Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan recording sessions, Johnny Cash

Feb 17: Bob Dylan’s 4th recording session for “Nashville Skyline (w/Johnny Cash) in 1969

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bob dylan nashville skyline

I like Johnny Cash a lot. I like everything he does really.
~Bob Dylan (to Nat Hentoff – Autumn 1965)

In the end, Nashville Skyline is a lovely album but not a heavyweight contender, though its effects were major ones. Country music was despised, hick music when Dylan took it up. People were divided into the hip and the non-hip. The counterculture was in full swing and riddled with its own self-importance and snobbery. Nashville Skyline was a hard pill to swallow: but it did ’em good.
~Michael Gray (Bob Dylan Encyclopedia)

The 4th recording session for ‘Nashville Skyline’ took place on February 17, 1969. Two master versions emerged.. the lovely “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” & “Nashville Skyline Rag”. Johnny Cash joined the session halfway through & they tried out “One Too Many Mornings”, “I Still Miss Someone” (Cash) & “Don’t Think Twice”. A video from one of the takes on “One Too Many Mornings” is available (& included in this post).. fantastic stuff!

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Feb 13: Mumford & Sons, The Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan Live at 2011 Grammys

bob dylan los angeles 2011

Staples Center
Los Angeles, California
13 February 2011
53rd Grammy Awards

  • Bob Dylan (vocal & harmonica)
  • Stu Kimball (guitar)
  • Donnie Herron (steel guitar)
  • Tony Garnier (bass)
  • with Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan recording sessions

Feb 13: Bob Dylan – 2nd Nashville Skyline session in 1969

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bob dylan nashville skyline

Well, Jann, I’ll tell you something. There’s not too much of a change in my singing style, but I’ll tell you something which is true… I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking my voice changed… So drastically, I couldn’t believe it myself. That’s true. I tell you, you stop smoking those cigarettes (laughter)… and you’ll be able to sing like Caruso.
~Bob Dylan (to Jann Wenner Nov 1969)

Anyway, on Nashville Skyline you had to read between the lines. I was trying to grasp something that would lead me on to where I thought I should be, and it didn’t go nowhere – it just went down, down, down.
~Bob Dylan (to Jonathan Cott, Sept 1978)

The first recording session for “Nashville Skyline” was held on February 12, 1969 – but no recordings sheets are available from this session. The second session took place the day after – February 13, 1969. Dylan landed 3 master versions this evening.

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Bob Dylan – On This Day – February 12
From the recording of Saved
From the recording of Saved – 1980

At every point in my life I’ve had to make decisions for what I believed in. Sometimes I’ve ended up hurting people that I’ve loved. Other times I’ve ended up loving people that I never thought I would.
~Bob Dylan (to Karen Hughes, May 21, 1980)

Historic event

Feb 12, 1961

Dylan sends a second postcard to the Whitakers. In it he states that he visits Guthrie four times a week and that he has been playing The Commons
“where people clap for me.”
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)

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Greil Marcus and Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan

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lrs2

“Dylan leads the group into the song with a strong, strummed theme on his electric rhythm guitar. Paul Griffin has a loose, free bounce on the piano; Kooper immediately has a high, clear tone. Dylan stops it: “Hey, man, you know, I can’t, I mean, I’m just me, you know. I can’t, really, man, I’m just playing the song. I know — I don’t want to scream it, that’s all I know — ” He takes up the theme again; Bloomfield and Gregg come in. The feeling is right all around; a rich ensemble is coming together.”
– Greil Marcus (Like a Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan at the crossroads)

I love Greil Marcus’s book on Bob Dylan’s song, Like a Rolling Stone, and therefore I’ve collected som clips on and about the book, including a very interesting YouTube-clip with Marcus talking about the book and the song.

Greil Marcus saw Bob Dylan for the first time in a New Jersey field in 1963. He didn’t know the name of the scruffy singer who had a bit part in a Joan Baez concert, but he knew his performance was unique. So began a dedicated and enduring relationship between America’s finest critic of popular music— “simply peerless,” in Nick Hornby’s words, “not only as a rock writer but as a cultural historian”— and Bob Dylan.

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