Bob Dylan and Taj Mahal – Happy birthday bluesman Taj Mahal
Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942),who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music. A self-taught singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, banjo and harmonica (among many other instruments), Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his almost 50 year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa and the South Pacific.
He has done some Dylan songs, and he add his own signature to his interpretations. I have also included a short show with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty and Taj Mahal.
Taj Mahal & The Phantom Blues Band – Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream (Audio from the Amnesty album, Chimes Of Freedom: The Songs Of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years Of Amnesty International):
Here is a 1993 clip of Jeff Buckley at a poetry event, reading an apology letter he wrote to his idol Bob Dylan. The reading is included on a CD accompanying the book The Spoken Word Revolution Redux.
“Dear Bob,
And I don’t know what purpose this will serve at all.
I don’t know how to start. Last Saturday, my man, Steve Burkowitz, broke it to me that you were told of something I said from the stage and that you’d felt insulted. I need for you to listen to me. I have no way of knowing how my words are translated to you, if they’re whole meaning and context are intact, but the truth is that I was off on a tangent, on a stage, my mind going where it goes, trying to be funny, it wasn’t funny at all and I fucked up, I really fucked up.
And the worst of it isn’t that your boys were at the gig to hear it. It doesn’t really bother me. It just kills me to know that whatever they told you was what you think I think of you-
not that I love you, not that I’ve always listened to you and carried the music with me wherever I go, not that I believe in you and also that your show was great. It was only the separate club crowd that I was cynical about and that’s what I was trying to get at when I said what I said.And I’m sorry that I’ll never get to make another first impression. You were really gracious to me, to even allow me backstage to meet you. I’ll never forget you, what you told me for as long as I live. He said “Make a good record man” and I’m very honored to have met you at all. He said some other shit too,
I’m only sad that I didn’t get a chance to tell you before all this intrigue, the intrigue is not the truth. Lots of eyes will read this letter before it gets to you, Bob, which I accept. Someday you will know exactly what I mean, man to man.
Always be well, Jeff Buckley
And you know who’s going to read this? The President of Sony Records, my A&R man, my manager, his two managers, his friend Ratzo, and this is my personal plea of love to Bob Dylan, and this is what happens when you’re not nobody anymore.”
Here are the songs that Jeff Buckley sang and Bob Dylan wrote.
Just Like A Woman – Jeff Buckley, Live at Palais Theatre, Melbourne on February 27 1996:
The Best Dylan covers: Stevie Wonder – Blowin’ in the wind
“Blowin’ in the Wind” is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1962 and released on his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1963. Although it has been described as a protest song, it poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war and freedom. The refrain “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind” has been described as “impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind”.
In 1994, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, it was ranked #14 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
Stevie Wonder – Blowin’ in the Wind (Studio version, 1966):
The Black Crowes were an American rockband formed in 1989. Their discography includes nine studio albums, four live albums and several charting singles. The band was signed to Def American Recordings in 1989 by producer George Drakoulias and released their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker, the following year. The follow-up, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, reached the top of the Billboard 200 in 1992.
After a hiatus between 2002 and 2005, the band released Warpaint, which hit number 5 on the Billboard chart.[1] After the release of a double album, the greatest hits-like and mostly acoustic Croweology in August 2010, the band started a 20th anniversary tour that was followed by an ongoing second hiatus. The band announced that they would return in early 2013 but that December they returned to hiatus status with no specific return date. They announced their break-up in 2015.
Here they are in a new post in our series where some of our favourite artists covers Bob Dylan. Enjoy!
The 3rd post with 12 Bob Dylan covers done by incredible women
This is my third collection of good cover versions of Dylan songs sung by incredible women, many of the songs are suggestions from our readers. Thank you, for great tips and for pointing me to great music that I hadn’t heard before.
