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
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
That was an inspired song that came to me. I felt like I was just putting down words that were coming from somewhere else, and I just stuck it out.
~Bob Dylan (“Biograph” notes)“That’s an excellent song, very painless song to write,… It took like 12 seconds – or that’s how it felt.”
~Bob Dylan (to Robert Hilburn – Feb 1992)…But “Every Grain of Sand” is something special: the “Chimes of Freedom” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” of Bob Dylan’s Christian period. A pearl among swine, it has surety and strength all down the line. Also vulnerability.
~Paul Nelson (from his famous “Rolling Stone Magazine” review of “Shot Of Love” – Oct. 1981)
Every Grain of Sand is a beautiful song, one of Dylan’s finest. It was released on Shot of Love in 1981. An alternate take of this song was released in The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991. It appeared on the soundtrack for the 1997 film Another Day In Paradise. Bob Dylan included in his live repertoire many years. First we will present five cover versions and after that we should listen to 2 really great versions from Dylan himself.
Luka Bloom – Every Grain Of Sand (2014, from the album Head & Heart):
Continue reading Four good and one GREAT versions of Bob Dylan’s Every Grain of Sand
Bob Dylan – Brown Sugar
FIRST UNION CENTER
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
NOVEMBER 15, 2002
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar),
Charlie Sexton (guitar),
Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar),
Tony Garnier (bass),
George Recile (drums & percussion)
Bob Dylan did many great cover versions of Stone’s “Brown Sugar” during 2002 (36 performances.. and one in 2003)
Dylan premiered this Jagger / Richards classic during the opening show of the October / November 2002 leg of his US tour. The first performance was in Seattle, Washington on October 4, 2002, after which the song was played in the number six slot at every show apart from October 13, when it was replaced by ‘ot Fade Away’. The reason for the song’s inclusion is unclear but it did coincide with the Stones’ much publicized and scrutinized 2002 “Licks” tour. …. …
Still, with guitarists Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton on hand to crank out the riffs and add the ‘Wooh-wooh’s to the song’s conclusion, ‘Brown Sugar’ has been one of the more thrilling Bob Dylan live covers of recent years.
~Derek Barker (The Songs He didn’t write)
Check out:
– Hallgeir