I heard the sound that Gordon Lightfoot was getting, with Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey. I’d used Charlie and Kenny both before, and I figured if he could get that sound, I could…. but we couldn’t get it. (Laughs) It was an attempt to get it, but it didn’t come off. We got a different sound… I don’t know what you’d call that… It’s a muffled sound.
~Bob Dylan (to Jann Wenner November 29, 1969)
Like a Bird on a Wire Like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free
~Leonard Cohen, Bird On A Wire
“The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”
― Leonard Cohen
“I don’t remember lighting this cigarette and I don’t remember if I’m here alone or waiting for someone.”
~Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing
From Wikipedia:
Birth name
Leonard Norman Cohen
Born
21 September 1934 (age 79)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Genres
Folk, folk rock, rock, pop rock,spoken word, synthpop
Occupations
Musician, singer-songwriter,poet, novelist
Instruments
Vocals, guitar, piano,keyboards, synthesizer
Years active
1956-present
Labels
Columbia
Associated acts
Sharon Robinson, Jennifer Warnes
Leonard Norman Cohen, CC GOQ (born 21 September 1934) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet, and novelist. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality, and interpersonal relationships.Cohen has been inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honour.
While giving the speech at Cohen’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008, Lou Reed described Cohen as belonging to the “highest and most influential echelon of songwriters.”
The critic Bruce Eder wrote an assessment of Cohen’s overall career in popular music, writing: “[Cohen is] one of the most fascinating and enigmatic. . .singer/songwriters of the late ’60s. . . [and] has retained an audience across four decades of music-making. . . Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon) [in terms of influence], he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century.”
The Academy of American Poets has commented more broadly on Cohen’s overall career in the arts, including his work as a poet, novelist, and songwriter, stating that “[Cohen’s] successful blending of poetry, fiction, and music is made most clear in Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, published in 1993, which gathered more than two hundred of Cohen’s poems . . .several novel excerpts, and almost sixty song lyrics. . .While it may seem to some that Leonard Cohen departed from the literary in pursuit of the musical, his fans continue to embrace him as a Renaissance man who straddles the elusive artistic borderlines.”
From allmusic.com – Bruce Eder:
One of the most fascinating and enigmatic — if not the most successful — singer/songwriters of the late ’60s, Leonard Cohen has retained an audience across four decades of music-making interrupted by various digressions into personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the mystique surrounding him. Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon), he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century, which is all the more remarkable an achievement for someone who didn’t even aspire to a musical career until he was in his thirties. read more over @ allmusic.com
Leonard Cohen – Tower of Song – Live, London 2009:
Leonard Cohen – Dance me to the end of love (live. Later with Jools):
..His talent takes many forms. He is one of the most compelling white blues singers ever recorded. He is a songwriter of exceptional facility and cleverness. He is an uncommonly skillful guitar player and harmonica player.
~Stacy Williams (“Bob Dylan” LP. liner notes)
Dylan’s first album can hardly be faulted. It is a brilliant debut, a performer’s tour de force,….
~Michael Gray (BD Encyclopedia)
Talkin’ New York:
Wikipedia:
Released
March 19, 1962
Recorded
November 20 and 22, 1961,Columbia Recording Studio, New York City, New York, United States
Genre
Folk
Length
36:54
Label
Columbia
Producer
John H. Hammond
Bob Dylan is the debut album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in March 1962 by Columbia Records. Produced by Columbia’s legendary talent scout John H. Hammond, who signed Dylan to the label, the album features folk standards, plus two original compositions, “Talkin’ New York” and “Song to Woody”.
Man of Constant Sorrow:
Recording sessions
The album was ultimately recorded in three short afternoon sessions on November 20 and 22 (1961). Hammond later joked that Columbia spent “about $402” to record it, and the figure has entered the Dylan legend as its actual cost. Despite the low cost and short amount of time, Dylan was still difficult to record, according to Hammond. “Bobby popped every p, hissed every s, and habitually wandered off mike,” recalls Hammond. “Even more frustrating, he refused to learn from his mistakes. It occurred to me at the time that I’d never worked with anyone so undisciplined before.”
Seventeen songs were recorded, and five of the album’s chosen tracks were actually cut in single takes (“Baby Let Me Follow You Down,” “In My Time of Dyin’,” “Gospel Plow,” “Highway 51 Blues,” and “Freight Train Blues”) while the master take of “Song to Woody” was recorded after one false start. The album’s four outtakes were also cut in single takes. During the sessions, Dylan refused requests to do second takes. “I said no. I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.”
The album cover features a reversed photo of Dylan holding his acoustic guitar. It is unknown as to why the photo was flipped.
In My Time of Dyin:
In less than one year in New York, Bob Dylan has thrown the folk crowd into an uproar. Ardent fans have been shouting his praises. Devotees have found in him the image of a singing rebel, a musical Chaplin tramp, a young Woody Guthrie, or a composite of some of the best country blues singers.
~Stacy Williams (“Bob Dylan” LP. liner notes)
Track Listing:
Side one
“You’re No Good” – Jesse Fuller 1:40
“Talkin’ New York” – Bob Dylan 3:20
“In My Time of Dyin'” – trad. arr. Dylan 2:40
“Man of Constant Sorrow” – trad. arr. Dylan 3:10
“Fixin’ to Die” – Bukka White 2:22
“Pretty Peggy-O” – trad. arr. Dylan 3:23
“Highway 51” – Curtis Jones 2:52
Side two
“Gospel Plow” – trad. arr. Dylan 1:47
“Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” – trad. arr. Eric von Schmidt 2:37
“House of the Risin’ Sun” – trad. arr. Dave Van Ronk 5:20
“Freight Train Blues” – trad., Roy Acuff 2:18
“Song to Woody” – Bob Dylan 2:42
“See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” – Blind Lemon Jefferson 2:43
Personnel:
Bob Dylan – vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica
Technical personnel
John H. Hammond – production
Baby, Let Me Follow You Down:
The Songs:
By the time sessions were held for his debut album, Dylan was absorbing an enormous amount of folk material from sitting and listening to contemporaries performing in New York’s clubs and coffeehouses. Many of these individuals were also close friends who performed with Dylan, often inviting him to their apartments where they would introduce him to more folk songs. At the same time, Dylan was borrowing and listening to a large number of folk, blues, and country records, many of which were hard to find at the time. Dylan revealed in an interview in the documentary No Direction Home that he needed to hear a song only once or twice to learn it.
The final album sequence of Bob Dylan features only two original compositions; the other eleven tracks are folk standards and traditional songs. Few of these were staples of his club/coffeehouse repertoire. Only two of the covers and both originals were in his club set in September 1961.
Dylan stated in a 2000 interview that he was hesitant to reveal too much of himself at first.
See That My Grave is Kept Clean:
Aftermath
Bob Dylan did not receive much acclaim until years later. “These debut songs are essayed with differing degrees of conviction,” writes music critic Tim Riley, “[but] even when his reach exceeds his grasp, he never sounds like he knows he’s in over his head, or gushily patronizing… Like Elvis Presley, what Dylan can sing, he quickly masters; what he can’t, he twists to his own devices. And as with the Presley Sun sessions, the voice that leaps from Dylan’s first album is its most striking feature, a determined, iconoclastic baying that chews up influences, and spits out the odd mixed signal without half trying.”
However, at the time of its release, Bob Dylan received little notice, and both Hammond and Dylan were soon dismissive of the first album’s results.
Bob Dylan’s first album is a lot like the debut albums by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones — a sterling effort, outclassing most, if not all, of what came before it in the genre, but similarly eclipsed by the artist’s own subsequent efforts. The difference was that not very many people heard Bob Dylan on its original release (originals on the early-’60s Columbia label are choice collectibles) because it was recorded with a much smaller audience and musical arena in mind.
~Bruce Eder (allmusic.com)
Graham William Nash, (born 2 February 1942) is known for his light tenor voice and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the super group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Nash is also a photography collector and a published photographer. Nash was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1997 and as a member of The Hollies in 2010.
In the early 1960s he was co-founder with schoolfriend Allan Clarke of The Hollies. Nash was a leading ‘group figurehead’ member of The Hollies, one of the UK’s most successful pop and “British Invasion” groups. Nash wrote or co-wrote many of the band’s original songs, most often early on in collaboration with Allan Clarke and also then together with Tony Hicks up to Nash’s departure from the band in December 1968.
Teach your Children:
Nash initially met both David Crosby and Stephen Stills in 1966 among a group of American musician friends during a Hollies USA tour. In 1968, after a further visit to the US during which he met David Crosby in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, California, Nash left The Hollies to form a new group with Crosby and Stephen Stills. A threesome at first, Crosby, Stills & Nash later became a foursome with Neil Young: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY). With them, Nash went on to even greater worldwide success.
Simple Man:
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young lasted long enough as a performing unit for one major national tour and a live follow-up album before the members went their separate ways. Nash emerged from the chaos of the quartet’s demise as a star in his own right and found a major audience for his music. There have been quite a few reunions.
The album of the day is his solo debut, Songs for beginners from 1971:
