Joan Baez has recorded many Dylan songs. Her unique and beautiful voice carries some of them to different places. For many Dylan enthusiasts, Joan Baez’s interpretations are the only tolerable ones, besides Dylan’s own 🙂
Baez first met Dylan in 1961 at Gerde’s Folk City in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
Here are my chosen 5:
Farewell Angelina:
Check out this full post about the song.
Continue reading January 9: Joan Baez was born in 1941 – here singing Bob Dylan songs
“His albums have a great class to them, even those albums where he is actually playing songs of long-dead blues singers. His writing, his song texts, leave me speechless. “
– David Bowie (about Bob Dylan, 1997)
David Bowie always talked about Dylan with great respect. Bob Dylan was maybe not the biggest influence on his music, but he did sing some of his songs both live and in studio. I found some fine versions of, Like a Rolling Stone, Maggie’s Farm and Trying to get to heaven. Mick Ronson a long-time Bowie friend and collaborator was also a part of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour.
Bowie also played Don’t think twice it’s all right and She belongs to me (I’ve read somewhere) but I could not find an upload of them anywhere.
Trying to get to heaven
Recorded during the mixing sessions for Earthling in 1998.
Bowie’s version of “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” (which, at least in its circulating edit, cuts Dylan’s second verse and squeezes the fourth and fifth into one incoherent lump) is, essentially, a first draft of what would become Hours. The take begins somber and ashen enough. Yet the circularity of Dylan’s singing on “Tryin’”, conveying a journey undertaken but never in danger of ending, seemed to frustrate Bowie: he needed a narrative.
So in the “people on platforms” verse, Bowie builds to a manic desperation, as if he has to make an eleventh-hour sale or he’ll be sacked by his proprietor. We get a rattled “cha-hay-hay-hain,” a squeaked-out “looose,” the creaking onomatopoeia of “cloowwoose the door,” and a gargle. Having made a hash of Dylan’s last verses, Bowie latches onto a line as if he’d drawn it by lot to torture: “I’ve beeen! to Sugar Town-I shook! the su!gar down!” Dylan sang those words with an earned swagger, like a spendthrift man recalling a spent-out life. Bowie sang them as if he was just passingly familiar with the English language.
– Pushing ahead of the Dame
TRANSCRIPT OF BOB DYLAN’S REMARKS
AT THE BILL OF RIGHTS DINNER
at the Americana Hotel on 12/13/63
Continue reading December 13: The Bob Dylan speech at the Bill of Rights Dinner, 1963
Man Gave Names to All the Animals is a song written by Bob Dylan that appeared on Dylan’s 1979 album Slow Train Coming and was also released as a single in some European countries. It was also released as a promo single in US. The single became a chart hit in France and Belgium.
However, the song also has detractors who consider it the worst song Dylan ever wrote. A 2013 reader’s poll conducted by Rolling Stone Magazine ranked “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” the 4th worst Bob Dylan song, although the hit single from Slow Train Coming, “Gotta Serve Somebody” placed second. I love’em both.
Man Gave Names to All the Animals has been covered by multiple artists, I’ve picked three of my favourites.
Continue reading Man gave name to all the animals by Bob Dylan – 3 nice covers and 1 great original
