Category: Music

Bob Dylan Turns 84

Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door. The scrawny Jewish kid from Hibbing Minnesota, son of an appliance salesman, was an unlikely bard, but bard he became. He's been at it a long, long time, and his body of work is as vast and as variegated as America herself. We old fans from way back who were with him from the beginning are still finding gems unheard as we ourselves enter the twilight where it's not dark yet, but getting there. But it is a beautiful fade-out from a world that cannot last.

Our boy's been covered, and covered some more. Here are some outstanding specimens:

Johnny Rivers, Positively Fourth Street.

Of all the versions of my recorded songs, the Johnny Rivers one was my favorite. It was obvious that we were from the same side of town, had been read the same citations, came from the same musical family and were cut from the same cloth. When I listened to Johnny’s version of “Positively 4th Street,” I liked his version better than mine. I listened to it over and over again. Most of the cover versions of my songs seemed to take them out into left field somewhere, but Rivers’s version had the mandate down — the attitude and melodic sense to complete and surpass even the feeling that I had put into it. It shouldn’t have surprised me, though. He had done the same thing with “Maybellene” and “Memphis,” two Chuck Berry songs. When I heard Johnny sing my song, it was obvious that life had the same external grip on him as it did on me. Bob Dylan, Chronicles

Mary Travers interviews Bob Dylan. Not a cover but interesting to the true Dylan aficionado.

Joan Baez, Hard Rain

Gary U.S. Bonds, From a Buick Six

Peter, Paul, and Mary, Too Much of Nothing

Arlo Guthrie, Percy's Song

Byrds, Chimes of Freedom

Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower

Stephen Stills, Ballad of Hollis Brown

McGuinn, Harrison, Clapton, Petty et al., My Back Pages 

Marianne Faithful, Visions of Johanna

But nothing touches the original. This is the bard at his incandescent best. Mid-'60s. Blonde on Blonde album.

Finally, Bro Inky from my boyhood sends us to Powerline where Scott Johnson offers some excellent Dylan commentary. If you say it is better than mine, I won't argue with you.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Help

Canned Heat, Help Me.

"Help me consolate my weary mind." I love that 'consolate.' Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson at his best.  I saw him and the boys at the Kaleidoscope in Hollywood in 1968.  Wilson was a tortured soul and ended up a member of the 27 Club. He quit the sublunary sphere on 3 September 1970.

Aficionados of that time and place will want to read Canned Heat: The Twisted Tale of Blind Owl and the Bear.

Beach Boys, Help Me, Rhonda

Hank Williams, I Can't Help it If I'm Still in Love with You 

Ringo Starr, With a Little Help from My Friends

Elvis Presley, Can't Help Falling in Love

Andrea Bocelli does a great live job with it.

Highwaymen, Help Me Make it Through the Night

While we have the Highwaymen cued up, let's enjoy Ghost Riders in the Sky

Joni Mitchell, Help Me

Hank Locklin, Please Help Me, I'm Falling

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Cowboys of the Open Road

Advanced AI and robotics may push us humans to the margin, and render many of us obsolete. I am alluding to the great Twilight Zone episode, The Obsolete Man. What happens to truckers when trucks drive themselves?  For many of these guys and gals, driving trucks is not a mere job but a way of life. 

It is hard to imagine these cowboys of the open road  sitting in cubicles and writing code. The vices to which they are prone, no longer held in check by hard work and long days, may prove their destruction. The topic is huge and beyond my paygrade. In any case it's Saturday night,  I'm drinking a Jack and Coke, and dreaming of the open road.

Sunday morning addendum: we need to think about the infantilization brought about by our technology.  Laura Trump interviewed Elon Musk last night on her show.  He will be scaling back his work on DOGE to get back to his various projects, including work on self-driving cars. One upside, though, is that the elderly will be able to retain their independence when they are no longer able to drive safely. Musk made  a comment to the effect that it won't be long before seeing a person driving a car will be as unusual as seeing someone traveling via horse and buggy.

Eddy Rabbit, Drivin' My Life Away

Dave Dudley, Six Days on the Road

Buck Owens, Truck Drivin' Man

Red Sovine, Phantom 309. Tom Waits' cover. 

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Truck Drivin' Man

Cody Jinks, Lost Highway

Tony Justice, One Mile at a Time 

Seatrain, I'm Willin'

I've been warped by the rain
Driven by the snow
I'm drunk and dirty, and don't you know
That I'm still, yes I'm still willin'

I ride the highway, late at night
I see my pretty Alice, in every headlight, Alice, Dallas Alice

[Chorus] I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah
I've driven every kind of truck that's ever been made
I've even rode the backroads so I wouldn't get weighed
If you give me weed, whites, and wine
 Show me a sign, and I'll be willin' to keep on movin'

. . .

And I've been from Tucson to Mexicali, Tehachapi to Tonopah
I've driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
I've even rode the backroads so I wouldn't get weighed
If you give me weed, whites, and wine
Show me a sign, and I'll be willin' to keep on movin' 

Holy Saturday Night at the Oldies

First off, six definite de-couplings of rock and roll from sex and drugs.

Norman Greenbaum, Spirit in the Sky

Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus. This is one powerful song.

Clapton and Winwood, Presence of the Lord. 

Billy Preston, My Sweet Lord

George Harrison, Hear Me Lord

George Harrison, All Things Must Pass.  Harrison was the Beatle with depth. Lennon the radical, McCartney the romantic, Starr the regular guy.

Bonus cuts

Stanley Bros., Rank Strangers

Bob Dylan, Gospel Plow

Bob Dylan, See that My Grave is Kept Clean

Bob Dylan, Father of Night

Iris Dement, Will the Circle be Unbroken?

Andrea Bocelli and Alison Krauss, Amazing Grace

Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet

…………………………

JSO sends us to Will You Remember Me? by the Pine Box Boys. The dessicated soul of the secularist is incapable of understanding religion.  He thinks he will eradicate it. But religion, like philosophy, always buries its undertakers.

Finally, The Presidential Message on Holy Week, 2025. Quite a change from that 'good Catholic' Joe Biden's Transgender Visibility Day of last Easter.  And if memory serves, Hillary spouted some equally offensive nonsense the year before that, but what she spouted I have forgotten.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Gambler He Broke Even

Kenny Rogers died in 2020 at the age of 81.  

A few days after he died, on my way back from a traipse in the local hills, I encountered a couple the female half of which suffers from Parkinson's. Being the over-clever fellow that I am, I asked her what condition her condition was in, thereby alluding to a curious '60s number. Her husband caught the allusion and hipped me to a fact hitherto unknown to me, namely, that the band in question, The First Edition, was headed by Kenny Rogers before he went country.  He was quite the genre-hopper. Before the acid-rock tune. he sang with the New Christy Minstrels, a 'sanitized' and 'wholesome' collegiate folk outfit. Here is "Green Green" with upbeat Barry Maguire in the lead. This was before Maguire got all topical and protesty and dark with Eve of Destruction in the summer of '65.

I never listened to much Kenny Rogers, but of course I know and like his signature number, now a permanent bit of Americana that taps into the myths that move the red-blooded among us. I mean The Gambler:

And when he finished speakin'
He turned back toward the window
Crushed out his cigarette
And faded off to sleep
 
And somewhere in the darkness
The gambler he broke even
But in his final words
I found an ace that I could keep
 
You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
 
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done.
 
Bonus cuts:
 
Clancy Bros., Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie
 
Byrds, Eight Miles High.  Referenced in the 'condition' tune.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: An Appeal to Obstructionist Democrats

I know, it's tough. You Dems got your collective (jack)ass handed to you on a platter.  But you are not learning the lessons. You think you had a problem with 'messaging,' and you did: you didn't have a message and you didn't have a messenger.  Mindless opposition to Trump got you nowhere. The race and Hitler cards are played out.  Strike another match, go start anew, or it's all over now, baby BLUE.  What you have to understand is that when your gravitas fails, negativity won't pull you through, to cop and slightly alter a Dylan line from Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. Do you want to end up on Rue Morgue Avenue? They got some hungry hombres there and they'll really make a mess out of you. 

The people don't like negativity and the nattering nabobs who spew it. They don't much cotton to brazen liars either. Try telling the truth for a change. You've gone as far as you can with gaslighting  and race-baiting. Are you stupid? Do you have a death wish? You need to work with us. After all, didn't some of your own ilk such as Slick Willy want to counter federal waste, fraud, and abuse? They did indeed. Bubba is looking pretty good these days compared to Kamala and the rest of you clowns.  So get with the program, set aside the smears and scumbaggery, be reasonable, and give it another shot in 2028. We need an opposition party! One that doesn't merely oppose reflexively but complements and corrects reflectively. 

Wilbert Harrison, Let's Work Together.  Canned Heat cover. The original beats all covers.

Youngbloods, Get Together

Jackie De Shannon, Put a Little Love in Your Heart This one goes out to Maxine Waters.  You reap what you sow, Maxine. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Jackie De Shannon, What the World Needs Now is Love. Love trumps hate, Nancy Pelosi.

And while we've got this cutie (Jackie, not Nancy!) cued up: When you Walk in the Room. 

Needles and Pins. 

Bette Davis Eyes.

Kim Carnes' 1981 version was a drastically re-arranged cover.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Quantifiers

Quantifiers are words that indicate logical quantity. 'All,' 'Some,' and 'No' are examples. Here are some songs featuring them from my memory with no reliance on A. I.

Chuck Berry, No Particular Place to Go.  

Bob Dylan, Only a Hobo

Rod Stewart, Only a Hobo. But is 'only' functioning as a quantifier in this title? 

Jackson Browne, Somebody's Baby

Jefferson Airplane, Somebody to Love

B. B. King, Nobody Knows You When You are Down and Out

Louis Armstrong, I Ain't Got Nobody

Byrds, All I Really Want to Do

Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower

Beatles, Something

Beatles, Any Time At All

Roy Orbison, Only the Lonely

Bob Dylan, Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (and I'll Go Mine)

Here are some comments of mine on the video which accompanies this touched-up Blonde on Blonde track.  The video is very cleverly constructed, providing a synopsis of milestones in Dylan's career.  The first girl the guy with the acoustic guitar case is walking with is a stand-in for Suze Rotolo, the girl 'immortalized' on the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album cover.  But now we see the pair from the back instead of from the front.  She is replaced by a second girl representing Joan Baez.  (Dylan's affair with Baez helped destroy his relationship with Rotolo.) Then the guy gets into a car and emerges on the other side with an electric guitar case.  This signifies Dylan's going electric in '65 at the Newport Folk Festival, a change  which enraged the die-hard folkies and doctrinaire leftists who thought they owned Dylan as a mouthpiece for their views.   

A quick shot of a newspaper in a trash can with the headline "Dylan Goes Electric" appears just in case you missed the subtlety of the auto entry-exit sequence.  After that we see a downed motorcycle representing Dylan's motorcycle accident, an event that brings to a close  the existentialist-absurdist-surrealist phase of the mid-60s trilogy, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.  After the accident Dylan is further from the mind and closer to the earth.  Dylan the psychedelically deracinated returns to his roots in the Bible and Americana with John Wesley Harding. The girl in the brass bed is an allusion to "Lay Lady Lay" ("lay across my big brass bed") from the Nashville Skyline album.  Dylan then colaesces with the man in black (Johnny Cash), and steps over and through the detritus of what remains of the hippy-trippy 60's and into the disco era, his Christian period, marked by the 1979 Slow Train Coming and a couple of subsequent albums, his marriage to a black back-up singer, and on into the later phases of the life of this protean bard on never-ending tour.

Here is what Auster has to say about the song:

By the way, that’s the first time I’ve seen “judge” rhymed with “grudge” since Bob Dylan’s “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine),” from Blonde on Blonde. Here’s the recording.

Dylan’s lyric (not for the first time) is pretty appropriate to our situation:

Well the judge
He holds a grudge
He’s gonna call on you.
But he’s badly built
And he walks on stilts
Watch out he don’t fall on you.

There is now on the U.S. Supreme Court an intellectually sub-par Puerto Rican woman whose entire career has been essentially founded on a grudge against whites, a judge who makes her pro-Hispanic, anti-white agenda an explicit element in her judging. “The judge, she holds a grudge.”

Sotomayor is not the first of that kind, however. Another Supreme Court sub-competent, Thurgood Marshall, openly stated to one of his colleagues that the philosophy behind his judging was that “It’s our [blacks’] turn now.”

Well, I can't call it a night without the schmaltzy

Dean Martin, Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ordinals and Cardinal >10

I did zero to ten a few years back.  What songs can you think of that feature ordinals or cardinals greater than tenth or ten? Well, racking wracking my brains there's

Connie Stevens, Sixteen Reasons.  With footage from David Lynch, "Mulholland Drive."

Simon and Garfunkel, 59th Street Bridge Song. What a great song!  Slow down you hyperkinetic hustlers, you're moving too fast!

Cannibal and  the Head Hunters, Land of 1000 Dances.  This one goes out to Tom Coleman who probably danced to this at the El Monte Legion Stadium circa '65.  "Be there or be square!"  Can you pony like Bony Maroni?

Question Mark and the Mysterians, 96 Tears.  Is that a Farfisa organ making that cheesy sound?  This one goes out to Colin McGinn.

Bobby Darin, 18 Yellow Roses

Cannonball Adderley, 74 Miles Away

Chicago, 25 or 6 to 4

Frank Zappa, Twenty Small Cigars

Tom Waits, Ol '55

Paul Simon, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

Billy Ward and the Dominoes, Sixty Minute Man

Ike Turner, Rocket 88

Beatles, When I'm 64

Dave Alvin, Highway 61 Revisited.  So who is Dylan? A folksinger, a rock & roller? Or the bard of Deep Americana? 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Good Tunes from the ’70s

The '60s rule, of  course, since no decade in Anglospheric popular music was richer or more creative.  I say Anglospheric because great stuff came out of the U. K., Canada, and Australia. I don't know about New Zealand. But let's not ignore the cream of the '70s.  Full enjoyment of course requires proper synaptic lubrication. I'm having me a Jack and Coke this Saturday night. Just one. A generous shot of whisky is good; ten shots is not ten times better.

Jackson Browne, The Pretender.  This great song  goes out to Darci M who introduced me to Jackson Browne. Darci was Lithuanian, and it's a good bet she still is. Her mother told her, "Never bring an Italian home." So I never did meet the old lady. I  encountered no anti-Italian prejudice on the West coast whence I hail; the East is a different story. The closer to Europe, the closer to Old World prejudice.

Running on Empty. A great road song. There's nothing like the open road of the American West. Big sky, lambent light, broad vistas, buttes and mesas, railroads running, truckers trucking, ballin' the jack one more time to the End of the Line. Get out there and see it before it's gone or you are too old, one.

Gerry Rafferty, Right Down the Line

Baker Street. This was a big hit in the summer of '78. This one goes out to Charaine H and our road trip that summer.

Dave Mason, Only You Know and I Know

We Just Disagree

All Along the Watchtower (2013)

Roy Buchanan, Sweet Dreams

Patsy Cline, Sweet Dreams (1963) 

Written by Don Gibson

Orleans, Dance with Me

Still the One

Abba, Fernando. I first heard this in Ben's Gasthaus, Zaehringen, Freiburg im Breisgau ,' 76-'77.  This one goes out to Rudolf, Helmut, Martin, Hans, und Herrmann, working class Germans who loved to drink the Ami under the table.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

It's Satyrday Saturday night. Pour  yourself a stiff one and loosen for a time the bonds that tether you to the straight and narrow. Tomorrow's another day. 

Freddy Fender, Cielito Lindo.  Tex-Mex version of a very old song.

Arizona's own Marty Robbins, La Paloma.  Another old song dating back to 1861. 

Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger, 1963. 1963 was arguably the best of the '60s years for pop compositions. 

Emmylou Harris, Hello Stranger. Same title, different song.  This one goes out to Mary Kay F-D. Do you Remember the Fall of 1980, Mary Kay? 

Get up, rounder/Let a working girl lie down/ You are rounder/And you are all out and down.

Carter Family version from 1939.

Joan Baez, Daddy, You've Been on My Mind. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Bruce  Langhorne's guitar.

Joan Baez, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar.

Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time. 

And now the fifteen-year-old is an old man of 75, and tears stream from his eyes for the nth time as he listens to this and we are once again on the brink of nuclear war as we were back in October of '62.  It'll be a hard rain indeed, should it fall. But the despicable Dems have been routed and sanity has returned to the White House. It's a New Morning.

Carolyn Hester, I'll Fly Away.  Dylan on harp, a little rough and ragged. Langhorne on guitar? Not sure.

Joan Baez and her sister, Mimi Farina, Catch the Wind. Fabulous.

Joan Baez, Boots of Spanish Leather.  Nanci Griffith also does a good job with this Dylan classic. 

The very best version may be this duet of Griffith and Hester.

Betty Everett, You're No Good, 1963.  More soulful than the 1975 Linda Ronstadt version.

The Ikettes, I'm Blue, 1962. 

Lee Dorsey, Ya Ya, 1961.  Simplicity itself. Three chords. I-IV-V progression. No bridge.

Travel and the Indifference of Places

Malcolm Pollack writing from Ha Long Bay, near Hanoi, Vietnam:

. . . mainly I’m writing just now to note how little enthusiasm I have for travel these days. I’ve been all over the place in my lengthening life (I’ll be 69 in April), and more and more it seems to me that every place is, well, just some other place, and that gallivanting around is increasingly just exhausting and distracting. The world outside seems increasingly finite in comparison to what can (and should) be explored within — and once you’ve scratched the youthful itch of restlessness the trick, I think, is just to find someplace you like well enough, and to make yourself at home.

I could not agree more.  

You may enjoy Three Reasons to Stay Home.

Of travel I've had my share, man. I've been everywhere.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ramblin’ Charles Adnopoz

David Dalton, Who is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion, 2012, p. 65:

As Dave van Ronk pointed out in his autobiography, many of the people involved in the first folk revival of the 1930s and '40s were Jewish — as were the folkies of the '60s. Van Ronk reasoned that for Jews, belonging to a movement centered on American traditional music was a form of belonging and assimilation.

[. . .]

"The revelation that Jack [Elliot] was Jewish was vouchsafed unto Bobby one afternoon at the Figaro," Van Ronk recalled.  "We were sitting around shooting the bull with Barry Kornfeld and maybe a couple of other people and somehow it came out that Jack had grown up in Ocean Parkway and was named Elliot Adnopoz.  Bobby literally fell off his chair; he was rolling around on the floor, and it took him a couple of minutes to pull himself together and get up again.  Then Barry, who can be diabolical in things like this, leaned over to him and just whispered the word 'Adnopoz' and back he went under the table."

Lacking as it does the proper American cowboy resonance, 'Elliot Charles Adnopoz' was ditched by its bearer who came to call himself 'Ramblin' Jack Elliot.'  Born in 1931 in Brooklyn to Jewish parents who wanted him to become a doctor, young Adnopoz rebelled, ran away, and became a protégé of Woody Guthrie.  If it weren't for Ramblin' Jack, Guthrie would be nowhere near as well-known as he is today.  

Pretty Boy Floyd.  "As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam/You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from their home."  No?  An example of the  tendency of lefties invariably to  take the side of the underdog regardless of whether right or wrong.  

Ramblin' Jack does a haunting version of Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.  It grows on you. Give it a chance.  

Cigarettes and Whisky and Wild Woman.  

Soul of a Man. 

Dylan's unforgettable,  Don't Think Twice. 

Here he is with Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Buffy Sainte Marie singing the beautiful, Passing Through.

Addendum:  A correspondent sends us to an article by Peter Hitchens on Dylan. Tell me what you think of it.

Scott Johnson on Richie Havens

Powerline:

Havens grew up in Brooklyn singing with a choir in church and with doo wop groups on street corners. He crossed the river to figure out how to make a go of it in Greenwich Village as a performer. He recorded two albums on Douglas Records before he signed a contract with Verve Forecast in 1967. He seemed to materialize out of nowhere that year with Mixed Bag, a beautiful album of folk covers and original compositions. The album was full of striking performances, but none more so than Havens’s interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman.” By the way, I may need to take a break from what is meant to be an occasional series until we celebrate Bob’s birthday next May with our traditional Bobfest.

By the way, did you catch Amy Klobuchar's oblique reference to Dylan at the Trump Inaugural? And what a speech our boy gave! He can turn on the gravitas when he wants to and needs to.  

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Remembering Suze Rotolo and the Songs She Inspired

Bob_Dylan_-_The_Freewheelin'_Bob_Dylan
Suze Rotolo, depicted above, died on 25 February 2011 at 67 years of age. Dylanologists usually refer to the following as songs she inspired:

Don't Think Twice.  This Peter, Paul, and Mary rendition may well be the best.  It moves me as much as it did 62 years ago in 1963 when it first came out.  It was via this song that I discovered Dylan.  The 45 rpm record I had and still have showed one 'B. Dylan' as the song's author.  I pronounced it as 'Dial-in' and wondered who he was.  I soon found out.

One Too Many Mornings

Tomorrow is a Long Time

Boots of Spanish Leather (Nancy Griffith) Joan Baez version.

There is some irony, of course, in Baez's renditions of songs inspired by Rotolo: Dylan's affair with Baez was a factor in his break up with Rotolo.

Ballad in Plain 'D.' Analysis. The song. This song is only indirectly inspired by Suze; it is 'inspired' by Suze's sister, Carla Rotolo, the "parasite sister" in Dylan's song. The link below that references their mother Mary Rotolo will also bring you to pages about Suze and Carla.  The commie character of the Village folk scene as represented by the Rotolos, Pete Seeger, and so many others  is a good part of the backstory to Dylan's My Back Pages. "Ah, but I was so much older them, I'm younger than that now."

Finally a great song by Baez inspired by and about Dylan: Diamonds and Rust

In her memoir, A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties (Broadway Books, 2008, p. 277-8), Suze Rotolo says this about her mother Mary Rotolo:

I remember her informing me that the career army man an older cousin was married to had lost out on a promotion that involved security clearance because of my appearance on the cover of Bob's album.  I was astounded.

True, the times they were troubled.  Protest against the escalating war in Vietnam was on the rise, draft cards were being burned, and colleges were erupting with discontent.  Blues, bluegrass, and ballads no longer defined folk music, since so many folksingers were now writing songs that spoke to current events.  Bob Dylan was labeled a "protest singer."  But the absurdity of my mother, Marxist Mary, trying to make me feel responsible for a military man's losing a security clearance because I am on an album cover with Bob Dylan, a rebel with a cause, left me speechless.  And that was all she said to me about the cover or the album in general. 

It Ain’t Me, Babe Today on TAP: When biopics get it wrong—and occasionally get it just right