The song lyrics of Bob Dylan contain mulitudes of biblical characters; one of them being Timothy (though he’s not mentioned by name).
As if biblical Christian Timothy, half-Jewish, half-Greek, in his travels, doesn’t have enough problems with the Roman authorities, and orthodox Hebrews, he also has to contend with followers of Greek beliefs akin to those of the later Persian Mani; ie, that light and dark forces in the Cosmos tangle with one another.
Gnostic-like Encratism holds on to the mythological depiction of the moon goddess Diana as a virgin.
Sexual desire be a dark force that needs to be held in check:
Forbidding to marry
And commanding to abstain from meats
Which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them
Which believe and know the truth
(I Timothy 4:3)
The dogma that ‘original sin’ is transferred through Adam’s seed becomes a hallmark of particular Christian churches; Saint Augustine, influenced by Mani, leads the charge.
In the song lyrics below, it can be construed that the Timothy of old would not be pleased about that:
I dreamed I saw St, Augustine
Alive with fiery breath
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
That put him out to death
(Bob Dylan: I Dreamed I St. Augustine)
Saint Paul, a Greek-speaking Jew, urges his Christian followers to protect Timothy:
Now if Timotheus come
See that he may be with you without fear
For he worketh the work of the Lord
As I do also
(I Corinthians 16: 10)
A modern Saint Paul is not happy with the view of a virginal Moon Goddess either:
I'm so young, and you're so old
This my darling, I've been told
I don't care just what they say
'Cause forever I will pray
You and I will be as free
As the birds up in the trees
Oh please stay by me, Diana
(Paul Anka: Diana)
Overall, however, biblical Paul and Timothy advance a rather negative view of sexual desire.
A list of previous articles in this series is given at the end.
By Tony Attwood
Next up in this series is Like a Rolling Stone, except that Aaron and I covered that song in depth in the “Beautiful Obscurity” series.
We’ve also covered Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, but I’d like to pull the various references made in different places together, because some of these covers are so wonderful and I want to put them together. And I’ve got a couple of versions that we haven’t mentioned before but really ought to be included.
I won’t go through the whole thing again, but if you want to venture into my commentary from last year it is still on the site. But really, all you need to do is watch and listen. This is just such enormous fun, and excellent music too.
And Tom Russell was also included by Jochen… it is restrained and calm, but keeps all the enthusiasm and drive inherent in the song.
If you are a regular here you’ll know the affection in which I hold Mary Lee’s Corvette. Sadly there is no video with this video (if you see what I mean) but their version is delivered with their usual enthusiasm and drive and is well worth listening to.
And one that we haven’t touched on before, as far as I know. The Minchmins
The point of all this is that the music is fast and furious, and to slow it down is really not practical because there is so much in the song it could be in danger of becoming tedious. But on the other hand because it is fast and furious there is not that much the musicians can do with it.
At least that is what I thought until I heard the Minchmins version. They go at speed but the accompaniment is inventive, novel, enthusiastic and indeed perfect. And against this the vocalist adds some nuances without any sense of trying to outdo the musicians. Indeed this version gives me, once again, new enthusiasm for this song. And after having lived with the track for so many years, I find that quite a clever thing to do.
———-
Here’s a list of most of the articles from this series…
Why it’s plausible to construe that the narrator in “Red River Shore” takes on the role of a modernized Elijah, wrapped in a cloak of misery, is because the narrator of another song, “SlowTrain Coming”, without him being named, can be considered the persona of the apostle-like Timothy of the New Testament.
Both Elijah and Timothy are true-believers who are frustrated by their inability to convert the unworthy.
According to the Bible, Timothy’s persuaded to stay in a city inhabited mostly by Diana worshippers though he is reluctant to do so; to remain, and teach nonbelievers and self-proclaimed Christians how of find the pure path to their true Savior Jesus:
For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind
For manstealers, for liars, for prejured persons
And if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine
(I Timothy 1:10)
Echoed by the modernized Timothy in the song lyics below:
Big- time negotiators, false healers, and woman haters
Masters of the bluff, and masters of the proposition
But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency
All non-believers and manstealers, talking in the name of religion
(Bob Dylan: Slow Train Coming)
This transformed Timothy walks around the streets of cities in America, the New Babylon:
All that foreign oil, controlling Ameican soil
Look around you, it's bound to make you embarrassed
Shieks walking around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings
(Bob Dylan: Slow Train Coming)
Claimed it be that biblical Timothy gets stoned to death for attempting to halt a parade in honour of the goddess Diana (led by a priest named Anka?).
Apparently, our modern-day Timothy ignores advice that the best thing to do is leave town before he too gets stoned:
I had a girl down in Alabama
She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic
She's said, "Boy without a doubt
Have to quit your mess, and strighten out"
You could die down here, be just another accident statistic
(Bob Dylan: Slow Train)
Still sinful he be; messes around with the medicine in the basement without strictly following the ‘sound doctrine’.
by Aaron Galbraith (in USA) and Tony Attwood (in the UK)
Aaron: Bob’s version appears as the closing track on his debut album.
Tony: It was hearing this first Dylan album that persuaded me to ask my parents for a guitar for my birthday. I am not sure that they thought I would stick at learning it, although I was a competent young pianist at the time, but they gave me the guitar, and I was playing and singing that first album quite soon after, but with none of the mastery of Dylan’s performance here, of course.
And coming back to it, having not played the track in a long old while, I am knocked out both by the power of the singing and technical mastery of the guitar work. Bob really does deliver. Mind you he was of course 20 or 21 when he recorded it, so he had had time to get the music together, but still, it is quite remarkable how assured he was in singing these songs that go back way before he was born.
Aaron: The song was written by Blind Lemon Jefferson and first recorded in 1927.
Tony: I’ve included two links to the original, as the one Aaron has provided from the USA doesn’t want to work in the UK. Hopefully you’ll find one of them works.
https://youtu.be/pX3mxjtpyBc
Tony: So we can hear that Dylan has cut out the chord change in the second line, and given a much more desperate delivery from that of the original. I think I always took it from the approach Dylan took for the song that the vocals were directed at his friends and relatives, while Blind Lemon Jefferson seems to be appealing to the Almighty.
And if you have time do play the Lemon Jefferson track to the end; it has a very curious ending that seems to make light of all that has gone before, whereas for Bob, the desperation is there from the start to the end.
Aaron: Here we have some other modern versions to compare to Bob’s
Lou Reed
Tony: I do like reworkings of songs that mean one would not be able to guess what is coming up from the instrumental introduction, and that is certainly the case here with the introduction. But when we get to the vocals it is not a disappointment, for this rendition really does go its own way, and gives a grim horror-laden approach. And the extension of the music between the repeated lines really does increase the horror. And it lasts for the full 7 minutes 30 seconds. Absolutely overpowering.
There are two verses in addition to Bob’s version
The second verse is
Long line ain't got no end
Lord, there's a long line that ain't got no end
It's a long long line that ain't got no end
Bad wind that never came
It's a bad wind that never came
Verse six is
Dig my grave with a silver spade
Why don't you dig my grave with a silver spade
Why don't you dig my grave with a silver spade
Why don't you lay me down with a golden chain
Not sure I could listen to this twice in quick succession, but wow, what a performance.
Mavis Staples
Tony: More lyrics changes. And I am not at all clear where they have all come from – were they introduced by the composer or added later? It would be good to know.
Here we’ve got a set of backing singers, and I think it is remarkable that the producer and Ms Staples have made this work without sanitising the song. It would be very easy for the depth of feeling in the lyrics to be lost, but that doesn’t happen, I’m delighted to say.
But having listened to Aaron’s selection I am still utterly haunted by Lou Reed’s version. And haunted is the right word for me; I really don’t think I can go back and play it again.
From a formal point of view, the last ten-line stanza, or officially the last quatrain + sextet, is the most remarkable of the entire lyrics. And on the other two fronts, stylistically and in terms of content, it actually is too. Just as the entire text “in fact” seems to have another form than the one presented, namely ten-line stanzas in a fixed rhyme scheme, closed with a recurring refrain line, this ending also “in fact” seems to have a completely different form: in terms of stanza construction, a reversed sonnet. An inverted Petrarchan sonnet, to be precise; first the sextet, then the octave. Dylan chooses – for the time being, presumably – for a quite original mixture of classical rhyme schemes in the two quatrains of the octave (aabb and cddc) and an open, modern rhyme scheme in the opening tercets (aab and ccd).
So officially, on the site, this part of the lyrics is again formatted as ten lines, as a quatrain plus a sextet, but both content and rhyme scheme as well as Dylan’s recitation leave little doubt:
Everything in the way
is so shiny today
A queer and unusual fall
Spirals of golden haze,
here and there in a blaze
Like beams of light in the storm
Maybe you were here and maybe you weren’t
Maybe you touched somebody and got burnt
The silent sun
has got me on the run
Burning a hole in my brain
I’m dreamin’ of you,
that’s all I do
But it’s driving me insane
… an inverted sonnet with even a neat classical chute between the sextet and the octave, as it should be. With the exposition in the opening sextet and the pointe in the concluding octave – Petrarch would have given his blessing. And probably would have tolerated the newfangled rhyme scheme of the sextet as youthful hubris. Maybe even appreciated it as a nod to McCartney’s “Hey Jude”;
So let it out and let it in,
hey Jude, begin,
You're waiting for someone to perform with.
And don't you know that it's just you,
hey Jude, you'll do,
The movement you need is on your shoulder.
… the second bridge, which McCartney actually only provided with filler lyrics for the time being, hence the “not right yet” rhyme scheme aab–ccd. But he was overruled by Lennon, as Sir Paul tells us (in Paul Gambaccini’s Paul McCartney In His Own Words, 1976):
Like “Hey Jude”, I think I’ve got that tape somewhere, where I’m going on and on with all these funny words. I remember I played it to John and Yoko and I was saying, “These words won’t be on the finished version.” Some of the words were the movement you need is on your shoulder, and John was saying, “It’s great! The movement you need is on your shoulder.” I’m saying “It’s crazy, it doesn’t make any sense at all.” He’s saying “Sure it does, it’s great.”
Considering the fate of “Dreamin’ Of You”, it seems obvious that Dylan, like McCartney, fills this part of his song with the words that come up first, words that at least approximately cover the intended content, but for the time being without worrying about rhyme or reason. “These words won’t be on the finished version,” after all. A finished version that, as we know, never came.
Removed from the complete song lyrics, the last part of “Dreamin’ Of You” seems to be an opening. Conceivable; ever since “All Along The Watchtower” (1967), or even earlier, Dylan has been resorting to a narrative technique he calls “the cycle of events working in a rather reverse order”. Though not quite conclusive here; after all, “Dreamin’ Of You” has a lyrical text, not an epic “cycle of events”, but nevertheless this closing section definitely seems to have been set up as an opening:
Everything in the way is so shiny today
A queer and unusual fall
Spirals of golden haze, here and there in a blaze
Like beams of light in the storm
A traditional opening like for instance “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’” (1943), the opening song of the hit musical Oklahoma!, incidentally the very first Rodgers/Hammerstein song that the world gets to know:
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow,
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow,
The corn is as high as an elephant's eye,
An' it looks like it's climbing clear up in the sky.
Oh, what a beautiful mornin',
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I got a beautiful feelin'
Ev'erything's goin' my way
… an immortal song that sets the standard for all musicals to come. In addition to the same idiom, it has exactly the same cinematic, professional quality – starting with a wide shot of carefree idyll and sunshine, to warm up the audience: this is too good, this spells disaster. Underlined by Dylan in the very last word of the sextet, storm.
The idiom, the choice of words, also suggests that the poet started with this part of the text; “queer fall”, “golden haze”, “silent sun”, “beams of light”… Dylan searches and finds archaic, elegant, nineteenth-century idiom and meanders among other things along shreds of Melville (“the golden haze that canopied this heaven,” Mardi), which the associative mind of the walking music encyclopaedia Dylan probably leads to Oklahoma!, and William Blake. “Beams of light” is most likely anchored in the poetic part of Dylan’s brain thanks to Blake’s poem “Auguries of Innocence” (1803), the same poem whose opening line To see a World in a Grain of Sand already (partly) inspired him to write the masterpiece “Every Grain Of Sand” and whose closing lines he noticed too: When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light. Just like Dylan seems to have Blake’s “Jerusalem”, from which he also drew for “Every Grain Of Sand”, on his bedside table again these days:
THEN the Divine Vision like a silent Sun appear'd above
Albion's dark rocks: setting behind the Gardens of Kensington
On Tyburn's River: in clouds of blood
… the clouds of blood are reserved for “Cold Irons Bound”, and the silent sun is an equally beautiful, loaded and mysterious image for the threat that the poet Dylan wants to express in the next few lines. With the nineteenth century couleur of steamboat, Mark Twain and Civil War that Dylan still strives for in this phase of Time Out Of Mind‘s genesis. Darker and more elegant than the movement on your shoulder, in any case.
————
To be continued. Next up Dreamin’ Of You part 7 (final): Perhaps soft-boiled egg shit
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:
Though rather mysterious, and Gnostic-like, the New Testament of the Holy Bible posits that the sinful suffer two deaths – one when their physical body dies; the second when the unworthy are punished to varying degrees in the Afterlife – with the Christian concept of ‘original sin’ thrown in for good measure:
But the fearful, and the unbelieving
And the abominable, and murderers
Idolaters, and all liars
Shall have their part in the lake
Which burneth with fire and brimstone
Which is the second death
(Revelations 21:8)
That is, God sees to it that the post-Eden punishment of physical death imposed on all humankind is no longer the eternal end.
As expressed in the following song lyrics:
Leaving men wholly, totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
(Bob Dylan: Gates Of Eden)
The physical death faced by all humans just isn’t good enough for what Adam and Eve did; the possibility of further punishments awaits one and all.
Pointed out in the song lyrics below:
When the cities are on fire with the burning flesh of men
Just remember that death is not the end
And you search in vain to find just one law-abiding citizen
Just remember that death is not the end
(Bob Dylan: Death Is Not The End)
This double jeopardy imposed by Christianity, Friedrich Nietzsche severely criticizes; says he, the rich and powerful are not that concernd about it.
Hinted at in the song lyrics beneath:
And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to see what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice
(Bob Dylan: Stuck In Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again)
Attempts by mankind have been made to find and remove an individual’s soul
(ie, supposing it may lie within the brain) before it has a chance to journey on to the Afterlife.
According to the following song lyrics, doctors playing God, unsuccessfully try to kill President Kennedy twice – once in body and then again in spirit:
It's vile and it's deceitful, it's cruel and it's mean
Ugliest thing you ever have seen
They killed him once, and they killed him twice
Killed him like a human sacrifice
(Bob Dylan: Murder Most Foul)
Dogmas that leave some devil-may-care humans with a good excuse for their sinful behaviour – they’re simply following God’s plan:
Pressing on to the higher calling of my Lord
Shake the dust off of your feet, don’t look back
Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack
Temptation’s not an easy thing, Adam given the devil reign
Because he sinned, I got no choice, it runs in my vein
In my post “Obscurity and Clarity” I was seeking to make the point that songs don’t have to be about anything, and hinting that attempts to force meaning into songs might on occasion be doing the artist a disservice. He or she might not have meant there to be a meaning at all.
Dylan elucidates this point with the song “Series of Dreams” – a song that if it has any meaning, has the meaning that dreams don’t have meanings. To hear the whole piece you need the track from Tell Tale Signs The Bootleg Series Volume 8 Deluxe Edition, which doesn’t exist on the internet as far as I can see, but which available on Spotify. But the shorter version is available online.
There are many clues in this song about meaningless with lines like
Wasn't thinking of anything specific,
Like in a dream, when someone wakes up and screams.
and
And there's no exit in any direction
'Cept the one that you can't see with your eyes.
I would particularly note the lines…
Wasn't thinking of anything specific,
Like in a dream, when someone wakes up and screams.
Nothing truly very scientific,
Just thinking of a series of dreams.
Now I know it is stretching things to suggest that we can put a number of Dylan songs into the category of “abstract songs” just because of one song about dreams, and really I am not trying to do that. Instead what I am wanting to suggest is that it is a perfectly valid approach to the work of Dylan to suggest that while most songs are about something, a number of songs that he has written are abstract and not full of meanings, hidden or overt.
In such abstract songs it is the images in the lyrics and the music that make the song interesting; the meaning is not part of the show.
Take a song that I have oft commented upon in the past: “Drifter’s Escape”
The song opens with something that appears meaningful in the first two lines but then reality begins to drift away from our grip.
But there are tricks within this meaninglessness. The opening verse for example appears to be quite meaningful. The drifter, who we can understand simply from his title (we know what a drifter is) is caught up by the legal process that applies to all citizens but which seems irrelevant to his lifestyle…
Oh, help me in my weakness
I heard the drifter say
As they carried him from the courtroom
And were taking him away
And indeed in the second half of that first verse, there is still a meaning – highlighting the disconnect between the lifestyle of the drifter and the process of law
"My trip hasn't been a pleasant one
And my time, it isn't long
And I still do not know
What it was that I've done wrong"
And then… everything falls apart. At first we can cling onto reality, because we can perceive the judge understanding that this outsider can’t grasp what the culture of the majority is all about
Well, the judge, he cast his robe aside
A tear came to his eye
"You'd fail to understand", he said
"Why must you even try?"
But this turns out to be the tip of the iceberg. It is not that the drifter and the judge come from different backgrounds, and have had different lives, but rather there is something far more weird going on
Outside, the crowd was stirring
You could hear it from the door
Inside, the judge was stepping down
While the jury cried for more"
We might look for an understanding, an explanation perhaps, or some other insight into why the jury would take leave of its collective senses and start demanding more. More what? A heavier sentence? More cases for them to hear? More likely they would then be arrested en masse and find themselves on trial.
I have served on juries twice in my life (obviously both times in my home country of England) and in my experience juries do not behave in this way! This is seriously odd, and that oddness is before we get to
"Oh, stop that cursed jury"
Cried the attendant and the nurse
"The trial was bad enough
But this is ten times worse"
Just then a bolt of lightning
Struck the courthouse out of shape
And while everybody knelt to pray
The drifter did escape
Of course, it is possible to make meaning out of this, to see it all as an allegory of something or other, but it is much easier to understand it as meaningless. And here Occam’s Razor surely applies: the rule that says the simplest explanation is always the best.
OK you could go a step further and say the meaning of the song is that at times life is meaningless, or in a clash of cultures (the legal process vs the drifter) the ways of each are incomprehensible to the other.
But it is still much simpler to say there is no meaning. Instead there are a set of images which clash and rebound and don’t have a meaning, any more than many abstract paintings have a meaning. “Drifter’s Escape” is in fact an abstract song – one of many in the world of Dylan songwriting.
And I make this point because it seems to me that seeing part of Dylan’s songwriting as being songs without meaning is generally missed by writers discussing Dylan’s work. Everything has to have a meaning, no matter how convoluted the logic is to fit that meaning into the lyrics.
I’ll try and take this a step further in another article shortly.
The complete index to the Never Ending Tour series of articles has been updated to include the six articles covering 2006. You can find the full index of all 86 articles here.
2006, Part 1, Enter The Organ Grinder
By Mike Johnson
We now enter a difficult and problematic period for the NET. It will last until 2012, when Dylan will abandon the organ and return to the piano. These six years I referred to in my Master Harpist series as the time of the Organ Grinder and the Circus Barker. Organ grinder because of Dylan’s unique and peculiar organ playing, and circus barker because of the devolution of his voice into a bark.
NET commentators have tended to avoid this period. Andrew Muir in his study of the NET One More Night, after having written a chapter on every year, passes over the years 2005 – 2009 in a single chapter entitled ‘In Which Your Author Becomes Lost.’ Muir, a dedicated follower, confesses to ‘falling out of love’ with the NET. After an inconclusive discussion about ‘authenticity’ he seems to conclude that Dylan lost his mojo during these years and was not worth following. He describes the period as ‘the slough of despond’ for NET fans.
Similarly, at A Thousand Highways the Dylan compiler CS, after pretty much working through the NET year by year, covers the years 2006 to 2012 in two posts.
Stories were told of audiences walking out of concerts, and the critics, sensing blood, began to circle.
So, what was going on during this period? Did Dylan really lose his mojo? I’m not so sure. Certainly, those who never liked Dylan’s piano playing liked his organ playing even less. The anti-keyboard brigades had their day. These ex-NET fans began to call the keyboard the IOT (instrument of torture) and there were deep splits in the Dylan camp. (See Muir Chapter 19)
The strange, thin, wiry sounds Dylan made with the organ were like nothing else anybody had heard, except perhaps at the circus. That style was described as ‘rinky-dink’ and was met with general incomprehension if not outrage. And Dylan’s increasingly rough voice didn’t win him many new fans and lost him some old ones.
And yet…and yet when you listen to some of these performances you can hear Dylan doing what he has been doing all along, reinterpreting and reconfiguring his songs. Trying out new arrangements, pouring some new wine into these fine old bottles.
I was struck, for example, by this performance of ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ in which Dylan delivers a hushed, half spoken version of the song Christopher Ricks declared only had one perfect performance – the album version. I wonder what Ricks would have thought of this:
Hattie Carrol
That recording (from Sun City, 8th April.) shows Dylan at his inventive best, pretty much reciting the song as if it were a poem. Sounds pretty good to me. This performance lifts the song to another level.
‘She Belongs to Me’ from Stockton, 3rd April, sounds pretty good too. Dylan is in full voice and the performance shows the song continuing to evolve into the powerful march we’ll hear in 2012/13. That solid pounding beat and restrained, bluesy harmonica are all in place. The song is turning into a tour de force.
She Belongs to Me
As with the piano, Dylan is not interested in playing lead with the organ, but nor is he using it entirely as a rhythm instrument. Rather it seems he wants to weave the organ notes into the instrumental background, creating the kind of musical texture he’s after. You can hear that in this performance of ‘Tears of Rage,’ another of Dylan’s old favourites and a difficult song to get right, I think, because of its slow, ponderous tempo. I find this version, also from Stockton, hard to beat. It’s that hushed, half-spoken, half-sung delivery that does the trick.
Tears of Rage
It’s really only when he begins to emphasise the beat that the organ begins to sound rinky-dink and the tempo becomes too emphatic, with the dumpty-dum effect I spoke of in my 2005 posts creeping in. You can hear it in ‘Tears of Rage’ where it is used deliberately to create a kind of stilted effect, particularly at the end when we get a beautiful duet between Dylan’s staccato harmonica and his organ. The alliance between the harp and the keyboard is still very much alive. He plays the organ with the left and and the harp with the right.
You can hear that alliance at work again on ‘Girl from the North Country,’ another perennial, which he gives the baroque treatment, familiar from the last three years. Dylan upsings on this one, I think to give the song some lift, but if you can deal with that, it’s a powerful performance. Dylan is obviously and consciously singing, rather than intoning or murmuring or growling. (Foggia, Italy, 19th July.)
Girl from the North Country.
It’s in 2006 that I found a performance of ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ to rival the powerhouse performance of 2003 (see NET, 2003, part 2) which on balance remains my favourite. The tempo is faster than the 2003 performance, it kicks along, the vocal is vigorous and the triumphant harp break at the end little short of divine in the way it feeds back into itself, creating an eerie, echoey sound.
Tom Thumb’s blues
‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ goes well with ‘Tom Thumb’s Blues,’ and this New York performance (13th Nov, Uniondale) creates that air of mystery, that atmosphere so integral to the song. He doesn’t use a voice echo, which he has tried and will try again, but the natural echo of the theatre’s acoustics does the job. We’re in a spooky place and we don’t know what is happening!
Ballad of a thin man (A)
Fans of the song might appreciate this alternative version from Lincoln, NE (25th Oct), as good as the New York performance. Here, the circus-like organ is perfect for the song, which is all about bizarre performances, circus characters like the geek and the sword swallower.
Ballad of a thin man (B)
For four years now Dylan has been exploring slower, more contemplative versions of ‘Mr Tambourine Man.’ The performances in 2000/1 were very intense, but when Dylan shifted to the keyboards, the song became more dreamy than intense, not a defiant declaration but soft surrender. This performance from Sun City (8th April) keeps the same arrangement, and Dylan even misses out the same lines as in 2005. He is in fine vocal form, and the gentle, pensive harp break proves as big a crowd-pleaser as any of his wilder performances of the song.
Mr T Man
Another song tamed along the way is ‘Senor.’ We moved from the ecstatic 2003 performance to the more stately but powerful 2005 performance, and onto this one, which has a bit of bounce in it. Hear how he bounces the ending with the harp. This performance may be a little too upbeat for the desperate tone the song needs to get across its atmosphere, but it begins to take the song in a new direction. (Another from Lincoln).
Senor
Let’s kick up the pace and move to Stockton and catch this ‘Highway 61 Revisited.’ Like ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ Dylan had been honing this song down for a while now, taking out the jangle and giving it a quieter, more threatening beat. Without the piano, it’s up to the rest of the band to push the rhythm, and they have no problem with that here. Again, that swirling, circus-like organ gives the song an oddness it didn’t, as a straight rocker, have. Dylan’s 2006 vocal style, which goes deep and dark, brings out the sinister edge of the song.
Highway 61 Revisited
Dylan sticks with the same arrangement for ‘It’s All Right Ma’ that he’s been using over the past years, a Sonny Boy Williamson rock rift. I still don’t think it is entirely suited to the song, and I’m nostalgic for the fast-paced acoustic versions of the past rather than this lumbering super-beast, but nevertheless it can stand beside any similar version, as good as any I’ve heard in this style. You get into it and it thumps you along. (Stockton)
It’s all right ma
Donnie Herron’s violin gives this version of ‘Absolutely Sweet Marie’ a country twist. This is a song for anybody who’s been stood up, left waiting ‘inside the frozen traffic’ for a date that never turned up. It needs a resentful, accusatory, jealous edge in the performance, and I think it achieves that, but not everybody will enjoy the thumpity-thump, almost square-dance feel to this performance (Sun City). That loss of fluidity I noticed in 2005 is evident here, despite the vitality.
Absolutely Sweet Marie
‘This Wheel’s on Fire’ is another song that Dylan has been honing by stripping it back. It’s fascinating to listen to the original Basement Tapes recording, which is fluid to the point of queasiness, trippy if you like, compared to this sharp, bare, strangely insistent performance. The distant sound of the organ enhances that sense of strangeness that infects the song. The restrained, echoey harp polishes it off. (Also Sun City)
This Wheel’s On Fire
Dylan would roll out ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ towards the end of the shows, often the second to last song before ‘Watchtower.’ Hitting this famous anthem is a means of signalling the end of the show. Despite the accusatory nature, it’s a rousing song which, in its effect, celebrates the existential state of having ‘no direction home’ and being stripped of pretensions. If this song attacks anything, it is snobby pretentiousness.
Dylan keeps this one (from Stockton) at mid-tempo, doesn’t rush the words, and delivers a hard-hitting performance. Funny, hearing his upsinging on the chorus ‘How does it feeeel’ made me realize that Dylan has always upsung on certain songs; it’s what helped give his vocal style its distinctive rise and fall.
Rolling Stone
In 2006 Dylan introduced a new guitarist, Denny Freeman, to complement Stu Kimball. Maybe he thought to beef up the rhythm section to make up for the loss of the piano. Freeman has a distinctive, lyrical style evident in some of the songs in this post, but particularly in ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ always the final song of the night. Like ‘Highway 61 Revisited,’ ‘Watchtower’ has been stripped back during the verses to a bare minimum, creating a dramatic tension between loudness and softness, restraint and letting loose. This one from Stockton is a favourite.
Watchtower
Listening to these recordings, I have to conclude that some of the negative reactions to Dylan’s shift to the organ were a bit over the top. Yes, the organ does sound strange, those thin often creepy notes, but Dylan is clearly engaged with his material, in good voice, still innovating, and playing the harp like the master he is.
What’s to complain about?
In August, 2006, Dylan released his follow up album to Love and Theft,Modern Times. We’ll turn to those new songs in the next post.
Biblical Queen Jezebel gets eaten by dogs because she stood up against the One Almighty God Who in the Garden of Eden takes Eve out of Adam’s rib, and orders her to be under her husband’s command (it’s said that his first wife left Adam because she wanted to be his equal).
In the song lyrics below, the narrator thereof claims nobody says they know who he’s talking about, but if it’s Jezebel, a similar love conflict apparently arises. To give the narrator, let’s call him Elijah, the benefit of the doubt, he leaves in a black whirlwind; takes off from the bloodied shores of the Kishon River in a Cadillac car:
Well, I been to the east, and I been to the west
And I been out where the black winds roar
Somehow, though, I never did get that far
With the girl from the Red River Shore
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
Admittedly, the biblical Elijah puts on a better show:
[B]ehold there appeared a chariot of fire
And horses of fire ...
And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven
(II Kings 2:11)
Claimed it could be that an updated Jezebel appears in the following song lyrics as well.
Elijah says unto her:
I got no place left to turn
I got nothing left to burn
Don' know if I saw you
If I would kiss or kill you
It probably wouldn't matter to you anyhow
You left me standing in the doorway
I got nothing to go back to now
(Bob Dylan: Standing In The Doorway)
Jezebel of yore puts on a good performance herself – she reappears in the New Testament after Christ is taken up into heaven.
The Son of God, like His Father, bad-mouths her too:
[T]hou sufferest that woman Jezebel
Which calleth herself a prophetess
To teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication
And to eat things sacrificed unto idols
(Revelations 2:20)
Dylanized Elijah tries to get into a sex-filled heaven down on Earth before he dies:
There's rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes
Every day your memory grows dimmer
It doesn't haunt me like it did before
I've been walking through the middle of nowhere
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door
(Bob Dylan: Trying To Get To Heaven)
Referencing an old gospel song:
Trying to get to heaven in a due time
Before those heaven doors close
(Wake Me, Shake Me ~ traditional)
By Aaron Galbraith (in the USA) and Tony Attwood (in the UK)
Aaron:Bob’s version appears as the opening track on Saved.
The song was written by Red Hayes and Jack Rhodes and has been recorded scores of times. Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, Porter Wagoner all had a go, amongst many others. Here are three versions I like which attempt to do something different with the song.
Tony: I really can’t get anything out of that Dylan recording at all – but that is probably primarily due to the style of performance which I just don’t like – it really does nothing for me at all (and it is not often that I have said that about one of Bob’s songs on this site!)
It was written in 1955, and the composer claimed that his father-in-law had once asked him who he thought the richest man in the world was, and then told his son-in-law that “it is the man with a satisfied mind.” The song reached number one in the country charts and was a top 40 hit in the year of its composition for Ella Fitzgerald.
Aaron: The Byrds
Tony:The guys do their best, and the harmonies are of course perfect, although I find the accompaniment a little uninspiring, with the verses running one onto the next. I’m not sure the guys were really doing what they wanted to here – it’s a bit like putting the three exclamation marks in “Turn! Turn! Turn!” – it all seems a bit desperate.
Aaron: Lindsey Buckingham
Tony:The Ella Fitzgerald version is definitely in 4/4 (four beats to the bar) so turning this song into a 3/4 rhythm (mostly associated with a waltz) is an interesting possibility … which sadly doesn’t work for me because of the incessant drumming. I wonder if they actually made the drummer play those three beats over and over. (Although there is one moment where he does slip in an extra quaver beat). The instrumental verse doesn’t do anything to relief the tedium either.
Aaron: Ben Harper with the Blind Boys of Alabama
Tony: OK if you have really studied Untold Dylan you will have come across me raving about the Blind Boys, not least concerning their recording of Dylan’s “Well well well” – and if you don’t know that song or that recording then the moment you’ve finished working through my rambling here please do take a peek at the article on “Well well well”
But back to this recording above – and what a relief to come to it. Aaron, you had me near utter desperation until I saw you had put this in.
It has buoyancy, light, rhythm, meaning, enthusiasm, power, drive… you name it, it has it. And now I see the point of including the earlier versions – as a pure contrast with this recording which is magnificent.
The point about the Blind Boys recordings is that the people involved are thinking about the music they are going to perform, what it means, where it is going, how to make it original, how to keep up interest… exactly the opposite from the recording sessions where the engineer says, “OK guys we’ve got half an hour before the next booking, so let’s get on with it ok…” and on with it they get.
I think you left this one til last Aaron just to wind me up!
——————
Untold Dylan has been published regularly since 2008, and is currently published once or twice a day. Indexes (which are not always very up to date) to various series can be found at the top of the page under the picture, and on the home page. A more informative list of recent articles can be found top right and at the very foot of the page (handy if you are reading on your phone).
We also have a vibrant Facebook group with over 14,000 members – just search Facebook for “Untold Dylan”.
If you would like to write for Untold Dylan please either send your article, or an outline of its contents to Tony@schools.co.uk
A list of past articles is given at the end of this piece.
If you have dipped into this series in the past you’ll possibly have come across a note which says that the point of a cover version is, or at least should be, the offering of a new arrangement which gives new insights into the song. Just copying what Bob did in the original doesn’t count.
Now since it is generally considered that Bob’s lyrics are sacrosanct (after all, no one goes around mucking about with the text of TS Eliot) that leaves us with the melody, chord sequence, timing, accompaniment and rhythm (although as we shall see in these renditions, repeating a line is acceptable too).
But those artists who do nothing new with any of those fundamentals don’t get my vote for inclusion by and large, because, in my view, we might as well listen to the original.
The Carolyn Wonderland version of “Leopard skin pill-box hat” really takes this command seriously, and the singers and instrumentalists do play with the music, while retaining what is instantly recognisable as the Dylan song. It just is great fun, which of course is what it is meant to be. After all, if it were not written as fun, why call it “Leopard skin pill-box hat”? (Incidentally, I love the name of the album too).
Moving on, if you are a regular reader of this rambling series you will perhaps have noted that I really do enjoy the music of Old Crow Medicine show, whose version of “Visions of Johanna” I rate as by far the best rendition ever and certainly in my top ten of Dylan covers.
What I like is that the band never take any of the original as unchangeable – to them everything is up for grabs – including in this recording the chord sequence, adding a silly dance routine, and playing with just about everything else.
(Sorry I can’t get the link to pop up into a screen).
Contrast is of course everything, and sonow I move on to Michael Chapman. You will know from the introduction that this is going to be different again. The feeling that this laid back approach is exquisite, especially coming after the raucousness and overt fun of Old Crow.
Even the instrumental break is gentle and calm – a total contrast but still so enjoyable and again something that I find myself absolutely wanting to listen to.
In fact for me, it is all rather strange. This has never been one of my big favourites of Dylan’s compositions, it sort of just is, but each of these versions of the song really makes me love the piece more and more.
I could go on and on and on with versions of this song, but I’ll finish with another total transformation. I was tempted to put this one up first, just to make sure that any readers who happen onto this page do get to listen to it.
But no, that is pandering to those who think they can judge the whole tenor of this little article by the first cover. And that would be silly. Indeed it would be like judging this wonderful rendition by the first ten seconds and not getting anywhere near the instrumental break.
Indeed so revolutionary is this cover version that it is the easiest thing in the world to forget that it is a Dylan song. I really do love this. Please listen.
Previously
Here’s a list of most of the articles from this series…
There’s a big cryptic clue in the song “Red River Shore” that reveals the songwriter is indeed speaking therein about Jezebel – and a reformed lady she be:
Well the dream dried up long time ago
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
The key hidden under the alliterative mat above when decoded by detective Dupin reads:
"Well, the stream dried up a long time ago".
That is, the unlocked clue reveals the biblical story of the prophet Elijah, who, upset at Ahab and Jezebel’s Baalist ways, tells the inhabitants of Northern Israel that the Kishon River has been dry for some time now because the Hebrew God is angry at them for worshipping Baal.
It’s not Jezebel’s god, represented by the Golden Calf, who’s brought on the drought to punish the Northerners’ failure to follow edicts pertaining to agricultural practices.
Says so in the Holy Bible.
Even a brook beside which Elijah resides dries up:
And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning
And bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank from the brook
And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up
Because there had been no rain in the land
(I Kings 17: 6,7)
Suddenly, there’s a black cloudburst of wind and rain, and the Baalist army gets swept away on the shores of the Kishon River.
History repeats itself in the time of Elijah; a similar event happens in days long, long before that prophet gets born.
There also God brings on the dark wind and the rain:
The river of Kishon swept them away
That ancient river, the river Kishon
O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength
(Judges 5:21)
In the song ‘”Red River Shore”, the narrator could be said saved by the advice given him by his beloved Jezebel, and, it might be added, by the food given him by the author of ‘The Raven’.
What becomes of her, we are not told – could be a ‘murder ballad’, maybe:
I've tried not to ever hurt anybody
And to stay out of a life of crime
(Bob Dylan; Red River Shore)
But did he or didn’t he?
Bob
Bob Dyln And Jezebel (Part VI)
In the song “Red River Shore”, the references to Elijah, Jezebel, and the worshippers of the Golden Calf may be oblique, but the clues, though partially hidden, be there.
In the Holy Bible, God speaks to the Hebrew prophet at the entrance to a cave:
And he came thither unto a cave
And lodged there, and behold
The word of the Lord came to him
And He said unto him,
"What doest thou here, Elijah?"
And he said, "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts
For the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant
Thrown down thine altars, and slain they prophets with the sword
And I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life to take it away"
(I Kings 19: 9,10)
As the above biblical verses indicate, poor old Elijah has all but given up in regards to his struggle against Queen Jezebel; God’s not happy with His prophet for being frightened, but later takes him up in a whirlwind.
So it might be said of Elijah in the song lyrics below. There’s a big difference, however. God’s angry because the updated prophet finds Jezebel sexually tempting, and the prophet doesn’t appear at all scared.
And it’s she, not God, who advises Elijah to get away from her door for the sake of his own well-being, and perhaps her own:
Well, the sun went down on me a long time ago
I had to pull back from the door
I wished I could have spent every hour of my life
With the the girl from the Red River Shore
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
How well Elijah/Dylan of the song handles the advice is left for the reader/listener of the song lyrics to decide.
Does he throw the seemingly repentant Jezebel out the window, or maybe leave her there like some raven with broken wing?
Or does he just vanish in a whirlwind?:
Some of us scare ourselves to death in the dark
To be where the angels fly
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
Supposing you suddenly decided you wanted to write a song, I suspect the first thing you might do is ponder what it is going to be about. For example you might want to write a piece about how wonderful your lover is, or how awful your ex-lover was. Or maybe about your magnificent home town. Or about a musical style that you like. Or maybe about a dance form that “everybody’s doing”.
In fact a very crude analysis suggests that around 90% of songs in the popular and folk tradition are about love, lost love and dance. But there is no rule to say you can’t write about something else. “16 tons” – one of the most famous songs of all times, is about the unjust rewards gained from being a miner.
So any subject is on the table. You might for example want to write about your belief and convictions, be they religious or political. Or even your favourite city. New York seems to have a number of songs dedicated to it. Or maybe the Red River Shore, or Alberta or … well in fact there is even a website that lists of the places Dylan has mentioned in songs he has recorded.
And my guess is that whatever the topic of the song you were about to write, you’d probably try and be specific and clear, rather than obscure. And this is indeed what we find with Dylan’s songs in 1979. For although “I believe in you” could be a love song, “I believe in You” with its extra capitalisation is clearly a profession of religious faith – as are many of the 1979 songs.
But there is an alternative approach: in writing a song, as in painting a picture or making a sculpture, one doesn’t have to be explicit. This is an issue that is totally up to the creative artist; for it has always been accepted that it is perfectly legitimate to be obscure. “Desolation Row,” I would argue, is clearly about the appalling state of humanity. Some of the lines are not overtly about this, but “They’re selling postcards of the hanging” is pretty clearly a statement of disgust at the behaviour of some people – doubly so when one realises that it was a true statement and it is the opening line.
In a different artistic field we might think of Picasso’s “Guernica” for here you can see elements within it which are overt, and the overall impression is clear: the inhumanity of the Nazis in testing out the capabilities of their airforce by bombing a town without defences. But perhaps not every line and shape is understandable as a representation of something.
Back to 1979 and we can see that Dylan was writing religious pieces. Maybe not every single song, and that detail can be debated, but at least quite a few of his works that year and forward into 1980 were religious. “Property of Jesus” is pretty overt in its message, for example.
We have published on this site a really detailed analysis of Caribbean Wind (an index to the series is here) which looks at the meaning of the song throughout. But I have a worry, for if this was intended as part of Dylan’s religious ouvre, in which he was for a while trying to convince his audience that following the Christian faith was by far the best thing we could do with our lives, why did he make this song so obscure? Because surely if you are trying to convert people to your cause, the best way to do that is to leave them in no uncertain frame of mind as to what your message is.
I find that an interesting point not least because if it was not part of the religious song collection, that does mean that Dylan’s religious period of writing overtly religious songs lasted under a year and a half. Which in the context of Dylan’s career wasn’t very long.
However my point is not about Caribbean Wind as such but about the issue of writing songs for a specific purpose. Surely if one wants to write about the truths within the Christian faith, one writes about that in a clear way, expressing that view so all can hear it and have the chance of being converted. Why make it obscure?
Indeed why make any song obscure?
I think that is an important question, and it takes me to other art forms. My house has a lot of pictures in it, ranging from rural scenes to Jackson Pollock and Bridgit Riley (although not originals I hasten to add, so no point working out where I live and then planning a break-in). I find inspiration and depth in the abstracts, and if there is meaning then the meaning is that life cannot always be described in words. (Which now I come to think about it, is a pretty weird thing for a writer to believe).
And although I have for many years earned my living in writing advertisements, articles and books, which tend to be fairly clear in terms of what they are about (at least I hope they do, and I am told by those for whom I write advertisements that sales do go up) I also write songs just for the fun of it, and do share some of those with a few close long-suffering friends.
But before I pause in this contemplation let me quote a song that I mentioned above, but which is not normally the centre of much debate: Trouble. Here are the lyrics
Trouble
Trouble, trouble, trouble
Nothin' but trouble
Trouble in the water
Trouble in the air
Go all the way to the other side of the world
You'll find trouble there
Revolution even ain't no solution for trouble
Trouble
Trouble, trouble, trouble
Nothin' but trouble
Drought and starvation
Packaging of the soul
Persecution, execution
Governments out of control
You can see the writing on the wall, inviting trouble
Trouble
Trouble, trouble, trouble
Nothin' but trouble
Put your ear to the train tracks
Put your ear to the ground
You ever feel like you're never alone
Even when there's nobody else around?
Since the beginning of the universe man's been cursed by trouble
Trouble
Trouble, trouble, trouble
Nothin' but trouble
Nightclubs of the broken-hearted
Stadiums of the damned
Legislature, perverted nature
Doors that are rudely slammed
Look into infinity, all you see is trouble
Yeah, yeah
Trouble
Trouble, trouble, trouble
Nothin' but trouble
Trouble, ooh yeah
Trouble
Trouble, trouble, trouble
Nothin' but trouble
Oh yeah, trouble
https://youtu.be/ikGCZVs2jfM
You could interpret this as a call for the troubled to turn to the Lord. Or you could read it as simply a statement that our society is pretty awful. And the point is that there is nothing in the piece that says “change your words and turn to the Lord”. Indeed there is a line that says the opposite: “Look into infinity, all you see is trouble”. No second coming in that perception.
But my point is not specifically about that one line, but rather, if you want to convert people to your way of seeing the world, normally the best thing to do is to be specific. It is after all what everyone from politicians to preachers do. So why not be clear?
And that is the question that I want to consider: why write songs that are not clear in their subject matter?
If I can clarify my own thoughts, I shall return to this in the near future.
Feel like a ghost in love
Underneath the heavens above
Feel further away
than I ever did before
Feel further than I can take
Dreamin’ of you
is all I do
But it’s driving me insane
It remains baffling, although it is actually not that extraordinary. Rimbaud is barely nineteen when Un Saison En Enfer is published, Hergé starts the Tintin series when he is twenty-two, Dylan is twenty-one when he records “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, Picasso and Mozart produce works of genius as teenagers, Stevie Wonder is twenty when he records his thirteenth (!) album Signed, Sealed & Delivered (1970). And Kate Bush may also be placed in this line-up. Kate is nineteen when she releases The Kick Inside (1977) – the oldest songs on it, such as the perfect “The Man With The Child In His Eyes”, were written around the age of thirteen. And her biggest hit, the masterpiece “Wuthering Heights”, was written when she was eighteen.
The song has more distinctive qualities, obviously, and one of them is its narrative perspective: the lyrics are narrated by Cathy, by a ghost in love – it is probably the only song ever where the protagonist is a love-struck apparition.
As an archetype, s/he has never really penetrated the upper world, the ghost in love. Only once in a while, in films like the witty Ghost Town (with Ricky Gervais, 2008), in The Phantom Of The Opera, in a way, and in the rather overpolished 1990 blockbuster Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, does a ghost in love play a leading role. A film, by the way, about which everyone may have their own opinion, but still: Ghost has firmly re-anchored “Unchained Melody” in the cultural baggage of yet another generation, so it has at least one big plus.
In songs however, apart from “Wuthering Heights”, smitten ethereal beings do not appear at all. Radiohead’s “Give Up The Ghost” from 2011 insinuates a spirit in love, as does Kristin Hersh’s wonderful “Your Ghost” (1994) – but there, too, ghost is actually used as in most other songs: as a metaphor for “the memory of you”. As Joan Baez introduces her former lover Bob Dylan in her remarkable Dylan ballad “Diamonds & Rust” (1975): “Well, I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again.” No, not many real ghosts in love in songs.
Apparently, it does not have such potential, such dramatic power as – for example – the vengeful spirit or the wandering poltergeist; there are hundreds of stories around these archetypes. And Dylan, too, uses the image here only as a metaphor, of course. But then still in the spirit of those few stories in which a real ghost in love appears; not to represent a memory of a loved one, but to express something like “being ghosted”, like you can look but you cannot touch, the frustration of being so-near-and-yet-so-far. Or, somewhat more literary, the frustration of Kafka’s beetle in Die Verwandlung or the accursed judge from “Seven Curses”: being able to hear and see everything, but at the same time invisible and unhearable to everyone.
The lines that follow seem to confirm that intention. Feel further away than I ever did before expresses a similar so-near-and-yet-so-far feeling, articulating the anguish of a narrator who feels an emotional distance from his beloved growing. And the lines reveal a fourth offshoot of the prolific “Dreamin’ Of You”; apart from the text fragments and images that move to “Things Have Changed”, “Cold Irons Bound” and especially “Standing In The Doorway”, the cast-off is apparently also a supplier for “Million Miles”. And especially for its motif (“tryin’ to get closer but I’m still a million miles from you”), of which we had already seen that Dylan’s inspiration for it came from Henry Rollins, from Black Coffee Blues;
“The next song I wrote was about the distance I felt when I thought about that girl. The song centered around the lines, “The closer I get, the farther away I feel.” I was thinking that all the time I was with her, I worked hard to put that out of my mind. Romance passes the time.”
Much more unlikely, and certainly more remarkable, is the source for the insubstantial middle line Underneath the heavens above: Glenn Frey. In themselves, of course, the words are far too mundane to attribute to any source of inspiration, but on the other hand, there is an all too coincidental match. In 2020, Dylan leads the attention of Dylanologists to the ex-Eagle through a name-check in “Murder Most Foul”:
Play Don Henley, play Glenn Frey
Take it to the limit and let it go by
On his most successful solo album, 1984’s The Allnighter, the piece of craftsmanship “I Got Love” stands out. Recorded in Muscle Shoals, in the same studio with the same men who assisted Dylan on Slow Train Coming and on Saved: Barry Beckett on keyboards and the studio’s horn section. The lyrics of the second verse apparently made an impression on Dylan:
Jumped on the freeway with this song in my head
I started thinkin' 'bout the things we said
I said I'm sorry; she said I'm sorry too;
You know I can't be happy 'less I'm happy with you
… the distich “I started thinkin’ ’bout the things we said / I said I’m sorry; she said I’m sorry too” moves almost literally to the monumental song Dylan writes and records during these very same days as the conception of “Dreamin’ Of You” takes place: “Mississippi” (respectively I was thinkin’ ’bout the things that Rosie said and I know you’re sorry, I’m sorry too). Words that are far too specific to be attributed to coincidence or any other source, in any case. And with that, the chorus that follows in Glenn Frey’s song suddenly gets more weight too:
I got love, it's my lucky day
I got love, gonna keep it that way
It's the sweetest gift from the heavens above
I got you, babe, I got love.
… so that Glenn Frey can suddenly call himself, with some right of speech, inspirator or rather: contributor of at least two Dylan songs. Incidentally, at the end of the album’s track list we find the horribly dated sounding “Living In Darkness” with its unmemorable chorus
You're living in darkness
You're living in the past
Living in darkness
Your dream is fading fast
… could just as well be about a ghost in love, come to think of it.
To be continued. Next up Dreamin’ Of You part 6: The movement on your shoulder
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:
In the Old Testament, prophet Ezekiel has to contend with double-dealing Abolah and Aholibah; then, prophet Elijah with Ahab and Baal-worshipper Jezebel.
So spins the roulette wheel of history, and prophets of Jesus, in the New Testament, have once again to deal with an apparently re-incarnated Jezebel.
In the Old Testament, Jezebel sends a fraudulent letter to the appropriate authorities, under the seal of King Ahab, ordering the death of a “blasphemous” vineyard-owner so that his property can be taken.
Not to be outdone, the death of the now resurrected Jezebel, and of her children too, is ordered by a New Testament prophet, in the name of Jesus, if they do not repent:
Behold I will cast her into a bed
And them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation
Except they repent of their deeds
(Revelations 2: 22)
The crucified, now-resurrected, Christ gets transformed into a chip off the old block, at least by some of His most ardent followers.
In the song lyrics quoted below, could be said that Jezebel takes heed of the stern biblical warning – only to leave the narrator thereof, as in the dramatic monologue to the Mona Lisa portrait in the “Visions Of Johanna”, with a fixed smile upon his face.
He’s been jilted by Jezebel:
Now I'm wearing the cloak of misery
And I've tasted jilted love
And the frozen smile upon my face
Fits me like glove
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
There are those among us who claim that Bob Dylan writes a number of lyrics just because they sound good, but biblical roots they often have that entwine with word images to render the song a meaningful unity:
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel
(Bob Dylan: Visions Of Johanna)
In the Old Testament, a prophet is promised silver by a king if has a meeting with him and curses the Hebrews escaping from Egypt. The mule can see an angel up ahead, and balks at taking the pathway to the king’s residence; after suffering a bad beating, the mule talks, and the prophet then is able to see the angel too.
The false prophet changes his mind, and instead has the Hebrew men distracted by sexually-seductive, Baal-worshipping women:
And the Lord said unto Moses
Take all the leaders of the people
And hang them up before the Lord against the sun
That the fierce anger of the Lord may not be turned away from Israel
(Numbers 25:4)
Now that’s tough love.
No wonder that the narrator in “Red River Shore” be thankful that he was sent home by Jezebel, or whomever it was, to live a quiet life.
Part IV
If dog-eaten Queen Jezebel be an actual, a literal, historical figure who’s able to travel forward in time to the days when a Jewish rabbi known as Christ is crucified, then magically comes back to life, I find no stated reason in the Holy Bible why musician/singer/songwriter Bob Dylan can’t fly around in space and time though still alive.
Below, crucified Jesus is said to speak through a prophet to members of a “church”, not to wayward Hebrews of days long gone, but rather to those claiming to be Christians:
[T]hou sufferest that woman Jezebel
Which calleth herself a prophetess
To teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication
And eat things sacrificed unto idols
(Revelations 2 :22)
So it is not that far-fetched of a stretch to imagine a reformed Jezebel be the gal brought back to life in the song “Red River Shore” with the ‘river of blood’ located in the Jezreel Valley of the Northern Kingdom of Israel … a Lilith-like archetype, but one who mends her wicked ways; or a Mary Magdalene from whom demons have been cast out:
She gave me her best advice
And said, "Go home, and lead a quiet life"
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
One analyst of the song above asserts that Dylan is a prisoner of time and rhyme when the songwriter chooses to pen “… she should always be with me” – in order to create a rhyme with “free”. Apparently, the analyst is quite sure that “… I should always be with her” was initially intended to be the line in the song, but then, of course, the rhyme doesn’t work.
But ” …. I should always be with thee” would more than serve the purpose of a rhyme for ‘free’ were not the songwriter, as he often does, switching the polarity of the relationship between the guy and gal, whether she be a Jezebel or not.
Interestingly, the same analyst has a bird in another song portrayed as a demon haunting that song when it’s the bird that is injured, quite likely symbolic of a female lover who has been abandoned by the narrator of the song – Poe’s “Raven” in reverse, it might be claimed:
My love she's like some raven at my window
With a broken wing
(Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero)
That is, Poe’s melancholy motif in lot of his poetry be followed, but this time the shoe is on the other claw, so to speak.
At other times, Poe’s sorrowful theme is less messed with:
I haven’t got a single rose
(Bob Dylan: I Feel A Change Coming On ~ Dylan/Hunter)
This is going to be an oddity in this series, because I can only find one cover of “Lenny Bruce” and obviously as that is the only version by another artist I’ll include it. If you know of any other versions please do write in.
I take it that the artist in this rendition is an amateur performer, but he’s none the worse for that, and does a damn sight better than I ever could achieve… which isn’t saying much, but it does show what can be achieved by people with real talent, even if there is no recording contract to go with it.
So why does no one cover this song? It can’t be because it doesn’t lend itself to re-interpretation as it is fairly easy to think up an orchestral accompaniment to the piece while keeping the time and rhythm the same, and indeed to deliver a performance with some heavy percussion to relate to the fact that it is about death.
But that is how it is, so since I don’t want to pass this song by I’m going to pick up on a few of Dylan’s own variations on the song. He has played the song 117 times on tour, so we have a few to choose from.
In the version above there are some really interesting slight variations in the melody, and the instrumentation changes its rhythm, while Bob restrains himself beautifully in terms of the vocals. Goodness knows what the crash from the lead guitar is doing at the very end, but still, it is at the very end so is not too hard to ignore!
In this next version with Tom Petty, Bob shows how the harmonies can work, and for me this is very effective indeed.
https://youtu.be/lqiJPZBEfqc
And of course, I do have to include this very strange version from 2019. I’m really not too sure about this; it feels to me like an experiment that has been made public before it is quite ready for release. The idea of the strings in the accompaniment is excellent, but I feel the piano part is just not right playing those half scales. And the electric bass and the viola seem to me to contradict each other. It is so frustrating because the idea is brilliant, but I just don’t feel the orchestration is right.
But that of course is just me, as ever.
Here’s a list of most of the articles from this series…
In 2005 Dylan did a few cover songs. One he hadn’t done before was ‘Blue Monday,’ not to be confused with a famous song by New Order of the same name. The song Dylan sang was originally written by Dave Bartholomew, first recorded in 1953 by Smiley Lewis and issued as a single, in January 1954, on Imperial Records. It was popular with rock and blues bands in the 1960s.
This recording is from London (3rd concert), and is a faithful, high-powered performance.
Blue Monday
‘Sing Me Back Home’ was written by Merle Haggard, who opened the show for Dylan during the American leg of the 2005 tour. Elvis Costello commented:
“I thought that show was tremendous. Both Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard were absolutely at their peak. Bob has a great new band. He’s playing very intricate arrangements … Merle Haggard was funny as hell and sang like a bird. It was a terrific complementary show of two people you admire.”
‘Sing Me Back Home’ was ranked by Rolling Stone as No. 32 on its list of the 40 Saddest Country Songs of All Time. And that’s just the spirit in which Dylan sings it. (8th March)
Sing Me Back Home
Another tear-jerker is ‘You Win Again’ by Hank Williams, released in 1952 (Again, not to be confused with the Bee Gees’ song of the same name). Dylan seems to relish packing a sad on this one. (4th July)
You Win Again
Before putting away your hanky, try ‘A 11’ written by Hank Cochran in 1963, and first sung by Don Deal. Dylan liked this song and covered it a number of times. In 2005, he’s ably backed by Donnie Herron on pedal steel guitar.
A 11
An old favourite of Dylan’s is ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ by Johnny Cash. It’s a foot-stomper and popular with audiences. Dylan, as always, gets right into the spirit of the song. This one’s from 18th March.
Folsom Prison Blues
Dylan would finish off the five London concerts by a brief version of ‘London Calling’ by The Clash (1979). It doesn’t sound much like The Clash, but it’s certainly rough and ready. It reminds us that Dylan often has a punky edge to him anyway. It’s just a taste of the song, really. A London crowd-pleasing moment. This one’s from the 3rd night.
London Calling
‘Mid-June 2005, halfway through a thirty-two-date tour with Willie Nelson, Dylan used a two-day break from the road to cut his latest movie soundtrack offering, for an independent film, North Country, based on the life of a female miner who brought a sexual harassment suit in North Carolina. .. It had been three years since he cut ‘’Cross The Green Mountain’, but there was no sign of a sea-change in his working method.’ Heylin, Clinton. Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2 1974-2008 (p. 473)
The song he is referring to is ‘Tell Ol Bill,’ which Dylan never performed live, although I wish he had. All we have is the ten different takes made during that recording session. The song was not included in the up and coming Modern Times, to be released in 2006.
So, it’s a song I wish he’d performed. In fact, I’d declare it to be his greatest song if it weren’t for ‘Visions of Johanna’ and ‘Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.’ Those songs are hard to best.
Wikipedia describes North Country like this: Single mother Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron) is part of a group of the first women to work at a local iron mine in Minnesota. Offended that they have to work with women, male workers at Eveleth Mines lash out at them and subject them to sexual harassment. Appalled by the constant stream of insults, sexually explicit language and physical abuse, Josey — despite being cautioned against it by family and friends — files a historic sexual harassment lawsuit.’
The film was inspired by ‘the life of a real person, Lois Jenson, who filed the first class action lawsuit for sexual harassment in American history.’ (Google)
With other soundtrack songs like ‘Over the Green Mountain’ and ‘Things Have Changed,’ some of the imagery can be traced to the storyline of the film, but with ‘Tell Ol Bill,’ it’s not so clear. The song’s narrator appears to be a drifter in the grip of intense loneliness and isolation, a favourite subject of Dylan’s dating back to his earliest songs like ‘Only a Hobo.’
However, the way in which the lyrics evoke despair in the face of oppression does seem to reflect the film:
The evenin' sun is sinkin' low
The woods are dark, the town isn't new
They''ll drag you down, they'll run the show
Ain't no telling what they'll do
I detect the possible mind-set of Lois Jenson as she wanders through the rugged hills of Minnesota, burdened by her experiences, brave in her lonely stand.
All the world I would defy
Let me make it plain as day
What makes it a great song is the way Dylan uses the stormy landscape, which would be familiar to him from his childhood in Minnesota, to reflect and express inner turbulence. Shakespeare does this brilliantly in King Lear.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Here’s Dylan:
The tempest struggles in the air
And to myself alone I sing
It could sink me then and there
I can hear the echoes ring
And
Beneath the thunder blasted trees
The words are ringin' off your tongue
The ground is hard in times like these
Stars are cold, the night is young
The rocks are bleak, the trees are bare
Iron clouds go floating by
Snowflakes fallin' in my hair
Beneath the gray and stormy sky
The Ol Bill of the title could refer to Shakespeare – or the police.
Tony Attwood prefers take 9, arguing that the song finds its fullest expression with that jazzy arrangement (See Tony’s posts), while I prefer take 3, a more primitive, bluesy, emphatic (dumpty-dum) version. With this slow and steady pace, every word gets its due.
Tell Ol Bill
That wraps up 2005. You might think, given the sound he’d developed over three years with the piano, getting better every year on the instrument, welding his band into a formidable force, and achieving a rich, often intricate sound, that Dylan would continue to build on that foundation – but no. He threw it all away. The triumphant London residency and outstanding Dublin performances were not a harbinger of what was to come but a finale, the final act of that three-year narrative.
In 2006, Dylan would abandon the piano and take up the organ, sparking a new development that would take him through to 2012.
Well, I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry / Live my life on the square
Even if the flesh falls off my face / It won’t matter, long as you’re there
Feel like a ghost in love
Underneath the heavens above
Feel further away
than I ever did before
Feel further than I can take
Dreamin’ of you
is all I do
But it’s driving me insane
The Original Soundtrack to the 2007 Dylan biopic I’m Not There is a treasure trove. A double CD with 34 lovely Dylan covers, almost all of them surprising, original and quirky. Even such usual suspects as “All Along the Watchtower” (Eddie Vedder), “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (Antony and the Johnsons) and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” (Mason Jennings), which are apparently unavoidable, qualitatively stand out from the thousands of covers that already exist of these songs. But the real magic of the collection comes from the dusted-off insider tips, from the covers of songs that suffer a languishing existence at the outer edges of Dylan’s vast catalogue. “Can’t Leave Her Behind”, “I’m Not There”, the brilliant “Goin’ to Acapulco” cover by Jim James and Calexico, John Doe’s unsurpassed “Pressing On”, “Billy 1” by Los Lobos… both the selection and the performances show genuine, intrinsic Dylan love and knowledge.
Within that list of exotic birds, Bob Forrest’s “The Moonshiner” is the odd duck out. Not because of Bob Forrest, obviously. The frontman of Thelonious Monster, who, after a devastating detour through heroin hell in 1999, was helped back into the saddle by men from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, returning under the name The Bicycle Thief with the smashingly beautiful album You Come And Go Like A Pop Song, can still do no wrong in 2007. His contribution to I’m Not There is “just” another one of the heartwarming highlights. No, his song choice is remarkable, is the odd duck out: it is the only song on the 34-song track list that is not a Dylan song. “The Moonshiner” is a traditional, written probably half a century before Dylan was born.
However, it is defensible, up to a point, to call it a Dylan song. The song is still quite popular when Dylan records it during the Times They Are A-Changin’ sessions in 1963, but it is not selected for the album at the time, nor is it ever on Dylan’s set list. After 1963, “The Moonshiner” still does float around in hard-core folk circles for about thirty years (plus a peerless recording by Tim Hardin, 1971), until The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 is released, featuring that forgotten Dylan recording. Which leads to a major reappraisal. In the years that follow, the song appears on the track and setlists of names such as Uncle Tupelo, Cat Power, David Bromberg and Rich Lerner – to name but a few; “The Moonshiner” is experiencing quite a revival, after the success of that bootleg box in 1991.
The origin is unclear, but the song is at least a hundred years old and there are – of course – dozens of text variants. After 1991, nearly all colleagues follow Dylan’s lyrics. But Dylan himself seems, when he records “Dreamin’ Of You” in 1997, to have the version in his head as he once learned it: the one by The Clancy Brothers from 1961. Not so much because of the lines that return word for word in “Dreamin’ Of You”, but because of the opening words with The Clancy Brothers:
I'm a rambler, I'm a gambler,
I'm a long way from home
And if you don't like me
You can leave me alone
I'll eat when I'm hungry
And I'll drink when I'm dry
And if moonshine don't kill me
I'll live till I die
… “I’m a rambler and I’m a gambler”, which echoes almost literally in “Red River Shore”, that other Time Out Of Mind outtake, is not sung in any version other than The Clancy Brothers. And “Moonshiner” playing in Dylan’s head should be clear enough from the words that follow: I’ll eat when I’m hungry and I’ll drink when I’m dry, which is sung in virtually every version, including those by Dylan, Bob Forrest and The New Lost City Ramblers (Tim Hardin sings the “Kentucky Moonshiner” version; Corn bread when i’m hungry, corn liquor when i’m dry).
So, for some reason, perhaps the white moonlight from the previous stanza, the stream of consciousness in Dylan’s creating mind meanders via Henry Rollins to an antique folksong that he had in his repertoire almost forty years ago. At least, the disturbing image from the next line, Even if the flesh falls off my face, is something Scott Warmuth has also found with Rollins, in one of the 61 dreams described in Black Coffee Blues:
“One guy comes through the door and I unload an entire clip into him but he keeps coming at me. Flesh is falling off his face, his skull is made of metal. He smiles and falls.”
In itself that is, of course, a bit too thin to draw an a-ha! line to Dylan. Flesh falling off bones or bodies or faces as an image of mortality and our corruptible lives is admittedly rather gruesome, and for that reason alone has never become mainstream, but it is hardly unique. We know the image from plenty of film horror scenes, Dylan himself has been singing along with “O Death” for years (Leave the body and leave it cold / To draw up the flesh off of the frame), Hieronymus Bosch was painting flesh-ripping scenes already five hundred years ago, and the opening line of Dylan’s own “Foot Of Pride” uses a similar idiom: “Like the lion tears the flesh off from a man”.
Still, these words are surrounded by literal quotes and unmistakable paraphrases from Rollins’ work… it is quite likely that Warmuth is right, that Dylan got this gruesome image also from the ferocious poet from Washington DC. And he really likes them, these lines; they move almost unchanged to “Standing In The Doorway”:
I’ll eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry
And live my life on the square
And even if the flesh falls off of my face
I know someone will be there to care
… where its beauty, arguably, indeed does shine even brighter. Well, less sinister anyway. In a soft, white moonshiner’s light.
To be continued. Next up Dreamin’ Of You part 5: It’s me, Cathy
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:
Elijah, prophet of the Hebrew God, tells King Ahab, the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom are being punished with drought for worshipping Baal; Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, claims Baal is punishing them for straying away from the natural laws of the Golden Calf.
Elijah’s God says a hard rain’s hard agonna fall, and, sure enough, the Baal-prophets and soldiers are swept away in the River of Slaughter – the Kishon flows red with blood:
And it came to pass in the mean while
That the heaven was black with clouds and wind
And there was a great rain ...
And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done
And withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword
(I Kings 18: 45; -19: I)
Poor Ahab was attempting to keep the peace with the Baalists, but begins have second thoughts about his marriage to Jezebel.
In the song below the singer/narrator takes on the role of Ahab:
Could be better had I never
Known such a lover as you
(Frankie Laine: Jezebel ~ Shanklin)
And so it goes –
Ahab say, I was just trying to play Baal with Belle
Elijah say the next time you see me coming, you better take a hike
And Ahab says, "It's enough; now O Lord, take away my life
For l am no better than my fathers" (I Kings 19: 4)
Captain Ahab hangs around, however, and, to make a long story short, he gets killed, and Jezebel, her face covered in a fresh coat of paint, now with no one on her side, gets thrown out a window, and her flesh eaten by a pack of dogs “so they shall not say, ‘This is Jezebel’ ” (II Kings 9:30)
It could be said that the singer/songwriter/musician, whose lyrics are quoted beneath, gives an obverse twist to the biblical story above.
Turns Jez into a good gal:
Well, I sat by her side, and for a while
I tried to make that girl my wife
She gave me her best advice
And she said , "Go home, and lead a quiet life"
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
Part II
In the concluding chapters of the Holy Bible, things start to get interesting.
Thus speaks Jesus:
Behold I stand at the door, and knock
If any man hear my voice
And open the door, I will come in to him
And will sup with him, and him with me
(Revelations 3: 20)
Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan opens the mirrored door; not sure who’s there.
For one thing, were readers of the Holy Bible to take the Kishon River in the Northern Kingdom of Israel as the Red River spoken of in the song “Red River Shore”, we would indeed find ourselves strangers transported to the backstage of a strange Gnostic Land.
The unrepentant wife of King Ahab, Jezebel from the Kishon River shore, is said to end up eaten by dogs in the Old Testament, but backstage she’s magically brought back to life by the crucified Jesus of the NewTestament.
There, Christ, at the very least His Ghostly Spirit, admonishes those who claim to accept Him as their Messiah. They (in a city where temples to the many-breasted fertility goddess, a variation on the virgin goddess, Diana are built) have fallen away from His teachings:
Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee
Because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel
Which calls herself a prophetess
To teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication
And to eat things sacrificed unto idols
(Revelations 2: 20)
The following song lyrics thus interpreted:
Now, I've heard of this guy who lived a long time ago
A man full of sorrow and strife
That if someone around him died, and was dead
He knew how to bring'em on back to life
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
Given the revelations above, the temptress Jezebel could well be the person brought back to life in the song.
With the curtains drawn, It's not clear, that's for sure:
Well, I don't know what kind of language that he used
Or if they do that kind of thing anymore
Sometimes, I think nobody ever saw me here at all
Except the girl from the Red River Shore
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
The New Testament Jezebel does not repent; no more than she does in the Old.
But the gal in the song, akin to the southern belle in the movie ‘Jezebel’, starring Bette Davis, does – in the song, by sending her lusty buck back across the river before he gets into trouble.
Clear it be that she’s not among the ones who, in the song, knock at the narrator’s door looking to seduce him:
Pretty maids all in a row lined up
Outside my cabin door
I've never wanted any of them wanting me
Except the girl from the Red River Shore
(Bob Dylan: Red River Shore)
If that be the case, the face of the evil female archetype – just happens she’s a good cook – is given a brand new coat of paint by the refomed gold hunter, the Jack of Hearts.
He, now into commerce, a.k.a the RAZ, stands in the doorway:
The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun, she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper, who sits
At the head of the Chamber of Commerce
(Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues)
Intro note– in case you have not come across any of these articles before. Aaron is in the USA and Tony in the UK – Aaron selects the theme and sends the videos to Tony who then tries to write up his commentary while the music is playing.
Aaron:Here is Bob’s version of “Man of Constant Sorrow” from the debut album.
Aaron: I must have heard hundreds of versions of the song over the years.
Tony: This was a central part of my performance as a teenager in the folk club in Bournemouth (England) in the days when I still thought I might make it as a professional musician (something I singularly failed to do). I used to play a couple of songs from Dylan’s first two albums copying Dylan note for note, and then throw in one or two of my own. Those were the days! But back to the point …
Aaron: Here’s three of my favorites
Ginger Baker (Cream) & Denny Laine (Moody Blues/Wings)
Tony: Oh from the off I love this, perhaps it is such a contrast from the Dylan song that has been a part of my life, for most of my life. But then I’m not sure about bringing the chorus in and then keep on building up and up with the vocals getting more and more excitable before the instrumental break.
I know it is something that producers love to do – the whole “let’s start real soft and make it build up” but the latter part of the instrumental break is, for me, just a mess, and then by the return of the vocals I just hear everyone fighting each other. Of course, the percussion needs to have prominence because it is Ginger, but really… the vocals on that last verse are just too much for me. There is no thought at all in any way about the lyrics. He’s singing “I am a man of constant sorrow” for goodness sake. It certainly doesn’t sound like he’s in sorrow. Shoot the producer, go back to the start and listen to how good the opening is.
(Actually, I like that phrase about “shoot the producer”. I wonder if it is possible to write a song called “Shoot the producer”).
Aaron: Soggy Bottom Boys – from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? movie. The original idea was for George Clooney to provide the lead vocals but when it was obvious his take wasn’t convincing enough Dan Tyminski stepped in. Jump to 1:15
Tony:Actually I disobeyed the instructions and watched the whole thing, which is, what shall I say… actually I don’t know. But the music is superb – it is a great rendition of the song with superb accompaniment and brilliant harmonies. Everything the Baker Boys couldn’t do.
Aaron:Home Free – believe it or not this is completely a cappella, everything you hear is made by a human voice!
Tony: Wow. Aaron are you really sure everything is made by a human voice? OK I’ll your word for it, but no, surely there are drums in use here! But either way it is a great version.
And now I’m going to be cheeky and throw in one other recording.
According to Wiki, the song was originally called “Farewell Song” in a songbook by Burnett dated to around 1913. I think this is about the earliest recording there is – it comes from 1928.
Times change, but the message is still as valid as ever.
