This is not a “best from 1971” list, just 5 Great songs Bob Dylan recorded in 1971.
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Columbia Studio B
New York City, New York
4 November 1971
Produced by Bob Dylan
Released on single, 12 November 1971
I woke up this mornin’
There were tears in my bed
They killed a man I really loved
Shot him through the head
Lord, Lord
They cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord
They laid him in the ground
They say ev’rything can be replaced
Yet ev’ry distance is not near
So I remember ev’ry face
Of ev’ry man who put me here
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
Continue reading March 31: Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello I Shall Be Released, London, 1995
Happy birthday Norah Jones!
Wikipedia:
Born Geetali Norah Jones Shankar; March 30, 1979
Norah Jones is the daughter of Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar and Sue Jones. She is also Anoushka Shankar’s half-sister.
In 2002, she launched her solo music career with the release of the commercially successful and critically acclaimed album Come Away with Me, a fusion of jazz, pop, and country music, which was certified diamond album, selling over 26 million copies. The record earned Jones five Grammy Awards, including theAlbum of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist. Her subsequent studio albums, Feels Like Home, released in 2004, Not Too Late, released in 2007, the same year she made her film debut in My Blueberry Nights, and her 2009 release The Fall all gained Platinum status, selling over a million copies and were generally well received by critics. Jones’ fifth studio album, Little Broken Hearts, was released on April 27, 2012.
Jones has won nine Grammy Awards and was 60th on Billboard magazine’s artists of the 2000–2009 decade chart. Throughout her career, Jones has won numerous awards and has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. Billboard named her the top jazz artist of the 2000–2009 decade.
We really like Norah Jones, we especially like it when she does Country music and of course when she sing the songs of our hero Bob Dylan. We have trawled the web to find some of her great cover versions.
Lets start with a duet, here she sings I Shall Be Released with the man himself, Bob Dylan:
Continue reading Norah Jones covers Bob Dylan – Happy Birthday Norah Jones
“He felt there were some songs that he had written that had become hits of sorts for other people, that he didn’t actually perform himself, and he wanted to fit those on the record as well…So we just went in one afternoon and did it, it was just the two of us and the engineer, and it was very simple…we chose three [songs] on the spot and mixed them…in the space of an afternoon…Sometimes I wasn’t even sure if it was a final take until we would just finish and Bob would say, ‘Okay, let’s go and mix it.'”
~Happy Traum
–
I believe we can hear a surprisingly happy Dylan reasserting the expressive power and rich musicality of his own work. The soulful harmonica playing, the striking two-part singing, the confident and inventive guitar rhythms, the strong conveying of individual consciousness and specific feelings in the vocalizing of words and phrases, all work together to communicate the artist’s renewed confidence in the value of his work and in his ability as a performer to share something unique with the world.
~Paul Williams (BD Performing Artist, 1960-73)
Wikipedia:
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II (1971), also known as More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits, was the second compilation album released by Bob Dylan. With Dylan not expected to release any new material for an extended period of time, CBS Records president Clive Davis proposed issuing a double LP compilation of older material. Dylan agreed, compiling it himself and suggesting that the package include a full side of unreleased tracks from his archives. After submitting a set of excerpts from the The Basement Tapes that Davis found unsatisfactory, Dylan returned to the studio in September 1971 to recut several Basement songs, with Happy Traum providing backup.
The final package included one previously uncollected single, “Watching the River Flow”, an outtake from the same sessions, “When I Paint My Masterpiece”; one song from Dylan’s April 12, 1963 Town Hall concert, “Tomorrow Is a Long Time”, and three songs from the September sessions, “I Shall Be Released”, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, and “Down in the Flood”. The remaining tracks were drawn from existing releases.
Continue reading Bob Dylan: Greatest Hits Vol.2 recording session, 24 September 1971
They say ev’rything can be replaced
Yet ev’ry distance is not near
So I remember ev’ry face
Of ev’ry man who put me here
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
Continue reading March 31: Bob Dylan & Elvis Costello: I Shall Be Released, London – 1995 (video)