the way I remember her best

… only the last line is unchanged. Which in itself is hardly a problem, of course. Dylan himself is the last person who thinks his lyrics are sacred; “They’re songs. They’re not written in stone. They’re on plastic” (SongTalk interview with Paul Zollo, 1991).

Dylan quickly switches gears and then sings the second verse himself, the verse Cash skipped. Ideally, The Man In Black would then do the fourth verse, but alas: he sets in the fifth, the last. Dylan is still alert and quick, and decides in a split second that this will be the last verse then, the two-part duet – Cash has only sung “If you’re…”, and Dylan is already joining in: “… travelin’, in the North Country fair”. The second line, Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, then comes out smoothly, but by line three it goes wrong again. Dylan sings, as he should, Remember me to one who lives there, but his partner improvises Please say hello to the one who lives there. However, Cash has kept his ears open; when the men then sing the same verse one more time, he neatly follows the original lyrics.

Oh well, who cares. It is and remains an exciting combo of two giants showcasing their musical pleasure with a song that is so strong that it cannot be broken anyway. And who knows – perhaps Cash has just sown the first seed for “If You See Her, Say Hello” with his lyrics rehash here. Not an insignificant song either.

To be continued. Next up Girl From The North Country part 4 (final): À la fille, qui fut mon amour

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:

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Tarantula

Posted on December 14, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

When Bob Dylan’s song-visions are taken as a whole, revealed is what the singer considers a flaw in Christian thought. That is, the religion foresees the future as ending with the second return of Jesus Christ; supposedly an event very close to happening.

The expectation that all the troubles on earth will get better eventually also comes to an end.

The problem being that matters didn’t change much at all the first time around; with that, so departed the hope that saves humankind from the melancholy of nihilism.

Sorrowful though it may seem, hope for deliverance from the woes of the world is never lost when the future never ends.

In short, better a Messiah who never comes than a particular one who’s supposedly on His way.

Singer/ songwriter/musician Bob Dylan sources the narratives of Roman and Greek mythology as well as those of the Judaic and Christian religions. And the prescience of Alchemy.

The ‘messages’ contained in his works are more unified, less fragmented in the Postmodern style than many critics would have his readers and listeners believe. Dylan’s word-images (and accompanying music) act as objective correlatives to harden up abstract ideas and emotional feelings so they can better be transmitted to his audiences.

Best abandon all hope, however, ye who expect Dylan visions to come only in colours black and white; instead, the old symbolic elements of air, earth, water, and fire play a large part therein; they intermingle – sometimes they be in balance, other times out of balance.

By mixing up mythologies in his song lyrics, Dylan twists their stories around quite a bit; for instance, the virgin twin sister of Apollo loans Venus a giant scorpion for protection against the both the advances of Achilles and of Paris – or so one of his songs might be construed:

I watch your scorpion
Who crawls a cross you circus floor
Just who do you think you have to guard
(Bob Dylan: Temporary Like Achilles)

Archer Artremis, the moon (mona) goddess, hunts animals but she protects them too, especially those pregnant. When Orion is said to brag that he could easily kill all the animals in the forest, she sends a giant scorpion after him which stings Orion to death.

Artemis/Diana also slows down Greek ships on the way to Troy because the Greek commander Agamemnon brags that he be a better archer than she is.

Arache, a mere mortal challenges Athena, the goddness of wisdom and crafts, to a contest; unwisely the human does the best weaving; the goddess becomes enraged, and Arachne hangs herself.

Not without pity, the goddess turns Arachne into a spider.

Dylan, it appears, into a Tarantula with Groucho Marxist eyes:

(Y)our problem is that you wanna better
word for world
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

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A Dylan cover a day: Only a pawn in their game

Posted on December 13, 2022 by TonyAttwood

Reminding me of just how lucky I have been.

by Tony Attwood

“Only a pawn” is such an idiosyncratic song, and a song sung by Bob in such a particular way, with the variations of timing and verse lengths, that at first sight it looks pretty well impossible to do anything with it that isn’t just a straight copy.

But I am delighted to say that this is not the case – delighted because I think it is a wonderful song, and one that the album recording by Bob doesn’t take to its ultimate point.

Fortunately however other artists seem to have been very reluctant to have a go. Sadly not all recordings are available on the internet, but I’ve selected a few covers from those that are…

Lenny Nelson

Lenny Nelson turns the song into rock, which before I heard this I thought would not be possible. And yet I found everything about this interesting, and indeed exciting except what happens with the title line. But that of course is just a personal point – I don’t think “game” needs emphasising as happens here, but it’s a musical decision. The problem for me is that doing that ending to each verse means that the ending of the whole piece doesn’t have much impact… but still that is a personal view.

Rich Robinson

This takes us right back to Bob’s version and I am not sure what the point is of doing the song in a way so similar to the original. But if you find something in this version that Bob doesn’t manage to find in his own recording then fine. And that brings me to what I think is an interesting point – Bob only played this eight times in concert, concluding in 1964. I wonder what he would make of it now.

Roy Bailey

Now this recording I treasure – not my favourite but one I am so glad I found. This solo performance really does show us the incredible power of this song which seemingly Bob set aside having written, presumably deciding it was not suitable for concerts.

I write these commentaries sitting upstairs in my house in the countryside, looking today with winter firmly established, at the leafless trees and the frost on the grass. There is no wind, and just a few birds circling. The red kites have long since migrated. I sit here alone. This performance is utterly and totally overwhelming – although there is yet more to come.

Morrisey

Hearing the drum beat used here, it seems utterly obvious – as if it should have been there in every recording.

What makes the song unusual is that it is in 6/8 time – meaning six beats in a bar in two groups of three, but that phrases are of uneven length so we never know what is going happen.

This is one of my absolute all time favourite cover versions of any Dylan song. If I ever feel I have forgotten how privileged a life I have been granted, this is the recording I use to remind me of just how lucky I have been. How dare I ever be sad or anxious or worried.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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Other people’s songs: Must be Sanata (and a touch of Hey Jude)

Posted on December 12, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

A list of previous articles from this series can be found at the end of the article.

Aaron: Dylan mentioned that he remembered first hearing “Must Be Santa” on Holiday Sing-Along with Mitch by Mitch Miller & The Gang.

Dylan’s version is a cover of Brave Combo’s 1991 version, from their album “It’s Christmas, Man!”

Dylan played that version of “Must be Santa” on the Theme Time Radio Hour Christmas episode and would later note in an interview that the song “comes from a band called Brave Combo. They’re a regional band out of Texas that takes regular songs and changes the way you think about them. You oughta hear their version of ‘Hey Jude.’”

Tony: Now Aaron didn’t follow that point up so I have – here is Hey Jude that Dylan was referring to. And I would add, if you are not impressed by the larking around at the start skip through to 45″ and play from there. It really is quite fun. Well, it made me smile. I love the version of la la la la la la la (etc) at the end. Lovely rhythmic change.

But back to Aaron’s text…

This is one of those situations in which the video Aaron has found in the USA isn’t available in the UK where I am. I’m leaving his selection in, and below putting another version I’ve found by the same band which does work in the UK.

Aaron: Here is Bob’s version

Tony: So this sounds pretty much like part two of the version by Brave Combo that I have found works in the UK, so I guess I’m on the right track. And OK if you are totally in the Christmas spirit, and the water pipes haven’t frozen etc etc then I guess it is great fun.

Perhaps my review this morning is suffering from the fact that last night I drove for 90 minutes in pretty awful conditions to an event only to get there to find it was called off. Not putting me in the best mood – but I think all these songs are best played with lots of friends around and everyone in the Christmas spirit. Which of course I’ll get to in time, I’m sure.

Aaron: She & Him recorded their version for 2016 album Christmas Party. Along the way they updated the list of presidents to include Obama and Hillary Clinton (“unfortunately Hillary never became president”).

Tony: The problem with the song is that there is not too much one can do with it – the repeated lines only make sense if performed as in the original, and the “Must be Santa” line can’t really be changed because of the fact that “must” comes in on the second beat of the bar which gives its distinctive sound. Take that out and the song loses its essence – unless you are doing the Brave Combo style approach where anything goes.

I’m glad I found that one. Really made me smile.

Previously in this series…

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Girl From The North Country (1963) part 2: La Gazza Ladra

Posted on December 11, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

Girl From The North Country (1963) part 1: He was a real magpie

II La Gazza Ladra

Ornithomancy it is called, divination based on bird behaviour. The ancient Romans, for example, released pigeons and the augurs would then interpret messages from the gods from their flight patterns. But all cultures have variations of it. The English owe the old nursery rhyme “One For Sorrow” to it, the counting rhyme that attributes predictive value to the number of magpies you see flying;

One for sorrow,
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral,
Four for birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven for the devil, his own self

… of which, of course, there are again dozens of variants. Illustrating the many superstitious myths surrounding the magpie. In Western culture, he usually does not come off well. The magpie is considered cunning and thieving, bad luck, associated with witchcraft and said to predict death. And, to add injury to the insult: “A single magpie in spring, foul weather will bring”.

The myth that the magpie steals shiny things is actually quite new. Rossini wrote one of his most beloved operas, La Gazza Ladra (“The Thieving Magpie”, 1817, the opera with Rossini’s perhaps most brilliant overture) in 1817, in which a magpie steals a silver spoon. An innocent maid is falsely accused of the theft and sentenced to death. The popularity of opera also popularises this plot, which is then further milked in stories (Lilian Gask’s A Basket Of Flowers, 1910), in children’s books, cartoons and in comics. Culminating in Hergé’s graphically stunning, atypical, suspensefully uninspired but humorously irresistible Tintin and The Castafiore Emerald (1963) – all comedy-of-errors-like stories that build on the misunderstandings that arise when a magpie steals something of value.

It’s not true, by the way. Magpies are exceptionally intelligent birds (the only birds to pass the mirror test, for example), and are mostly curious. They have no particular inclination to steal shiny things. But the myth is persistent, and so we all understand what Martin Carthy means when he characterises Dylan with the words “He was a real magpie”.

To the indefatigable, enthusiastic German folklorist Jürgen Kloss and the brilliant work of love on his website Just Another Tune, we owe academic confirmation of Carthy’s apt observation. Kloss writes the fascinating article “…She Once Was A True Love Of Mine” and in it takes us along on a treasure hunt for the sources for “Girl From The North Country”, a scavenger hunt for the origins of all the shiny thingies found by the magpie Dylan.

Kloss acknowledges – of course – and discusses at length the influence of Carthy and “Scarborough Fair”, but also analyses that Dylan’s song is at best a vague copy of it, or less so, actually: “In fact the differences are so great that it can easily be called an original melody.” He then searches and finds a host of sources for the shiny things the magpie gathers. The motif anyway, of the messenger to remind the girl of her former lover, which Dylan already knows from songs like Johnny Cash’s “Give My Love To Rose”, and the Everly Brothers’ hit “Take A Message To Mary”. More notable still is Betty Carter’s “Tell Him I Said Hello”, from which theme and word choice descend both in “Girl From The North Country” and later in “If You See Her, Say Hello”;

When you see him
Tell him things are slow
There's a reason and he's sure to know
But on second thought, forget it
Just tell him I said hello
If he asks you when I come and go
Say I stay home 'cause I miss him so
But on second thought, forget it
Just tell him I said hello

Equally widespread is the use of “North Country” as an idealised place of carefree idyll, which Kloss finds in abundance in traditional folk songs, and Dylan’s recurring use of it in “North Country Blues”, “Ballad For A Friend” and in this song. Or the tender sigh Please see if she’s wearing a coat so warm, which the German scholar traces to yet other songs in Dylan’s baggage, songs like “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and Irving Berlin’s “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm”.

Just a few examples of the multitude of shiny things Dylan collects here and there for his song. And just as many arguments to classify the song as an exceptionally successful work in a long, long tradition – rather than as an individual expression of a personal, fundamental formative experience.

Indeed, Kloss also has a commendable aversion to the many biographical interpretations you inevitably come across, to the stubborn, childish attempts of exegetes who try to stick a name from Dylan’s environment on the Girl from the North Country.

One consensus among all those code-crackers is: Echo Hellstrom, a childhood friend of Dylan’s who has the misfortune of being blonde, leading to her having to walk around with the “Muse of Dylan” stamp for the rest of her life. Longer even; the mere fact that so many fans and Dylanologists want to understand the song as biographical historiography, and that the northern girl then “therefore” is Echo, gives her death news value. Hundreds of newspapers reported on 23 January 2018 that Echo Star Casey, nee Helstrom, “the woman rumoured to be the subject of Bob Dylan’s song Girl from the North Country” had died. The song has quite literally become the story of her life; her Wikipedia page describes her life in 761 words, and 697 of them are about Dylan and his song.

It might be a bit sad, such fame by association, and all the more so if that association seems to be fictitious and mainly due to sensationalist wishful thinking, but it is what it is. And in the end, for what it’s worth, Echo is for millions of people indeed a “shard of glass, an agate bead, a monocle”, well alright, maybe even “the emerald”, but in any case: at the very least one of the many shiny things with which the magpie Dylan embellishes one of his all-time greatest songs. No small feat, however you look at it.

To be continued. Next up Girl From The North Country part 3: Whatever “country” is

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:

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Country Pie (1969) part 3: I’m your wicked Uncle Ernie

More On Tennessee Williams

Never Ending Tour: the absolute highlights 8: Girl from the North Country

Like A Wagon Wheel

Country Pie (1969) part 2: Slap that drummer with a pie that smells

A Dylan Cover a Day: Oxford Town

NET: The Absolute Highlights. Gates of Eden – perfection in desolation

Bob Dylan, George Byron And William Blake

Country Pie (1969) part 1: People try and read so much into songs

The Never Ending Tour: The Absolute Highlights. It ain’t me babe. Go lightly.

The Tarantula Crawls Across The Circus Floor and Arachnida Is Dead

Girl From The North Country (1963) part 4 (final)

The Bride and the Return of Tarantula

A Dylan cover a day: Outlaw Blues – prepare to be amazed

Other people’s songs: The Christmas Song

Girl From The North Country (1963) part 3: Whatever “country” is

Tarantula

A Dylan cover a day: Only a pawn in their game

Other people’s songs: Must be Sanata (and a touch of Hey Jude)

Girl From The North Country (1963) part 2: La Gazza Ladra

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