This is an ongoing series… I will fill in the holes as I create new posts…
Category Archives: Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan’s best songs: Let Me Die In My Footsteps
Let me drink from the waters where the mountain streams flood
Let the smell of wildflowers flow free through my blood
Let me sleep in your meadows with the green grassy leaves
Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the groundLet Me Die In My Footsteps written while Gil Turner and I were in Toronto in Dec. 1961. I set out to say something about fallout and bomb-testing but I didn’t want it to be a slogan song. Too many of the protest songs are bad music. Exception being Which Side Are You On. Most of the mining songs are good. Especially the bomb songs – usually awkward and with bad music. Which takes a stand – no beating around the bush.
~Bob Dylan (notebook entry for February 17, 1962)“Let Me Die in My Footsteps” is Dylan’s first anthem, in the sense that “Pastures of Plenty” and “This Land Is Your Land” and “This Train Is Bound for Glory” are anthems-songs people can unite around, that can be sung as an expression of belonging, to a nation or a faith or a cause. The song is a refusal to go into a fallout shelter or into the fallout shelter mentality (“I will not go down under the groundfCause somebody tells me that death’s coming round”), a fist shaken at the death in the soul that fear brings, in effect a statement that I would rather risk dying in the flesh than choose a living death, cut off from what gives life its value.
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan Performing Artist I: The Early Years 1960-1973)
TBS version:
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The Best Songs: Just a Closer Walk With Thee
Just a Closer Walk with Thee is a traditional gospel song that has been covered by many artists. Performed as either an instrumental or vocal, “A Closer Walk” is perhaps the most frequently played number in the hymn and dirge section of traditional New Orleans jazz funerals.
Rebirth Brass Band – A Closer Walk With Thee:
The ‘jazz funeral’ starts off sombre. On its way to the cemetery, the brass band plays soulful, sad funeral hymns called ‘dirges’, it should be something that reminds mourners of life’s ups and downs. The slow tune lasts until the procession reaches its final destination, at which point they ‘cut the body loose’ – send the hearse off into the cemetery.
I really love this song and have “dug up” a few examples of great artists doing their version of this old tune.
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Bob Dylan: Folsom Prison Blues (video)
I hear the train a comin’
It’s rolling round the bend
And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when,
I’m stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin’ on
Great version of this Johnny Cash classic.
New Haven Coliseum
New Haven, Connecticut
10 November 1999
- Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
- Charlie Sexton (guitar)
- Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
- Tony Garnier (bass)
- David Kemper (drums & percussion)
Van Morrison & Bob Dylan: Whenever God Shines His Light/Enlightenment Milan 1991 (video)
Reach out for him, he’ll be there
With him your troubles you can share
If you live the life you love
You get the blessing from above
He heals the sick and heals the lame
Says you can do it too in Jesus name