washerman's dog: Bob Dylan

Showing posts with label Bob Dylan. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Queen of the Backups: Clydie King

Clydie King

Who hasn’t wanted to be a back up singer? My first consciousness of this particular species of humanity was when I saw Gladys Knight and the Pips perform Midnight Train to Georgia on Soul Train in the early 1970s. I suspected that I should not be deriving such pure pleasure from seeing three men in immaculate suits moving in honeyed unison as if they were performing some seriously important task akin to healing or miracle working. I wanted to be a Pip, if only to possess a license to pull an imaginary train whistle and wear really loud clothes.

Clydie King is one of those amazing singers who seems to have backed up everyone from the Rolling Stones (Exile on Main Street), Steely Dan (Can’t Buy a Thrill), Lynyrd Skynrd (Sweet Home Alabama), Ray Charles (many many songs) and of course Bob Dylan (most of his Born-Again era work). Indeed, Clydie did more than simply back Bob up in the studio. She, for a while, was his wife, or at least ‘main squeeze’ and is said to have born the great man two children. Some even claimed she was instrumental is ‘leading him to the Lord’.

They say every back up singer’s dream to be the headliner. And Clydie King was no different. She issued several records under her own name and tonight, we present her debut album, Direct Me. Certainly not as nasty as Betty Davis, but neither as cotton candy as Diana Ross, Clydie’s voice brings back a rush of memories of 70’s American soul. Upbeat or slow, she’s got some chops and you can see why she was in such demand by all those white boy rockers!

Track Listing:

01 Direct Me

02 Ain't My Stuff Good Enough

03 First Time, Last Time

04 Never Like This Before

05 I Can't Go On Without Love

06 'Bout Love

07 Long Road Ahead

08 B Minor

09 You Need Love Like I Do, Don't You

10 The Long And Winding Road

here

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Obscura: Dylan

Here are some soundings from the long career of Bob Dylan, caught in concerts around the world, or scraped up off the studio floor or interpreted by others.

Track Listing:

01 Rainy Day Women [Grand Rapids 15-2-1999]

02 Spanish Is The Loving Tongue [New Morning Outtake]

03 Sara [Castello di San Felice 8-7-2005]

04 One More Cup Of Coffee [Clearwater 22-4-1976]

05 Romance In Durango [Renaldo & Clara Soundtrack 1975]

06 Wild Take [Pat Garret & Billy the Kid Sessions]

07 Billy [Pat Garret & Billy The Kid Sessions]

07 He Was A Friend Of Mine [Sebastpol 29-6-1997]

08 Boots Of Spanish Leather [Livorno 22-6-1989]

09 The Midnight Special (Harry Belafonte with Dylan on harmonica) [June 1961]

10 The Times We've Known [New York 1-11-1998]

11 Blowin' in the Wind (Dolly Parton) [Denver 10-6-2005]

12 Soon Gershwin Concert [Brooklyn 11-3-1987]

13 When The Deal Goes Down [Odense 28-5-2008]

14 Went To See The Gypsy [New Morning Outtake]

14 I Shall Be Released [Dylan and Van Morrison]

15 Yesterday [New York Studio 1-5-1970]

here

Friday, August 3, 2012

Dreamtime on the Beeb: Robert Dylan

Ultimate Live Dylan

We all know Bob had a radio show some years ago. We also know that the venerable British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) issued some of his 1965 recordings.

Herewith, for your listening pleasure, is a compilation of obscure, rare and some very rare, indeed, live recordings of the Bobster from throughout his career, put together by the BBC. Michael Bloomfield, three weeks before he passed away, smoking on The Bridegroom's Still Standing at the Altar, winds up this session. Blowing in the Wind opens it up.

Thank you BBC!

here

Friday, July 13, 2012

The Other Side of the Tracks: Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan had taken to painting in 1974, to try to find a new way to put songs together. He’d grown tired of his recent results and so had the critics. He was declared past his prime and out of puff. Nothing new to say.

His painting teacher was a grumpy old school Central European named Norman Raeben who was never one to think twice about saying exactly what he thought. ‘You’re tangled up in blue,’ he scolded Dylan, one day when the singer seemed to be painting only with one color. His master’s voice stuck in Dylan’s mind. When in early autumn 1974 he went into a New York City studio to record his next album he named the opening song Tangled Up in Blue.

He worked with a top-notch band of sessions players and made the album, Blood on the Tracks, in typical style. Fast, spontaneous, unscripted and flying by the seat of the pants. His band found it hard to keep up or follow. But they were exhilarated by the music they were making. The album was a ‘wrap’. Columbia Records had printed the cover and were about to press the wax but Dylan himself was less than happy with the results. The more he listened to the album back ‘home’ in Minnesota the less he liked what he heard. He asked his brother David to get some local Minneapolis musicians together, ‘I want to make it again,’ he said.

Sound 80 studio was a local Twin Cities landmark. Even I, who had absolutely nothing to do with music making, but read the music reviews in the Reader every week, felt proud that Minneapolis had one of the country’s best recording studios. Artists like Leo Kottke, Dave Brubeck, Cat Stevens and Prince recorded there and though I didn’t know what it meant, I knew that Sound 80 was the first studio in America to make a digital recording. That Dylan had recorded Blood on the Tracks there was also part of our local ‘coolness’ factor.

Blood on the Tracks is my favorite Dylan record of them all. And for years I was dismayed not to be able to find any reference to Minneapolis musicians on the sleeve. I wondered if perhaps the story of Dylan using local players to back him on the album was an urban myth. But of course, what happened was that since Columbia had already printed the jackets they didn’t want to bear the cost of designing a new one. After all, Bobby hasn’t been selling too many records lately. Best cut costs.

Of course, we all now know that Blood on the Tracks is not only one a good album but one of the most admired pieces of popular music artistry in recent history. He had found his voice again, plus a new way of using it. Tonight, the Washerman’s Dog shines a light on the ORIGINAL New York version of the album which sounds familiar but has a much darker feel than the one we’ve all been in love with, and know by heart. But there is beauty in these versions without a doubt. Dylan’s voice offers different shadings of each classic song and in many places the lyrics are different. The arrangements are more complex and the instrumentation more diverse than the spare, ‘small-group’ sound of the version that was released in 1975.

Its not often we get two versions of the same masterpiece!

Track Listing:

01 Tangled Up In Blue

02 Simple Twist of Fate

03 You're A Big Girl Now

04 Idiot Wind

05 You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

06 Meet Me In The Morning

07 Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts

08 If You See Her Say Hello

09 Shelter From The Storm

10 Buckets of Rain

here

Friday, June 15, 2012

Homage to Bob: Jerry Garcia (link restored)

Jerry Garcia + Bob Dylan

There was probably no bigger Dylan fan than Jerry Garcia. As leader of the Grateful Dead, as a solo artist and in his many other side projects, Garcia always found a way to include a Dylan song or two into his performances. And with great love.

Ladder to the Stars: Garcia Plays Dylan (2005) examines the unique relationship between the pair, featuring Jerry Garcia (guitar/vocals) in a variety of musical settings spanning nearly a quarter century. While the occasional exception exists, the contents are primarily presented in a chronological fashion. Rather than going all the way back to the pre-psychedelic Grateful Dead -- when the band included covers of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "She Belongs to Me" in its repertoire -- the earliest inclusion finds Garcia fronting a quartet alongside Merl Saunders (organ) through a blues-infused treatment of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." Dylan provided Garcia with perhaps his most intimately interpreted material. As the liner notes point out, Garcia felt "...right in those songs." Adding, "When I sing them I feel like I could have written them. I relate to them that well." Nowhere can that symbiotically beneficial relationship be heard better than the profound and practically spiritual "Positively 4th Street" circa the mid-'70s Jerry Garcia Band with Nicky Hopkins (piano) and Ron Tutt (drums). Garcia also chose obscure, deeper album tracks, making them very much his own. Examples abound, ranging from the brooding and methodical "Wicked Messenger" -- courtesy of the short-lived Legion of Mary -- to the exploratory funk driving "Tough Mama." On the opposite side of the backbeat are the lamenting "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and a humbling, if not reverential reading of "I Shall Be Released." By the mid-'80s the quality of Garcia's solo endeavors equalled -- if not surpassed -- that of the Grateful Dead. One constant was an ever-expanding stable of Dylan tunes. One of the songs that Garcia shared with both was the rollicking "When I Paint My Masterpiece." When it turned up -- usually in the first set of Dead shows -- Bob Weir (guitar/vocals) took the lead. Here, listeners are treated to a Garcia Band run through guided by some simply smouldering solos from the guitarist. Presumably in an effort to offer unreleased nuggets, the unplugged early-'90s take of "She Belongs to Me," with just Garcia, Weir, and Phil Lesh (bass), was passed over for a rendering by the 1990-era Grateful Dead. The band sounds spent and probably was as this particular performance happened to be the second of a rare double encore. An emotive and gripping "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)" by the Jerry Garcia Band and the poignant "Visions of Johanna" taken from the Grateful Dead's penultimate live show on August 8, 1995, are among the remaining highlights. (allmusic)