Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

Blues, Bukka White, The Best Songs

The Best Songs: Fixin’ To Die Blues by Bukka White aka Booker T Washington
Drawing by the incredible William Stout
Drawing by the incredible William Stout

The Best Songs: Fixin’ To Die Blues by Bukka White aka Booker T Washington

“Fixin’ to Die” is song by American blues musician Bukka White. It is performed in the Delta blues style with White’s vocal and guitar accompanied by washboard rhythm. White recorded it in Chicago on May 8, 1940, for record producer Lester Melrose. The song was written just days before, along with eleven others, at Melrose’s urging.

White was resuming his recording career, which had been interrupted by his incarceration for two and one-half years at the infamous Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi. While there, White witnessed the death of a friend and “got to wondering how a man feels when he dies”. His lyrics reflect his thoughts about his children and wife:

I’m looking funny in my eyes, an’ I b’lieve I’m fixin’ to die (2×)
I know I was born to die, but I hate to leave my children cryin’ …
So many nights at the fireside, how my children’s mother would cry (2×)
‘Cause I ain’t told their mother I had to say good-bye

Fixin To Die blues by Bukka White (1940 version):

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Country, folk, Johnny Cash, Music Calendar

April 26: Johnny Cash American Recordings was released in 1994


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April 26:  Johnny Cash  American Recordings was released in 1994

…Always, the choice of material is a revelation. The Beast In Me (written by former son-in-law, Nick Lowe) could be autobiographical. And while writers like horrorpunk figurehead Glenn Danzig or Tom Waits probably would never have figured on his radar were it not for Rubin; time and again the duo found songs that were, in Cash’s hands, to take on new life. This willingness to experiment was to set a precedent: Subsequent albums were to see him work magic on material from Nine Inch Nails to U2 and Depeche Mode. But Johnny Cash’s final road to redemption and artistic fulfillment starts here…
~Chris Jones (bbc.co.uk)

American Recordings did something very important — it gave Cash a chance to show how much he could do with a set of great songs and no creative interference, and it afforded him the respect he’d been denied for so long, and the result is a powerful and intimate album that brought the Man in Black back to the spotlight, where he belonged.
~Mark Deming (allmusic.com)

#1 – Delia’s Gone

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylans's best songs, List, The Best Songs

Bob Dylan – Top 200 songs

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Well, I just drifted into it, you know. I started singing, writing my own songs some place or somewhere. I always kinda written my own songs but I never really would play them. Nobody played their own songs; the only person that I ever heard do that was Woody Guthrie. And then one day I just wrote a song, and it was the first song I ever wrote that I performed in public was the song that I wrote to Woody Guthrie. And I just felt like playing it one night. And I played it.
~Bob Dylan (30 July 1984 – The Bert Kleinman Interview)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

This is an ongoing series… I will fill in the holes as I create new posts…

1. Visions Of Johanna (Updated – 14.09.2018)
1. Like A Rolling Stone (Updated – 21.09.2018)
3. Tangled Up in Blue (Updated – 27.09.2018)
4. Ballad Of A Thin Man
5. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
6. Blind Willie McTell (electric version)
7. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
8. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
9. Desolation Row
10. Idiot Wind (New York version)
11. Every Grain Of Sand
12. Mr. Tambourine Man
13. Positively 4th Street
14. Subterranean Homesick Blues
15. Mississippi
16. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
17. She’s Your Lover Now
18. Shelter From the Storm
19. Brownsville Girl
20. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues

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Blues, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Gospel, Jazz, Johnny Cash, Soul, The Best Songs, Video

The Best Songs: Just a Closer Walk With Thee

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Just a Closer Walk with Thee is a traditional gospel song that has been covered by many artists. Performed as either an instrumental or vocal, “A Closer Walk” is perhaps the most frequently played number in the hymn and dirge section of traditional New Orleans jazz funerals.

Rebirth Brass Band – A Closer Walk With Thee:

The ‘jazz funeral’ starts off sombre. On its way to the cemetery, the brass band plays soulful, sad funeral hymns called ‘dirges’,  it should be something that reminds mourners of life’s ups and downs. The slow tune lasts until the procession reaches its final destination, at which point they ‘cut the body loose’ – send the hearse off into the cemetery.

I really love this song and have “dug up” a few examples of great artists doing their version of this old tune.

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Blues, Music Calendar

April 20: Johnny Shines passed away in 1992

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April 20: Johnny Shines passed away in 1992

That’s what I am, a Delta blues man. And now I’m considered the king of the Delta blues.
~Johnny Shines (1989 Living Blues Interview)

Best known as a traveling companion of Robert Johnson, Johnny Shines’ own contributions to the blues have often been unfairly shortchanged, simply because Johnson’s own legend casts such a long shadow. In his early days, Shines was one of the top slide guitarists in Delta blues, with his own distinctive, energized style; one that may have echoed Johnson’s spirit and influence, but was never a mere imitation.
~Steve Huey (allmusic.com)

Sweet Home Chicago:

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