Author archive: Michael Gray

Happy birthday Richie Havens, 70 years old today. Among many other things he was another headliner at the 2nd Isle of Wight Festival back in August 1969, and nearly 40 years later appeared briefly in Tod Haynes’ film I’m Not There & contributing a version of ‘Tombstone Blues’ to the soundtrack. Paul Nelson would have been 75 today. He was co-founder of the small but influential critical journal Little Sandy Review Continue reading →

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And this comes courtesy of John Baldwin’s Desolation Row Newsletter this morning, who found it in a message on AllAlongTheWatchtower.dk: My Own Love Song is now available on DVD… [This] is a 2010 road movie directed and written by Olivier Dahan and starring Renée Zellweger, Forest Whitaker, Madeline Zima and Nick Nolte. It premiered in Dahan’s native France on April 7, 2010 and in the United States at the Tribeca Film Festival between April 21 to May 2, 2010. The soundtrack contains music written by Dylan, including ‘Life is Hard’ from his 2009 album Together Through Life . T he soundtrack is heavy in material from those studio sessions. Not only does it feature several selections that originally appeared on Together Through Life , but it also includes 16 previously unreleased originals recorded during that same time frame. Titles include…’Driving South’, ‘Bumble Bee’, and ‘Sweeping The Floor’. So, My Own Love Song includes both old and new Dylan, all of which came from the same studio sessions… Tracklist: Bob Dylan – Forgetful Heart (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Life Is Hard (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Sweeping The Floor (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Bumble Bee (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Jane’s Lament (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Joey’s Theme (Dylan) Ron Eaton – Preludes, Opus 28 #6 in b Minor (Chopin) Bob Dylan – I Feel A Change Coming On (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Driving South (Dylan) Georges Drakoulias – What Good Am I (Dylan) Forest Whitaker – What Good Am I (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Back Alley (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Snow Falling (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Billie #30 (Dylan) Chopin Nocturne 7 Ren é Zellweger – Precious Angel (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Road Weary (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Click Clack (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Life Is Hard (Dylan) (instrumental) Bob Dylan – Robbie Robert’s Lament (Dylan) Robert Johnson – Me And The Devil Blues Bob Dylan – New Orleans Drums (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Janet’s Step (Dylan) Source Music – Late Night Blues For Leroy Carr Ron Eaton – Preludes, Opus 28 #4 in e Minor (Chopin) Don Sparks – I Believe In You Bob Dylan – Swingin’ (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Blues Club (Playback) (Dylan) Ren é e Zellweger – This Land Is Your Land Bob Dylan – It’s All Good (Dylan) Bob Dylan – East Texas (Dylan) The Bourbon Street Stompers – Down By The Riverside Georges Darkoulias – What Good Am I (Dylan) Ron Eaton – Preludes, Opus 28 #15 in Db Major (Chopin) Ren é e Zellweger – Life Is Hard (Dylan) Bob Dylan – Beyond Here Lies Nothing (Dylan) Amazon France has a better price than Amazon UK at Euro 15.98. Continue reading →

This was sent on to me by Mick Gold, and comes from Crain’s NewYorkBusiness.com: Published: January 16, 2011 – 5:59 am Rock legend Bob Dylan has a new book deal—with his old publisher, Simon & Schuster. The house, which brought out the singer-songwriter’s 2004 best-seller Chronicles: Volume One , has reached a deal with literary agent Andrew Wylie for six books, according to several industry insiders. The books include two follow-ups to Chronicles and a collection of riffs from Mr. Dylan’s radio show on Sirius XM. The deal came after Mr. Wylie had spent months trying to drum up interest in the project among other publishers (see Crain’s , Nov. 22), despite Simon & Schuster’s insistence that it had the rights to any Chronicles sequels. “Wylie’s contention was that S&S didn’t own the “memoir,’ because Chronicles was “nonfiction stories’ from his life and not a memoir,” said the editor. But no house would bite because of the potential for a lawsuit. Mr. Wylie had been looking for an eight-figure offer, according to another editor, who didn’t know the deal’s final value. The agent did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment. A Simon & Schuster spokesman declined to comment. My thanks to Mick for spotting this. Continue reading →

Hi Michael As you know I spent about as much of the 90s and early 2000s collecting, “rare Dylan CDs” as I did travelling around various countries following his shows. I had a trip down memory lane last week and thought you’d be interested in changes in the “rare records” market. Now, this is all within the overall perspective that the CD market and the “rare” market in particular is in terminal decline anyway. (Unlike vinyl but that is another topic); replaced as we know by downloads and computer files that with a broadband connection can be easily shared in full quality rather than using files like MP3s that compress the files. But what has changed recently is that from a commercial point of view the Dylan market is almost completely dead after decades of him being the top seller (by far). Although diminished, the likes of Neil Young and the Stones still sell and Springsteen, who was second only to Bob for many years, now sells the most. My curiosity piqued, I asked a couple of leaders in the field and they both said the same thing: that within the last year or two the hard core Dylan buyers have stopped altogether, while some Springsteen and Young hardcore buyers still remain. They said that some of the old guard collectors from the other artists still come to the fairs etc. but the Dylan ones – by far the most numerous – just stopped. Odd. I have to stress that this is very recent: in the middle of the last decade Dylan was still the main centre of attraction. Three possible reasons occur to me: An over-abundance of Dylan already out? (I once would have found that phrase unintelligible) Perhaps people have simply stopped because they bought so very much in the past… and for newcomers now there are so many official bootlegs that it’d take an age to buy all the official albums and your whole life to absorb them. Or is it that the Dylan audience has changed in a way that others haven’t? Or is it just lack of interest? If you were to make a list of all your long term Dylan listening friends, how many would still hold his work in high regard and/or still be collecting? One way or another, given that younger fans will generally download, we seem to be looking at the Dylan old guard finally giving up on their man in terms of collecting. Perhaps your blog could confirm/deny whether it it the same in Europe and the States. Homer Continue reading →

Next week I should be able to post some information about when tickets for each of the Irish dates go on sale. Meanwhile all the earlier dates – except at the bookshop in New Jersey – are at colleges or universities, and with one exception (the McTell talk in Athens GA) these offer free admission to the public as well as to college people. New dates have been added in Connecticut (April 4) and in County Wicklow, Ireland (April 17). Details: Thu Feb 17, 5pm Liverpool University Sherrington Building Lecture Theatre 1, Ashton Street, L’pool L69 3GE reservations: e-mail Jackie Bracken comprm@liverpool.ac.uk Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Tues Feb 22, 11am West Valley College, Saratoga CA 1400 Fruitvale Avenue, Saratoga CA reservations: e-mail dteeeee@yahoo.com Searching For Blind Willie McTell Wed Feb 23, 7pm University of the Pacific, Stockton CA Janet Leigh Theatre, off Atchley Way/Stagg Way 3601 Pacific Avenue , Stockton CA reservations: cdobbs@pacific.edu Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Thu Feb 24, tba Stanford University Building 460, Margaret Jacks Hall, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford CA reservations: sfishkin@stanford.edu Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Thu Mar 24, tba New College, University of Alabama 201 Lloyd Hall, Campus, Tuscaloosa AL reservations: jhall2@nc.ua.edu Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Tue Mar 29, tba Georgia Southern University 1400 Southern Drive, Statesboro 30460 reservations: wbmitch@georgiasouthern.edu Compressed Version of a Winterlude Weekend, with Dinner Wed Mar 30, 4pm University of Georgia 101 Miller Learning Center, UGA, Athens GA 30602 reservations: hruppers@uga.edu Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Thu Mar 31, 3.30pm University of Georgia 247 Miller Learning Center, UGA, Athens GA 30602 restricted admission Searching for Blind Willie McTell Sun Apr 3, 2pm Nighthawk Books, Highland Park NJ 212 Raritan Ave., Highland Park NJ 08904 free admission but donation requested Bob Dylan & Beyond: Geniuses of American Music Mon Apr 4, 4.30pm Connecticut College English Dept., 270 Mohegan Ave., New London CT 06320 reservations: jkgez@conncoll.edu Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Wed Apr 6, 6.30pm New School, NYC 5th Floor, Room 510, 66 W. 12th St., NY NY 10011 reservations: TurnerL@newschool.edu Searching for Blind Willie McTell Sat Apr 9, tba Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Ireland Main St, Newbridge, Co. Kildare Box Office: boxoffice@riverbank.ie or buy online at www.riverbank.ie or phone 045 448327 Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Tues Apr 12, tba Passionfruit Theatre, Athlone 9 Northgate, Athlone, Co. Westmeath Box Office: 086 333 8547 or www.passionfruittheatre.com tickets: €10 Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Wed Apr 13, tba Dock Arts Centre, Carrick-on-Shannon St. George’s Terrace, Carrick, Co. Leitrim Box Office: info@thedock.ie or phone 071 96 50828 Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Thu Apr 14, tba Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar Linenhall St., Castlebar, Co. Mayo Box Office: linenhall@anu.ie or 094 90 23733 Searching For Blind Willie McTell Fri Apr 15, tba Locke Bar, Limerick The Loft at The Locke Bar, 3 Georges Quay, Limerick Box Office: 085 208 5737 tickets: €12 (concessions €10) Love Me Slender: The Genius of Early Elvis Sat Apr 16, 1pm Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Galway All enquiries: dani@galwayartscentre.ie Searching For Blind Willie McTell Sun Apr 17, 8pm Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray Main St., Bray, Co. Wicklow Box Office: 01 272 4030 or http://mermaid.ticketsolve.com/performances/all_shows Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Wed Apr 20, 7pm Cork World Book Festival Central Library, Grand Parade, Cork enquiries/tickets: 021 492 4900 or libraries@corkcity.ie or www.corklibraries.ie Love Me Slender: The Genius of Early Elvis Thu Apr 21, 8.30pm Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda Stockwell St., Drogheda, Co. Louth Box Office: in person or online at www.droicheadartscentre.com/booking or by phone 041 983 3946 Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Tue May 17, tba The Salon, Vienna details to come Special Dylan Talk: topic tba Thu May 19, 6pm University of Vienna Refractions Of Bob Dylan Conference Main Lecture Hall, Amerikahaus, Friedrich-Schmidt-Platz 2, Vienna How Did Bob Dylan’s Version Of Americanness Impact ’60s British Culture? Continue reading →

Here’s Robert Johnson then and, er, now. He’s become a non-smoker. So has everyone from Jackson Pollock to Winston Churchill. No cigar, apparently. Can Bob Dylan be far behind? See this Iconic Photos blog . Continue reading →

This item comes to me from today’s Desolation Row Newsletter, and it (ie John Baldwin) was alerted to it by reader David McBride: The cover mounted CD ’2011 For Your Pleasure’ with the latest issue of Uncut (February 2011 Issue 165 price £4.60) has as its first track Thunder on the Mountain by Wanda Jackson from her latest album ‘The Party Ain’t Over’ on Third Man Records. The detail of the track listing inside the magazine says “A perfect collaboration across the generations; the most spirited female rocker of the ’50s covering the opening track of Dylan’s ‘Modern Times’ album, produced by Jack White, who also plays blistering lead guitar over rambunctious backing from various Raconteurs and a fiery horn section”. In the album review it says “a breathless, weird, oh-so-slightly-rushed run through of Bob Dylan’s ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ recorded at Dylan’s suggestion that defies description”. In a question and answer section “Was Dylan’s ‘Thunder on the Mountainl’ a challenge to record?” she says “Yes. 11 verses! But Jack White helped me with it, to edit it down. You know that verse Bob Dylan sings about Alicia Keys? Jack had to change that to ‘Jerry Lee’.” I’d like to hear it. Continue reading →

Gerry Rafferty & producer Hugh Murphy, February 1980 photo © Michael Gray 2011 I was saddened to hear yesterday that Gerry Rafferty had died that morning. I first met him in 1977-78, that punk-dominated era, when I’d retreated from the cold of freelance writing and taken a job as press officer for United Artists Records in London. Gerry was signed to the label – after years in a contractual tangle after the demise of Stealer’s Wheel – and had recorded, very economically, the album City To City . The company decided to issue the title track as a single. It didn’t do much. I sat in the weekly marketing meeting at which we were all asked which track should be the next single. Someone suggested ‘Baker Street’. With my usual infallable finger on the pulse of popular taste, I said “No: too jazzy.” After the huge success of that record, and the album’s enormous sales around the world, Gerry found he needed a manager – but he’d been burnt by heavy American pro management in the case of Stealer’s Wheel and didn’t want that again. He just wanted someone he could trust, to stand between him and the cacophony of music-biz people wanting him to tour America, meet so-and-so, do this TV, and so on. We’d got to know each other from when he’d sat in my office answering questions for press releases and a long interview we’d constructed together for a UK tour brochure, and from coping with the odd bit of media together. I think he recognised that my fit in the biz was as awkward as his and my ardour for great records just as real – though all through the years I knew him, he always retained the artist’s wariness for the critic. At any rate, I stopped working for the record company and started working for its most mega-selling artist (involving a satisfying shift in my relations with the label’s managing director). My son Gabriel was often around in this period, spending time in the dressing room on tour, time at Gerry & his wife’s homes first in Scotland and then in Kent, always treated with great kindness by both, and enjoying the time spent with the Raffertys’ daughter Martha, who was about the same age. Gabe remembers all this with great fondness, and was deeply saddened by yesterday’s news. In some ways my job was less fun than you’d imagine, because mostly I was being asked to say “no” to everything and everyone. Gerry never would tour America, and when he and I went over there just for him to do bits of media, we stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel but declined, I was sorry to say, all invitations to celebrity Hollywood parties. In New York, we stayed at the Plaza. We crossed the Atlantic several times in the first-class cabins of aeroplanes, and one time flew both ways on Concorde. We spent weeks at George Martin’s recording studio in the West Indies and holidaying in beachside luxury on Antigua. Yet while Gerry relished all this, it was, I think, the relish of the naughty boy allowed by chance to run around some corridors of power; and besides, he retained a healthy scepticism not just about the music industry but about society, money and politics in general. His background was soaked in Scottish socialism and poverty, his mind sharp and his personality acerbic, and he wasn’t going to be dazzled by the glamour of success. There was a good deal of grass and cocaine around, but Gerry always seemed to derive more pleasure from drink. Whisky didn’t bring out the best in him, and yet it never occurred to me in all the time I knew him that he was heading for alcoholism. Maybe I should have realised, but I didn’t. I’m unsure whether he did. The second edition of my study of Dylan’s work, that time titled The Art of Bob Dylan: Song & Dance Man , came out in 1981 in the UK and 1982 in the States, and Gerry and I parted company that latter year. I went back to full-time freelance writing. We never met again. I often missed him. Last year, after reports of his illness made the papers, I was asked to write an obituary for him for The Guardian . (With people judged to be famous/important, they like to have these things ready in advance, so that they can publish promptly when death comes around.) I wrote one. It was published online last night – here – and should be in today’s paper. It ended up with a bit more about his alcoholic decline than I’d wanted, and I wish I’d been given the space to put in more of the kind of stuff I’ve written here and now – but an obituary isn’t supposed to be about its writer, and while he’ll aways be important to me, I don’t claim it was mutual. It was good at the time, though, and I’m sorry he’s gone. Continue reading →

I was interviewed on December 8 for a BBC Radio 4 programme that goes out tomorrow in the series Word of Mouth , fronted by Michael Rosen (no relation to Jeff, as far as I know). More interesting than my not especially tremendous answers to the scripted questions will be the contribution of KT Tunstall. There’s a morsel more information here , and the 30-minute programme starts at 4pm UK time (Tuesday January 4). Continue reading →

Odetta died on Decenber 2, 2008 – I reprinted an obituary of her on this blog at the time – but she would have been 80 years old tomorrow. Here’s a specially-updated version of her entry in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia : Odetta [1930 -2008] Odetta Holmes Felious Gordon was born on the last day of 1930, in Birmingham, Alabama but she grew up from the age of 6 in LA with her mother and a sister, took singing lessons at 13 studying music at City College and becoming an actress, teacher and songwriter but more significantly a singer, at first hovering between musical shows and folksong but soon plumping for the folk. She had appeared in Finian’s Rainbow through summer 1949, during which she first encountered the blues in the form of SONNY TERRY; in 1950 she was in San Francisco playing in Guys and Dolls , and there discovered the local folk scene. Her first concert, in San Francisco in 1952, co-produced by folksinger Rolf Kahn and the 18-year-old LYNN CASTNER (at whose Minneapolis apartment Dylan would first hear WOODY GUTHRIE’s records) had people queuing round the block; her New York début, achieved only by taking time off from her work as an LA housekeeper, was in 1953 at the Blue Angel. Then came a shortlived duo, Odetta and Larry, yielding her début album, The Tin Angel (the name of a Philadelphia club), recorded in 1953 and ’54, on which it’s clear that the competent Larry Mohr, on banjo and vocals, was utterly superfluous. Less was Mohr, she must have decided. In 1956 came the solo Odetta Sings Ballads & Blues , and the next year At the Gate of Horn , recorded not live at the Chicago club but in the studio, and with BILL LEE on bass. She was encouraged through the 1950s by many in the music business, especially HARRY BELAFONTE, on whose 1959 TV Special she appeared to great effect. This can be readily imagined by anyone who saw the vintage footage of Odetta performing ‘Water Boy’ shown within SCORSESE’s No Direction Home in 2005, on which the stark, ferocious power of her field-holler delivery and explosive use of the soundbox on her guitar were matched only by her terrifying teeth. This all leapt out at the viewer across a 50-year divide to explain instantaneously why Bob Dylan had found her so revelatory and important to his early entrancement with folk – and when it was new, such a performance must have exploded into Eisenhower America’s living rooms as the nightmare embodiment of the nation’s oppressed ex-slaves rising up as if to start a slaughter of revenge. But Odetta was no fieldhand, as made clear when, appearing at Belafonte’s Carnegie Hall concert of May 1960 – billed above Miriam Makeba and the Chad Mitchell Trio – she followed a medley of ‘I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain’ and ‘Water Boy’ with a double act with Belafonte on that tiresome old LEADBELLY song ‘There’s A Hole In The Bucket’, on which the timing and delivery of her spoken lines is that of a professional actress. To track back through her 1950s recordings is to recognise that despite the marvellous ferocity of ‘Water Boy’, the great majority are understandably invaded by the well-spoken gentility and concert-platform formality of musicianship that were prevalent in 1950s folk music, despite the way that both the blues and rock’n’roll had demonstrated the artistic glory to be had from abolishing these aspirations. In Minneapolis at at start of the 1960s, JAHANARA ROMNEY (aka Bonnie Beecher) told The Telegraph 30 years later, ‘Odetta was coming to town…so me and Cynthia Fisher were plotting as to how we could get Dylan to meet Odetta and play for her…And in fact he did meet her…. Cynthia Fisher came running over to my house…saying “She said that Dylan had real talent and he can make it!”’ This thrilled Dylan, keeping his determination fully charged, and encouraging his inclusion of Odetta repertoire items in his own. Years later, Dylan would specify that he had devoured Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues , her 1956 album: ‘I learned all the songs on that record,’ he said: ‘…“Mule Skinner”, “Jack of Diamonds”, “Water Boy”, “’Buked and Scorned”.’ He may also have learnt ‘Devilish Mary’, ‘Ain’t No More Cane’ and ‘No More Auction Block’ from early Odetta recordings. In 1960 she appeared at the NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL, made a flurry of albums, including Odetta at Carnegie Hall , and was an acceptable guest on Ed Sullivan’s TV show ‘Toast of the Town’ that Christmas Day – but was criticised for 1962’s Odetta and the Blues because it was ‘closer to jazz than folk’, as Time put it. This LP featured a combo of jazz musicians, including pianist Dick Wellstood, who that year also played on a couple of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan sessions. Switching labels again she made two albums for the heavyweight RCA (Belafonte’s label), the second of which, Odetta Sings Folk Songs , in 1963, made the Top 75 album charts. It included her ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ – and by 1965 she had recorded Odetta Sings Dylan . BRUCE LANGHORNE plays guitar and tambourine, and the tracks are ‘Baby, I’m In The Mood For You’, ‘Long Ago, Far Away’, ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’, ‘Tomorrow Is A Long Time’, ‘Masters Of War’, ‘Walkin’ Down The Line’, ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’, ‘With God On Our Side’, ‘Long Time Gone’ and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’: a mix of the obvious with the far from obvious, revealing that she had paid Dylan’s work, including unreleased material, close attention. Odetta has also written songs, appeared in films – including Tony Richardson’s film of the William Faulkner novel Sanctuary in 1961 and, uncredited, Paul Newman’s extravagantly titled The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972). In late September 2005 she was one of the more effective performers at the London Royal Albert Hall’s ‘Talking Bob Dylan Blues: A Tribute Concert’, no longer subduing the audience with ‘Water Boy’ but by taking ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ at a punishingly funereal pace. She died December 2, 2008, four weeks before her 78th birthday. [Odetta: The Tin Angel , US, 1954; Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, Tradition TLP1010, US, 1956; Odetta at the Gate of Horn , Tradition TLP1025, 1957; Odetta at Carnegie Hall , Amadeo Vanguard AVRS9027, US, 1960; Odetta and the Blues , Riverside RLP-9417, US, 1962; Odetta Sings Folk Songs , RCA LSP2643, 1963; Odetta Sings Dylan , RCA LSP3324, 1965. ‘Talking Bob Dylan Blues: A Tribute Concert’, London, 26 Sep 2005. Harry Belafonte: Returns to Carnegie Hall , NY 2 May, 1960, RCA LOC-6007 (mono) & LSO-6007, US, 1962. Time , US, 23 Nov 1962, quoted from www.bobdylanroots.com/odetta.html ; special thanks to Åke Holm’s amazing discography online at www.akh.se/odetta/index.htm ; both seen online 10 Feb 2006.] Continue reading →

No, not Dylan, Geldof. When Harvey Met Bob was a TV drama by Joe Dunlop shown on BBC-2 last night (9.15-10.45pm UK time) about how Bob Geldof persuaded promoter Harvey Goldsmith to help him organise Live Aid in 1985. I thought it was quite good, interesting and quaint (any drama about organising something difficult being quaint now, if it’s set in the pre-mobile phone, pre-internet world). I particularly liked the way that the story paid no attention to the US concert at all, aside from their having to change the date of the event to accommodate Bruce Springsteen, and a reference to having to put up with Philadelphia instead of New York as the American venue. Not only no mention of Dylan’s tired and emotional demeanour or his speech: no mention of him at all. My own main memory is of rushing to a London station at the last possible moment, getting a train up north and dropping in on John Bauldie at his Lancashire bungalow home. He was surprised to see me; I was surprised that he was there alone, watching Live Aid in semi-darkness. I remember our agitated anticipation as we waited boyishly for Dylan’s appearance. Some intimation of bad news hung in the air, and we steadied our nerves with much gin and tonic. Not, as it turned out, as much alcohol as the nerves of Bob, Keith and Ron had received. On they came, floundering through. I was so pleased Bob had chosen ‘When the Ship Comes In’ but there was nothing else to be pleased about. We didn’t enjoy it. I’ve never re-watched it since. Continue reading →

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I’ve been sent a really interesting response to the Mono Box Set – see first comment below – from someone who has written about Dylan in the past but no longer generally does; more important, in this context, is that he has been comparing these mono CDs to, among other things, his old mono vinyl, so it’s a careful, unrushed assessment. It strikes me as fair but not entirely positive. See what you think. But also, see if you can find the long, fascinating interview that Roger Ford conducted in ISIS no.153 (November-December 2010) with the main men who put the box set together, Steve Berowitz and Mark Wilder – which shows just how very much effort they put into trying to get it all as correct as possible, how scrupulous they were and how many difficulties stood in their way. (In the same issue there’s Roger Ford’s own appraisal of the albums too.) All feedback gratefully received. Continue reading →

I know there’s no real Dylan connection here but I’m saddened to have learnt a few minutes ago of Captain Beefheart’s death yesterday. He was an extraordinary artist by any standards, and also a major figure in the career of Frank Zappa. See www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/arts/music/18beefheart.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 Continue reading →

I’ve been sent this short blurb about a radio programme coming up next Tuesday. I’ve never heard him called “the fifth Beatle”, and I’m not sure that claiming he “collaborated with Bob Dylan” isn’t a slight stretch too, but still: Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It Tuesday 21 December 1:30pm – 2:00pm BBC Radio 4 Rick Wakeman explores the life and music of fellow keyboard player Billy Preston, the so-called fifth Beatle, who collaborated with some of the biggest names in pop, including Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton and Aretha Franklin. Featuring contributions by Jools Holland, Bill Wyman and Pete Townshend, this documentary also explores the secret that Preston spent his life suppressing – one that his former manager Joyce Moore believes fuelled his personal problems. Continue reading →

I see that Bob Dylan’s Bob’s handwritten lyrics to ‘The Times They Are Changin” have been sold to a hedger fun manager at a Sotheby’s auction for well over $300,000. The buyer also owns, it says here, the guitar John Lennon was carrying when he first met Paul McCartney: http://tinyurl.com/3xnucgn The weird thing about this report is that while it says these handwritten lyrics were “originally owned” by Dylan’s early friend Kevin Krown, it doesn’t say who owned them subsequently and sold them at the auction. Continue reading →

… would have been today. Here’s his entry in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (a book that makes an ideal Christmas gift, if I may say so…): Hammond, John [1910 - 1987] John Henry Hammond Jr. was born into a branch of the Vanderbilt family in New York City on December 15, 1910, attended Yale and the Juilliard school of music. He gave up classical music in order to pursue his enthusiasm for jazz (which he discovered in the city’s clubs as an adolescent) and black popular music. He wrote music criticism and journalism for Down Beat and the British papers Melody Maker and The Gramophone , wrote widely on race relations in the US and even became a vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. His family money financed his further career as an impresario: he owned a theatre at which he presented black acts, and he pioneered integrated touring and recording sessions. (As PETE SEEGER once said, ‘Jazz became integrated 10 years before baseball largely because of John Hammond.’) His career as a promoter of talent and as a record producer stretched from the 1930s to the 1980s and the list of greats he discovered or brought into the studio was phenomenal. He worked in executive positions for several labels, though most notably for Columbia Records, for whom he produced artists from Bessie Smith to Bob Dylan. He discovered and/or brought studio opportunities to Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Meade Lux Lewis, Teddy Wilson and Lester Young and many other jazz artists, and in 1938 and 1939 Hammond financed and promoted the now-famous ‘From Spirituals to Swing’ concerts at Carnegie Hall – bringing a wide range of black music to Manhattan’s swankiest venue – and featuring many of the above, plus Benny Goodman, BIG BILL BROONZY and SONNY TERRY. He wanted to include ROBERT JOHNSON at the first of these concerts and sent for him, not knowing that Johnson had been murdered shortly beforehand. Hammond served in the US Army in World War II, returning to the musical fray as soon as possible. But when swing gave way to bebop, Hammond, who didn’t understand the latter, switched his attention more towards blues and pop. Just as many of the earlier jazz names he had espoused were unknowns when he latched onto them, so too he followed only his own instincts in the post-war era, in which he signed, among others, the important Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji (Hammond produced his ground-breaking first album, Drums of Passion , released in 1959 and still selling today), Big Joe Turner, Pete Seeger, Aretha Franklin, MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD, LEONARD COHEN and BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, and had a significant hand in opening the careers of George Benson and STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN (his last signing). Hammond had the decency and belief to produce the 1965 album by the fragile but giant figure SON HOUSE that yielded at least one invaluable addition to his canon, the exquisite ‘Pearline’, and in 1962 it was also Hammond who, returning his attention to one of House’s pupils, compiled and released on Columbia the hugely influential LP of Robert Johnson’s work Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues Singers . In 1961 Hammond signed Bob Dylan to Columbia, and then produced his first and second albums. Indeed after the poor sales of the first album, Dylan was known around the Columbia building as ‘Hammond’s folly’. On September 10, 1975, it was in Hammond’s presence at the recording of the tribute TV show ‘The World of John Hammond’ that Dylan delivered the first public performances of ‘Hurricane’, ‘Oh Sister’ and ‘Simple Twist of Fate’, from his then-forthcoming album Desire . No-one except DAVE VAN RONK receives more a more respectful write-up in Dylan’s 2004 memoir Chronicles Volume One than John Hammond. Dylan appreciates not only the man’s straightforwardness and seriousness of purpose, his depth of knowledge and his insight into the very young Dylan’s potential, but also makes the specific point that when Hammond gave him a pre-release copy of King of the Delta Blues Singers this had ramifications for his own development as a writer: ‘If I hadn’t heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down – that I wouldn’t have felt free enough or upraised enough to write.’ Returning to the more general, Dylan says of Hammond that men like him ‘came from an older world, a more ancient order…. They knew where they belonged and they had guts to back up whatever their beliefs were. You didn’t want to let them down.’ John Hammond died, from complications following several strokes, on July 10, 1987, at the age of 76. [Seeger quote seen online 5 Jan 2006 at www.rockhall.com/hof/inductee.asp?id=117. Bob Dylan: ‘Hurricane’ (1 st take, uncirculated), ‘Oh Sister’, ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ & ‘Hurricane’, WTTW-TV, NY, 10 Sep 1975, broadcast ‘The World of John Hammond’, PBS-TV, 13 Dec 1975; Dylan quotes, Chronicles Volume One , pp. 287-288 & 288-289.] Continue reading →

A couple more dates have been confirmed now, and a bit more info on a couple of the others, so the list is now like this (new info is asterisked; whole new date added is double-asterisked and all in bold): Thu Feb 17, 5pm Liverpool University School of the Arts Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Tue Feb 22, tba Saratoga CA: West Valley College Searching For Blind Willie McTell Wed Feb 23, 7pm* Stockton CA: University of the Pacific, Janet Leigh Theatre* Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Thu Feb 24, tba Stanford CA: Stanford University English Department Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Thu Mar 24, tba Tuscaloosa AL: University of Alabama New College Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Tue Mar 29, tba Georgia Southern University Compressed Version of Winterlude Weekend Wed Mar 30, 4pm* Athens GA: University of Georgia, 101 Miller Learning Center* Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Thu Mar 31, 3.30pm* Athens GA: University of Georgia, 247 Miller Learning Center* Searching For Blind Willie McTell Sun April 3, 2pm Highland Park NJ: Nighthawk Books Bob Dylan & Beyond: A Journey Among Geniuses of American Music **Mon April 4, 4.30pm New London, CT: Connecticut College English Dept. Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Wed April 6, 6.30pm NYC: The New School Searching For Blind Willie McTell Sat April 9, tba Newbridge, Ireland: Riverbank Arts Centre Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Tues April 12, tba Athlone, Ireland: Passionfruit Theatre Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Wed April 13, tba Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland: The Dock Arts Centre Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Thu April 14, tba Castlebar, Ireland: Linenhall Arts Centre topic not yet selected Fri April 15, tba Limerick, Ireland: The Loft, The Locke Bar Love Me Slender: The Genius Of Early Elvis Sat April 16, 1pm Galway, Ireland: Cúirt International Festival of Literature Searching For Blind Willie McTell **Sun April 17, tba Bray, Ireland: Mermaid Arts Centre Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Wed April 20, 7pm Cork, Ireland: Cork World Book Festival Love Me Slender: The Genius Of Early Elvis Thu April 21, 8.30pm Drogheda, Ireland: Droichead Arts Centre Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues Thu-Sat May 19-21, tba Vienna: Bob Dylan Conference How did Bob Dylan’s version of Americanness impact 1960s’ British culture? Continue reading →

Woody sez why does everything have to end up as a musical? Continue reading →

First I’d like to thank the person who has posted a generous number of comments (attached to several different posts) about the rich array of poetry and folksong from which Dylan may have derived the “yellow hair” he gives himself in the magnificent ‘Angelina’. Really interesting stuff, so thank you. Second, today it is 30 years since John Lennon died in New York City. Third, it is 65 years since the death in Chicago, at age 53, of Richard Jones, pianist and composer of one of the greatest songs I think has ever been written: the numinous, rich yet simple ‘Trouble In Mind’. (Not the Dylan b-side.) I’ve loved this song ever since hearing it by the Everly Brothers when I was about 15, long before I knew anything about the pre-war blues. And when it arrives unbidden as an earworm, it’s always welcome. Fourth, tomorrow Joan Armatrading, who was a support to Bob Dylan at Blackbushe back in 1978, will be 60 years old. I still like her stuff too. Continue reading →

If anyone tries to contact me via bobdylan.com they’ll fail. When I used to use Internet Explorer I couldn’t get the revamped website to load at all – no trouble with any other website (or the original version of bobdylan.com) but never any success with that one. Since I switched to Mozilla Firefox I can access the site but cannot log in to get “private messages”. Even though it sends me a daily e-mail telling me I have “private messages”, if I try to log in it tells me that the same e-mail address isn’t valid – and doesn’t give me the usual “forgotten your password?” option. I’ve consulted Dan Levy on the matter, and he’s been helpful, but he’s battling with website machinery he inherited from other people now that he’s been brought back in to run things after that daft period when they dispensed with his services to revamp the site, largely by making it far more corporate and unpleasant. So there it is. I’m a stranger in the strange land of bobdylan.com. Someone in there who can log in, apparently, has the username Gypsy Daisy – and the other day “The Bob Dylan Team” e-mailed (to my “invalid” e-address) to report that “Michael Gray’s friend relationship to GypsyDaisy has been removed by GypsyDaisy.” No wonder. Sorry, Gypsy, whoever you are. Continue reading →

I’m pleased to have added more dates to my spring tour of Dylan/McTell/Presley dates. The updated confirmed (though not finalised) list, with new information asterisked, is: FEB 17 Liverpool University School of the Arts Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues *FEB 22 West Valley College, Saratoga CA Searching For Blind Willie McTell *FEB 23 University of the Pacific, Stockton CA Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues * FEB 24 Stanford University, Stanford CA Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues MAR 24 University of Alabama New College, Tuscaloosa AL Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues *MAR 29 Georgia Southern University, Statesboro Compressed Dylan Discussion Weekend, with dinner MAR 30 University of Georgia, Athens GA Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues MAR 31 University of Georgia, Athens GA Searching For Blind Willie McTell *APR 3 Nighthawk Books, Highland Park NJ Bob Dylan & Blind Willie McTell APR 6 The New School, New York City NY Searching For Blind Willie McTell APR 9 Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Ireland Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues APR 12 Passionfruit Theatre, Athlone, Ireland Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues APR 13 The Dock Arts Centre, Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues APR 14 Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Ireland topic not yet decided APR 15 The Loft, The Locke Bar, Limerick, Ireland Love Me Slender: the Genius of Early Elvis APR 16 Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Galway, Ireland Searching For Blind Willie McTell APR 20 Cork World Book Fair, Cork, Ireland Love Me Slender: the Genius of Early Elvis APR 21 Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda, Ireland Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues MAY 19/21 University of Vienna Bob Dylan Conference , Austria How did Bob Dylan’s version of Americanness impact British culture? Continue reading →

Brownie McGhee was born in Knoxville Tennessee 95 years ago tomorrow. Here’s his entry in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia : McGhee, Brownie [1915 - 1996] Walter Brown McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on November 30, 1915. He was the older and smoother brother of Granville Sticks McGhee, composer of ‘Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee’, with whom Brownie played in New York in the early 1940s, and on whose brother’s huge hit record of 1949 Brownie too played and sang. He learnt ukelele, 5-string banjo, piano and guitar but concentrated on guitar, met harmonica-player SONNY TERRY in 1939 and off and on worked with him for 40 years thereafter. McGhee first recorded in August 1940 in Chicago (his début track was ‘Pickin’ My Tomatoes’), and being an exemplar of the Piedmont blues school (if, in fact, there ever was such a thing) he was promoted as the successor to BLIND BOY FULLER, with whom he and Sonny Terry had both worked shortly before Fuller’s death. He made one gospel session in 1941 – as it happens, the day before Bob Dylan was born – billed as Brother George and his Sanctified Singers and he was recorded for the Library of Congress in 1942. With and without Sonny, Brownie recorded for Folkways from the mid-1940s till the late 1950s (though moonlighting under pseudonyms for many other labels) and the two became an omnipresent part of the folk revival and blues revival scene in New York City (McGhee had even played on the soundtrack of Elia Kazan’s 1957 film A Face in the Crowd , and both would do more filmwork later). By the time Bob Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village they were perhaps the world’s best-known still-active blues artists. McGhee’s Leroy Carr-inspired ‘In the Evening’ was in Dylan’s repertoire by the time he went back to Minneapolis in December 1961 to show his old friends there his greatly-improved skills and knowledge. Dylan mentions Sonny & Brownie alongside THE BEATS and the jazz musicians when listing, in the Biograph box-set interview of 1985, the constituent parts of the underground, bohemian scene that he found and tagged onto just before it was too late. But as Tony Russell sums it up, ‘They were around for so long that they began to be overlooked or underestimated. Their blues stories, once new and fascinating, were still worth listening to but they had told them too often and like pub bores they…lost their audience. Still, for a generation they had been despatch riders of the blues…’ Sonny & Brownie, as it was sufficient to call them, played all through the 1960s and survived beyond them, recording, in 1973, a ‘contemporary’ album (itself just called Sonny & Brownie ) on which they were joined by CLYDIE KING, Don ‘Sugarcane’ Harris, JOHN MAYALL and even (on a cover of Randy Newman’s splendid song ‘Sail Away’) ARLO GUTHRIE and included versions of ‘People Get Ready’ and SAM COOKE’s ‘Bring It On Home To Me’. By this point, though, the two could hardly stand each other though their duo continued until 1982, after which McGhee recorded with the inferior harp player Sugar Blue. He long outlived his ex-partner and died of cancer in Oakland, California on February 16, 1996, aged 80. Continue reading →