Jonny Lang (born Jon Gordon Langseth, Jr.; January 29, 1981) is an American blues, gospel, and rock singer, songwriter, guitarist and recording artist. He has five albums that charted on the top 50 of the Billboard 200 chart and has won a Grammy Award for Turn Around.
Let us listen to a couple of his Dylan versions.
Continue reading January 29: Jonny Lang was born in 1981 – Here playing Bob Dylan songs
Here are two Dylan covers by The Everly Brothers & Bob Dylan singing two songs made famous by The Everly Brothers.
I can hear the turning of the key
I’ve been deceived by the clown inside of me
I thought that he was righteous but he’s vain
Oh, something’s a-telling me I wear the ball and chainMy patron saint is a-fighting with a ghost
He’s always off somewhere when I need him most
The Spanish moon is rising on the hill
But my heart is a-tellin’ me I love ya still
Abandoned Love (from their 1985 Dave Edmunds produced album Born Yesterday)
Roderick David “Rod” Stewart, CBE (born 10 January 1945) is born and raised in London, he is of English and Scottish ancestry. Stewart is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold over 100 million records worldwide.
With his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with The Jeff Beck Group and then with Faces, though his music career had begun in 1962 when he took up busking with a harmonica. In October 1963 he joined the Dimensions as a harmonica player and part-time vocalist, then in 1964 he joined Long John Baldry and the All Stars. Later, in August 1964, he also signed a solo contract, releasing his first solo single, “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”, in October of the same year. He maintained a solo career alongside a group career, releasing his debut solo album An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down (US: The Rod Stewart Album), in 1969. His early albums were a fusion of rock, folk music, soul music and R&B. His aggressive blues work with The Jeff Beck Group and the Faces influenced heavy metal genres. From the late 1970s through the 1990s, Stewart’s music often took on a new wave or soft rock/middle-of-the-road quality, and in the early 2000s he released a series of successful albums interpreting the Great American Songbook.
We have written many posts on the subject of other artists covering Bob Dylan’s songs. Today we present Rod Stewart’s takes on Dylan songs. We must remember that Mr. Stewart is a very good vocalist, yes, he has done some “strange” projects lately, but he can still muster a great rock’n roll vocal when he choose to.
Continue reading January 10: Rod Stewart was born in 1945 – here singing Bob Dylan songs
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