Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: November 22, 1961
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
“Gospel Plow” is another traditional title quoted by the folklorist Alan Lomax in his book Singing Country (1949). This folk song is known by two names: “Hold On” and “Gospel Plow,” referring to the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke, chapter 9, verse 62, where it is written: “Jesus replied: ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’” For the singer, it is the first true reference to the New Testament. Before Dylan, Duke Ellington and Odetta had interpreted this spiritual, respectively, at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 and Carnegie Hall in 1961. After Dylan, two later interpretations are the Screaming Trees (Dust, 1996) and Old Crow Medicine Show (Greetings from Wawa, 2000). “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” which became an anthem for the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, is based on “Gospel Plow.”
Production
Dylan delivers a “super energetic” rendition, far from the spiritual message of Mahalia Jackson as recorded in 1954 for Columbia Records as “Keep Your Hand on the Plow.” Dylan’s interpretation is close to country music and delivered with an astonishingly intense harmonica part (in G). His voice is sometimes close to breaking up at 1:16, but his own message is nevertheless less clear, with a touch of irony. He eventually makes us believe that he actually held a plow! With a running time of 1:44, this piece is the fastest and the shortest on the album. Only one take was necessary to record the song.
Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
Reverend Gary Davis / Additional contribution by Eric Von Schmidt and Dave Van Ronk / 2:37
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: November 20, 1961
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
“Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” is a folk song attributed to the Reverend Gary Davis. There are different recorded versions of this song: one under the title of “Don’t Tear My Clothes” by the State Street Boys in 1935, another by Washboard Sam the following year, and another under the title of “Mama Let Me Lay It on You” by Blind Boy Fuller in 1938. Many years later, the song was adapted by Eric Von Schmidt. This is precisely what Bob Dylan explains at the beginning of his interpretation: “I first heard this from, uh, Ric Von Schmidt. He lives in Cambridge. Ric’s a blues guitar player. I met him one day on the green pastures of Harvard University.”9
In fact, Von Schmidt told Larry Jaffee in 1993 that he had played the song one night in 1960 for Dylan, believing he was reviving a title written by Blind Boy Fuller and given to him by Geno Foreman. Dylan, seduced by what he heard, included the song in his first album. Von Schmidt recalls: “The tune was the same, and the chords were real pretty, but they weren’t the same. I don’t know if he changed them or if he’d heard a different version from Van Ronk.”9
To his surprise, he saw his name on the record associated with the copyright of the song. However, authorship is assigned to Reverend Gary Davis, and Eric Von Schmidt never received any royalties.
Production
Dylan had some difficulty with the guitar part, particularly in a few arpeggios (presumably played with a pick) and where some chords refused systematically to “ring.” But the arrangements are subtle, voice and harmonica in D tuning infusing the song with a sad feeling. Even if from time to time his guitar playing is “irregular,” he has a perfect sense of the rhythm—except perhaps between 2:02 and 2:05, where he panics slightly… Only one take was deemed necessary to put the song in the box.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
On the album cover of Bringing It All Back Home, released in 1965, among the LPs next to Bob we can see the first album by Von Schmidt, titled The Folk Blues of Eric Von Schmidt (1963). A lovely testament to their friendship.
House Of The Risin ’ Sun
Traditional / Arrangement Bob Dylan / 5:18
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: November 20, 1961
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
Famous worldwide, this ballad (according to Alan Price, organist of the Animals) probably originated in English folklore as a sixteenth-century song. Other sources mention the ballads “Matty Groves” and “The Unfortunate Rake,” dating, respectively, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During a trip to Middlesboro, Kentucky, in 1937, folklorist Alan Lomax recorded the song as sung by a sixteen-year-old girl, Georgia Turner. He called it “The Rising Sun Blues.” Then, a few years later, he recorded two Kentucky musicians’ slightly different versions, first by Bert Martin then by Daw Henson. Three years earlier, two Appalachian artists, Clarence “Tom” Ashley and Gwen Foster, recorded a similar song for the Vocalion company.
The “House of the Risin’ Sun” is a brothel or a women’s prison in New Orleans. Maybe both! Several hypotheses exist. Bob Dylan recorded it only after hearing it sung by Dave Van Ronk: “I’d never done that song before, but heard it every night because Van Ronk would do it… I thought he was really onto something with the song, so I just recorded it.”6 Van Ronk intended to record the song for his next album; he talked to Dylan, but too late: “He asked me if I would mind if… he recorded my version of ‘House of the Risin’ Sun.’… I said, ‘I’d rather you didn’t, because I’m going to record it myself soon.’ And Bobby said, ‘Uh-oh.’”6 Van Ronk was not spiteful, but because he kept it out of his repertoire initially, the public later accused him of “borrowing” Dylan’s version!12 But this did not prevent him from recording the song in 1964 at Mercury for his album Just Dave Van Ronk. In his interpretation, Bob Dylan decided not to change the original lyrics, keeping the feminine, whereas some performers use the “masculine,” including the Animals in 1964.
Cover
There are hundreds of versions of “House of the Risin’ Sun”: Woody Guthrie (1941), Leadbelly (1944 and 1948), Josh White (1947)… Some have entered the realm of legend. The recording by the Animals, which started the rhythm ’n’ blues revolution in the United Kingdom, allowed the band from Newcastle to be number 1 on the British charts in June 1964. Similarly, the very psychedelic band Frijid Pink from Detroit reached the top of the charts in several European countries (West Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom), and also in the United States and Canada, with their rendition of the song in 1970. To be noted also: Dolly Parton (1980), Eric Burdon and the Robbie Krieger Band (1990), Tracy Chapman (1990), and Muse (2010).
Production
To strengthen the necessary tension in the song, Dylan preferred not to play harmonica but instead to rhythmically fingerpick his guitar, without frills or counterpoint. Van Ronk thought that this adaptation altered the song, and he preserved both lyrics and melody, but Bob’s harmonies are extremely effective. The Animals could have used it as the basis of their own version, although some think that it is Josh White’s version and Eric Burdon recalls the influence of Johnny Handle. However, in this song Dylan finds an ideal way to express all the emotion contained in his voice. He even misses the low string on his guitar again and again (1:40, 2:09)! The introduction has a strong resemblance to the acoustic version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by George Harrison (Beatles Anthology 3), his future friend. Of the three takes that were necessary to record the piece, the third was the best.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
In 1995 Dylan released an elec
tric version of the song on the Highway 61 Interactive CD-ROM, with an overdub from the original record release.
Freight Train Blues
Traditional / Arrangement Bob Dylan / 2:18
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: November 22, 1961
Technical Team
Producers: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
“Freight Train Blues” is one of the most famous compositions by John Laird, a harmonica player from Kentucky who wrote about five hundred songs. In an interview in 1973, Laird says that he wrote this song specifically for the singer and host Red Foley, in memory of the sound of the train that had punctuated his youth in the southern United States (also known as Dixie): “I was born in Dixie in a boomer shed just a little shanty by the railway track / freight train was it taught me how to cry / the holler of the driver was my lullaby.” The song was often covered by, among others, Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Anita Carter, the Weavers, and Bob Dylan.
Production
Recorded on November 22, “Freight Train Blues” is the last song Bob Dylan completed for his first album (the last song of the recording session; “House Carpenter,” was dropped from the album). It is also the last song in which he plays harmonica tuned in C, while accompanying himself on his Gibson J-50. While he faultlessly provides the rhythmic tempo, he is not as comfortable on the arpeggiated part (plectrum) between 1:14 and 1:28. Similarly, his vocal performance, although marked with some ironies, barely follows the tempo on the upper parts. Bob is on the verge of derailing. Strange for a song called “Freight Train Blues”! The song was recorded in one take.
Song To Woody
Bob Dylan / 2:42
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: November 20, 1961
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
“Written by Bob Dylan at the Mills Bar Bleeker Street, New York City, February 14, for Woody Guthrie.” Bob Dylan wrote these few words on a sheet of paper (now in possession of the Gleasons). At that time, the young songwriter had visited Woody Guthrie at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, and had seen firsthand the declining health of the composer of “This Land Is Your Land.” “Song to Woody” is primarily an homage of a disciple to his master and his fellow travelers (Cisco, Sonny, Leadbelly).
“Song to Woody” is based on Woody Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre.” Guthrie’s song details the “Italian Hall Disaster,” the death of striking miners and their families in Michigan on Christmas Eve in 1913. The lyric “that come with the dust and are gone with the wind” is a reference to Woody’s “we come with the dust and we go with the wind” in “Pastures of Plenty” from 1941.
“Song to Woody” also demonstrates how Dylan, at the age of twenty, is powerfully and poetically haunted by death and endings—not only the death of his mentor who died in his hospital bed, but also the end of an era and a musical universe. He confessed to the director Martin Scorsese, “I really cared. I really wanted to portray my gratitude in some kind of way, but I knew that I was not going to be going back to Greystone anymore.”6
The song is a tribute to the great Woody Guthrie, from whom Dylan had received, in his own words, “my identity and destiny.”1 “I felt like I had to write that song. I did not consider myself a songwriter at all, but I needed to write that, and I needed to sing it, so that’s why I needed to write it, because it hadn’t been written, and that’s what I needed to say…”6
Dylan’s friend Dave Van Ronk, who covered “Song to Woody” in his album Somebody Else, Not Me in 1980, testified to the lyric strength of the song. “This song was his second composition that I heard (the first being ‘Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Disaster Blues,’ a deathless epic!). I remember the first time he played on the stage of the Old Gaslight on McDougal Street. I was stunned. We all were.”10
Production
Very close harmonically to Guthrie’s song “1913 Massacre,” “Song to Woody” is nevertheless the archetypal “Dylanesque” song, characterized by an evocative power that distinguishes Dylan from his peers. Dylan admits readily that he took the song from his mentor: “I used the melody from one of his old songs,” he says in the book Chronicles.1 His guitar playing is enough to enhance the full scope of the text, and his voice, never unanimously appreciated, immediately captivates the listener. He plays his Gibson with a mix of finger-picking and beating, so characteristic of Dylan. With a triple-meter rhythm, he gives us a tribute to Guthrie from his heart. This song demonstrates the essence of the combination between text and music. “Song to Woody” was recorded just after another of his compositions, “Talkin’ New York.” Only two takes were needed, the second being the best.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Note that ten years later, for his Hunky Dory album, David Bowie recorded “Song for Bob Dylan.” Bowie sings, “Hear this Robert Zimmerman / I wrote a song for you” that echoes “Hey, hey Woody Guthrie / I wrote you a song” in “Song to Woody.”
Woody Guthrie
A Breath of Fresh Air
During his apprenticeship as a folksinger in one of the clubs in Minneapolis, Bob Dylan became familiar with Woody Guthrie’s 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads and, soon after, his autobiography, Bound for Glory. An extraordinary life is revealed on each page. His childhood in Oklahoma was marked by several tragedies: the accidental death of his older sister Clara, the institutionalization and death of his mother Nora, his father’s bankruptcy, and the Dust Bowl that ravaged the Great Plains during the 1930s. Because of the Dust Bowl, Guthrie migrated to California, with thousands of other Okies. There he took his first steps as a folksinger, made his first recordings, and began to have his first troubles with the authorities that would recur during the early 1950s anticommunist witch hunts.
The Father of Protest Singers
Guthrie’s songs, which Dylan describes as “beyond category,” are folk songs of a new kind: resolutely protest songs, according to Dylan, and carrying with them an “infinite sweep of humanity.” Guthrie initiates the type and style of song that found particular resonance in the American circles of protesters in the early 1960s.
According to Hugh Brown, poet, guitarist, and a familiar figure in the clubs of Dinkytown at the time, “[Dylan] fell in love with Woody Guthrie right away.”2 Evidently, the young folksinger wanted to follow a similar path. “I was doing nothing but Carter Family and Jesse Fuller songs. Then later I got to Woody Guthrie, which opened up a whole new world at the time. Then I was still only 19 or 20. I was pretty fanatical about what I wanted to do, so after learning about 200 of Woody’s songs, I went to see him and I waited for the right moment to visit him in a hospital in Morristown, New Jersey.”4 Paul Nelson, a writer and editor who knew Dylan at the University of Minnesota, recalls, “It just took him about a week to become the finest interpreter I have yet heard of the songs of Woody Guthrie.”2
When Bob Dylan arrived in New York City on January 24, 1961, he went immediately to Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey, where Woody Guthrie was hospitalized for Huntington’s disease. It was their first meeting. A complicity developed between the master and his disciple. Bob Dylan: “Woody always asked me to bring him cigarettes, Raleigh cigarettes. Usually, I’d play him his songs during the afternoon. Sometimes he’d ask for specific ones… the song he’d written after seeing the movie The Grapes of Wrath. I knew all those songs and many more.”1
Bob Dylan spent almost every weekend at Bob and Sid Gleason’s apartment on North Arlington Avenue in East Orange, New Jersey. The whole folk scene of Greenwich Village was there, from Pete Seeger and Cisco Houston to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Sid Glea
son: “He came, and he said little except that he loved Woody and wanted to spend time with him.”2 Meanwhile, Woody enjoyed being with the young Bob Dylan and enjoyed his precocious talent. One Sunday in his hotel room, Bob sang for Woody a song that he just composed titled “Song to Woody.” Later, Guthrie confessed to the Gleasons, “That boy’s got a voice.” And he predicted a great future for Dylan, even more than for his two close friends Jack Elliott and Pete Seeger.
So, it was by imitating Woody Guthrie that Bob Dylan started a career in the clubs of Greenwich Village. He took over the reputation of his elder as a protest singer. Dylan honored Guthrie in his first opus with “Song to Woody” and again in concert at Town Hall in New York on April 12, 1963, reciting the poem “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.”
See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
Blind Lemon Jefferson / 2:44
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: November 20, 1961
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
Bob Dylan’s first album ends with a blues song by Blind Lemon Jefferson (recorded in October 1927 for Paramount), a pioneer of Texas blues and a mentor of Leadbelly and Lightnin’ Hopkins, then musicians of blues rock and folk rock in the 1960s. “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” is actually an adaptation of a spiritual, “One Kind Favor.” There have been multiple versions by everyone from the Grateful Dead to Lou Reed, and from Canned Heat to Dave Van Ronk. Bob Dylan’s recording is quite different from Jefferson’s version—the first is dark, the second brimming with life. But both singers ask one favor: that someone keep their graves clean!
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 4