Jan 10, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Links to Song: Only a Pawn in Their Game
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez 1963 March on Washington: Only a Pawn in Their Game
What you should know about this song: After the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, the emergence of Martin Luther King Jr., the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, and the numerous “sit ins” across the country, the civil rights movement was coming to a head. Enter Medgar Evers, a young civil rights activist from Mississippi. He became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi and played a key role in organizing voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and boycotts of companies that practiced discrimination (source).
In June, 1963, Evers was assassinated by a white segregationist who shot him in the back, leaving him dead in the streets of a local church for his wife and three kids to find. Within a few days, Bob Dylan wrote “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” his response to the racist system in the US that was the catalyst for the murder. Typical Bob Dylan… he chose to debut the song at a voter registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi.
“All the other protest songs were very self-righteous polemics on the terrible rednecks of the South… This song had a much more cosmic and far-reaching overview. He pointed out that the people the movement were vilifying as the enemy were really just pawns in the larger game, a game where corporate greed and the politicians were playing them against the blacks and keeping everyone down. I loved the song.” – Maria Muldaur*
*Source: “Bob Dylan: 100 Songs and Pictures” by Fine Communications
Photo Source: Mississippi Library Commission. July 2, 1963: Bob Dylan at civil rights gathering in Greenwood, Mississippi singing ‘Only a Pawn in Their Game.”
Jan 9, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
BBC Tonight Show 1964: With God on our Side
Duet with Joan Baez: With God on our Side
What you should know about this song: You can feel Dylan’s frustration through the lyrics of this song. It grows stronger and stronger throughout each verse and it essentially ends with him giving up on the whole thing altogether: “So now as I’m leaving’ / I’m weary as Hell / The confusion I’m feeling’ / Ain’t no tongue can tell” (verse 9).
The first time Dylan performed the song was at the New York Town Hall in April 1963, which (after listening to the lyrics) strikes me as quite gutsy. The song is also known for the duet version Dylan sang with Joan Baez, the two of which performed live together in 1963 and 1964.
“(When I heard that song) I took him seriously. I was bowled over. It was devastating. It’s a very mature song. It’s a beautiful song. It changed the way I thought of Bob.” – Joan Baez*
Source: Bob Dylan: 100 Songs and Pictures by Fine Communications
Photo Source: The Guardian
Jan 8, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Link to Song: Girl from the North Country
Duet Version (with Johnny Cash): Girl from the North Country
What you should know about this song: Dylan composed this song in 1963 during his first trip to Italy (a great country for music inspiration, if you ask me). After recording it for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album that year, Dylan revisited the song six years later as a duet with Johnny Cash, who recorded it with him as the opening track on Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album. (Source: “Dylan: 100 Songs & Pictures” by Fine Communications).
“To me, the person who wrote the most moving lyrics was Bob Dylan, in the early days – ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’, ‘Girl From the North Country’…” – Paul Simon*
“[‘Girl From the North Country” has] got all of the elements of beautiful folk writing without being pretentious…Before he went electric and submitted himself to that relentless discipline of a rhythm section, there was a beautiful flow in Bob’s songs that you can only get with just a voice and a guitar. He can float across the bar here and there. He’s not restricted by anything; it’s a beautiful form of expression… He’s the most prolific writer: I think he’s written more songs than I’ve had hot dinners. So, Bob, just keep ’em coming! He’s an inspiration, really, to us all, beyond even the songwriting, because he’s always trying to go somewhere new. I love the man – I love that he rock and rolls, too!” – Keith Richards (from Rolling Stone Magazine, Issue 1131).
Photo Source
Jan 7, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Link to Song: Masters of War
What you should know about this song: This anti-war anthem was recorded during the final session for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1963, a few months after having performed it on radio. This is by far one of Dylan’s angriest protest songs. Rolling Stones Magazine quotes Dylan’s personal observations of the song, saying, “I don’t sing songs which hope people will die, but I couldn’t help it with this one.” (Issue 1131).
“Bob’s songs seemed to update the concepts of justice and injustice. The civil rights movement was in full bloom, and the war which would tear this nation asunder was moving towards us like a mighty storm. Before the first official bullet was fired, he had filled our arsenals with song.” – Joan Baez*
*Source: Dylan:100 Songs & Pictures” by Fine Communications
Photo Source: DylanChords.info
Jan 6, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Link to Song: Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
John Mayer cover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk-2YmENW2Q
Johnny Cash cover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoyPKKuCG7A
Ke$ha cover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCEV7ZSNFo
What you should know about this song: This is your classic breakup ballad with bittersweet honesty. Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s first serious girlfriend, broke his heart in 1962 and ran off to live in Italy for an indefinite amount of time (Rolling Stone Magazine, Issue 1131). As I searched on YouTube for this song, it appears as though it’s been covered by just about everyone. Both Peter, Paul, and Mary along with The Four Seasons made Top 20 hits by covering this song.
Photo Source: Open Culture
Jan 5, 2012 | 100 Days with Bob Dylan
Link to Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9hMtVWN91M (This is a famous version from his performance in Japan 1994 where he was accompanied by a full orchestra).
What you should know about this song: According to Rolling Stone Magazine, this is the 2nd greatest Dylan song of all time (behind “Like a Rolling Stone,” of course). The magazine goes on to describe this seven-minute apocalyptic ballad as “the greatest protest song by the greatest protest songwriter of his time” (Issue 1131, March 2011).
Interestingly enough, every line in the song actually started out as a beginning of a whole (separate) song. Once Dylan realized he wouldn’t have enough to write all of those songs, he chose to put all the lines together into one. What is also interesting is that Dylan chose to debut this song in 1962 at the Carnegie Hall despite only being given a 10 minute act. According to Pete Seeger, the concert’s organizer,”Bob raised his hand and said, ‘What am I supposed to do? One of my songs is 10 minutes long.'”
This is a perfect example of how Dylan’s seemingly natural inspiration from the world around him transpires into music that makes history. Since it’s conception in 1962, it has rarely left his live performance song repertoire.
“I wrote it at the time of the Cuban [missile] crisis. I was in Bleecker Street in New York. we just hung around at night – people sat around wondering if it was the end, and so did I… It was a song of desperation. What could we do? Could we control men on the verge of wiping us out? The words came fast, very fast.” – Bob Dylan, 1965
Dylan describing his task as an artist: to sing out against darkness wherever he sees it – to “tell it and think it and speak it and breath it.” – Dylan (quote by Rolling Stone Issue 1131).
Photo Copyright Don Hunstein, 1963.
