Category: Americana
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St. Valentine’s Day’s Night at the Oldies: Love and Murder
We'll start with murder. David Dalton (Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion 2012, pp. 28-29, hyperlinks added!): Most folk songs had grim, murderous content (and subtext). In Pretty Polly a man lures a young girl from her home with the promise of marriage,and then leads the pregnant girl to…
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Bob Dylan’s 2015 MusicCares Person of the Year Speech
Here. (Link via Frank Beckwith's FB page. Interesting how many conservatives are Dylan fans. Lawrence Auster is another.) It is a fascinating, rich speech by a living repository of musical Americana and without a doubt the most creative interpreter of our musical legacy, the "bard of our generation" as Auster puts it. One is…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Water High, Wide, Dirty, Troubled, and Moody
Bob Dylan, High Water. This is a late-career Dylan gem from Love and Theft (2001). A tribute to Charley Patton. Demonstrates Dylan's mastery of the arcana of Americana. Our greatest and deepest singer-songwriter. Here is some fairly good analysis by Kees de Graaf: “I got a cravin’ love for blazing speed, got a hopped-up Mustang…
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The Philosopher and the Thief
John Kaag in Harper's tells a fascinating story of William Ernest Hocking and his library, and he tells it well. (HT: Seldom Seen Slim) No bibliophile could fail to enjoy it. And this raises one of life's greatest mysteries. Why do some of us value good books above bread while others of us are indifferent…
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Suze Rotolo Remembered
Suze Rotolo, who inspired a number of great Dylan songs, died on this date three years ago. Joan Baez, One Too Many Mornings Nanci Griffith, Boots of Spanish Leather Peter, Paul and Mary, Don't Think Twice, It's Alright Ian and Sylvia, Tomorrow is a Long Time Jeff Leach, Ballad in Plain D Related articles Saturday…
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What do you want to be buried with?
When I was a teenager I fantasized dying and being buried with my guitars. A fantasy puerile and absurd, as it seems to me now. For some, however, adolescence is a life-long condition: Related articles Religion Always Buries its Undertakers A Modest Epitaph
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Are You a True Boomer or a Shadow Boomer?
We boomers are one self-absorbed generation, further evidence of which fact is a post like this. You are a boomer if you were born between 1946 and 1964. Call the elder half of that cohort the true boomers, or the classics. Call the second half the shadow boomers, or the reboots. Take this test to…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Spencer’s Picks
Spencer Case thinks I need to expand my musical horizons. I don't disagree. He writes, O.K. here are my five picks for good folk/rock music within the last ten years. First, "The Wrote and the Writ" by Johnny Flynn, an artist I've just discovered. I chose it because of the syncopated guitar and the…
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JFK Assassination: Chalk it up to One Lone Nebbish
I don't usually recommend anything from Slate, but Fred Kaplan's Killing Conspiracy is a must-read. The money quote: . . . If horrible events can be traced to a cabal of evildoers who control the world from behind a vast curtain, that’s, in one sense, less scary than the idea that some horrible things happen…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Recent Dylan Bootleg Releases
Song to Woody. This version from the 1970 New Morning sessions, but not included on that album. Originally heard on Dylan's first album. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. This version too from the 1970 New Morning sessions. First heard on the 1966 Highway 61 Revisited album. Ramblin' Jack Elliot delivers a haunting version. When I…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Dylan’s Civil Rights Songs
The 1963 March on Washington now lies 50 years in the past. Those civil rights battles were fought and they were won. What could be achieved by legislation and government intervention was achieved. Unfortunately, the civil rights movement gradually transmogrified into a civil rights hustle and grievance industry as the original ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr. were…
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He Was a Friend of Mine
John F. Kennedy was assassinated 49 years ago today. Here is The Byrds' tribute to the slain leader. They took a traditional song and redid the lyrics. The young Bob Dylan here offers an outstanding interpretation of the old song. I was in the eighth grade when Kennedy was gunned down. We were assembled in an…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Youth, Fast Cars, and Death
Tomorrow is the 57th anniversary of the death of James Dean. When the young Dean crashed his low slung silver Porsche Spyder on a lonely California highway on September 30, 1955, he catapulted a couple of unknowns into the national spotlight. One of them was Ernie Tripke, one of two California Highway Patrol officers who…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Levon Helm and Dick Clark
Both passed on this last week, Helm at 71, Clark at 82. Here is part of a fine tribute to Helm: He was a river of American popular music. Whatever you call it, roots music, Americana, R&B, rockabilly, gospel, country soul, he kept its rhythm and sang it as well as any American musician ever…
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Philosophy, Superman, and Richard C. Potter
I was pleased to hear from Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence this morning. He inquired: About four or five years ago you wrote about an American writer and thinker, perhaps an academic philosopher, who published, I believe, two books and seemed to disappear. You had difficulty finding information about him online. I believe you said…