Besides the songs mentioned in the comments after the On This Day In Music History: Bob Dylan post, I heard and received several other titles in answer to the question above.
They were: “Tangled Up In Blue,” “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “Blowing In The Wind,” “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and … none.
It’s not too late to add your choice to the list!
Today is Bob Dylan’s birthday.
He was born Robert Allen Zimmerman, the first born son of Abe and Beatty Zimmerman, on Saturday, May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. (The family moved to Hibbing in 1946.) He became Bob Dillon in 1958 while a junior in high school and legally changed his name to Bob Dylan in 1962. He went on to become “the most prolific and influential singer/songwriter in the history of music.” (Bob Dylan Complete Discography 2006 by Brain Hinton)
In the vast ocean of all that has been said and written about Bob Dylan, including all that he has said and written about himself, it seems to me that the most important thing is his songs, all of those songs
So, what is your favorite Bob Dylan song?
I pose this question knowing that you might not like, maybe even can’t stand, Bob Dylan. But given that he is the most “covered” songwriter of all time, there’s a pretty good chance that you like, maybe even love, one of his songs. (For example: “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” as done by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, “My Back Pages” as done by the Byrds, “I Shall Be Released” as done by the Band, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” as done by Nina Simone, “Just Like A Woman” as done by Richie Havens… hmm… I think I have an idea for another blogpost!)
My initial response to the question is one of those question-to-answer-the-question answers: how can you pick just one?
My serious answer is: “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
I love this song. I’ve been playing it for many years, performed it dozens of times. At first, I played it capoed up around the fifth fret, fingering in the key of C and using Cotten-style fingerpicking patterns. Then I saw the Murray Lerner documentary film Festival about the 1963-65 Newport Folk Festivals and there was Bob playing the song, doing Carter-style strumming on a D major chord, capoed at the second fret and with a low bass note that signaled dropped-D tuning. From then on, that’s been the way for me.
I’ve never felt the need to play harmonica in the song. Just getting those words out there, those incredible, dazzling words, and letting that melody soar has been enough. (I’ve never understood why the Byrds only do the second verse in their electric version.) It’s one of those songs that I feel from the bottom of my feet right on through my fingers and seemingly out the top of my head. I’ll be playing and singing this song as long as my fingers and my voice allow.
Bob liked the song, too. In No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (1986), Robert Shelton wrote: “In 1968, Dylan told Sing Out: ‘There was one thing I tried to do which wasn’t a good idea for me. I tried to write another ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’ It’s the only song I tried to write ‘another one.’ I don’t do that anymore.’ ”
After trying to record it at two other sessions, Bob finally cut the version we know and love in the sixth take on January 15, 1965 at Columbia Records’ Studio A in New York City with Bruce Langhorne on second guitar.
“Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free…”
What is your favorite Bob Dylan song?
Happy Birthday, Bob. All the best.
On May 21, 1955, Chuck Berry was in Chicago, Illinois. Having been introduced to Leonard Chess, owner of Chess Records, by Muddy Waters, the St. Louis, MO based, singer, guitarist and songwriter was recording his first single.
1954 had seen popular releases by newcomers Bill Haley & His Comets [“(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock”] and Elvis Presley (“That’s All Right” and “Good Rockin’ Tonight”), records that merged hillbilly (country) music with rhythm & blues and introduced something that came to be known as rockabilly. The song on Chuck’s demo tape that caught Leonard’s ear was his remake of a 1938 Bob Wills song called “Ida Red”. It too merged these two musically and racially disparate styles into a new and very infectious sound.
But besides Bob Wills, an R&B artist named Bumble Bee Slim had put out a song also called “Ida Red” in 1950, so a name change was called for. Chuck went to work and the rewritten number was given the title “Maybellene”. The track was cut, in 36 takes, with Chuck on lead vocals and electric guitar (a Gibson ES-350T with P-90 single-coil pickups), Johnnie Johnson on piano, Willie Dixon on bass, Jerome Green on maracas and Ebby Hardy on drums.
In A Brief History of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Nick Johnstone wrote: “Welding country and western guitar licks to a Chicago-influenced rhythm and blues beat while throwing over the top, cocky, rebellious, mischievous lyrics, packed with lusty innuendo and metaphor, Berry all but defined rock ‘n’ roll with “Maybellene.””
Yes, indeed.
If you’ve never heard “Maybellene”, find it and listen to it (more than once.) If you have heard it, more than likely it has been awhile. So, listen to it again. “As I was motivatin’ over the hill..”
Three months after being recorded, “Maybellene” reached #5 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the R&B chart.
Is there a song, a single song, that you can point to and say: “That song changed my life.”?
My answer would be: yes. The song? “Spirit In The Night” by Bruce Springsteen.
Like several songs, I can remember the first time I heard it. The year was 1973. It was in the evening and I was sitting alone in my parent’s station wagon in the parking lot of St. Michael’s church, waiting to pick up my then-girlfriend after choir practice. I had the radio tuned to WBCN-FM out of Boston and this song came on that was both unlike anything I’d ever heard and still somehow familiar. I heard the opening sax riff over drums, bass, keyboards and electric guitar. Then the scratchy male vocals: “Crazy Janey and her mission man were back in the alley tradin’ hands.” Whoa, what’s this? I was immediately drawn in and followed the story (a rock song that told a story!) of this group of friends and their trip up to Greasy Lake, armed with “a bottle of rose” and the dust that Wild Billy shook out of his coon-skin cap. There was the chorus with the call: “and they dance like spirits in the night” and the response: “all night” that I joined in on instantaneously. After the characters “said good-bye to gypsy angel row” and the last chorus ended, I turned up the volume a bit more and leaned in, hoping the DJ would say who I’d been listening to. He did: “That was Bruce Springsteen from his brand new album Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.”
The next day, I went shopping.
That album led to more than a dozen others: vinyl LPs (including the “live” box set), cassette tapes and CDs. I learned how to play and sing “Spirit In The Night” and it was one of the most popular songs in my repertoire when I started playing summer weekend nights at a little bar down on A Street in Hampton Beach, N.H. That call-and-response chorus got ’em every time. Two of his albums are on my short list of all-time favorites: The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle and We Shall Overcome: the Seeger Sessions.
I’ve been to see Bruce and the E Street Band in concert four times (a paltry number compared to many of his fans) and all in Boston: twice at the Music Hall (now the Wang Center), once at the old Boston Garden and a few summers ago at Fenway Park. The first time my ticket cost $6.50. The Fenway show was a birthday present from my amazing wife – also a Bruce fan – and all she would tell me was that it was the only time in her life that she’d bought something and paid more than full price.
I’ve started playing “Spirit In The Night” again, giving it a folky, fingerpicked setting that, I think, works really well. As I get caught up in the song, I feel a sense of coming full circle, returning home to the spot where I started a long, fantastic journey.
So…
“How do you calculate the influence of a song in your life? We have songs that carry enormous meaning for us, songs we want played at our weddings or at our funerals, songs that every time we hear them, every single time, we pause, we remember, we smile, we sing, we ignite. And maybe even more that that. Maybe we have music that has changed or saved our lives.”
Louis P. Masur, from: Runaway Dream: Born To Run and Bruce Springsteen’s American Vision. 2009
How about you? What’s your song?
The title of this post is taken from the title of a book put together by Charles K. Wolfe and Ted Olson called The Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music, published in 2005. The information to follow is taken from some of the various fine articles in that book.
In his comment to my post of May 11 (Yesterday In Music History), Tom Savage wrote about listening to his father’s Jimmie Rodgers records and how he remembered a few tracks where Jimmie and the Carter Family “visited” and did a song together.
The original connection between Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family is that they were both “discovered” and made their first recordings at the same recording sessions held in Bristol, Tennessee, in the summer of 1927. Given the subsequent popularity and influence of these two acts, the term “Big Bang” is well deserved.
Ralph Peer, the man in charge of the sessions, arrived in Bristol with his wife, two recording engineers and their portable recording equipement on Friday, July 22. On Sunday, July 24, the Bristol Herald Courier newspaper ran an article, including an interview with Mr. Peer, that announced their arrival and served as an invitation to local musicians to come and audition.
Recording started on Monday, July 25 and ended on Friday, August 5. During that time, nineteen “hillbilly” bands and soloists were recorded. Artists such as Ernest Stoneman, Uncle Eck Dunford, The Johnson Brothers, Blind Alfred Reed, The Bull Mountain Moonshiners and The West Virginia Coon Hunters “cut sides” to be released on Victor Records.
The Carter Family auditioned in the morning on Monday, August 1 and recorded four songs that evening. Maybelle and Sara came back the next morning and recored two more songs, for some unknown reason, without A.P. In the afternoon on Thursday, August 4, Jimmie Rodgers recorded the two songs that would launch his career: The Soldier’s Sweetheart and Sleep, Baby, Sleep.
Victor Records released Jimmie Rodger’s record on October 7, 1927. The first Carter Family record: The Poor Orphan Child backed with The Wandering Boy was released on November 4. Their next release came on December 2 and the final release from this first session came out on January 20, 1928.
Johnny Cash once said: “These recordings in Bristol in 1927 are the single most important event in the history of country music.” I think it is safe to paraphrase this and say that these recordings are among the most important events in the history of American music.
“She’d hook that right thumb under that big bass string and just like magic the other fingers moved fast like a threshing machine, always on the right strings, and out came the lead notes and the accompaniment at the same time. The left hand worked in perfect timing, and the frets seemed to pull those nimble fingers to the very place where they were supposed to be, and the guitar rang clear and sweet with a mellow touch that made you know it was Maybelle playing the guitar.”
June Carter Cash describing her mother, Maybelle Carter, playing the guitar.
Maybelle Addington Carter was born on May 10, 1909 in Nicklesville, Virginia. While still a teenager, she played guitar and sang back-up in a trio with Sara Carter, her cousin, and A.P.Carter, Sara’s husband. Sara sang lead and played autoharp and guitar. A.P. sang bass. The group was known as the Carter Family.
On August 1, 1927, in Bristol, Tennessee, the Carter Family made their first recordings for Ralph Peer, a traveling talent scout for Victor Records. From then until 1943, when A.P. and Sara left the group, the Carter Family recorded hundreds of songs and sold millions of records.
Thanks to those records and several years of live radio broadcasts, Maybelle’s guitar style, her “Carter Scratch,” was heard all over the country and adopted by generations of guitar players.
To try to put the extent and importance of her influence simply:
Maybelle Carter was Woody Guthrie’s favorite guitar player.
Woody Guthrie was the primary influence of Bob Dylan.
And who did Bob Dylan influence?
Well, as a student said when I posed that question in class one day:
“Everyone.”
Maybelle Carter passed away on October 23, 1978.
The first time I heard the words and music of Robert Johnson, I was listening to a Led Zeppelin album.
It was October 1969. I was in high school and the previous August, I’d seen Led Zeppelin in concert in Framingham, MA with my good friend, Tom. The new album, their second release, was awesome. One track, “The Lemon Song,” had some rather interesting lyrics. The liner notes gave songwriting credit to all four members of the band.
About six weeks later, I heard the words and music of Robert Johnson again. That time I was listening to Let It Bleed, the new album by the Rolling Stones (my other favorite band back then) and the song “Love In Vain” really stood out with its gorgeous acoustic guitar playing, evocative lyrics and passionate Mick Jagger vocals. The songwriter was listed as “Woody Payne.”
That sort of thing happened quite a bit in the 60’s.
Robert johnson was born on May 8, 1911, in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. To list but two of his many accolades, Cub Koda, writing in The All Music Guide to the Blues said that he is “certainly the most celebrated figure in the history of the blues.” Author Peter Guralnick wrote: “Robert Johnson created music of the highest sophistication, music in which not a single note is misplaced, in which metaphor can become meaning without the need for explanation.” The “How” of how he became such an artist is the subject of more speculation than for that of any other musician.
Over the course of five recording sessions, Nov.23, 26 & 27, 1936 in San Antonio, Texas and June 19 & 20, 1937 in Dallas, Texas, he recorded a total of 29 songs or “sides.” His records, 10-inch, 78-rpm discs with one song per side, sold mostly to an African-American audience in the rural South and Southwest. At the time, the total sales from the sides released from his first sessions numbered around 5000 discs.
In 1961, John Hammond and Frank Driggs of Columbia Records gathered 16 of Johnson’s sides together and released them on a 12-inch LP, entitled The King of the Delta Blues Singers. Volume 2 soon followed. Both albums are available on CD.
If you haven’t heard the words and music of Robert Johnson by Robert Johnson, don’t wait any longer. If you have, listen again.
Robert Johnson died of mysterious circumstances on August 16, 1938.
In the room where I teach, on the wall behind where I sit, hung so that my students can see it just over my left shoulder, is a framed quote: “Practice may not make perfect but it sure as hell makes for improvement.”
The quote is from Pete Seeger, found in the introduction to his children’s picture book Abiyoyo (1985).
On May 3, 1919, in New York City, Charles and Constance Seeger welcomed their third son, Peter, into the world. At the age of 8, Pete learned to play the ukulele. When he was 13, he took up the 4-string banjo and then switched to 5-string banjo when he was 19. When Pete was around 21, Huddie Ledbetter taught him to play the 12-string guitar.
In March of 1940, he gave his first concert performance. He went on to perform and record as a member of the Almanac Singers and then the Weavers, who in 1950, had a #1 hit record with their version of “Goodnight, Irene.” As a solo performer, Pete sang and played for decades in schools, coffehouses, concert halls, on college campuses and in all sorts of venues across America and around the world; inspiring countless numbers of people, young and old, with folk music.
From 1957-1962, Pete recorded a five-album series for Folkways Records entitled “American Favorite Ballads.” In 2002, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings began releasing the series on CD in five volumes. Listening just to Volume 1, I am enthralled by and thankful for the incredible, timeless songs that Pete has preserved. “John Henry,” “Shenandoah,” “Home On The Range,” “Oh, Susanna,” “Wayfaring Stranger” and “Frankie and Johnny” to name a very few. His renditions are joyous, alive and though the songs are for the most part simple, he makes them “vibrate and sparkle with the life that is within them.” (From: The Folksinger’s Guide To The 12-String Guitar As Played By Leadbelly: An Instruction Manual by Julius Lester and Pete Seeger, 1965)
Last August, not long after celebrating his 90th birthday with a star-studded concert at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Pete took to the stage again. This time it was at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, RI, for the first night of George Wein’s Folk Festival 50, a two-day celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first Newport Folk Festival (which Pete helped organize and also played at). And, thanks to my amazing wife and the best Father’s Day/birthday present ever, I, as I kept incredulously telling myself, was there.
As Pete strode on stage, with his banjo in one hand and 12-string guitar in the other, the 9000-plus in the audience stood and roared in excitement and wonder and with much love. Starting with the 12-string, he picked out the notes of the melody of “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and, after apologizing for not having much of his singing voice left, turned the singing over to us, lining out the lyrics as we went along.
His next songs paid tribute to his old guitar teacher (“The Midnight Special”) and Irving Berlin (“Blue Skies”). Then, line by line, he taught us his song “Take It From Dr. King.” The stage soon filled with the other musicians who had played during the day at the festival, and the evening air was filled with sing-along after fabulous sing-along: “This Little Light,” “Guantanamera,” “Worried Man Blues,” “If I Had A Hammer” and the finale “This Land Is Your Land.”
That was Saturday, August 1st, 2009. The next night, Sunday, in the rain, he and about 7800 of us, did it again.
If you want to hear Pete Seeger, his Greatest Hits CD on Columbia features his original songs and the American Favorite Ballads series on Smithsonian Folkways features all those great old folk songs. If you want to see Pete Seeger, the DVD Pete Seeger: the Power of Song is outstanding and if you want to read about him, How Can I Keep From Singing: Pete Seeger by David Dunaway is the definitive biography.
Happy 91st Birthday, Pete Seeger. Thank you for everything.
This blog came into the world on April 18, 2010. Since then, it has enjoyed hundreds of views, several thoughtful comments and much encouraging feedback.
I send many thanks and my deepest gratitude to all of you who have viewed, commented and emailed. As April goes and May arrives, there will be much to celebrate and write about. The upcoming anniversaries and birthdays will inspire more “On This Day In Music History” posts and who knows what else. Given the density of my personal and professional life during May, I will do my best to keep up and do them all justice.
I hope you keep coming back to see what I’ve come up with and keep those cards and letters (aka: comments and emails) coming. And, by all means: tell your friends!
Thanks again. Talk to you soon.
EFS
The sound of a musical instrument is generally referred to as its “tone.” Among many definitions, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that tone is: “sound quality” and “accent or inflection expressive of an emotion.” In the recent issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine, “New Gear” columnist Scott Nygaard uses the words “warmth,” “sparkle” and “chang” to convey his impressions of the tone quality of a new Collings dreadnaught-size, steel-string acoustic guitar. In a previous post, I used the words “searing” and “soulful” to try to describe the sound of Albert King’s guitar playing.
Late the other afternoon as my wife and I were beginning to prepare our dinner, I put on a 1992 CD by a prominent Jazz Fusion electric guitarist. Before the second piece had finished, I found that the electronic, effects-laden sound of the guitar had gotten to be rather annoying.
When I came back into the kitchen, my wife asked why I’d changed the music.
I told her that I liked the clear, round sound of the guitars better on this one.
She smiled. “Round?”
“I know,” I replied. “But yes, round. The sound of each note is round and clear, like a teardrop or a falling drop of rain.”
“Hmmm,” she pondered.
I continued: “It’s not easy to do. It’s like trying to describe a color. How would you describe the sound of a guitar?”
P.S.: the second CD was “Conversations In Swing Guitar” from 1999 with Duke Robillard and Herb Ellis. Highly recommended.
sixstr stories 