Dylan records a half-hour program as part of the CBC-TV series “Quest.” The half a dozen songs he sings-“Talkin’ World War III Blues,” “Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “Girl from the North Country,” “The Times They Are a-Chang in’,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” and “Restless Farewell”-are all performed within the most incongruous of settings, a log cabin filled with working men pretending to pay attention.
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995
CBC TV Studios
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
1 February 1964
Produced by Daryl Duke.
- The Times They Are A-Changin’
- Talking World War III Blues
- The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
- Girl From The North Country
- A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
- Restless Farewell
Check out:
-Egil
HPB you should listen to Halligier (sp) ; he is someone who really knows the winds around Bob ! The fact is Bob ‘s voice is changed from softer to more bluesy to edgy rock , whenever he chooses . He has grown & changed as an artist , songwriter / singer in unfathomly limits .
Also when he sang, “Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, “I knew those winds, I knew that borderline. The summer before I worked in a northern bush camp with the same type of faces sitting around the set in the film.
And I must also add, when he sang about the girl from the North Country, “with her hair hanging long, ” I had a yearning for a certain girl who lived north of town, with hair hanging long. From out of the blue, for me watching that program was a WTF ? experience . The girl from the North Country, with her hair hanging long is still by my side.
See how he used to really SING? Now he sounds like a frog!!!
You obviously haven’t listened to his latest album, or attended one of his latest concerts. His voice is fantastic these days!
I have to disagree with English author Clinton Heylin in his Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995 that this is “the most incongruous of settings, a log cabin filled with working men pretending to pay attention.”
Heylin, not being from the country that they called the Midwest, doesn’t have a reference for the cabin depicted in this great 1960’s video.
The Country that I come from is also called the Midwest, as I was raised in Wisconsin and we took many vacations in the early 60’s in Northern Wisconsin, in Upper Michigan, and in Northern Minnesota. Up in that forested wild country it was common to have such a cabin like this for men who were working say in logging or trapping or hunting or just on a manly get-a-way from civilization with some other men maybe on a multi-day canoe trip through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
We used to also stay in similarly appointed cabins and go skiing in the winter. These cabins usually didn’t have any insulation but people could keep warm in them if they knew how to operate a wood-stove and these special place would be opportunities for wonderful fellowship around the wood stove, just feeding it with the plentiful wood found on the ground around such a cabin, singing songs, playing poker and sewing socks that had come apart during the day’s activities.
If there was a musician in the group, he would be encouraged to bring his instrument if it was portable enough, say an acoustic guitar and especially a lightweight harmonica was perfect for entertaining the group, as there was no television or other entertainment in those cabins without electricity. The group would usually have a wonderful time passing those long winter nights, “Laughin’ and singin’ till the early hours of the morn.”
It was in a nostalgic moment remembering a cabin like this, that Bob wrote in 1963 Bob’s Dylan’s Dream. Read these lyrics and listen for references to a cabin like the one depicted in the video:
While riding on a train goin’ west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had
With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin’ and singin’ till the early hours of the morn
By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung
Our words were told, our songs were sung
Where we longed for nothin’ and were quite satisfied
Talkin’ and a-jokin’ about the world outside
With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
We never thought we could ever get old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
But our chances really was a million to one
As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split
How many a year has passed and gone
And many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a friend
And each one I’ve never seen again
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that
Copyright © 1963, 1964
Brilliant
Seeing this in “64 as a teen in Northern Ontario was STARTLING !!!!!!! Oh those words. From his words, look, and sound I was certain that he was from just a bit North of town. (Sault Ste Marie) He actually was from just a few degrees of latitude North, but on the other side of Lake Superior which lay like a giant inland sea between us.
Hat’s off too to Daryl Duke for directing this. .