Author archive: Michael Gray

A New York Times report (http://tinyurl.com/26w8oz9) about the 50th anniversary of Arhoolie Records, mentions in passing a surprising (at least to me) but rather pleasing aspect of Dylan’s interaction with the blues: “To commemorate its 50th anniversary, Arhoolie is about to release a four-CD collection of songs, ranging in style from the blues of Jesse Fuller to the free jazz of Sonny Simmons, that Mr. Strachwitz recorded between 1954 and 1970 in the San Francisco Bay area. Called “Hear Me Howling: Blues, Ballads & Beyond,” the package also includes a 136-page book that tells the history of the label; the set will be available for purchase at the company’s Web site, arhoolie.com , beginning next week and from music stores early in 2011… For a generation of folk- and blues-inspired performers, from Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones to Bonnie Raitt and T-Bone Burnett, Arhoolie has been a lodestone. In his autobiographical “Chronicles Vol. I,” Mr. Dylan, a member of the advisory board of the nonprofit Arhoolie Foundation , [ my emphasis ] credits the label as being the place ‘where I first heard Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Charlie Patton and Tommy Johnson.’ ” Continue reading →

The list of tour dates is growing all the time, so this is the up-to-date but unfinished list of events already clinched: FEB 17 Liverpool University School of the Arts Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues MAR 24 University of Alabama New College, Tuscaloosa AL Bob Dylan & The Poetry of the Blues 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 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 →

I’m working on building a new tour of my own performances – mostly on Bob Dylan, some on Blind Willie McTell and a couple on Elvis Presley. These will be mostly in the US and Ireland, from late March through till late April. They’ll all include audio and visuals and they’ll be… Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues Searching For Blind Willie McTell: A Biographer in the South and Love Me Slender: the Genius of Early Elvis (& the Myth that he Ripped Off Black Music) Dates will be listed soon, and then more details later , when tickets go on sale. If you see me, say hello. Continue reading →

Heavy snow fall caused more than 400 traffic accidents in Minnesota Saturday, as drivers battled early wintry conditions. The storm… came in late Friday night. Several inches of snow were dumped in Minneapolis. Scientists say to expect El Nino winter weather . Continue reading →

I see that Bob was in concert last night in the Stabler Arena, Bethlehem (PA). Can’t help but wonder if there was straw on the floor and frankincense during the encore. Yesterday, with mild existential serendipity, was the anniversary of both the birth of Screaming Lord Sutch (1940) and the death of Richard Lord Buckley (1960). There’s an entry on the latter, but not the former, in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia . It ends like this: “…Dylan once called him, rather grandly, ‘the fuel to my success’. Lord Buckley died in Columbus Hospital, New York, on November 12, 1960, probably from a stroke. He sounded about a hundred years old but he was only 54. His death certificate nonetheless read ‘natural causes’. His ashes were scattered in Red Rock Canyon, just west of Las Vegas.” And earlier in the entry, writing of Bob Dylan’s early recording of Buckley’s ‘Black Cross’ (written by Joseph S. Newman, uncle of actor Paul Newman), I have this to say: “He comes to ‘Black Cross’ very early on, performing it at his first concert – at the Carnegie Chapter Hall in New York City on November 4, 1961; recording it on the December 22, 1961 tape made privately back in Minnesota a month after he’d recorded his début album in New York, and performing the song again in 1962 at the Gaslight – it is, unfortunately, one of the numbers omitted from the official release Live at the Gaslight (2005), though it has circulated. The Minnesota recording is simply great. He took it from Lord Buckley, but incontestably he made it his own. No-one in the world can deliver a talking song or a half-talking song as Bob Dylan can. It’s a facet of his genius that he has remained in full control of, and it’s certainly evident when he produces the perfect mimickry of the white voices and the black voice on ‘Black Cross’: not just a mastery but his audible joy in exercising it: a generous, sharing joy.” Continue reading →

Rebecca Ferguson sang ‘To Make You Feel My Love’ on X-Factor last night – so well as to redeem the song. The detailing in her voice and delivery, her discretion and judgment in handling the dodgiest phrases in the lyric are a delight and a lesson to everyone else who’s sung it. The first time the awful title line comes around, she sings “my love” – not “ma lurve” – with ineffable modesty. The vainglorious boasting of “you ain’t seen nothing like me yet” and the hollow, lazy bathos of “No there’s nothin’ that I wouldn’t do” are both made close to acceptable by an understatement that manages to claim back some rectitude that the song never had in the first place. And then – and yet – there’s the sheer imaginative freedom she lets loose at other moments – as when her voice soars joyously on “blue”, yielding a thrill of surprise and bringing inventive complexities of meaning to the phrase “black and blue”. It’s all soulful, heartfelt and disarming, with an utter lack of hamminess and an unwavering attentiveness. There are very few times when I prefer to hear someone else’s version of a Dylan song. Despite the overblown, glutinous X-Factor setting, this is one of them: Continue reading →

Today is the 5th anniversary of the death of Link Wray . He died from heart failure at home in Copenhagen. He was 76. ‘Rumble’, his first record, was his biggest hit and a strong influence on a generation or two of musicians. It was released on the Cadence label – the small label run by Archie Bleyer that was also responsible for the early Everly Brothers records. Wray was born in Dunn, North Carolina and grew up there and then in Norfolk Virginia. He had four wives and nine children. Wikipedia’s Link Wray page is excellent. The photo above (photographer unknown) was given to me by Rob Stoner for use in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia and shows Stoner, Link Wray, Robert Gordon and Anton Fig. (The photo wasn’t used in the end; I used one of Stoner as a child, taken by his father, of Rob sitting on Trigger with Roy Rogers.) About Rory Gallagher : sometimes people come to this site by finding something in its Archives, and so if they then leave a Comment, it’s automatically glued to the bottom of the archived posting – which means that even though the Comment is new, no-one looking at the new posts sees it. So this is just to say that several interesting Comments about Rory Gallagher and Dylan have arrived in the last two or three days. Worth searching back to find them. Continue reading →

Above: Dylan’s staircase painting; below: Staircase painting by Marie Jaouan (date unknown). You can see more of Marie Jaouan’s paintings and pastels at http://mariejaouan.free.fr Continue reading →

British beer mat from the 1980s, the flipside of which advertises Tetley’s Mild Continue reading →

Thanks to today’s Desolation Row Information Service e-newsletter, I learn, albeit belately, that there’s an exhibition of photographs by Don Hunstein on show at the Proud Gallery Chelsea in London till November 21st. The galle ry’s own rather quaint blurb runs like this: Widely considered to be one of the most influential figures of the 20 th century, Bob Dylan is an icon. This Autumn, Proud Chelsea presents ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’, a photographic portrait by legendary rock n’ roll photographer Don Hunstein, who worked closely with Dylan in the early 1960s whilst his star was in the ascent. The result is an intimate and touching body of work which includes the legendary ‘The Freewheelin’ (1963) album cover image which brought Dylan international fame and launched his career. The exhibition includes images of Dylan recording ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ which is considered to be the best and most important of his albums including the tracks ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Desolation Row’; as well as images of Dylan rehearsing for concerts and in repose. Hunstein’s images capture the young Dylan and his intrepid spirit of counter-culture which resonated the world over. Working as a photographer for Columbia Records, Hunstein has photographed Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Simon & Garfunkel and, of course, Bob Dylan Exclusively showing at Proud Chelsea, this exhibition of Hunstein’s work is a must see for Dylan fans and photography fans alike. The Chelsea Gallery is at 161 King’s Road, London SW3 5XP. Opening times 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday. Admission free. Telephone 0207 349 0822 (+44 207 349 0822 from outside UK). Don Hunstein, a straightforward and accessible man, has this brief entry in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia: Hunstein, Don [1928 - ] Donald Robert Hunstein was born in St. Louis, Missouri on November 19, 1928, studied liberal arts at Washington University there, and then, fearful of army call-up to fight in Korea, enlisted in the US Air Force instead. His squadron was sent to England, and visiting Paris he discovered the work of Cartier-Bresson, which prompted his career in photography. Discharged in spring 1954, within months he moved to New York City, where he learnt the business as a Pagano studio gofer, after which work for another photographer led to a Columbia Records publicity department job in January 1956. So it came about that he was the staff photographer who took the cover shot for Bob Dylan and, more famously, the iconic cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan . This was taken after an amiable session, mostly on black and white film, in Dylan’s West 4th Street apartment with and without SUZE ROTOLO, arranged by publicist Billy James (who was also present), so as to build up Columbia’s stock of photos of an artist rapidly becoming ‘hot’. As the light was threatening to fade, Hunstein suggested trying some shots in the street, with happy results, taken on one roll of colour film on a Hasselblad. Hunstein is certain, despite other claims, that his back was to West 4th Street and Dylan’s apartment as he took the shot, and that Bob and Suze are walking down Cornelia Street. * Don Hunstein took his last Dylan shots in 1965: lovely shots at the piano. He ran the photographic studio Columbia created in 1966, until it closed in 1982; after four years of corporate work for CBS he went freelance. He has not ‘gone digital’ and now, at 77, he is ‘somewhat more than semi-retired’. [Source: Don Hunstein, phone calls from & to this writer 13 Mar 2006.] * His recollection of which street it was has been widely challenged. I can’t now recall whether anyone has proved him wrong beyond any inkling of doubt. Continue reading →

Here is a review by one Jason Hartley of Decatur Georgia of a recent – and his first – Dylan concert. It’s full of dubious special pleading but so charmingly and (a)cutely done that I couldn’t help enjoying it, envying his relish of the concert and wishing I could hear current Bob that way too. Thanks to reader Yvonne C for passing this along: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/33387/this-week-in-advancement-bob-dylan/ Continue reading →

Left to right: drummer D.J. Fontana, Scotty Moore, Bill Black & Elvis, Las Vegas, May 4 1956. Bill Black, the upright bass player on Elvis Presley’s immortal Sun recordings and beyond, and on Presley’s early shows, died 45 years ago yesterday – 1965 – at the shockingly young age of 39, from a brain tumour. Bill Black and guitarist Scotty Moore worked with Elvis till September 1957 and Black continued to record with him until 1958, becoming one of the first bass players in rock to use a Fender Precision Bass, on Presley’s 1958 classic ‘Jailhouse Rock’. He formed Bill Black’s Combo the following year and had several hits, including a revival of ‘Don’t Be Cruel’. In 1964 they became the opening act for the Beatles on their first tour of America after an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show – though by this time Bill himself was too ill to go on the road with his group. Paul McCartney now owns Bill’s stand-up bass. OK, none of this has anything directly to do with Bob Dylan. Except of course that without that Sun studio, where Bob eventually got down and kissed the floor in homage… Continue reading →

A couple of people have responded on the matter of the Sundazed (in particular) and vinyl (in general) versus Bob’s new mono CDs (in particular) and digital (in general); see the Comments under the previous post. But I hope more people will contribute here, especially if they Know About Sound. For me it was a pleasure to read someone writing unequivocally that 1960s vinyl sounds better than anything that’s come along since. But is it true?… Certainly I remember the first time I ever heard a CD it was blaring out of a hi-fi shop as I was walking past – and it sounded mind-blowingly fantastic (even though it was Simon & Garfunkel). This was partly because of the then-eerie lack of any hiss or crackle, but it was probably mostly because they were playing it on mega-expensive equipment of an unattainable nature. Then further down the line I read that engineers were building a bit of hiss back into CDs because the music sounded funkier that way… and certainly when I played Bob’s ‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’ directly from one of the Great White Wonder LPs to some Dylan Discussion Weekenders last month, the noise that rose up with the music produced a certain fond amusement. I may well have said all this before, but if I had money, my sound system of choice would be a shockingly pricey turntable and two mono valve amps in sync for stereo, linked to excellent speakers. The change from valves to transistors was for cheapness’ sake, and sold on its convenience – transistor radios on the beach – not for anything to do with sound quality. As for digital, well, I don’t know enough about it. Maybe you do… Continue reading →

though as several people point out, the Sundazed vinyl has the best sound… Continue reading →

There’s an interview with Sean Wilentz by David Hepworth offered as a podcast by Word magazine here . In it, Wilentz is asked about the writing of his chapter about Blind Willie McTell. He says “I was helped a lot by a wonderful biography by Michael Gray, Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes .” OK Geoff? Continue reading →

Tonight’s competitors performed material supposedly by their music heroes. Nobody claimed Bob Dylan as one. I’m just saying. However, I’m told that on Saturday evening they used a version of ‘To Make You Feel My Lurve’ on Strictly Come Dancing . This song really has found its own level… No: I don’t watch it. Never have, never will. The trailers told me all I needed to know. I’m just saying. Continue reading →

Tonight’s competitors performed material supposedly by their music heroes. Nobody claimed Bob Dylan as one. I’m just saying. Continue reading →

I’m pleased to report that, albeit two months late, the 2010 ARSC Awards have been announced, and in the Blues Etc category, while I wasn’t the winner, I was awarded one of the two Certificates of Merit, for Hand Me My Travlein’ Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell . The press release, received this morning, begins like this: The Association for Recorded Sound Collections is pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. Begun in 1991, the awards are presented to authors and publishers of books, articles, liner notes, and monographs, to recognize outstanding published research in the field of recorded sound. In giving these awards, ARSC recognizes outstanding contributions, encourages high standards, and promotes awareness of superior works. Two awards may presented annually in each category—one for best history and one for best discography. Certificates of Merit are presented to runners-up of exceptionally high quality. The 2010 Awards for Excellence honor works published in 2009. BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED BLUES, RHYTHM & BLUES, or SOUL MUSIC Best Discography: Chuck Berry International Directory , by Morten Reff (Music Mentor) Certificates of Merit: Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues , by William Ferris (University of North Carolina Press) Hand Me Down My Travelin’ Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell , by Michael Gray (Chicago Review Press). This would be more pleasing if they had troubled to get the name of my book right. Continue reading →

I only learnt yesterday that Larry Fabbro had died. My copy of the UK-based ISIS fanzine always arrives late here in France, and it gave me the sad news that Larry had died unexpectedly this August 25, aged 69, in Pontiac MI. Lawrence L Fabbro was one of Bobby Zimmerman’s fellow students at Hibbing High and played guitar in Bob’s first Hibbing group, the Shadow Blasters (as the wider world first learnt from Dave Engel’s excellent book Just Like Bob Zimmerman’s Blues: Dylan in Minnesota , 1997). Bob’s girlfriend Echo Helstrom wrote in Larry’s high school yearbook that she really liked the way he played guitar, though he was only learning the instrument as he went along, having played the trumpet till he helped form Bob’s group.* News of Larry’s death saddens me in particular because on my own first visit to Hibbing, in 1998, it was Larry who showed me around the town and drove me in his car out to North Hibbing in the snow and pointed out its remaining traces, reading them almost like an archaeologist who’d known the place in a previous life. Dave Engel tells me that Larry was also one of the first to be helpful to him when he started researching his book. When I returned to Hibbing a second time, in 2001, to give a talk at the public library, Larry and his then partner Deborah Irish were among those who bought a copy of Song & Dance Man III – they were living on Hibbing’s 3rd Avenue East at the time – and Larry hung back at the end of the event till others had finished talking to me, to take me for a drink. He was a gracious guide and a thoughtful, loyal old friend to Bob, and he made no attempt to claim any relevance of his own to the later Dylan. * Dave Engel’s book is long out of print, but there’s a short account, titled Hibbing rock’n'rollers , drawn largely from his research, in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia . Continue reading →

The group Old 97 have a song called ‘Champaign, Illinois’. It has nothing to do with the Bob Dylan-Carl Perkins song of that name – but obviously its melody is entirely to do with Bob’s ‘Desolation Row’. I’m told he’s been given a share of the writing credits. Sometimes he’s that scrupulous himself. Continue reading →

This review of Duane Eddy’s concert at the Royal Festival Hall a couple of days ago may be of interest to some of this blog’s readership (those of a certain age, like me): Reviewed by Pierre Perrone, The Independent Thursday, 7 October 2010 His 1959 debut might have been called Have ‘Twangy’ Guitar Will Travel, but the legendary Duane Eddy hadn’t graced a British stage since a tour with the Everly Brothers in 1991. All dressed in black, including an immovable Stetson, and playing his beautiful Gretsch signature guitar, Eddy rolled back the years from the off with “Detour” and his debut hit, “Moovin’N'Groovin”. Backed by Richard Hawley’s excellent band and a very adept saxophone player, he re-created his run of instrumental hits that are so evocative of the late Fifties and early Sixties. Eddy and his co-writer and producer, the late Lee Hazlewood, had a way with a title – cue “Cannonball” and the even snappier “Yep!” and “Shazam!” – and moved the guitar on from Les Paul’s clean sound to a meaner, leaner rock’n'roll style. “3.30 Blues” and support act Pete Molinari singing the country standard “Tennessee Waltz” provided just the right change of mood and tempo, though they were soon eclipsed by two female vocalists who added a bit of oomph! and ooh la la! to “Dance with the Guitar Man” and “Play Me Like You Play Your Guitar”. Most endearing was the obvious bond between Eddy and Hawley as the Sheffield indie crooner guested on sepulchral versions of Hazlewood’s “The Girl on Death Row” and “Still As the Night”. It all ended with the humungous riff of “Peter Gunn”, the irresistible track Eddy re-recorded with the Art of Noise in the mid-Eighties, and an appropriately riotous “Rebel Rouser”. The guitarist’s guitarist is now 72 and dropped two songs from the set but, as they shuffled along to “Hard Times”, the sole encore, his devoted fans, some of whom had travelled from as far afield as Italy, didn’t seem to mind. Five decades on, Eddy is still twangin’ up a storm. Duane Eddy, Richard Hawley, Jarvis Cocker and Ellie Goulding play Tennessee Comes to Town at the Clapham Grand, London SW11 (020 7223 6523) tonight Continue reading →

Janis Joplin died 40 years ago. She co-wrote her well-known song ‘Mercedes Benz’ with Dylan’s old associate Bob Neuwirth. As I wrote in the entry on the latter (there is no entry on Ms Joplin) “Dylan’s memoir Chronicles Volume One … gives a vivid description of Neuwirth’s spiky character, without managing to explain what he liked about a man who seems to so many the archetypal snivelling sidekick, stroking Dylan’s ego all through Don’t Look Back while kicking and belittling everyone else around – as when he says of JOAN BAEZ, right in front of her, ‘Hey, she has one of those see-through blouses that you don’t even wanna’ – and generally game-playing, suffused with the vicarious power of being Bob’s friend, a position he first assumed in February 1964…” On the cover of Highway 61 Revisited , Neuwirth’s “are the legs standing behind motorbike-persona Dylan, his black-jeaned crotch just off to one side of Dylan’s head, while his fist, thumb in pocket, holds a dangling camera on a strap. Those legs have always contributed a very, very slight hint of Warholian arty eroticism to the photo…” A decade later, “there was no getting away from Bob Neuwirth in the film Renaldo & Clara , and in the concert footage, he’s the one mugging the bulbous-eyed faces and, in David Faciane’s happy phrase, ‘jumping around like he had to go to the bathroom’.” The entry concludes: “In the 2000s [Neuwirth] has co-produced Down from the Mountain , the D.A. Pennebaker film about the musicians who contributed to the hit movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? , and performed Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s trademark song ‘I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground’ at the ‘HARRY SMITH Concerts’ in New York and London in 2004. “Yet whatever else he does, Bob Neuwirth will always be Robin to Dylan’s Batman (or to put it another way, always batman to Bob). He is therefore also an interviewee in Scorsese’s No Direction Home ; by the time of this filming he had grown quieter, dessicated and slightly camp; but he remained articulate and gave illuminating testimony, as for instance when recalling that on the Village scene in the early 1960s, a key question always asked about any performer, even a musician who never used words, was ‘Does he have anything to say?’ In Dylan’s case, of course, the answer had been an emphatic ‘Yes’. In Neuwirth’s case, it had probably been ‘Neu’.” Continue reading →

I very much like this, from the Barack Obama interview in the current Rolling Stone : Q: You had Bob Dylan here. How did that go? A: Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that. He came in and played “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. Continue reading →

Following our Winterludes , Summer Days and Slowly Into Autumn Weekends, we’re pleased to announce a range of New Winterlude Weekends for this coming November. Arrive on a Friday, stay till the Sunday and enjoy a winterlude of great food and Bob Dylan Discussion here at our house in southwest France, 40-odd miles from the Pyrenees and the Spanish border. The house, an 1870s maison bourgeois, lies on the edge of a small village in deep countryside but within easy access of airports and train stations. These weekend breaks are limited to a maximum of six guests each time. Meals, with good local wines, are provided by Sarah and taken communally. Every guest bedroom is en suite. See the New Winterlude Weekends webpage for full details. Act now! Continue reading →

Many of us felt that ‘To Make You Feel My Love’ was one of the dreariest, most calculatedly commercial, no-other-raison-d’etre songs Bob Dylan had ever offered: a song as glutinous and abjectly Tin Pan Alley as, say, ‘Feelings’, ‘People Who Need People’ or ‘If I Ruled The World’. Then it was a huge countryish hit by Garth Brooks and widely covered by others. Along came British singer Adele and had another hit with it. This is hers: Ever since, the song has been spreading across musical genres like a species-hopping virus. Strange but true, it seems more plausible as a soul/R&B song than as any other kind, and it’s been more interesting to see how readily black British performers and listeners have taken to it than it’s ever been to hear. Now on the list of songs current X Factor contestants could choose to perform to Simon Cowell and his co-judges at the end of so-called Boot Camp, Cowell has been obliged to listen to innumerable versions of it. Does he even know it’s a Dylan song? At any rate it’s the Dylan song he deserves. Of course its composer would never have got through the first round of the contest. Not even if he’d sung ‘To Make You Feel My Lurve’. Continue reading →