The MusicCares Bob Dylan tribute concert from earlier this year which honored Dylan as 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year will be released on DVD, according to Billboard magazine.
The concert, which took place on Friday February 6, 2015, included performances by Bruce Springsteen, Jack White, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Norah Jones, Tom Jones, Los Lobos, John Mellencamp, Alanis Morissette, Willie Nelson, Aaron Neville, Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt, Derek Trucks, John Doe, Jackson Browne and Neil Young. It is expected that they will all appear on the DVD.
As of now, it’s not known if Dylan’s 35-minute MusicCares speech will be on the DVD. In an earlier version of this post I reported that it would be included but that was an error. For now there is no info about the speech being included.
Dylan personally chose the performers and the songs they would sing at the MusicCares event.
Here are the songs performed:
Beck – “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”
Aaron Neville – “Shooting Star”
Alanis Morissette – “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
Los Lobo – “On A Night Like This”
Willie Nelson – “Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)”
Jackson Browne – “Blind Willie McTell”
John Mellencamp – “Highway 61 Revisited”
Jack White – “One More Cup Of Coffee”
Tom Jones – “What Good Am I?”
Norah Jones – “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”
Dereck Trucks And Susan Tedeschi – “Million Miles”
John Doe – “Pressing On”
Crosby, Stills & Nash – “Girl From The North County”
Bonnie Raitt – “Standing In The Doorway”
Sheryl Crow – “Boots Of Spanish Leather”
Bruce Springsteen – “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”
Neil Young – “Blowin’ In The Wind”
Fifty-three years ago, on March 11, 1962, Cynthia Gooding’s Folksinger’s Choice radio show featuring Bob Dylan aired on WBAI in New York.
This was Dylan’s first radio interview. His debut album, Bob Dylan, recorded in November 1961, would not be released for another week.
If you haven’t yet heard these performances, now is the time! And if you have, another listen is in order.
I’ve included a transcript of the show below the YouTube clips.
Enjoy!
1 “(I heard That) Lonesome Whistle Blow” (after the song ends if you go to about the seven minute point you can hear some of the interview):
2 “Fixin’ To Die”:
3 “Smokestack Lightning”:
4 “Hard Travellin'”:
5 “The Death Of Emmett Till”:
6 “Standing On The Highway”:
7 “Roll On, John”:
8 “Stealin'”:
9 “It Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad”:
10 “Baby Please Don’t Go”:
11 “Hard Times In New York”:
Here’s a transcript of the show:
CG: That was Bob Dylan. Just one man doing all that. Playing the … er … mouth harp and guitar because, well, when you do this you have to wear a little sort of, what another person might call a necklace.
BD: Yeah !
CG: And then it’s got joints so that you can bring the mouth harp up to where you can reach it. To play it. Bob Dylan is, well, you must be twenty years old now aren’t you?
BD: Yeah. I must be twenty. (laughs)
CG: (laughs) Are you?
BD: Yeah. I’m twenty, I’m twenty.
CG: When I first heard Bob Dylan it was, I think, about three years ago in Minneapolis, and at that time you were thinking of being a rock and roll singer weren’t you?
BD: Well at that time I was just sort of doin’ nothin’. I was there.
CG: Well, you were studying.
BD: I was working, I guess. l was making pretend I was going to school out there. I’d just come there from south Dakota. That was about three years ago?
CG: Yeah.?
BD: Yeah, I’d come there from Sioux Falls. That was only about the place you didn’t have to go too far to find the Mississippi River. It runs right through the town you know. (laughs).
CG: You’ve been singing … you’ve sung now at Gerdes here in town and have you sung at any of the coffee houses?
BD: Yeah, I’ve sung at the Gaslight. That was a long time ago though. I used to play down in the Wha too. You ever know where that place is?
CG: Yeah, I didn’t know you sung there though.
BD: Yeah, I sung down there during the afternoons. I played my harmonica for this guy there who was singing. He used to give me a dollar to play every day with him, from 2 o’clock in the afternoon until 8.30 at night. He gave me a dollar plus a cheese burger.
CG: Wow, a thin one or a thick one?
BD: I couldn’t much tell in those days.
CG: Well, whatever got you off rock ‘n roll and on to folk music?
BD: Well, I never really got onto this, they were just sort of, I dunno, I wasn’t calling it anything then you know, I wasn’t really singing rock ‘n roll, I was singing Muddy Waters songs and I was writing songs, and I was singing Woody Guthrie songs and also I sung Hank Williams songs and Johnny Cash, I think.
CG: Yeah, I think the ones that I heard were a couple of the Johnny Cash songs.
BD: Yeah, this one I just sang for you is Hank Williams.
CG: It’s a nice song too.
BD: Lonesome Whistle.
CG: Heartbreaking.
BD: Yeah.
CG: And you’ve been writing songs as long as you’ve been singing.
BD: Well no, Yeah. Actually, I guess you could say that. Are these, ah, these are French ones, yeah?
CG: No, they are healthy cigarettes. They’re healthy because they’ve got a long filter and no tobacco.
BD: That’s the kind I need.
CG: And now you’re doing a record for Columbia?
BD: Yeah, I made it already. It’s coming out next month. Or not next month, yeah, it’s coming out in March.
CG: And what’s it going to be called?
BD: Ah, Bob Dylan, I think.
CG: That’s a novel title for a record.
BD: Yeah, it’s really strange.
CG: Yeah and hmm this is one of the quickest rises in folk music wouldn’t you say?
BD: Yeah, but I really don’t think to myself as, a you know, a folk singer, er folk singer thing, er, because I don’t really much play across the country, in any of these places, you know? I’m not on a circuit or anything like that like those other folk singers so ah, I play once in a while you know. But I dunno’ I like more than just folk music too and I sing more than just folk music. I mean as such, a lot of people they’re just folk music, folk music, folk music you know. I like folk music like Hobart Smith stuff an all that but I don’t sing much of that and when I do it’s probably a modified version of something. Not a modified version, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just there’s more to it, I think. Old time jazz things you know. Jelly Roll Morton, you know, stuff like that.
CG: Well, what I would like is for you to sing some songs, you know, from different parts of your short history. Short because you’re only 20 now.
BD: Yeah, OK. Let’s see. I’m looking for one.
CG: He has the, I gather, a small part of his repertoire, pasted to his guitar.
BD: Yeah. Well, this is you know actually, I don’t even know some of these songs, this list I put on ‘cos other people got it on, you know, and I copied the best songs I could find down here from all these guitar players list. So I don’t know a lot of these, you know. It gives me something to do though on stage.
CG: Yeah, like something to look at.
BD: Yeah. I’ll sing you, oh, you wanna hear a blues song?
CG: Sure.
BD: This one’s called Fixin’ To Die.
Track 2: Fixin’ To Die
CG: That’s a great song. How much of it is yours?
BD: That’s ah, I don’t know. I can’t remember. My hands are cold; it’s a pretty cold studio.
CG: It s the coldest studio !
BD: Usually can do this (picking a few notes). There, I just wanted to do it once.
CG: You’re a very good friend of John Lee Hookers, aren’t you?
BD: Yeah, I’m a friend of his.
CG: Do you sing any of his songs at all?
BD: Well, no I don’t sing any of his really. I sing one of Howlin’ Wolfs. You wanna hear that one again?
CG: Well, first I wanna ask you, um, why you don’t sing any of his because I know you like them.
BD: I play harmonica with him, and I sing with him. But I don’t do, sing, any of his songs because, I might sing a version of one of them, but I don’t sing any like he does, ‘cos I don’t think anybody sings any of his songs to tell you the truth. He’s a funny guy to sing like.
CG: Hard guy to sing like too.
BD: This is, I’ll see if I can find a key here and do this one. I heard this one a long time ago. This is one, I never do it.
CG: This is the Howlin’ Wolf song
BD: Yeah.
Track 3: Smokestack Lightning
BD: You like that?
CG: Yeah, I sure do. You’re very brave to try and sing that kind of a howling song.
BD: Yeah, it’s Howlin’ Wolf.
CG: Yeah. Another of the singers that you’re a very good friend of is, I know, Woody Guthrie.
BD: Yeah.
CG: Did you, you said er singing his songs, or rather his songs were some of the first ones that you sang.
BD: Yeah.
CG: Which ones did you sing of his?
BD: Well, I sing…
CG: Or which do you like the best perhaps I should say.
BD: Well, which ones you’re gonna hear. Here, I’ll sing you one, if I get it together here.
CG: In order for Bob to put on his necklace which is what he holds up the mouth harp with, he’s gotta take his hat off. Then he puts on the necklace. Then he puts the hat back on.
BD: Yeah.
CG: Then he screws up the necklace so he can put the mouth harp in it. It’s a complicated business.
BD: You know, the necklace gotta go round the collar.
CG: Also, in case any of you don’t know, in order for Bob to decide what key he’s gonna sing in, he gotta, well, first, he decides what key he s gonna sing in and then he’s gotta find the mouth harp that’s in that key. And, then he’s gotta put the mouth harp in the necklace.
BD: Yeah. I’ll sing you Hard Travellin’. How’s that one? Everybody sings it, but he likes that one.
Track 4: Hard Travellin’
CG: Nice, you started off slow but boy you ended up.
BD: Yeah, that’s a thing of mine there.
CG: Tell me about the songs that you’ve sung, that you’ve written yourself that you sing.
BD: Oh those are … I don’t claim to call them folk songs or anything. I just call them contemporary songs, I guess. You know, there’s a lot of people paint, you know. If they’ve got something that they wanna say, you know, they paint. Or other people write. Well, I just, you know write a song it’s the same thing . You wanna hear one?
CG: Why, yes. That’s just what I had in mind Bob Dylan. Whatever made you think of that.
BD: Well, let me see. What kind do you wanna hear? I got a new one I wrote.
CG: Yeah. you said you were gonna play some of your new ones for me.
BD: Yeah, I got a new one, er. This one’s called, em, Emmett Till. Oh, by the way, the melody here is, excuse me, the melody’s, I stole the melody from Len Chandler. An’ he’s a funny guy. He’s a, he’s a folk singer guy. He uses a lot of funny chords you know when he plays and he’s always getting to, want me, to use some of these chords, you know, trying to teach me new chords all the time. Well, he played me this one. Said don’t those chords sound nice? An’ I said they sure do, an so I stole it, stole the whole thing.
CG: That was his first mistake.
BD: Yeah … Naughty tips.
Track 5: Emmett Till
BD: You like that one?
CG: It’s one of the greatest contemporary ballads I’ve ever heard. It s tremendous.
BD: You think so?
CG: Oh yes !
BD: Thanks !
CG: It’s got some lines that are just make you stop breathing, great. Have you sung that for Woody Guthrie?
BD: No. I’m gonna sing that for him next time.
CG: Gonna sing that one for him?
BD: Yeah.
CG: Oh Yeah.
BD: I just wrote that one about last week, I think.
CG: Pine song. It makes me very proud. It’s uh, what’s so magnificent about it to me, is that it doesn’t have any sense of being written, you know. It sounds as if it just came out of …. it doesn’t have any of those little poetic contortions that mess up so many contemporary ballads, you know.
BD: Oh yeah, I try to keep it working.
CG: Yeah, and you sing it so straight. That’s fine.
BD: Just wait til’ Len Chandler hears the melody though.
CG: He’ll probably be very pleased with what you did to it. What song does he sing to it?
BD: He sings another one he wrote, you know. About some bus driver out in Colorado, that crashed a school bus with 27 kids. That’s a good one too. It’s a good song.
CG: What other songs are you gonna sing?
BD: You wanna hear another one?
CG: I wanna hear tons more.
BD: OK, I’ll sing ya, I never get a chance to sing a lot of, let me sing you just a plain ordinary one.
CG: Fine.
BD: I’ll tune this one. It’s open E. Oh ! I got one, I got two of ’em. I broke my fingernail so it might not be so, it might slip a few times.
Track 6: Standing On The Highway
BD: You like that?
CG: Yes I do. You know the eight of diamonds is delay, and the ace of spades is death so that sort of goes in with the two roads, doesn’t it?
BD: I learned that from the carnival.
CG: From who?
BD: Carnival, I used to travel with the carnival. I used to speak of those things all the time.
CG: Oh. You can read cards too?
BD: Humm, I can’t read cards. I really believe in palm reading, but for a bunch of personal things, I don’t, personal experiences, I don’t believe too much in the cards. I like to think I don’t believe too much in the cards, anyhow.
CG: So you go out of your way not to get em read, so you won’t believe them. How long were you with the carnival?
BD: I was with the carnival off and on for about six years.
CG: What were you doing?
BD: Oh, just about everything. Uh, I was clean-up boy, I used to be on the main line, on the ferris wheel, uh, do just run rides. I used to do all kinds of stuff like that.
CG: Didn’t that interfere with your schooling?
BD: Well, I skipped a bunch of things, and I didn’t go to school a bunch of years and I skipped this and I skipped that.
CG: That’s what I figured.
BD: All came out even though.
CG: What, you were gonna … you were gonna, sing another blues, you said.
BD: Oh yeah, I’ll sing you this one. This is a nice slow one. I learned this … you know Ralph Rensler?
CG: Sure.
BD: I learned this sort of thing from him. A version of this, I got the idea from him. This isn’t the blues, but, how much time we got?
CG: Oh, we got half an hour.
BD: Oh, good.
Track 7: Roll On John
CG: That’s a lonesome accompaniment too. Oh my !
BD: You like that one?
CG: It makes you feel even lonelier. How much of that last one was yours by the way?
BD: Well, I dunno, maybe one or two verses.
CG: Where’d the rest of it come from?
BD: Well, like I say, I got the idea for Roll On John from Ralph Rensler.
CG: Oh! I see.
BD: And then I got … the rest just sort of fell together. Here’s one, I’ll bet you’ll remember. Yay, I bet you’ll know this one.
CG: Take the hat off, put on the necklace, put the hat back on. Nobody’s ever seen Bob Dylan without his hat excepting when he’s putting on his necklace. Is there … is there a more dignified name for that thing?
BD: What, the, this?
CG: Yeah the brace, what’s it called?
BD: Er, harmonica holder.
CG: Oh, I think necklace is better than that.
BD: Yeah, ha ha. This one here’s an old jug band song.
Track 8: Stealin’
BD: Like that? That’s called Stealin’.
CG: I figured. You haven’t been playing the harrnonica too long, have you?
BD: Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I been playing the harmonica for a long time. I just have never had … couldn’t play ’em at the same time. I used to play the smaller Hohners. I never knew harmonica holders existed, the real kind like this. I used to go ahead and play with the coat hanger. That never really held out so good. I used to put tape around it, you know, and then it would hold out pretty good. But then there were smaller harmonicas than these, you know, they’re about this far an’ I used to put them in my mouth. But I, but I got bad teeth, you know, and some kind of thing back there you know. Maybe there’s … I don’t know what it was, a filling or something. I don’t know what it was in there but it used to magnify.
CG: Oh yes.
BD: Not magnified but magnet, you know. Man, this whole harmonica would go, you know, wham, drop from my mouth like that. So I couldn’t hold it onto my teeth very much.
CG: Yeah, it’s like, sometimes you get a piece of tin foil in your mouth and it goes wow. It’s terrible. But let’s not talk about that.
BD: No, I don’t want to talk about that either.
CG: At the carnival did you learn songs?
BD: No, I learned how to sing though. That’s more important.
CG: Yeah. You made up the songs even then.
BD: Er, actually, I wrote a song once. I’m trying to find, a real good song I wrote. An’ it’s about this lady I knew in the carnival. An’ er, they had a side show, I only, I was, this was, Thomas show, Roy B Thomas shows, and there was, they had a freak show in it, you know, and all the midgets and all that kind of stuff. An’ there was one lady in there really bad shape. Like her skin had been all burned when she was a little baby, you know, and it didn’t grow right, and so she was like a freak. An’ all these people would pay money, you know, to come and see and … er … that really sort of got to me, you know. They’d come and see, and I mean, she was very, she didn’t really look like normal, she had this funny kind of skin and they passed her of as the elephant lady. And, er, like she was just burned completely since she was a little baby, er.
And … er, it’s a funny thing about them: I know how these people think, you know. Like when they wanna sell you stuff, you know, the spectators. And I don’t see why people don’t buy something, because, you know, like they sell little cards of themselves for, you know, like ten cents, you know. They got a picture on it and it’s got some story, you know. And they’ve very funny thinking, like they get up there like, a lot of them are very smart, you know, because they’ve had to do this, I mean, still you can’t. A lot of them are great people, you know. But like, they got a funny thing in their minds. Like they want to. Here they are on the stage, they wanna make you have two thoughts. Like, they wanna make you think that, er, they don’t feel, er, bad about themselves. They want you to think that they just go on living everyday and they don’t ever think about their, what’s bothering them, they don’t ever think about their condition. An’ also they wanna make you feel sorry for them, an’ they gotta do that two ways you see And er … they do it, a lot of them do it. And … er, it’s er. I had a good friend, this woman who was like that, and I wrote a song for her, you know, a long time ago. An’ lost it some place. It’s just about, just speakin’ from first person, like here I am, you know, and sort a like, talkin’ to you, and trying, an’ it was called, “Won’t You Buy A Postcard”. That’s the name of the song I wrote. Can’t remember that one though.
CG: There’s a lot of circus literature about how freaks don’t mind being freaks but it’s very hard to believe.
BD: Oh yeah.
CG: You’re absolutely right, that they would have to look at it two ways at the same time. Did you manage to get both ways into the song?
BD: Yeah. I lost the song.
CG: I hope you fond it and when you find it sing it for me.
BD: I got a verse here of some… You know Ian and Silvia?
CG: Oh sure. Ian and Silvia are at the Bitter End Club.
BD: I sort of borrowed this from them.
CG: He’s looking for a harmonica.
BD: I don’t have to take the necklace off; necklace as you call it. You might have heard them do it. This is the same song. I used to do this one.
Track 9: Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad
BD: Got sort of… You like that one?
CG: Boy it, when you…
BD: That’s got them funny chords in it.
CG: …really get going there’s a tremendous sort of push that you give things that’s wild.
BD: Oh, you really think so?
CG: No, I was just talking.
BD: I’ll take off my necklace.
CG: Without taking off your hat.
BD: No.
CG: Well, then the thing is you see that …
BD: I’m getting good at this.
CG: Yah. After he takes off the necklace or puts it on he’s gotta fluff up the hat again every time.
BD: Yeah. I got it cleaned and blocked last week.
CG: What did you wear on your head? (laughing)
BD: Stetson. You seen me wear that Stetson.
CG: Oh yeah, you were wearing somebody’s Stetson.
BD: It was mine. I got that for a present.
CG: So why don’t you wear it? ‘Cause you like this one better?
BD: I like this one better. It’s been with me longer.
CG: What happens when you take it off for any length of time? You go to sleep?
BD: Yeah.
CG: I see.
BD: Or else I’m in the bathroom or somethin’. Well actually just when I go to sleep. I wanted to sing Baby Please Don ‘t Go because I’ve wanted to hear how that sounded.
Track 10; Baby Please Don’t Go
CG: That’s a nice song too. You said that you’ve written several new songs lately.
BD: Yeah.
CG: You’ve only sung one of them. You realise that? I know I’m working you very hard for this hour of the morning, but there it is.
BD: Yeah, this really isn’t a new one but this is one of the ones. You’ll like it. I wrote this one before I got this Columbia Records thing. Just about when I got it, you know. I like New York, but this is a song from one person’s angle.
Track 11: Hard Times In New York Town
CG: That’s a very nice song, Bob Dylan. You’ve been listening to Bob Dylan playing some, playing and singing some of his songs and some of the songs that he’s learned from other people. And thank you very, very much for coming down here and working so hard.
BD: It’s my pleasure to come down.
CG: When you’re rich and famous are you gonna wear the hat too?
BD: Oh, I’m never gonna become rich and famous.
CG: And you’re never gonna take off the hat either.
BD: No.
CG: And this has been Folksingers Choice and I’m Cynthia Gooding. I’ll be here next week at the same time.
Transcript via Expecting Rain. Thanks!!!
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Here are nine things I learned from Bob Dylan’s AARP interview.
1) Bob Dylan listened to tons of big band music as a kid:
“Early on, before rock ‘n’ roll, I listened to big band music: Harry James, Russ Columbo, Glenn Miller. Singers like Jo Stafford, Kay Starr, Dick Haymes. Anything that came over the radio and music played by bands in hotels that our parents could dance to. We had a big radio that looked like a jukebox, with a record player on the top.”
2) Bob Dylan thinks the access to most of recorded music that the Internet now makes possible is a negative:
“Well, if you’re just a member of the general public, and you have all this music available to you, what do you listen to? How many of these things are you going to listen to at the same time? Your head is just going to get jammed — it’s all going to become a blur, I would think. Back in the day, if you wanted to hear Memphis Minnie, you had to seek a compilation record, which would have a Memphis Minnie song on it. And if you heard Memphis Minnie back then, you would just accidentally discover her on a record that also had Son House and Skip James and the Memphis Jug Band. And then maybe you’d seek Memphis Minnie in some other places — a song here, a song there. You’d try to find out who she was. Is she still alive? Does she play? Can she teach me anything? Can I hang out with her? Can I do anything for her? Does she need anything? But now, if you want to hear Memphis Minnie, you can go hear a thousand songs. Likewise, all the rest of those performers, like Blind Lemon [Jefferson]. In the old days, maybe you’d hear “Matchbox” and “Prison Cell Blues.” That would be all you would hear, so those songs would be prominent in your mind. But when you hear an onslaught of 100 more songs of Blind Lemon, then it’s like, “Oh man! This is overkill!” It’s so easy you might appreciate it a lot less.”
3) Bob Dylan is such a fan of Picasso he’d like to be him – maybe:
“Well, I might trade places with Picasso if I could, creatively speaking. I’d like to think I was the boss of my creative process, too, and I could just do anything I wanted whenever I wanted and it would all be on a grand scale. But of course, that’s not true. Like Sinatra, there was only one Picasso.”
4) Bob Dylan’s take on creativity:
“[Creativity is] uncontrollable. It makes no sense in literal terms. I wish I could enlighten you, but I can’t — just sound stupid trying. But I’ll try. It starts like this. What kind of song do I need to play in my show? What don’t I have? It always starts with what I don’t have instead of doing more of the same. I need all kinds of songs — fast ones, slow ones, minor key, ballads, rumbas — and they all get juggled around during a live show. I’ve been trying for years to come up with songs that have the feeling of a Shakespearean drama, so I’m always starting with that. Once I can focus in on something, I just play it in my mind until an idea comes from out of nowhere, and it’s usually the key to the whole song. It’s the idea that matters. The idea is floating around long before me. It’s like electricity was around long before Edison harnessed it. Communism was around before Lenin took over. Pete Townshend thought about Tommy for years before he actually wrote any songs for it. So creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won’t invite what’s not there to begin with.”
5) Bob Dylan believes “self-sufficiency creates happiness”:
“OK, a lot of people say there is no happiness in this life, and certainly there’s no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness. Happiness is a state of bliss. Actually, it never crosses my mind. Just because you’re satisfied one moment — saying yes, it’s a good meal, makes me happy — well, that’s not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner, you know? Really, time is your soul mate. Children are happy. But they haven’t really experienced ups and downs yet. I’m not exactly sure what happiness even means, to tell you the truth. I don’t know if I personally could define it. [Happiness is] like water — it slips through your hands. As long as there’s suffering, you can only be so happy. How can a person be happy if he has misfortune? Does money make a person happy? Some wealthy billionaire who can buy 30 cars and maybe buy a sports team, is that guy happy? What then would make him happier? Does it make him happy giving his money away to foreign countries? Is there more contentment in that than giving it here to the inner cities and creating jobs? Nowhere does it say that one of the government’s responsibilities is to create jobs. That is a false premise. But if you like lies, go ahead and believe it. The government’s not going to create jobs. It doesn’t have to. People have to create jobs, and these big billionaires are the ones who can do it. We don’t see that happening. We see crime and inner cities exploding, with people who have nothing to do but meander around, turning to drink and drugs, into killers and jailbirds. They could all have work created for them by all these hotshot billionaires. For sure, that would create a lot of happiness. Now, I’m not saying they have to — I’m not talking about communism — but what do they do with their money? Do they use it in virtuous ways? If you have no idea what virtue is all about, look it up in a Greek dictionary. There’s nothing namby-pamby about it.
6) Bob Dylan thinks Billy Graham, the evangelist, was “like rock ’n’ roll personified”:
When I was growing up, Billy Graham was very popular. He was the greatest preacher and evangelist of my time — that guy could save souls and did. I went to two or three of his rallies in the ’50s or ’60s. This guy was like rock ’n’ roll personified — volatile, explosive. He had the hair, the tone, the elocution — when he spoke, he brought the storm down. Clouds parted. Souls got saved, sometimes 30- or 40,000 of them. If you ever went to a Billy Graham rally back then, you were changed forever. There’s never been a preacher like him. He could fill football stadiums before anybody. He could fill Giants Stadium more than even the Giants football team. Seems like a long time ago. Long before Mick Jagger sang his first note or Bruce strapped on his first guitar — that’s some of the part of rock ’n’ roll that I retained. I had to. I saw Billy Graham in the flesh and heard him loud and clear.
7) These days Bob Dylan can relate more to a song like “I’m A Fool To Want You” than to his own “Queen Jane Approximately”:
“These songs [on Shadows In The Night] have been written by people who went out of fashion years ago. I’m probably someone who helped put them out of fashion. But what they did is a lost art form. Just like da Vinci and Renoir and van Gogh. Nobody paints like that anymore either. But it can’t be wrong to try. So a song like “I’m a Fool to Want You” — I know that song. I can sing that song. I’ve felt every word in that song. I mean, I know that song. It’s like I wrote it. It’s easier for me to sing that song than it is to sing, “Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane.” At one time that wouldn’t have been so. But now it is. Because “Queen Jane” might be a little bit outdated. It can’t be outrun. But this song is not outdated. It has to do with human emotion, which is a constant thing. There’s nothing contrived in these songs. There’s not one false word in any of them. They’re eternal, lyrically and musically.”
8) Bob Dylan clearly understands what recording an album of standards, Shadows in The Night, means — that in a way he is making peace with a music that, as he puts it, “rock ’n’ roll came to destroy”:
“To those of us who grew up with these kinds of songs and didn’t think much of it, these are the same songs that rock ’n’ roll came to destroy — music hall, tangos, pop songs from the ’40s, fox-trots, rumbas, Irving Berlin, Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Hammerstein. Composers of great renown.”
9) Dylan is asked if Frank Sinatra was “too square to admit liking” back in the late ’50s/’60s:
“Square? I don’t think anybody would have been bold enough to call Frank Sinatra square. Kerouac listened to him, along with Bird [Charlie Parker] and Dizzy [Gillespie]. But I myself never bought any Frank Sinatra records back then, if that’s what you mean. I never listened to Frank as an influence. All I had to go on were records, and they were all over the place, orchestrated in one way or another. Swing music, Count Basie, romantic ballads, jazz bands — it was hard to get a fix on him. But like I say, you’d hear him anyway. You’d hear him in a car or a jukebox. You were conscious of Frank Sinatra no matter what age you were. Certainly nobody worshipped Frank Sinatra in the ’60s like they did in the ’40s. But he never went away. All those other things that we thought were here to stay, they did go away. But he never did.”
Frank Sinatra, “Ebb Tide”:
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
If you’ve even seen the great Film Noir classics “Double Indemnity,” “Detour” or Orson Welles “Touch Of Evil,” than you know what Bob Dylan is up to in his new video for the song “The Night We Called It A Day” off his latest album, Shadows In The Night.
The black and white video finds characters played by Dylan, Tracy Phillips and Nash Edgerton involved in some kind of double double cross that involves a diamond ring and a double murder.
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Nat Hentoff, who had profiled Dylan for the New Yorker in 1964, is the interviewer.
Dylan says some fascinating things, especially given that we now know what’s happened since 1966. This interview was done after the release of Highway 61 Revisited but before Blonde On Blonde was released.
Just one example:
“I refuse to be any kind of Lawrence Welk or something like that. I’ll continue making the records. They’re not going to be any better from now on, they’re gonna be just different.”
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Amazing interview from February 1966 that Bob Dylan did for Playboy magazine. I’ve previously posted some of the transcript but now you can hear the interview.
Nat Hentoff, who had profiled Dylan for the New Yorker in 1964, is the interviewer.
By the way, interesting to hear Dylan praise Buck Owens in this interview, given his recent MusicCares speech.
Part One:
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
The musicians and writers whose art presaged and influenced and influenced The Sixties.
By Michael Goldberg.
On Highway 61 – Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom, Dennis McNally, Counterpoint Press (471 pages)
Let me start at the end and tell you that the final section of On Highway 61, some 120 pages, provides the best portrait of Bob Dylan and his creativity, what nurtured it, and how it evolved, that I’ve read to date.
Additionally, author Dennis McNally focuses on how Dylan’s worldview – and the songs he wrote and/or sung – can be characterized as part of the ongoing search for freedom in all it’s manifestations, physical, spiritual and cultural. And more. Dylan was at least as influenced by the music made by African Americans, as he was by white country and folk musicians. And this is important, as it is simply one of many examples in this terrific book that make the case that African Americans are primarily responsible for what is truly great in American music.
But there are other reasons it’s appropriate to start with Dylan. Like some of that artist’s surrealist (or perhaps hyper-real) songs of 1965 – “Desolation Row,” “Ballad of a Thin Man” and “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” — McNally has populated his book with an incredible array of iconic figures — including Henry David Thoreau, Miles Davis, Mark Twain, Bessie Smith and Jack Kerouac – who, like Dylan, have allowed those who have paid attention to their art to experience, as McNally puts it, “a widening of vision, a softening of the heart, and an increase in tolerance.”
No Anita Ekberg (“to make the country grow”)) and no Shakespeare (“with his pointed shoes and his bells”), but what the hell. As artfully as Dylan in his songs, McNally has made his superhuman crew fit seamlessly into this treatise on cultural freedom. In fact, those artists and their work is the story of cultural freedom.
And what is cultural freedom?
Taking from the past and making something new.
Leave it to Mr. Dylan, who McNally quotes from a 1987 US magazine interview, to give us a clue.
“When I first heard Elvis’s voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody and nobody was gonna be my boss,” Dylan said. “Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.”
Art that makes you feel like busting out of jail. That would be one definition.
Or, as Dylan sang it, “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.”
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
While I predicted last week that Bob Dylan’s excellent new album, Shadows in The Night, would chart at #1 in the U.S. following its first week of release, in fact the album has charted at #6, according to Nielsen SoundScan sales data chart for current releases.
Or #7, depending on which chart you consult.
The album is at #7 on the BillboardTop 200 albums chart, which also includes older releases.
The Billboard Top 200 albums chart is partially based on sales information collected by Nielsen SoundScan but incorporates other data as well.
Shadows In The Night has sold 49,791 copies following its release on Tuesday, February 3, 2014, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
The album has done better, chartwise, in other countries. It charted at #1 in England (Official Charts Company), Ireland (Irish Recorded Music Association) and Sweden (Sverigetopplistan).
Additionally, Shadows In The Night has charted at #3 on Austria’s Ö3 Austria Top 40 Longplay (Albums) chart, #2 on the Swiss Hitparade Albums Top 100, #3 on Belgium’s Ultratop albums chart, at #2 on the Dutch MegaCharts albums chart and at #6 on the German Offiziell albums chart.
In the U.S, the albums that sold more copies than Shadows In The Night are the various artists compilation, NOW 53 (99,543) at #1, Taylor Swift’s 1989 (76,769) at #2, Fifth Harmony’s Reflection (61,854) at #3, Sam Smith’s In The Lonely Hour (56,937) at #4, and Ed Sheeran’s X (53,262) at #5, according to SoundScan.
Billboard has a slightly different order since their chart combines physical album sales, audio on-demand streaming activity and digital sales: Taylor Swift at #1, the NOW 53 compilation at #2, Ed Sheeran at #3, Sam Smith at #4 and Fifth Harmony at #5 and Meghan Trainor’s Title (59,000) at #6.
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
On Bob Dylan’s Facebook page, info about the songs he covers on Shadows In The Night has been posted.
Here are excerpts from what’s there so far with links to each entire post:
I’M A FOOL TO WANT YOU
Song written in 1951
Joel S Herron, Frank Sinatra, Jack Wolf
COVERS:
Many came to know the song from Billie Holiday’s last sessions for Columbia Records, Lady in Satin, released in 1958. Also recorded by Chet Baker, The Four Freshmen, Billy Eckstine, Sergio Franchi, Sammy Davis Junior, Helen Merrill, Dinah Washington, Dionne Warwick, Robert Goulet, Tony Bennett, Shirley Bassey, Hadda Brooks, Peggy Lee and Steve Lawrence.
Joel Herron was the musical director of the famous Copacabana nightclub during the 1940s. He also was a pianist, arranger and accompanist. Lyricist, Jack Wolf was a close friend. Herron had been using Brahms’ Third Symphony as his theme song at the Copa, when Wolf suggested using the Andantino section from the same symphony as a melody for a song. Together they created a composition that Frank Sinatra recorded in 1950, entitled TAKE MY LOVE. Released as a single during 1951, a low point in Sinatra’s recording career, TAKE MY LOVE failed to chart. At that time, Mitch Miller, who was the head of A&R at Columbia Records had lost faith in Frank’s ability to sell records. Indeed, many consider the absolute nadir in Sinatra’s career was when Miller forced him to record the novelty song, MAMA WILL BARK. Ironically, eleven short years later Miller also showed complete indifference to John Hammond’s new signing to Columbia Records, Bob Dylan…
The Night We Called It a Day
Song written 1941
Matt Dennis, Tom Adair
COVERS:
Doris Day, Chris Connor, June Christy, Chet Baker, Diana Krall, The Hi-Lo’s, Frank Sinatra.
Matt Dennis was a singer, pianist, bandleader, arranger and songwriter. Born in Seattle to a musical Vaudevillian family, he formed his own band in the mid-30s with Dick Haymes as vocalist. Dennis also worked as vocal coach and arranger for big band singers and popular recording artists including Martha Tilton and Jo Stafford. When Stafford joined the Tommy Dorsey Band in 1939, she persuaded Dorsey to hire Dennis as an arranger. Along with lyricist Tom Adair, Dennis wrote fourteen songs in one year alone including EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO ME – a hit for the band with lead vocalist Frank Sinatra…
STAY WITH ME
Song written in 1963
Carolyn Leigh, Jerome Moross
COVERS:
The song is best known as its alternate title, “Theme Song from The Cardinal,” as sung by Frank Sinatra. The Cardinal was a 1963 Otto Preminger film which follows the journey of a young Boston priest as he climbs the hierarchy of the Catholic Church during the rise of Fascism in Europe.
Carolyn Leigh was a New York born lyricist who wrote for Broadway, movies and popular music. After graduating New York University, Leigh began her career as a copywriter for radio stations and advertising agencies. She transitioned to writing lyrics for Broadway musicals including “Peter Pan,” “Wild Cat,” ” Little Me” and “How Now Dow Jones.” Her biggest successes came in partnership with Cy Coleman in the early 60s. Together they penned such notable hits as, WITCHCRAFT, HEY LOOK ME OVER, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME…
AUTUMN LEAVES
Song written in 1945, English lyrics written in 1947
Joseph Kosma, Jacques Prevert , Johnny Mercer
COVERS:
Jo Stafford, Edith Piaff (in French), Tom Jones, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughn, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Paul Anka, Tony Bennett, Louis Prima. The song has long been a favorite of jazz musicians with over 1400 cover versions from Paul Whiteman, to Ben Webster, to Cannonball Adderly, Bill Evans, Charles Lloyd and Coleman Hawkins.
Joseph Kosma was born in Budapest in 1905. A musical prodigy, he began piano lessons at age 5 and composed his first opera at age 11. He studied at the Liszt Academy with Bela Bartok. He emigrated to Paris in 1933 where he met poet and screenwriter Jacques Prevert, who in turn introduced him to filmmaker, Jean Renoir. During World War II, Kosma was placed under house arrest and was banned from composing music. However, Prevert arranged for him to continue composing for films using other musicians as a front. It was in this way that he wrote the music for Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) in 1945. His other film credits include La Grand Illusion (1937), La Bete Humaine (The Human Beast) (1938) and La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) (1939) all directed by Jean Renoir. Although he did not write many songs he is legendary for composing the melody to the Jacques Prevert poem Les Feuilles Mortes, which would eventually become Autumn Leaves…
Why Try To Change Me Now
Song written in 1952
Cy Coleman, Joseph Allen McCarthy
COVERS:
Frank Sinatra had the first recording. Other covers include Sammy Davis Jr., Fionna Apple, Jimmy Scott, and Nancy Wilson.
Born Seymour Kaufman in The Bronx in 1929, Cy Coleman was a composer, songwriter and jazz pianist. He was a child prodigy who gave piano recitals at Town Hall and Carnegie Hall between the ages of 6 and 9. Prior to beginning his Broadway career he led a trio which became a successful nightclub attraction. Success on Broadway first came as a composer in collaboration with Joseph McCarthy, Jr. But his biggest successes started in 1960 once he paired with lyricist Carolyn Leigh. Together they wrote WITCHCRAFT and THE BEST IS YET TO COME, HEY LOOK ME OVER, among many others…
Some Enchanted Evening
Song written in 1949
Oscar Hammerstein II, Richard Rodgers
COVERS:
Bing Crosby, Barbara Streisand, Al Jolson, Andy Williams, Jo Stafford, Perry Como, Ezio Pinza, Harry Connick, Jr., Art Garfunkel, Jay & the Americans, Frank Sinatra.
From the musical South Pacific, SOME ENCHANTED EVENING is considered the single biggest popular hit to come out of any Rodgers and Hammerstein show. In the original Broadway Production, the song was sung by former Metropolitan Opera bass, Ezio Pinza.
Oscar Hammerstein was born in New York City in 1895, the grandson of a Jewish theater impresario. His father was a Vaudeville theater manager and producer. He attended Columbia University and studied at Columbia Law School, but would soon quit the study of law to pursue theater. For the next 40 years he would be one of the most successful and prolific lyricist and theatrical producers of musicals in America…
FULL MOON AND EMPTY ARMS
Song written in 1945
Buddy Kaye, Ted Mossman
COVERS:
Robert Goulet, Sarah Vaughn, Jerry Vale, Eddie Fisher, Donna Brooks. Best known version is by Frank Sinatra.
This song is based on Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2, written between 1900 and 1901. It became Rachmaninoff’s most popular composition and built his reputation as a concerto composer. Born to an aristocratic family in Russia in 1873, Rachmaninoff’s first success came as a pianist – giving his first concert by the age of nineteen. In that same year he composed and performed an opera based on a poem by Alexander Pushkin, which became an immediate success in Moscow. The Russian Revolution forced him to leave the country in 1917. Eventually he emigrated to the United States in 1918 after receiving several lucrative performance offers. He supported himself and his family as a world renown concert pianist until his death, in Beverly Hills, in 1943…
Where are You?
Song written in 1937
Harold Adamson, Jimmy McHugh
COVERS:
Mildred Bailey, Chris Connor, Shirley Bassey, Aretha Franklin, Brenda Lee, Julie London, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Washington.
Jimmy McHugh was one of the most prolific songwriters from the 1920s through the 1950s. Born in Boston in 1894, McHugh struggled in a variety of odd jobs including work as a rehearsal pianist at the Boston Opera House and as a pianist/song plugger for Irving Berlin’s music publishing company. At the age of 26, he relocated to New York City, finding work as a song plugger with the Jack Mills publishing company. It was there that he teamed up with future Duke Ellington manager Irving Mills to form the Hotsy Totsy Boys, writing and recording their hit song, EVERYTHING IS HOTSY TOTSY NOW…
COVERS:
Julie London, Anne Murray, Lou Rawls, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Chet Baker, Cher, Perry Como, Tommy Dorsey, Judy Garland, Dinah Shore, Eydie Gorme, Linda Ronstadt, Sarah Vaughan, Paul Whiteman, Lena Horne, Alison Krauss, Dick Haymes, Georgia Gibbs and Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Born in Russia in 1888, Berlin was one of eight children. His father was a cantor in a synagogue who uprooted the family in 1893 and moved to New York in order to escape the Russian pogroms against Jews so rampant in Eastern Europe. They settled on Cherry Street on the Lower East Side in a cold water basement flat with no windows. His father, unable to find work as a cantor, labored at a meat market and gave Hebrew lessons on the side. He died when Irving was thirteen years old. With only a few years of schooling, Irving found it necessary to take to the streets to help support his family. His first job was as a newspaper boy – hawking the Evening Journal. Meanwhile the rest of the family scrounged for work; his mother as a midwife, his three sisters wrapping cigars in a factory and his older brother assembling shirts in a sweatshop…
That Lucky Old Sun
Song written in 1949
Haven Gillespie, Beasley Smith
COVERS:
Biggest hit version was by Frankie Lane, which reached number one in 1949. Other chart hits were by Vaughan Monroe, Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra, all in 1949. Other covers include Ray Charles, Dean Martin, Leon Russell, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, The Isley Brothers, Pat Boone, Sarah Vaughan, LaVerne Baker, Sammy Davis Junior and Bing Crosby…
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
