Bob Dylan: The roots of Sweet Amarillo
“Country music has a lot to learn from Bob Dylan” – Ketch Secor (to Rolling Stone Magazine)
So, Old Crow Medicine Show has done it again, taken an old Dylan tune off a bootleg and finished it. In 2003, OCMS completed an old song that Bob Dylan had made a “sketch” of 30 years earlier, with the result being “Wagon Wheel.” Darius Rucker also did his take on the song and had a huge hit.
Read more here: The Roots of Wagon Wheel aka Rock Me Mama
The “new” song, Amarillo, the melody and some of the lyrics comes from a demo recorded by Bob Dylan during the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid sessions.It is track 12 on the famous bootleg Peco’s Blues, the Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid Sessions.
Bob Dylan – Sweet Amarillo (1973):
Let us also listen to Old Crow Medicine Show’s version:
The melody has not changed much, but they have added verses and kept the chorus. Both songs are country waltzes. Old Crow medicine show works in the folk tradition that Dylan is definitely a part of, getting parts of melodies and lyrics and adding your own verses.
Donna Terry Weiss and Brenda Patterson have recorded a song with the same name, and it is clearly inspired by Dylan’s song.