Untold Dylan

By Tony Attwood

It is Christmas Day in the UK – the biggest holiday of the year.  And so I thought I would do something different.  I wasn’t sure what but then Jochen and I were having one of our occasional email exchanges (we live in different countries as I have mentioned before) and he reminded me that he had already reminded me that I should be mentioned Chris Smither’s covers.  (People reminding me that I have already been reminded is becoming quite a part of my life these days).

And so rather than drop Chris Smither’s songs into the articles in A Dylan Cover A Day, I thought I’d do this terrific musician the honour of a special for himself – which he most certainly deserves.  If you want to know about this extraordinary performer there is a Wiki page on him of course, and of course he has his own website

https://youtu.be/gHPXGD6SRS8

So what is he doing?  Well, most obviously he’s using open tuning on the guitar, which I am not sure Bob does very much if at all (forgive me I’ve never checked – I just can’t recall where Bob does this.  Do tell if you’ve spotted it).  If you are not familiar with the way guitarists like to get more out of their guitar, there is a standard set up for the tuning of guitar strings (E A D G B E – going from the lowest to the highest) but there is nothing to stop anyone changing the tuning.

The most popular alternative tunings gives a chord of D or G when the open strings are played, but others are possible.  Perhaps the most interesting thing is that if one then plays some of the chord fingerings from the standard tuning, while the guitar is tuned in an alternative way, all sorts of interesting and unusual chords emerge.  It is an approach that has inspired many a performer looking for a way of giving the guitar a new sound, and of playing some chords one has not used before.

And if that did not move you enough try this

Already you should have a feel for what this musician is doing – and I really have not heard this sort of approach to Dylan before.  OK maybe there are others out there, but I live in rural Northamptonshire, and the local folk are still discussing the notion of introducing this new fangled postal service idea to the area, so news from elsewhere is a little slow.

This third example of his work again works in the same way – it is one that Jochen particularly reminded me of this morning, and indeed it is one that was used to illustrate a point in one of Larry’s articles, as well as in Jochen’s article “It takes a lot to laugh it takes “Chris Smither to make me cry”

Now there may be Dylan songs performed by Chris Smither but I haven’t found any yet.  However I have now diverted onto Spotify, and if you have a Spotify account do type in Chris Smither’s name and start playing.  From the very first track on the page dedicated to his music “Leave the light on” your life is likely to be changed – believe me it really is.

But in case you haven’t got a Spotify account here’s some more…

Chris clearly has his own style, but he retains the essence of Bob’s music and then merges the two so we get a new insight into each song.  Here all the atmosphere is created by the opening tuning and the constant pulse which I imagine is a foot tap.

His changes to the music itself are not profound – it is the sound that is different and which gives us different insights…

He does occasionally venture elsewhere but after listening to all the songs above, and quite a few more in the Spotify collection, I wasn’t really for this…

I think I’m going to have to come back to this later to try and take it in fully.  But I think first I am going to play “What was it you wanted” again.  I do hope Bob has heard this.  And maybe sent Chris a postcard of appreciation.

Anyway, there it is.  There is also a lot more of Chris Smither on Second Hand Songs although no more Dylan covers.  And if you have worked your way through those records above, I hope you have enjoyed something therein.

What with it being Christmas I’m visiting my children and grandchildren just now, so the timing of posting articles maybe slightly out for a couple of days (it depends if my grandchildren will allow me onto the internet while I’m visiting… “Oh Granddad I’m on line and you’re slowing the connection down” says the five year old) but one way or another I’ll be back soon.

Happy Christmas everyone, whether you celebrate Christmas or not.  And thank you for reading Untold Dylan.  Without you, it wouldn’t mean a thing.

Tony

By Tony Attwood

If you have been following this little series you may have noticed that I have meandered somewhat, moving out of the strict alphabetical order occasionally, to go back to songs I missed, and then mistakenly written a review of a song’s covers already covered.

I’ve now tried to sort this list out somewhat …

• Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.
• Dylan cover of the day. No 2: Ain’t Talkin
• Bob Dylan cover of the day No3: All I really want to do
• Dylan cover of the day No4: Angelina
• Dylan covers of the day No 5. Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• Cover version of the day No 6: As I went out one morning
• Dylan cover of the day No 7: Ballad for a Friend
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 8: Ballad in Plain D
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 9: Ballad of a thin man
• Dylan cover No. 10: The stunning reworking of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• Dylan cover of the day No 11: The ballad of Hollis Brown
• A Dylan cover a day No 12: Beyond here lies nothing
• Dylan cover of the day No 13: Blind Willie McTell
• Dylan Cover of the Day 14: Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• Dylan Cover of the Day 15: An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Dylan Cover of the Day 16: Blowin in the wind as never before
• Dylan Cover of the Day 17: Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Dylan Cover of the Day 18: You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Dylan cover of the day 19: Boots of Spanish leather
• Dylan cover of the day 20: Born in Time
• Dylan cover of the day 21: Buckets of Rain
• Dylan cover of the day: 22 Can you please crawl out your window
• Dylan cover of the day 23: Can’t wait
• Dylan Cover of the Day 24: Changing of the Guard
• Dylan Cover of the Day 25: Chimes of Freedom
• Dylan cover a day 34: Country Pie
• Dylan Cover of the Day 33: Crash on the Levee
• A Dylan cover a day 35: Dark Eyes
• Dylan Cover of the Day 26: Dear Landlord
• Dylan cover of the Day 27: Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dylan cover of the Day 28: Dignity.
• Dylan Cover of the Day 29: Dirge
• Dylan Cover of the Day 30: Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Dylan cover a Day 31: Don’t think twice
• Dylan cover a day 32: Down along the cove
• Dylan cover – recovered: Drifter’s Escape

The next one on my list was Drifter’s Escape, but I’ve already done an article on that before thinking of this series – so I’ve listed that piece above, and updated a link or two that had gone missing within the article.

All of which meandering brings me to Duquesne Whistle – which is fortunate because there is one and only one cover version that needs to be played.  For it is so, so good, no one surely could ever take this song any further.  And why would they even try?

Just sit back and enjoy the sheer fun, liveliness and pleasure that this song in this interpretation is.

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

• Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 1: They going down 61 Highway
• Dirt Road Blues part 2: The troublingest woman I ever seen

by Jochen Markhorst

III         But your brains are staying south

Gon’ walk down that dirt road, ’til someone lets me ride
Gon’ walk down that dirt road, ’til someone lets me ride
If I can’t find my baby, I’m gonna run away and hide

 For a quarter of a century, the Dutch author Arnon Grunberg has been bivouacking at and around the top of the literary Olympus in the Low Lands, and translations of his novels are read all over the world thanks to rave reviews in The New York Times, Le Figaro, the L.A. Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine, among others. His output cannot be categorised; like Dylan, Grunberg jumps from one genre to another.

One of his greatest successes is the 2006 psychological thriller Tirza, a novel that reveals a soul connection to the spiritual father of songs like “Cold Irons Bound”, “Soon After Midnight” and the 2021 rewrite of “To Be Alone With You”. Lyrics with a brooding, lugubrious undercurrent that only comes to the surface at second glance.

In Tirza, we meet a somewhat dull, middle-class single father who idolises his youngest daughter in an almost unhealthy way. The farewell approaches; Tirza has finished her final exams and is on the threshold of an independent life. Before university life swallows her up, she and her boyfriend go on an adventurous holiday to Africa. Dad Jörgen brings them to the airport and then she is gone. And stays gone – there is no sign nor word from Tirza anymore, and the father, growing desperate and already instinctively suspicious of the boyfriend, decides to travel after her, decides to go look for her. He trudges over the dirt roads of Namibia, he can’t find his baby, and gradually he takes the reader with him in his intention to stay here, never to return to Amsterdam, to run away and hide. In the meantime, he found a kind of surrogate daughter, nine-year-old Kaisa, and when he tells her his life story, the bomb hits; Jörgen tells Kaisa that months ago he killed his own daughter and her boyfriend, on the way to the airport.

It is a mind-boggling plot twist that hits with the force of a grenade and makes the reader scroll back. Similar to mindfuck films like The Sixth Sense and Shutter Island: the plot twist forces the viewer to re-contextualise the entire story up until that point. What did we miss, could we have seen this coming? And yes, the foreshadowing of the surprising catastrophe is usually hidden in small, unobtrusive hints that, at first sight, are at most a tiny bit unsettling.

Something like that, such a small, unobtrusive hint, seems to be hidden in this closing line of the first verse of “Dirt Road Blues”. Up to and including “If I can’t find my baby”, nothing is out of the ordinary; still a classic dirt road blues, a lament of a poor, lovesick sod. But then: “I’m gonna run away and hide.” That, in twelve words, is the bewildering plottwist of Tirza – the protagonist who despairs of not being able to find his baby, and is then overcome by a run-and-hide urge. An urge that can only be explained by a preceding outrage, of course – either the protagonist is threatened and flees danger, or the protagonist has committed an atrocity and must now run-and-hide to avoid the consequences.

The second stanza does not clarify anything, but it does perpetuate the unease:

I been pacing around the room hoping maybe she’d come back
Pacing ’round the room hoping maybe she’d come back
Well, I been praying for salvation laying ’round 
   in a one-room country shack

… although it is a flashback, it is not a clarifying flash-back – the plot is still ambiguous. The narrator takes the listener back to a moment after the breaking point, to a moment when despair has already begun. And chooses reassuringly “ordinary” idiom to describe his despair, idiom as we know it from dozens of songs, from songs like Mel Tormé’s “Comin’ Home Baby”;

I'm pressin' on, baby, now
And pacing up and down the floor
Oh, hear me holler, and hear me roar
Say you'll be with me
Gonna be with you ever more 
I'm comin' home

… and from Muddy Waters’ “All Aboard” (“I’m hopin’ and tusslin’ she’d come back”), or George Jones’s monumental “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (“He still loved her through it all / Hoping she’d come back again”), or The Everly Brothers’ “Chained To A Memory”;

I get up in the morning
I'm pacing the floor
Like I'm expecting you to walk in the door
I keep forgetting I won't see you anymore
Guess I'm doomed to be chained to a memory

… and dozens of other songs from Dylan’s personal jukebox in which pained protagonists are pacing around and are consumed by the desire that she’d come back. Just like the ending of this verse, laying ’round in a one-room country shack, does not raise any eyebrows; that too is a setting we know from plenty of blues songs, again a setting the conditioned listener has long associated with heartache and love affliction of an unhappy first-person chronicler. In Dylan’s case, it probably got under his skin via Johnny Cash’s version of Billy Joe Shaver’s “Georgia On A Fast Train”, or via Willie Nelson (who plays the song again at Farm Aid 2013) – although neither of these can match the raw charm of Billy Joe’s 1973 original;

It’s more likely, however, that the walking music encyclopaedia has a flopped single by Johnny “Guitar” Watson from 1958 in his record case: “Gangster Of Love b/w One Room Country Shack”, produced and accompanied by the man who is held in such high esteem by Dylan, Bumps Blackwell. Presumably, Dylan was initially struck – again – by the sound, which is indeed close to the Time Out Of Mind sound. And is this décor an accidental by-catch;

I'm sittin' here, thousand miles from nowhere
In this one room country little shack

And my only worldly possession
Is this raggedy old cotton sack

On the other hand: given the subcutaneous suspense, the insinuated horror and the choice of scenery, it cannot be ruled out that Dylan was inspired by Louisiana Red’s signature song “Sweet Blood Call”, the lurid monologue of a psychopathic bad man, with the repulsive opening line “I have a hard time missing you baby, with my pistol in your mouth” and with, in the third verse, the scenery that Dylan will choose for his “Dirt Road Blues”:

I see your eyes are rollin'
Must mean your love for me has come back
Must mean you're satisfied again
With our little wooden country shack
I have a hard time missing you baby, with my pistol in your mouth
You may be thinking about going north woman, but your brains are staying south

Not inconceivable, a line from “Sweet Blood Call” to Dylan’s “Dirt Road Blues”, and not only because of that in itself meagre similarity in scenery. Roughly since Time Out Of Mind, Dylan has developed a growing fascination for what, for the sake of convenience, can be called murder-suggesting ballads; ominous narratives surrounding sinister protagonists and macabre incidents, which are mainly diffusely, implicitly evoked – Dylan is not yet as explicit as in “Sweet Blood Call” or as in comparable bloody folk and blues songs (“Knoxville Girl”, “Delia’s Gone”, “Crow Jane”). Here, it remains with that disturbing suggestion I have been praying for salvation; words that suggest the narrator is seeking deliverance from sin and its consequences.

But he apparently does not receive that salvation, in that remote one-room country shack. He is standing in the doorway, and then decides to go down the dirt road, decides to run and hide…

To be continued. Next up: Dirt Road Blues part 4

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

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

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

By Tony Attwood

Now this is a problematic song and a half.  “Dignity” (the song) does something that I can’t for the moment, associate with any other popular song.   It’s core is the pragmatisation of the concept – turning the notion of “dignity” which is perceived but which cannot be touched, and is quite difficult to describe, into a reality.  No wonder Bob was unsure of what he had got and took so long to release it.

It was recorded in the spring of 1989 but not released until the end of 1994, ironically on one of the Greatest Hits albums.  How very Dylan.

It is a difficult song to grasp at first and I think a difficult song to cover.  Indeed listening to a range of covers in preparation for this little piece, I’ve been interested to listen to the eminent recording artists who have had a bash, and really failed to deliver anything worthy of the song.

But as ever I’ve found (and indeed already knew) a handful that are worth a listen if you have a spare 15 minutes or so.

The Low Anthem’s version really is worth trying – but please don’t just judge it by the opening lines – it grows in a way that I doubt that Bob could ever have imagined.  I find this beautiful, and it gives me a new set of insights into the meaning of the lyrics – which still puzzle me just as they did when the song was first released.

And because I like contrasts here is a real big contrast with Denny Freeman enjoying himself no end exploring the music only.  I am not sure this really works in full, because the chord sequence and melody are so distinctive that Mr Freeman finds it hard to get away from them… but as a bit of light listening it’s nice, and very much a piece to take away the blues.

Last one for the day – and taking exactly the same beat and time as Denny Freeman, but now forcing me to focus on the sound, since I don’t speak the language.   And  Francesco de gregori dignità (“Il Principe dei cantautori”) (“The Prince of the singer-songwriters”) knows how to keep the original and then vary from time to time, which is why at this time, this is my favourite cover of the song.

And my lack of Italian helps me once again appreciate what a masterpiece of sound this is in a way that I can’t do if it is all just an instrumental.  I need the words, even when I can’t understand them at all.

• Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.
• Dylan cover of the day. No 2: Ain’t Talkin
• Bob Dylan cover of the day No3: All I really want to do
• Dylan cover of the day No4: Angelina
• Dylan covers of the day No 5. Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• Cover version of the day No 6: As I went out one morning
• Dylan cover of the day No 7: Ballad for a Friend
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 8: Ballad in Plain D
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 9: Ballad of a thin man
• Dylan cover No. 10: The stunning reworking of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• Dylan cover of the day No 11: The ballad of Hollis Brown
• A Dylan cover a day No 12: Beyond here lies nothing
• Dylan cover of the day No 13: Blind Willie McTell
• Dylan Cover of the Day 14: Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• Dylan Cover of the Day 15: An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Dylan Cover of the Day 16: Blowin in the wind as never before
• Dylan Cover of the Day 17: Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Dylan Cover of the Day 18: You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Dylan cover of the day 19: Boots of Spanish leather
• Dylan cover of the day 20: Born in Time
• Dylan cover of the day 21: Buckets of Rain
• Dylan cover of the day: 22 Can you please crawl out your window
• Dylan cover of the day 23: Can’t wait
• Dylan Cover of the Day 24: Changing of the Guard
• Dylan Cover of the Day 25: Chimes of Freedom
• Dylan Cover of the Day 26: Dear Landlord
• Dylan cover of the Day 27: Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dylan cover of the Day 28: Dignity.
• Dylan Cover of the Day 29: Dirge
• Dylan Cover of the Day 30: Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Dylan cover a Day 31: Don’t think twice
• Dylan cover a day 32: Down along the cove
• Dylan Cover of the Day 33: Crash on the Levee
• Dylan cover a day 34: Country Pie
• A Dylan cover a day 35: Dark Eyes
• A Dylan cover a day 36: Dear Landlord
• A Dylan cover a day 37: Desolation Row

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

“Soundstage : The World of John Hammond” was broadcast on December 6, 1975 and lasted almost 3 hours! Tributes were made to Hammond from all the many and varied artists whose careers he had touched including Bessie Smith, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and others.

Highlights of the show included a performance from Benny Goodman and for the first time on television in over 6 years, Bob Dylan.

I found an article from The NY Times archives discussing the show from 1975 which makes for interesting reading:

“the main attraction, of course, the reason Channel 13 is running the segment twice tomorrow, is Bob Dylan, accompanied by two men (drums and bass guitar) and a woman (violin).

“Displaying his well‐established genius for tapping the most fashionable of politicalsocial causes, the millionaire chronicler of modern folk opens with “Hurricane,” his version of the Rubin Carter story, a story now being played out in the courts and prisons. Mr. Carter, the former boxer (“It’s my work, and I do it for pay”) is Mr. Dylan’s idealized hero. His villains, needless to say, are all those “criminals in coats and ties.” Also, needless to say, all, the coats and ties in the “Soundstage” audience applaud lustily.

“Mr. Dylan’s other numbers are “Oh, Sister” and “Simple Twist of Fate,” both performed a bit sullenly but attractively. While not generating the sheer excitement of the Benny Goodman group’s appearance, the Dylan set provides an effective, oddly lyrical, close for these two exceptional instalments of “Soundstage.””

Here are Bob’s performances

Hurricane – the single had been released by this time but the album was not released until January 1976.

Tony: Watching what Bob does before he starts playing I think he is actually suddenly deciding to change the key at the very last moment.   He couldn’t be could he?

Whether that is me just trying too hard to understand the moving of the capo and changing the harmonica – or whether it is all a sleight of hand (or indeed maybe they had been warming up prior to the film starting and Bob had forgotten to remove the capo) I’m not sure. Interesting see the look the violinist gives him at one point as if to say, “If that’s what you do, I’m not playing for you again.”

But whatever was going on, this is a brilliant performance and a half.

Oh Sister

Tony: Ah the old “she knows who she is” line – not one of Bob’s, but the song fits perfectly well with the quartet approach of guitar/harmonica, violin, bass and percussion.

And contradicting my thought about the sudden change of key – these are beautiful renditions.

Simple Twist Of Fate

Aaron: This isn’t on YouTube but it is on Dylan’s official Facebook page, so hopefully if you click this link it should take you there!

https://fb.watch/9-tj6DyIng/

Tony: This is indeed a superb collection and one that I didn’t know about.   (My excuse is being British, I had no chance to watch this, as it was never shown in the UK.)    It is a beautiful song, but the move into declamation rather than singing at certain points removes some of the beauty in my view.

And dare I say it, I think the format of the quartet’s accompaniment isn’t varied enough to carry us through a whole series of songs.  At first, it is incredibly attractive, but by this third song I am starting to think, well yes, I can see how this song will go when played by the quartet – so is there anything else they can put into the arrangement?

But the answer is no.   The accompanying instruments are all playing the same way on each song – and if there is a problem with this performance, then that’s the problem.  There’s no musical variation, so we are left enjoying the songs we now know so well.

Of course, they were much newer when this was recorded, so the impact then would have been very different.  And I am at this moment influenced by having started my little “Dylan cover a day” series on this site, which focuses on what interests me – the way the songs can be varied and changed.   Perhaps if I were not writing that each day, I’d appreciate the undoubted beauty of these arrangements more.

Aaron: As a bonus, I did a bit of detective work and found the missing track from the article in this series on Quest (Girl From The North Country) on YouTube. This was track 4 on the program.  Here it is…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rziSN63X5FE&t=52s

Tony: Ah you took me by surprise there Aaron.  I wasn’t ready for the jump – but it does give some emphasis to my point above.  Now, after a lifetime of Dylan, we appreciate how he has changed his style and approach to songwriting and performance.  That was a bit of serendipity.

But when we hear a complete concert not just performed with the same instrumentation (they normally are) but with the same style of performance, that makes it a bit less Bob, somehow.  But still these are exquisite performances and arrangements; maybe I’m just demanding too much these ays.

Dylan released and unreleased

• Part 1: Dylan Released and Unreleased
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: 2 – The usual, Pretty Boy, People get ready.
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: 3 – Hard to Handle the full one hour video
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 4: from the nursery to looking back
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: Girl From the North Country
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: Quest
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 7: Down along the cove
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 8: The Compilation Albums
• Dylan released and unreleased 9: the Galas

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

If it were just the shouting it would be nothing, but the vocal harmonies, the slight intermissioins and the guitar solo make it.

Of course we all know the lyrics so well, so an instrumental version is welcome – if nothing else but to find out what exists beneath the lyrical lines we already know so well.

There is a note on Vitamin String Quartet’s wiki article which says, “This article appears to contain trivial, minor, or unrelated references to popular culture. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject’s impact on popular culture, providing citations to reliable, secondary sources, rather than simply listing appearances. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.”

What utter tripe.   Turning anything to do with Vitamin String Quartet into something other than unrelated references to popular culture is to deny what VSQ is about.

The final choice of the day is something that really surprises me.  It is one of two Dylan tracks on the album Les Sauterelles which was apparently released within a year of Desolation Row coming out.  I am surprised that anyone had the audacity to do this so early on.  Hats off to them, in that case, because they must have been one of the influences that said to other artists, really you can try anything you like with Dylan – just to see what happens.

Les Sauterelles played between 1962 and 1971 and then were reformed at the end of the 1980s.  Toni Vescoli has been with the band from the start.

But in the end I still feel the essence of the song needs a certain level of simplicity.  So I leave you with Songdog.   It’s far from perfect in my view, but it takes me back to the original, and then adds a certain something.  Of course I know the words by heart, but somehow I find a little more here than I have thought of before.

• Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.
• Dylan cover of the day. No 2: Ain’t Talkin
• Bob Dylan cover of the day No3: All I really want to do
• Dylan cover of the day No4: Angelina
• Dylan covers of the day No 5. Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• Cover version of the day No 6: As I went out one morning
• Dylan cover of the day No 7: Ballad for a Friend
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 8: Ballad in Plain D
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 9: Ballad of a thin man
• Dylan cover No. 10: The stunning reworking of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• Dylan cover of the day No 11: The ballad of Hollis Brown
• A Dylan cover a day No 12: Beyond here lies nothing
• Dylan cover of the day No 13: Blind Willie McTell
• Dylan Cover of the Day 14: Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• Dylan Cover of the Day 15: An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Dylan Cover of the Day 16: Blowin in the wind as never before
• Dylan Cover of the Day 17: Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Dylan Cover of the Day 18: You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Dylan cover of the day 19: Boots of Spanish leather
• Dylan cover of the day 20: Born in Time
• Dylan cover of the day 21: Buckets of Rain
• Dylan cover of the day: 22 Can you please crawl out your window
• Dylan cover of the day 23: Can’t wait
• Dylan Cover of the Day 24: Changing of the Guard
• Dylan Cover of the Day 25: Chimes of Freedom
• Dylan Cover of the Day 26: Dear Landlord
• Dylan cover of the Day 27: Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dylan cover of the Day 28: Dignity.
• Dylan Cover of the Day 29: Dirge
• Dylan Cover of the Day 30: Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Dylan cover a Day 31: Don’t think twice
• Dylan cover a day 32: Down along the cove
• Dylan Cover of the Day 33: Crash on the Levee
• Dylan cover a day 34: Country Pie
• A Dylan cover a day 35: Dark Eyes
• A Dylan cover a day 36: Dear Landlord

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

By Larry Fyffe

John Milton and John Bunyan be Puritans, and believe faith in God, not good works, is the key to salvation.

In the poetic lyrics below, blindness is a burden that the writer  just has to learn to live with:

... Thousands at his bidding speed
And post over land and ocean without rest
They also serve him best who only stand and wait
(John Milton: On His Blindness)

Likewise, so too, in regards to the burden of being locked up:

And stand by him, too, when bound in irons....
(John Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress, chapter VII)

In the song lyrics below, the Puritan creed is questioned; not only that, questioned is the choice left by the Almighty to stand beside Satan instead.

Which side are you on?

Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
(Bob Dylan: Gotta Serve Somebody)

Expressed rather sarcastically in the song lyrics beneath:

Temptation's not an easy thing, Adam given the devil reign
Because he sinned, I got no choice, it run in my vein
(Bob Dylan: Pressing On)

In the following lines, an experiment is undertaken –  men from a number of different religions, including Catholic and Protestant, are locked up together in a cage:

When I came back to note results ….not a specimen left alive. These Reasonable Animals had a disagreement on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court

(Mark Twain: Letters From Earth)

The above satire sourced for the following song lyrics that reference a performer known to have suffered due to the colour of his skin; not merely because of consuming some forbidden food or drink, or wearing certain kinds of makeup, or wearing particular types of clothes:

I live on a street named after a saint
Women in the churches wear powder and paint
Where the Jews and the Catholics, and the Muslims
all come to pray
I can tell a Proddie from a mile away
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, Jimmy Reed indeed
Give me that old-time religion, it's just what I need
(Bob Dylan: Goodbye Jimmy Reed)

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

As presented in the Old Testament below, the Hebrews manage to keep hold of their faith in spite of their suffering:

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me

Why art thou so far from helping me

And from the words of my roaring?”

(Psalm 22:1)

God warns His creations that He bluffs some of the time, but not all the time.

Jesus, as He hangs dying on the cross, loses faith in a loving Father figure.

An irony not lost on the following song lyrics in which God does come to Ishmael’s rescue at the last second:

Ah, God said, “Kill me a son”

Abe said, “You must be putting me on”

God said “No”; Abe say, “What?”

God say, “You can do what you want, Abe

But the next time you see me coming, you better run”

(Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited)

Nor is their a loving father in the song lyrics quoted beneath:

Oh Lazarus’, Lazarus’ father

When he heard his son was a-dying

Said, “Let the fool go down

Let the fool go down”

(Bob Dylan: Poor Lazarus ~ Dylan, traditional)

By Tony Attwood

Moving on through the Dylan songs in alphabetical order I was not especially surprised to find the paucity of covers of Day of the Locusts, which is a very personal song, but I was interested and slightly taken aback by the lack of versions of “Dead Man Dead Man”, which musically I feel has a lot of potential.

However, it’s not for me to tell artists what they ought to be putting out to the great wide public, so on we go and “Dear Landlord” turns up more.  Including an offer from Diva de Lai (Dylan at the opera).  At first, I thought it might just be an operatic voice with vibrato cashing in on the song, but no it is much more than this.   I love the harmonies later and the male chorus which also appears later.  Great fun.

I have no idea how long Thea Gilmore and her colleagues actually took to work out the arrangements for the John Wesley Harding album, but the great thing about it is that each arrangement really does start from a different position, each related to the essence of the song.  It would have been so easy to take a style (which is after all what Bob did for all the songs apart from the last two extra tracks, seemingly thrown in to make it long enough to be an album), but they resisted.  I get the feeling each and every song was considered in depth, the new arrangement always starting from scratch.

Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker in their own versions of the song have given it a regular rock n roll beat and although musically it is possible, I just don’t think it works for the essence of the lyrics.  So I move on finally to…

… Joan Baez…  I really don’t feel this bouncy rhythm works.  Ms Baez is easily adept enough to fit the lyrics and variations of the melody to this, but the rhythm behind her makes no sense in the context of her singing, nor in the context of lyrics.  Indeed you can hear the pianist getting rather desperate to fill in his/her part around it all.   Artistically it is the equivalent of taking a famous picture and saying “Ok let’s turn it upside and add a load of paint sploshes around the edges; that might work.”

It’s not Ms Baez fault – she’s not the producer, although she might have had the power to say, “let’s not put that one out”.  In that context, the picture of her (below) is just about right.

• Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.
• Dylan cover of the day. No 2: Ain’t Talkin
• Bob Dylan cover of the day No3: All I really want to do
• Dylan cover of the day No4: Angelina
• Dylan covers of the day No 5. Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• Cover version of the day No 6: As I went out one morning
• Dylan cover of the day No 7: Ballad for a Friend
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 8: Ballad in Plain D
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 9: Ballad of a thin man
• Dylan cover No. 10: The stunning reworking of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• Dylan cover of the day No 11: The ballad of Hollis Brown
• A Dylan cover a day No 12: Beyond here lies nothing
• Dylan cover of the day No 13: Blind Willie McTell
• Dylan Cover of the Day 14: Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• Dylan Cover of the Day 15: An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Dylan Cover of the Day 16: Blowin in the wind as never before
• Dylan Cover of the Day 17: Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Dylan Cover of the Day 18: You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Dylan cover of the day 19: Boots of Spanish leather
• Dylan cover of the day 20: Born in Time
• Dylan cover of the day 21: Buckets of Rain
• Dylan cover of the day: 22 Can you please crawl out your window
• Dylan cover of the day 23: Can’t wait
• Dylan Cover of the Day 24: Changing of the Guard
• Dylan Cover of the Day 25: Chimes of Freedom
• Dylan Cover of the Day 26: Dear Landlord
• Dylan cover of the Day 27: Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dylan cover of the Day 28: Dignity.
• Dylan Cover of the Day 29: Dirge
• Dylan Cover of the Day 30: Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Dylan cover a Day 31: Don’t think twice
• Dylan cover a day 32: Down along the cove
• Dylan Cover of the Day 33: Crash on the Levee
• Dylan cover a day 34: Country Pie
• A Dylan cover a day 35: Dark Eyes

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

• Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 1: They going down 61 Highway

by Jochen Markhorst

II          The troublingest woman I ever seen

Gon’ walk down that dirt road, ’til someone lets me ride
Gon’ walk down that dirt road, ’til someone lets me ride
If I can’t find my baby, I’m gonna run away and hide

They do walkabout, the poor protagonists of Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind. “I’m walking through streets that are dead” is the opening line of the album (“Love Sick”), “Standing In The Doorway”, the song after “Dirt Road Blues” starts with I’m walking through the summer nights, then comes “Million Miles” and “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven”, in which the I-person has to walk through the middle of nowhere, to wade through high muddy water and is just going down the road feeling bad, and like this, it goes on. In “Not Dark Yet” he follows the river, he is twenty miles out of town in Cold Irons Bound, he goes to the end of the earth To Make You Feel My Love and the album’s closing track is a restless wanderer again, with his heart in the Highlands.

Already after one verse “Dirt Road Blues” seems to be a similar lament as the lamentations of the other lamenters on this album; scourged by heartbreak, abandoned by the woman he can’t live without. Not that those first few words are that explicit – but after about seventy years of blues tradition, it’s an educated guess; most of us have been conditioned to the point that walking down the dirt road can only mean: that poor sucker just lost the love of his life. A Pavlovian association that can be traced all the way back to Tommy Johnson, presumably.

“Sing in me, O Muse, and through me tell the story.” The Odyssey quote with which Dylan concludes his Nobel Prize lecture is also the opening of the brilliant 2000 Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou. Dylan publicly expresses his great admiration for the film, which has a lot to do with George Clooney, but even more with the soundtrack. And with the wildly colourful script of course, which playfully, unobtrusively and extremely imaginatively incorporates hints and nods to classic films, Homer, American history and music. Like the role for Tommy Johnson:

HITCHHIKER: Thank you fuh the lif’, suh. M’names Tommy. Tommy Johnson.
Delmar is genuinely friendly:
DELMAR: How ya doin’, Tommy. I haven’t seen a house in miles. What’re you doin’ out in the middle of nowhere?
Tommy is matter-of-fact:
TOMMY: I had to be at that crossroads las’ midnight to sell mah soul to the devil.

Indeed, of the legendary blues Founding Father the story was spread that he owed his exceptional guitar skills to a deal with the devil on the crossroads, a story that somehow got transferred to Robert Johnson. In the film, the Soggy Bottom Boys take him to the studio, where, with Tommy as guitarist, they record an irresistible version of “Man Of Constant Sorrow”, the song that is also somewhere in Dylan’s personal Top 40.

Dylan got to know Tommy Johnson’s work as early as 1960 in Minnesota, he tells in Chronicles (“where I first heard Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Charlie Patton and Tommy Johnson”), and as a DJ in Theme Time Radio Hour, he dwells on him more extensively:

“Along with Son House and Charley Patton, no one was more important to the development of Delta Blues than Tommy Johnson. And long before the stories about Robert Johnson, selling his soul at the crossroads, those same stories were told about Tommy Johnson. His live performances, where he would play guitar behind his neck, while hollering the blues at full volume, are legendary. Unfortunately, his addiction to alcohol was so pronounced, that he was often seen drinking sterno and even shoe polish, strained through white bread, when whiskey wasn’t available.”

… introducing “Cool Drink Of Water Blues”, episode 23, Water. Dylan recalls the bizarre-appearing fact that Tommy even drank sterno and shoe polish to satisfy his alcohol addiction, but it does seem to be a true story; several sources report this disturbing biographical fact – not least Tommy Johnson himself:

Cryin', canned heat, mama
Sho', Lord, killin' me
Take alcorub to
Take these canned heat blues

… the opening couplet of “Canned Heat Blues” from 1928, in which Tommy complains that rubbing alcohol, the at least as poisonous isopropyl, is supposed to save him from the canned heat blues, from the sickly desire for that thoroughly toxic burning paste Sterno. Repulsive, but who knows – maybe it contributed to the emergence of immortal pillars of the blues, to monuments such as “Big Road Blues” that via Floyd Jones’s “Dark Road” from 1951 eventually evolved into “On The Road Again”.

“On The Road Again” (1968) is one of the biggest hits for the Californian blues rock band Canned Heat, the band that already honours Tommy Johnson in its choice of band name. And with this hit, the band contributes to the continuity of that image, of the image that walking down the road evokes;

Well, I'm so tired of crying
But I'm out on the road again
I'm on the road again
I ain't got no woman
Just to call my special friend

… the image of the pitiful, love sick dupe. The image carved in 1928 by Tommy Johnson’s “Big Road Blues”;

Cryin', ain't goin' down this
Big road by myself
A-don't ya hear me talkin', pretty mama?
Lord, ain't goin' down this
Big road by myself

But from that other monument, the song that DJ Dylan plays in the twenty-first century, “Cool Drink Of Water Blues”, we hear echoes in Dylan’s “Dirt Road Blues” as well; the simple blues lick that carries the song is a sped-up copy of Tommy Johnson’s lick. Another song that reverberates for decades, by the way; Howlin’ Wolf’s 1956 hit “I Asked For Water” is Wolf’s take on the same song.

… which the DJ knew all along, of course:

“Cool Drink Of Water Blues” was amped up in the fifties and became one of the great Chicago blues tracks when it was recorded by one of his biggest admirers, Howlin’ Wolf, under the name “I Asked For Water, She Brought Me Gasoline”

Not an easy-going girl either, that one. “That’s the troublingest woman, that I ever saw,” as Howlin’ Wolf says. Sooner rather than later, that boy shall go down the road too. But: by car, this time.

To be continued. Next up: Dirt Road Blues part 3

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

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

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

By Tony Attwood

I have loved Dark Eyes from the first moment I heard it and am always sad about the fact Bob’s hardly ever played it on tour.  It is a delicate beautiful song of sadness and world weariness.  A work of musical and poetic art.

And yet the first cover I am going to present may well have you switching off within the first minute.  But if so skip to around 1 minute 30 seconds, and let it roll.  It is Jewels and Binoculars’ instrumental version, and if you like what they do just leave the video running.

If you would like to know more about Jewels and Bioculars there is an interesting review here.   But I know this is not everyone’s cup of whatnot, so moving on…

By and large I restrict myself to recordings that are on the internet but I must make an exception of The Proper Way with Carrie Myers, who have produced what is the most disturbing version of this song not only that I have heard, but that I can imagine.   You can listen to it on Spotify or Amazon, but perhaps not if you are already feeling down.  If it gets too much, do listen just to the last minute.  It takes the essence of the song, screws it up and the straightens it out again and totally expresses the whole notion of Dark Eyes in music.

Back on the internet Nathan Salsburg and Joan Shelley do it straight but with their own instrumentation experimentations.

But if a gentle harmonic expression which recognises the sadness but doesn’t take it inside you, leaving you free just to consider it from afar, then Dawn Landes and Bonny Prince Billy offered that.  It’s beautiful, and I need this to recover from listening to the earlier ventures.  The harmonies are quite different, and to be cherished.

And of course I am going to finish with Judy Collins, simply because she knows how to do it so perfectly.  And sometimes I don’t want to be challenged in my simple existence sitting here looking at my garden with the bare trees of winter and my windmill, still today as there is no wind.  This is where I sit every day and turn out my thoughts on the computer.  Today, because we are in the week approaching Christmas, no one phones and demands writing to be completed.   At such time Judy does me just fine.

• Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.
• Dylan cover of the day. No 2: Ain’t Talkin
• Bob Dylan cover of the day No3: All I really want to do
• Dylan cover of the day No4: Angelina
• Dylan covers of the day No 5. Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• Cover version of the day No 6: As I went out one morning
• Dylan cover of the day No 7: Ballad for a Friend
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 8: Ballad in Plain D
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 9: Ballad of a thin man
• Dylan cover No. 10: The stunning reworking of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• Dylan cover of the day No 11: The ballad of Hollis Brown
• A Dylan cover a day No 12: Beyond here lies nothing
• Dylan cover of the day No 13: Blind Willie McTell
• Dylan Cover of the Day 14: Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• Dylan Cover of the Day 15: An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Dylan Cover of the Day 16: Blowin in the wind as never before
• Dylan Cover of the Day 17: Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Dylan Cover of the Day 18: You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Dylan cover of the day 19: Boots of Spanish leather
• Dylan cover of the day 20: Born in Time
• Dylan cover of the day 21: Buckets of Rain
• Dylan cover of the day: 22 Can you please crawl out your window
• Dylan cover of the day 23: Can’t wait
• Dylan Cover of the Day 24: Changing of the Guard
• Dylan Cover of the Day 25: Chimes of Freedom
• Dylan Cover of the Day 26: Dear Landlord
• Dylan cover of the Day 27: Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dylan cover of the Day 28: Dignity.
• Dylan Cover of the Day 29: Dirge
• Dylan Cover of the Day 30: Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• Dylan cover a Day 31: Don’t think twice
• Dylan cover a day 32: Down along the cove
• Dylan Cover of the Day 33: Crash on the Levee
• Dylan cover a day 34: Country Pie

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: I first came across Playing for Change a couple of years ago when I stumbled upon this version of The Bands’ The Weight on YouTube

This is from their website https://playingforchange.com/

Playing For Change is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, born from the shared belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. Its primary focus is to record and film musicians performing in their natural environments and combine their talents and cultural power in innovative videos we call Songs Around The World.

Several big names have been involved over the years (Robbie & Ringo, Keith Richards, Yusuf/Cat Stevens, Peter Gabriel etc) and as you can imagine Dylan covers pop up regularly. Here are some I’ve come across for your listening pleasure, let’s see what Tony thinks of these! I’ll put these in order of my favorites – leaving the best to last (in my opinion!)

If the videos don’t work in your country you can listen/watch them all on their website above.

Times They Are A-Changin’

Tony:  You’ve probably had enough of me saying that the song is not a call to arms, not a statement saying, “rise up and change the world” but rather that times change – that is what happens.  But that fact still seems to be ignored, and the song is presented as a call to arms.

I find the pauses before certain words a bit artificial – we all know the lyrics so I’m not sure of the musical validity.   But the instrumental verse really is fun with its delayed echo, and after that yes, it’s quite moving.   However, the central point of this song now is that we have heard it over and over and we know that yes times they changed, and we got Trump and the Taliban and global warming.  That rather spoils the message for me.

Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

Tony: Now this is more up my street, simply because the arrangement allows the musicians to say something new through the song.  It’s a beautiful presentation because it is totally natural and unforced and there is that extra lilt to the rhythm via the unseen percussionist.  In fact I wonder, did they add the drums after the recording to give it more of that lilt?  Or was there nowhere on the set for the percussionist to sit?   And did the producer of the video think we wouldn’t notice?

But I’m glad she or he is there, because that is what really makes this bounce along – they are all such superb musicians it gives that little bit of pulse behind their elegant harmonies.

Jokerman 

Tony: We’ve looked at some of these before, and I’ve not cheated by going back to see what I said last time around.   But whatever I said before, I utterly love this.   The presentation of the video is sublime, and so is the music.  Perhaps this is my favourite “Jokerman” of all time – every word needs to be heard and appreciated, while the guitar playing is so understated but utterly right throughout, even as it builds in the latter part of the performance.

Additionally, it really makes sense of the “wo-oh-oh” line.  Oh this is gorgeous.

All Along The Watchtower 

Tony: The settings they have arranged are extraordinary, and in this song more than any of the other recordings.   What I think one needs to do is to listen to this twice – once just hearing the performance without looking at the video.

“Watchtower” has been performed by so many people that it is very hard to think of what to do with the song – after all there is only one musical line repeated over and over.  And yet it still holds our attention.

The one thing I’ve found with friends I’ve debated this song with is that we have to work to remind ourselves of the magic of those vocal lines.   To remind us that this is a song that ends

Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl

That is part of the magic – we are left not with a resolution but a feeling that this is just the start…  indeed I am rather surprised no one (that I know about) has written the song of what happens next.  I think one could almost make a novel out of it.

I really would like to know.

Dylan released and unreleased

• Part 1: Dylan Released and Unreleased
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: 2 – The usual, Pretty Boy, People get ready.
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: 3 – Hard to Handle the full one hour video
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 4: from the nursery to looking back
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: Girl From the North Country
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: Quest
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 7: Down along the cove
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 8: The Compilation Albums
• Dylan released and unreleased 9: the Galas

By Tony Attwood

Not a Dylan song I particularly care about, and when this ramble through Dylan songs (which rather obviously is being undertaken in alphabetical order) got to Country Pie I suspected this was going to be another song I’d miss out on.

But as ever I didn’t simply trust to my rapidly declining powers of memory, and so went a-looking, and to my surprise found a couple of covers that are quite jolly and fun and add something to the original – in my view.

Charlie Daniels from 2014 gives it that bit of fun and nonsense that the song seems to need.  Charlie passed away just over a year ago at the ripe age (for a musician with multiple hits) of 83.  Incidentally, he co-wrote “It Hurts Me” for Elvis Presley.  Now there’s a thing.

The other is a singularly chaotic Fairport Convention version…

I knew a few members of the band in the very early days – they of course won’t remember me, but it means I always have a soft spot for them.

• Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.
• Dylan cover of the day. No 2: Ain’t Talkin
• Bob Dylan cover of the day No3: All I really want to do
• Dylan cover of the day No4: Angelina
• Dylan covers of the day No 5. Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• Cover version of the day No 6: As I went out one morning
• Dylan cover of the day No 7: Ballad for a Friend
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 8: Ballad in Plain D
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 9: Ballad of a thin man
• Dylan cover No. 10: The stunning reworking of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• Dylan cover of the day No 11: The ballad of Hollis Brown
• A Dylan cover a day No 12: Beyond here lies nothing
• Dylan cover of the day No 13: Blind Willie McTell
• Dylan Cover of the Day 14: Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• Dylan Cover of the Day 15: An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Dylan Cover of the Day 16: Blowin in the wind as never before
• Dylan Cover of the Day 17: Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Dylan Cover of the Day 18: You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Dylan cover of the day 19: Boots of Spanish leather
• Dylan cover of the day 20: Born in Time
• Dylan cover of the day 21: Buckets of Rain
• Dylan cover of the day: 22 Can you please crawl out your window
• Dylan cover of the day 23: Can’t wait
• Dylan Cover of the Day 24: Changing of the Guard
• Dylan Cover of the Day 25: Chimes of Freedom
• Dylan Cover of the Day 26: Dear Landlord
• Dylan cover of the Day 27: Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dylan cover of the Day 28: Dignity.
• Dylan Cover of the Day 29: Dirge
• Dylan Cover of the Day 30: Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• A Dylan cover a Day 31: Don’t think twice
• Dylan cover a day 32: Down along the cove
• Dylan Cover of the Day 33: Crash on the Levee

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

By Larry Fyffe

Said by some art historians that Leonardo da Vinci replaces the bad-boy Apostle John with Mary Magdalene in the painting “The Last Supper”.

Christ’s bond with her is much stronger than the relationships He has with His male companions.

Close examination of the Dylavinci Code demonstrates that indeed Christ has a long-term relationship with Mary, but, hold on to your seatbelts, it’s a bumpy ride.

Turns out Maggie has multiple personalities, and Jesus manages to kick out only seven of them.

For example, she easily changes from ‘Spanish Mary” to “French Marie”, and then back again.

As the song lyrics beneath reveal, Jesus is in France to meet up with pregnant Mary; He runs into a bit of trouble, and, lo and behold, something strange happens:

They threw me in the alley
When up comes this girl from France
Who invited me to her house
I went, but she had a friend
Who knocked me out
And robbed my boots
And I was on the street again
(Bob Dylan: 115th Dream)

Mary’s ‘half-siblings’ Martha and Lazarus are living with her in France, and are a bit surprised that Jesus is caught off guard because of a similar incident that happened in America.

Indicated in the following song lyrics:
Shakespeare's in the alley 
With his pointed shoes and his bells
Speaking to some French girl
Who says she knows me well
(Bob Dylan: Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again)

Magdalene’s schizophrenia explains in part why Jesus bounds her up “undead” in the Sphinx –  to protect their child, and to save Himself from any of her unsavory personalities.

Vivien, first wife of TS Eliot, suffers a similar fate, dies in a mental hospital.

The singer/songwriter as “Jesus, the Thief” could be playing that role again, cohabiting with his grown-up daughter for a time in some Gothic Usher Castle in order to strengthen the right of family members to the hold the keys to the pearly gates through their blood line.

Or Dylan as “Jesus, the Joker”, could just be pulling a fast one on everybody.

In the verse beneath, Jesus and Mary gaily ride up to the Magdala Castle on the Sea of Galilee while the wind laughs it’s clouds off:

Outside in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

As Jesus is always telling Mary, “He who laughs last, laughs loudest”.

Cover versions in this series

• Abandoned Love – Sean Keane
• Ahab The Arab -Ray Stevens
• Angelina -Bob Dylan
• Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream -John Bull And The Bandits
• Billy Los Lobos
• Changing Of The Guards -Whitley & Lang
• Changing Of The Guards -Gaslight Anthem
• Crossing The Rubicon -Bob Dylan
• Drifter’s Escape -George Thorogood/Destroyers
• Duquesne Whistle -Benmont Tench
• False Prophet -Bob Dylan
• Going to Acapulco – Calexico
• Goodbye Jimmy Reed -Bob Dylan
• Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar -Elkie Brooks 
• Handy Dandy -Bob Dylan
• High Water – Joan Osborne
• Highway 61 Revisited -Ross Scrivener
• Highway 61 Revisited – Ben Sidran
• I Contain Multitudes -Emma Swift
• I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine – John Doe
• Idiot Wind -Gerard Quintana
• Idiot Wind -The Coal Porters
• I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight -Robert Palmer
• Isis – Julie Corbalis
• Isis -White Stripes
• Just Like A Woman -Old Crow Medicine Show
• Little Maggie – Bob Dylan
• Lord Protect My Child -Susan Tedeshi
• Maggie’s Farm -Chicken Diamond
• Maggie’s Farm -The Specials
• Maggie’s Farm – Zero Prophet
• Maggie’s Farm – Jimmy Vivino And The Black Italians
• Mary And The Soldier – Bob Dylan
• Memphis Blues – HC Handy
• My Own Version Of You -Bob Dylan
• Not Dark Yet: Lucinda Williams
• Oh Sister – Stanilsaw Sojka
• Precious Angel – The Weather Station
• Pretty Mary -Bob Dylan/Band
• Ring Them Bells -Muscle And Bone
• Ring Them Bells – McCrary Sisters
• Rocky Racoon -Charlie Parr
• Romance In Durango – Julie Felix
• Romance In Durango -Gerard Quintana
• Romance In Durango – Starry Eyed and Laughing
• Scarlet Town -Bob Dylan
• Seeing The Real You At Last -Bettye Lavette
• Simple Twist of Fate – Emma Swift
• Sign On The Window -Al Turk
• Sign On the Window – Sarah Jarosz
• Slow Train – Clas Yngstrom
• Stuck inside Of Mobile – North Mississippi Alstars
• Summer Days -Brothers Lazaroff
• Talking World War III Blues -Toni Vescoli
• Tears of Rage – Odissed
• Things have changed – String Swing
• Time Passes Slowly: Judy Collins
• Times they are a changing – Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
• Tin Angel – Bob Dylan
• Visions Of Johanna – Stephen Inglis
• Wagon Wheel – Old Crow Medicine Show
• Wedding Song – Maria Muldaur

Earlier articles

• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code Part 1
• Bob Dylan And The DylavincI Code (Part II)
• Bob Dylan And The DylavincI Code (Part III)
• Bob Dylan And The DylavincI Code (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan And The DylavincI Code (Part V)
• Bob  Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part VI)
• Bob Dylan And The DylavincI Code (Part VII)
• Bob Dylan And the Dylanvinci Code Part VIII
• Bob Dylan And The DylavincI Code (Part IX)
• Bob Dylan And The DylavincI Code (Part X)
• Bob Dylan And The DylanvincI Code (Part XI)
• Bob Dylan and The DylanvincI Code (Part XII)
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XIII)
• Bob Dylan And The Dylanvinci Code (Part XIV) 
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XV)
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XVI) 
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XVII)
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XVIII)
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XIX)
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XX)
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XXI)
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XXII)
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XXIII)
• Bob Dylan And the Dylavinci Code (Part XXIV)
• Bob Dylan and the Dylavinci Code (Part XXV)
• Bob Dylan and the Dylavinci Code Part XXVI
• Bob Dylan and the Dylavinci Code Part XXVII
• Bob Dylan And The Dylavinci Code (Part XXVIII)

By Tony Attwood

The trouble with this song is that although it isn’t a 12 bar blues it feels as if it ought to be created as one, and that thought has obviously sunk into the minds of many of the artists covering the song.  As a result, a lot of the covers sound pretty much the same.

But although The Derek Trucks Band don’t turn it into a ballad they do keep a lot of the obvious feel of the piece, while at the same time do that magical thing of taking us somewhere else.

And then rather unexpectedly at around 3 minutes 30 seconds they create a coda which feels absolutely part of the song, and yet at the same time gives us new insights, new feelings, new emotions, and above all a new sense of catastrophe, which contrasts with many other recording in which the only catastrophe is that the cover version was made at all.

But of course, really this is a blues song, and Jimmy LaFave (pictured at the top of this article) gave us a fair old working through of the song in this style tinged with some solid rock and roll.  He really was a sublime performer who incidentally championed the work of Woodie Guthrie.  Jimmy died tragically of cancer in his early 60s, never missing a gig.

I can think of no talent more deserving than a place among this daily look at Dylan covers.  Utterly stunning.

• Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.
• Dylan cover of the day. No 2: Ain’t Talkin
• Bob Dylan cover of the day No3: All I really want to do
• Dylan cover of the day No4: Angelina
• Dylan covers of the day No 5. Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• Cover version of the day No 6: As I went out one morning
• Dylan cover of the day No 7: Ballad for a Friend
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 8: Ballad in Plain D
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 9: Ballad of a thin man
• Dylan cover No. 10: The stunning reworking of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• Dylan cover of the day No 11: The ballad of Hollis Brown
• A Dylan cover a day No 12: Beyond here lies nothing
• Dylan cover of the day No 13: Blind Willie McTell
• Dylan Cover of the Day 14: Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• Dylan Cover of the Day 15: An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Dylan Cover of the Day 16: Blowin in the wind as never before
• Dylan Cover of the Day 17: Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Dylan Cover of the Day 18: You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Dylan cover of the day 19: Boots of Spanish leather
• Dylan cover of the day 20: Born in Time
• Dylan cover of the day 21: Buckets of Rain
• Dylan cover of the day: 22 Can you please crawl out your window
• Dylan cover of the day 23: Can’t wait
• Dylan Cover of the Day 24: Changing of the Guard
• Dylan Cover of the Day 25: Chimes of Freedom
• Dylan Cover of the Day 26: Dear Landlord
• Dylan cover of the Day 27: Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dylan cover of the Day 28: Dignity.
• Dylan Cover of the Day 29: Dirge
• Dylan Cover of the Day 30: Don’t fall apart on me tonight.
• A Dylan cover a Day 31: Don’t think twice
• Dylan cover a day 32: Down along the cove

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: For this episode, I thought we could take a look at some performances Bob made at a series of televised galas down the years.

First from the Gershwin Gala in 1987 is Bob’s performance of Soon.

Tony:  This is a 1927 song from the Gershwins – music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira and it was used in the musical Strike up the Band.  As this song takes us away from our normal territory I thought I might drop in a recording which is closer to showing how it was used in the musical.

I’m actually not sure Bob adds anything to the song – but then I was brought up in a family that knew all about (and played) Gershwin.   This is how I suspect many people will think of Gershwin

Sorry Aaron, I’ve taken this piece away from where you intended.  I’ll try and get us back on track…

Aaron: From 2012 comes this version of Blind Willie McTell in honor of Martin Scorsese- introduced by Olivia Harrison, you can have great fun playing “spot the A listers” in the audience!

Tony:   Oh my goodness.  I have never seen this before. This is incredible – from the rearrangement of the time (the extra bar at the end of each verse) to the hand movements, from the swing in the beat to the smile on Bob’s face, and on to the false ending.  This is so not Bob it is utterly wonderful.  And then beyond this the utter bemusement on the faces of the audience.   I’ve just had to play it a second time, rather than continuing with the article.

Aaron: Last up for this time is a one-off performance Bob gave at the White House of The Times They Are A Changin’

Tony: OK this is the reverse, this time he takes out the bar at end of the verse.  I remember the President saying that other performers make use of the occasion of the Presidential concerts by spending the day in the White House looking around, rehearsing etc, whereas Bob just turned up, performed and then left.   And, as I recall, President Obama said “And that’s how you want Bob Dylan to be.”   Or something like that.

Here Bob performs the song as a waltz – whoever would have thought it?   Love it.

But really I just have to go back to Blind Willie – that is such a sensational performance and amazing arrangement.  Aaron I’m very much indebted to you for this.

(I perhaps should add, if you have not read any Aaron / Tony pieces before, Aaron is in the USA and I’m in the UK.  Aaron sends me the videos and his script and I try and write a commentary on hearing the music, straight off without sneaking onto the internet to look stuff up.  If I’ve got the bit about the White House performance wrong, sorry about that.  Please put me right.)

Dylan released and unreleased

• Part 1: Dylan Released and Unreleased
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: 2 – The usual, Pretty Boy, People get ready.
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: 3 – Hard to Handle the full one hour video
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 4: from the nursery to looking back
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: Girl From the North Country
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: Quest
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 7: Down along the cove
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 8: The Compilation Albums

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day –  sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

by Jochen Markhorst

I           They going down 61 Highway

Mozart, Van Gogh, Garrincha, Charley Patton, Nick Drake, Baudelaire… our history is rich with exceptionally gifted artists who, for various reasons, do not manage to cash in on their otherworldly talent and die penniless and forgotten. Especially painful in that shameful list are the artists who live long enough to see others make use of their work and become rich and famous with it. Arthur Crudup, of course, is a prime example. The man who wrote “That’s Alright, Ma” and “My Baby Left me”, the songs that catapulted Elvis into the stratosphere. Crudup was eventually fobbed off with $10,000, three years before his death in 1974, after years of lawyer’s sabre-rattling and embarrassing legal wrangling.

His genius seems to have touched Dylan, too. Apart from “It’s Alright, Ma”, which Dylan will continue to play over the years (including with Johnny Cash in the studio, 1969), a dusty Crudup single also seems to have been among the “reference records”, the records Dylan gives as homework to producer Daniel Lanois and studio staff before recording Time Out Of Mind and “Dirt Road Blues”. Like engineer Mark Howard, who tells Uncut:

“All these old blues recordings, Little Walter, guys like that. And he’d ask us, ‘Why do those records sound so great? Why can’t anybody have a record sound like that anymore? Can I have that?’ And so, I say, “Yeah, you can get those sounds still.”

Similar to how engineer Chris Shaw describes his experiences of searching for the right sound: “He might say, ‘Well, I’m kinda hearing this like this old Billie Holiday song.’ And so we’ll start with that, the band will actually start playing that song, try to get that sound, and then he’ll go, ‘Okay, and this is how my song goes.’ It’s a weird process.” And fitting with what Lanois reveals about his preparations for Time Out Of Mind:

“I did a lot of preparation with Pretty Tony in New York City. I listened to a lot of old records that Bob recommended I fish out. Some of them I knew already – some Charley Patton records, dusty old rock’n’roll records really, blues records. And Tony and I played along to those records.”

Charley Patton is, of course, a spirit that hovers over Time Out Of Mind anyway, and especially over its successor «Love And Theft» (2001). In lovingly stolen riffs (“Highlands”), complete songs (“High Water”), fragments of lyrics and, indeed, sound. Patton’s stamp on “Dirt Road Blues” seems rather obvious. After all, one of Patton’s best-known songs is the smashing “Down The Dirt Road Blues” from 1929, with the opening lines expressing the same, world-weary state of mind as Dylan’s protagonist:

I'm goin' away to a world unknown
I'm goin' away to world unknown
I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long

https://youtu.be/cuICVsaxJxc

… and, obviously, the same classic blues text structure – each verse a repeated opening line, followed by a rhyming closing line. And coincidentally, almost as many words even (170 vs. 179). Yet this doesn’t seem to be the “reference record” around which Dylan constructs his song – the sound doesn’t match. In this respect, Crudup’s adaptation, “Dirt Road Blues”, which he recorded in Chicago in October 1945, is closer. From which, by the way, Arthur will lift the second verse, turning it into the Big Bang of rock’n’roll:

Well now, that's all right now, mama, that's all right for you
That's all right, baby, any way you do
Now, I ain't goin' down, baby, by myself
You know, the one that I love, moving down with someone else

… the verse with the lyrics, the drive and the melody that will become “That’s All Right Mama”, rock’n’roll’s ground zero, which Crudup will record eleven months later as “That’s All Right”, a B-side to “Crudup’s After Hours”. That music-historical fact of Crudup’s “Dirt Road Blues” eclipses everything else, but in 1997 Dylan seems to be particularly touched by the sound;

…at least, Dylan takes the stomp, the rhythm, the guitar pattern and the rattling, shrill guitar sound with him. The atmosphere is different, though – Dylan’s song is spooky. Thanks to a fairly simple artifice: reverb on Dylan’s vocals and the ethereal, wispy, unearthly organ sound of Augie Meyers’ keys.

Dylan is asked about it, in interviews after the release of Time Out Of Mind. By Newsweek‘s David Gates, for example. In the week of 21 September 1997, a week before the release of Time Out Of Mind, three journalists are invited, one after the other, to a Santa Monica hotel suite. They have already heard the recordings, and Gates did notice both the overall desolate theme and the extraordinary sound. “It is a spooky record,” Dylan agrees, “because I feel spooky. I don’t feel in tune with anything.”

Bleak, lugubrious words. Spoken by a man who is still recovering from an encounter with Death four months earlier – that viral infection in the sac around the heart. Who, the doctors explain, presumably contracted his infection by inhaling fungal spores down some dirt road in Indiana, Tennessee or Illinois. Who declares after his discharge from hospital: “I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.” And Patton, Robert Johnson and Arthur Crudup, we might add. That heavenly choir would probably have had strike up “Dirt Road Blues” as welcome song. Although Crudup most likely would have called for his own “Death Valley Blues”:

Tell all the women
Please come dressed in red
They going down 61 Highway
That's where the poor boy he fell dead

“Man, you must be puttin’ me on,” Dylan probably would have said, before joining in.

To be continued. Next up: Dirt Road Blues part 2

——————

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

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

By Tony Attwood

OK this is where it gets a bit silly.  There are so many many many covers of Don’t think twice that it is impossible to say this is the best, or anything remotely like that.  Except that is what I am going to do at the end of this piece.

But in case you don’t like it I’ll offer three others first…

There are two covers we have mentioned before on this site which have been in my favourites list for quite a long while, having kindly had them pointed out by readers of Untold, and I want to remind you of them.  The first is just beautifully simple…

and the second is one that just sounds perfectly right in every regard.  Sheeran doesn’t try, he just knows it is a beautiful song and offers it with due respect and understanding and in a most understated way.

So, those are two versions we have discovered before from the hundreds available.  Here are two more recorded in the last year or two.  First DylanGrass – an album from the Grassmasters.   I’m not a bluegrass fan, but this is laid back and gentle and I can enjoy this as the sun sets.

And now the one track that I really wanted to send your way: a version released this year, and my newfound friend in relation to this wonderful song.  A recording by  Sachal Vasandani and Romain Collin.

Sachal Vasandani is a jazz vocal improviser who just has that way of singing that makes his voice something very special.  Here he works with French pianist, Romain Collin, who is well-known on the New York jazz scene for his innovative playing.

If that doesn’t make you want to play the song again, well, sorry, because that is what I am doing.

There are hundreds and hundreds of covers of this song – but this Sachal Vasandani and Romain Collin version is the one that does it for me.

• Dylan cover of the day: Number 1. The song with numbers in the title.
• Dylan cover of the day. No 2: Ain’t Talkin
• Bob Dylan cover of the day No3: All I really want to do
• Dylan cover of the day No4: Angelina
• Dylan covers of the day No 5. Apple Suckling and Are you Ready.
• Cover version of the day No 6: As I went out one morning
• Dylan cover of the day No 7: Ballad for a Friend
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 8: Ballad in Plain D
• Dylan Cover of the Day No 9: Ballad of a thin man
• Dylan cover No. 10: The stunning reworking of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
• Dylan cover of the day No 11: The ballad of Hollis Brown
• A Dylan cover a day No 12: Beyond here lies nothing
• Dylan cover of the day No 13: Blind Willie McTell
• Dylan Cover of the Day 14: Black Crow Blues (more fun than you might recall)
• Dylan Cover of the Day 15: An unexpected cover of “Black Diamond Bay”
• Dylan Cover of the Day 16: Blowin in the wind as never before
• Dylan Cover of the Day 17: Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Dylan Cover of the Day 18: You will not believe this… 115th Dream revisited
• Dylan cover of the day 19: Boots of Spanish leather
• Dylan cover of the day 20: Born in Time
• Dylan cover of the day 21: Buckets of Rain
• Dylan cover of the day: 22 Can you please crawl out your window
• Dylan cover of the day 23: Can’t wait
• Dylan Cover of the Day 24: Changing of the Guard
• Dylan Cover of the Day 25: Chimes of Freedom
• Dylan Cover of the Day 26: Dear Landlord
• Dylan cover of the Day 27: Desolation Row as never ever before (twice)
• Dylan cover of the Day 28: Dignity.
• Dylan Cover of the Day 29: Dirge
• Dylan Cover of the Day 30: Don’t fall apart on me tonight.

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: Let’s take another meander through some various artists compilation albums in search of more one-off Dylan performances!

First up from the Hank Williams tribute album Timeless (my pick for the all-time greatest tribute album!) it’s I Can’t Get You Off Of My Mind.

Tony:   Just what I want to get me moving this morning after a late night out in London (and 90 miles back home up the motorway in the early hours) – a really bouncy instrumentation and Bob singing in a relaxed way over the top of it.  I’m now awake.

And it reminds me that how we hear music is so much influenced by how our days are going.    For me, yesterday evening was spent watching my football (soccer) team winning in style.   Now this morning getting out my rarely worn respectable clothing to go to the Christmas Dinner of the walking group I’m a member of.   Two very different hobbies, but both greatly loved.  And this recording sets me up for the day.

Incidentally, is that Bob playing the lead guitar in the instrumental breaks?   Sounds like it to me.

Aaron: Next from The Art Of McCartney (the most star-filled tribute album of all time…seriously, everyone who is anyone is on this!) is Bob’s cover of Things We Said Today.

Tony:  Bob as his most growly!  It is interesting because it is Bob, but … well I don’t know.  There is something about that growl that doesn’t quite fit with a song about loving a young woman.  Maybe it is just that we are all so aware these days of the activities of predators (there was a long piece about it on the BBC news this morning) that just makes me edgy.  It just shows how times change.

Musically it is one of the few pop songs that goes from the minor key for the verses to a major key for the middle 8 (“me I’m just the lucky kind”).  But that’s McCartney for you.

But no, Bob singing like this is weirdly weird.  A bit too spooky for me.

Aaron: Interestingly the producer of the album matched each artist with a song, except in Dylan’s case, as he picked that track himself. “I was surprised he decided to take part,” says Sall. “That’s not the song I would have picked, but it sure fits him.” McCartney’s live band was also used as the musicians on the album.

Tony: Ah well if the producer thinks it fits, who am I to say?

Aaron: Lastly from Bob’s own tribute album “Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs Of Bob Dylan” comes this excellent duet with Mavis Staples of Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking.

Tony:   So much better musically, but I never get the idea of having the rehearsed chit chat in the middle of a song.  I want to hear the music – and the music is great.  Love the harmonies.

The old 12 bar blues can become tedious sometimes, but not here, this is sensational,  the band really get it even when around 2.43 the rhythm guitar (is that Bob?) plays the wrong chord – except he does it in the next verse as well, so maybe not.  Not sure if it quite works but, well, it’s Bob.  And besides Mike Johnson has a go about Bob’s upsinging in the Never Ending Tour series, so I guess I can criticise his guitar work on this track.  (If it is Bob that is).

So there we are, great fun.  Another good collection Aaron.  Here are the series details…

Dylan released and unreleased

• Part 1: Dylan Released and Unreleased
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: 2 – The usual, Pretty Boy, People get ready.
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: 3 – Hard to Handle the full one hour video
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 4: from the nursery to looking back
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: Girl From the North Country
• Dylan Released and Unreleased: Quest
• Dylan Released and Unreleased 7: Down along the cove

———-

Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.  Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone).  Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here    If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk.  Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

By Tony Attwood

The next song in the alphabetical list is the lesser known “Dirty Lie” which has one superb cover version by The Secret Sisters.   But I’ve already raved about that here, so if you want to hear that cover, and the original from which the song was derived, that’s the place to go.

I’ve also replaced the source of the Dylan recording of the song in that article – the previous one linked to was no longer available.  It’s a fun piece of music, and so is the cover version.

So moving on, “Don’t fall apart from me tonight” is next – one of the songs that Bob has never chosen to perform.  But others have.

During the first lockdown in England I discovered what Chrissie Hynde was up to, recording Dylan songs for the fun of it, and “Don’t fall” was one of them…

She really has that ability to get inside the lyrics.  I’m not at all sure about video, but I do love this recording.   It really shows to me that these songs that many Dylan fans will have completely forgotten, have so much in them.  They are worthy of being kept alive…

Just listen to what she does with the “These people walking toward you” section – that is stunningly brilliant.

And to prove how brilliant that recording above is I am going to include three other covers that fail to get there.

Overall Bettye Lavette’s contribution to the cause really is something to behold.  But this isn’t my favourite reinterpretation of a Dylan song.  However I feel it deserves to be noted simply because of how much she has done to bring the songs to more and more people’s awareness.  Yet it shows that no matter how much talent and background understanding one has, success with a Dylan song is not guaranteed.

These next two covers also provide a further warning.  Just playing and singing the song as another pop ballad, without any extra insight (as opposed to a load of emphasis to try and suggest that the singer is really really really feeling it) doesn’t quite make it worthwhile.

Aaron Neville (below) takes it more gently and seeks to use his voice as the prime input but the instrumentation for me trivialises what’s left.  The insight has gone.

And so again I think it is worth hearing these three versions just to show the magnitude of what Chrissie Hynde achieved.  Once you’ve had enough of this, go back to that opening recording on this page, if you have the time, and hear just what can be achieved with a person who really feels that this is a Dylan song, not just another song.  Listening to these alternative versions I just feel that Chrissie has not only understood the lyrics and music, but understood Dylan.  Not only Dylan in this song, but Dylan generally.

The series so far…