A note on the music of Bob Dylan and his excellent, inspiring book 'The Philosophy of Modern Song'.

by Ton van Zutphen, April 2023

Dylan early years when he was 20 years young?

No way I will try to add another 'personal analysis' amongst the hundreds that already exist about the man Bob Dylan and his music...and his impact on Western music at large. 

To be frank, much of the text in his songs I never understood, and still do not, although my English is reasonably ok. 

Therefore I was astonished to read that Dylan in 2016 was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Amongst the hullaballoo that followed his recognition, Dylan himself remained silent and only about a year later he travelled to Stockhom to receive the award in person. By then the media interest had died down. And yes I was also surprised...did he deserve, as the Nobel committee mentioned that he, Bob Dylan 'had created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition'?  

This Jewish boy from Duluth 'the Iron Range' in the State of Minnesota, USA,  name of Robert Allen Zimmerman, made it to the top and is without doubt one of the most well known, successfull, and extra ordinary singer-songwriters of the past and current century.  

I never read the books Dylan wrote, I never read a biography about him either but I did buy and read his latest book 'The Philosophy of Modern Song', a 'tour de force' affirming that Mr. Dylan does know intimately about (all kinds of) music and does know how to write about it. It took him 10 years to write it and definitely the way in which this book is carefully written, crafted and presented, gives me the certainty that this book will once again contribute to his name and fame. At present Dylan's oeuvre amounts to over 600 songs he wrote and sang himself; and this over a period of well over 60 years. 

It renders hommage to the American traditional and modern music with only a few songs from Europe. Dylan has done his homework and includes a detailed historical perspective with many references on every one of the 66 songs he chose.

And then the book includes relevant and historical illustrations, mostly photographs and posters, supporting the texts. Impressive also!   Great examples include:

- Poster of Jesse and Frank James, Dead or Alive 5.000 $ for either one of them brothers, referring to the song 'Jesse James' by Harry McClintock (1928)  

- Photograph of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, referring to the song 'Cheaper to keep Her' by Johnnie Taylor (1973)

- Photograph of Fidel Castro, referring to the song 'CIA Man' by the Fugs (1967)

- Picture of a US Silver Dollar (In God We Trust), referring to the song 'Midnight Rider' by the Allman Brothers (1970).

Different styles and songs on anti-establishment, folk, blues, ballroom music by crooners, country and bluegrass, slow love songs, rockabilly, rock, rock and roll, country rock, 'Motown sound', protest songs, gospel, ballads, cowboy songs, anti-war songs ....what else or what more?

From Dylan's choice of 66 songs only  18 feature in my personal Top 2000, and 29 of the songs Dylan describes and analyses were totally unknown to me.

On a score of 0 to 10 I ranked all the songs separately and came to 425 points out of a max. of 660 points. This is an average of 6,44 points out of the maximum score of 10. Following songs are close to my heart and most of these feature in my personal Top 2000

The Temptations with 'Ball of Confusion' (1970)           scoring 9 points

Jimmy Reed  with 'Big Boss Man' (1960)                       scoring 9 points

Bobby Bare with 'Detroit City'(1963)                             scoring 8 points

Little Richard with 'Tutti Frutti'(1955)                            scoring 8 points

Elvis Presley with 'Money Honey'(1956)                       scoring 8 points

The Grateful Dead with 'Truckin' (1970)                        scoring 8 points

Domenico Mudogno with 'Volare' (1958)                      scoring 8 points

Roy Orbison with 'Blue Bayou' (1963)                          scoring 8 points

The Allman Brothers with 'Midnight Rider'(1970)         scoring 8 points

Carl Perkins with 'Blue Suede Shoes (1956)                  scoring 8 points

Warren Zevon with 'Dirty Life and Times' (2003)           scoring 8 points

John Trudell with 'Doesn't Hurt Anymore' (2001)           scoring 8 points

Little Walter with 'Key to the Highway'(1958)               scoring 8 points

Ernie K-Doe with 'A Certain Girl' (1961)                       scoring 8 points

Santana with 'Black Magic Woman' (1970)                    scoring 8 points

Frank Sinatra with 'Strangers in the Night'(1966)          scoring 8 points

Elvis Presley with 'Viva Las Vegas'( 1964)                    scoring 8 points

The Drifters with 'Saturday Night at the Movies' (1964)   scoring 8 points

Then there are a few songs ranked very low by me because I could not fathom really what Bob meant when he selected these...at least not using my criteria that include melody, originality, authenticity, rhythm, style, text, presentation, recording quality:

Billy Joe Shaver with 'Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me (1973)  scoring 4 points

Bing Crosby with 'Whiffenpoof Song'(1947)                                     scoring 3 points only

Johnnie Ray with 'The Little White Cloud that Cried'(1951)            scoring 4 points

The bulk of the scores are 7 and 6 with a few songs scoring 5 points.

Now, after reading and digesting his book I believe Dylan wanted to create with his extensive historical and anecdotal knowledge an overview of relevant songs, relevant to the society during a special period. Each song seems to develop a theme and is analysed against the period during which it was popular or important like, again only a few examples:

- War, and what is it good for?, referring to the song 'War' by Edwin Starr (1970) with Vietnam in the background

- Life of artists on the road, referring to the song 'Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves by CHER (1971)

- Impossible love, referring to the song 'El Paso' by Marty Robbins (1959)

Texts pertaining to the songs in the book are more than often difficult to understand if one is oblivious of USA history. Then the vocabulary used is full to the brim with American slang and sayings. I love it! Here are some examples of it:

- A world of small-time petty criminals, sneak thieves, gangster pimps, pickpockets, cigar-puffing killers; the subculture that Hitlerism put and end to. This refers to the song 'Mack the Knife' by Bobby Darin (1959)

- It's rolling like a ball and you're packed inside of it. You're walking unsteady, get going they say, and you're marching along, confiding in the great Googa Mooga, your personal deity. This refers to the song 'Ball of Confusion' by The Temptations (1970). 

- One of the reasons people turn away from God is because religion is no longer in the fabric of their lives. It is presented as a thing: it is Sunday we have to go to church. Or, it is used as a weapon of threat by political nutjobs on either side of every argument. But religion used to be the water we drank, the air we breathed. This refers to the song 'If you don't know me by now' by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (1972).

Dylan can write!

                                                           Dylan in his late twenties

In my personal Top 2000 listing I have included the following songs composed and sung by Bob Dylan; 26 in total

Ranking    0008   Desolation Row (1965)

                  0055   Like a Rolling Stone (1965)

                  0166   Maggie's Farm (1965)

                  0280   She belongs to Me (1965)

                  0429   Blowin' in the Wind (1963)

                  0627   I'll be your Baby Tonight (1967)

                  0718   Lay Lady lay (1969)

                  0781   Visions of Johanna (1966)

                  0787   Just like a Woman (1966) 

                  0797   I am a lonesome Hobo (1967)

                  0821   I want You (1966)

                  0852   Everybody must get stoned (1966)

                  0899   I threw it all away (1969)

                  0920   Tangled up in blue (1974)

                  0973   Dear Landlord (1967)

                  0977   Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965)

                  1018   John Wesley Harding (1967) 

                  1089   It ain't me Babe (1964) 

                  1109   Highway 61 revisited (1965)

                  1160   Drifter's Escape (1968)

                  1307   If not for You (1970)

                  1370   Boots of Spanish Leather (1964)

                   1425   Romance in Durango (1976)

                   1737   Girl from the North Country (1964)

                   1801   Mozambique (1976) 

                    1944   Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest (1967)

Once again, let me give you just 3 examples out of thousands that illustrate the mystifying poetic texts that sprouted out of Dylan's brain...all of these texts are unique, of celestial beauty, and some carry one-liners never to forget.

- From the song 'Maggie's Farm' (1965):

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more, No, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more,

Well, he hands you a nickel, He hands you a dime,

He asks you with a grin, If you're having a good time,

Then he fines you every time you slam the door, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more

- From the song 'She belongs to Me' (1965):

She's got everything she needs, she's an artist, she don't look back

She can take the dark out of the nighttime, and paint the daytime black

She never stumbles, she's got no place to fall

She's nobody's child, the law can't touch her at all

She wears an Egyptian ring, it sparkles before she speaks

She's a hypnotist collector, you are a walking antique

- From the song 'If not for you' (1970): 

If not for you, Babe, I couldn't even find the door

I couldn't even see the floor, I'd be sad and blue, if not for you

If not for you, the winter would hold no spring

Couldn't hear a robin sing, I just wouldn't have a clue, if not for you

Absolutely creative and innovative language, often a 'Wordspiel', and at times incomprehensible but inviting you to think about the possible meaning. 

To be able to contextualize Dylan's early music (his folk and protest songs) one has to listen to Woody Guthrie, a US folksinger. In Europe we would call Guthrie a musician with a rather socialist approach in his songs = standing up for the voiceless and disadvantaged (the poor folks) and singing about the profound reasons why especially rural folks are poor and remain so. And he clearly expressed his opinion in his famous and popular song 'This land is your land' that everybody should have equal rights 'from the Californias to the New York island; from the redwood forests to the gulfstream waters, this land was made for you and me'. He wrote this song in 1940, just like many of his other prominent songs during the second World War. 

This most famous song (beautifully covered also by Trini Lopez in 1960), and others such as 'Hard ain't it hard?', 'I ain't got no home', 'Jesus Christ', and 'Do Re Mi' (about the infamous drought in the US MidWest during the 1930ies and the run toward California), are all songs that made it into my Top 2000. In the USA after the war, Woody Guthrie was shunned as a communist, unfortunately and incorrectly so. In 1962 Dylan wrote 'Song to Woody' to honour Woody Guthrie as a fellow singer songwriter, performer of protest songs and activist. 

Clearly my selection does not cover the 60 plus years that Dylan has been 'operational and on stage': meaning writing, performing and arranging new songs. Only during my studies at Nijmegen University, NL and one, perhaps two years earlier at college (period 1967-1975) did I listen frequently to his songs. Readers may note that one of Dylan's most articulate and famous songs 'The Times they are A-changin' (1964) is missing. In this song his voice is very raw, unpolished...and I never was able to appreciate the music of this song. I guess it was all about the text and in 1964 I was still a junior at college, an adolescent listening to Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, more rock and roll. 

When I was 15 years young (1966), little did I know about civil rights and anti-war movements, or 'counterculture'. All I knew was what I picked up at college during formal lessons about the history of the USA. And these lessons focussed on how great America was because of its economic and military puissance, and that they liberated Europe twice from the Germans (in 1918 and in 1945), and how badly they treated the Indians, how they fought amongst themselves during the Civil War for 4 years (1861-1865), how they had kept black people in slavery and now legally accepted equality of the races, and how they were fighting 'the commies' = communism, mainly from the Soviet Union/USSR. And,that we as Dutch were good friends and supporters of the American system and its population. The US President, John F. Kennedy (JFK) was extremely popular in the NL (increasingly so after his speech in West Berlin, Germany in 1963, during which he spoke these famous words in German 'Ich bin ein Berliner'. His popularity later rose to mythical proportions after he was assassinated in Dallas that same year 1963 on November 22. I still remember the special anouncement while at school when it was made public. Literally everybody was shocked and for weeks it remained the topic of the day at school and at home! It was never found out who killed JFK.

Dylan played with several legendary musicians like the Canadian group 'The BAND', Johnny Cash and Mark Knopfler, lead guitarist of 'Dire Straits', to name a few.

So my Top 2000 also features quite a few songs that Dylan wrote but were performed by other musicians. I decided to include these songs from other artists; some examples are:

Ranking 0007 played by The BAND:  'When I paint my Masterpiece'(1971)

Ranking 0066 played by THEM: 'It's all over now Baby Blue' (1965)

Ranking 1363 in a version by Brian Ferry:  A hard Rain's gonna fall (1973) 

Ranking 1508 played by Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan: 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door'(1996)

Then the USA West Coast Band 'The BYRDS' covered quite a lot of songs written by Dylan. The following are included in my Top 2000:

- You ain't going nowhere (Dylan 1967)

- Nothing was delivered (Dylan 1967)

- My Back Pages (Dylan 1964)

- All I really want to do ( Dylan 1964) = one of my all time favourites!

- Mr. Tambourine Man  (Dylan 1965)

Dylan's composition 'Quinn the Eskimo (the Mighty Queen), a beautiful rag rhythm song from his album  'The Basement Tapes' in 1967, was succesfully covered by Manfred Mann a year later who made a big charts hit out of it. 

In 1968 the famous 'Jimi Hendrix Experience' band covered the Dylan song 'All along the Watchtower' : indeed some say the most electrifying cover that exists! A remarkable version also because 'The Experience' consisted of only three bandmembers. 

And in 1969 the English band 'Fairport Convention' covered the song 'Million Dollar Bash' in a jolly playful  folk-rock style.

Other rare and stunningly beautiful covers are:

Nico,  with 'I'll keep it with mine' (1967) / sounds very much like Nico/Velvet Underground

Elvis Presley,  with 'Tomorrow is a long Time' (1966) / possibly Dylan's favorite cover version

Nina Simone,  with 'Just like Tom Thumb's Blues' (1969) / Nina at her best!

Jim James & CALEXICO,  with 'Goin' to Acapulco' (2007) /  superb singing and orchestration.

The following song is mentioned twice in this blog: 'Desolation Row'. Dylan's original ranks #0008 in my Top 2000; then recently I discovered the unusual and magnificent version by singer Bobby Woods (covered in 2018). What a voice too!  

Ranking  #1215 performed by Joan Baez: 'Sad eyed Lady of the Lowlands'(1968) Then the 'exotic looking lady with the angelic voice' Joan Baez with whom Bob Dylan had an intimate but streneous relationship also wrote a beautiful and sad song about him: ranking # 0213: 'Diamonds and Rust' (1975). 

Quite a few musical experts strongly suggest that the song 'Visions of Johanna' by Dylan then refers to Joan Baez.

All in all, in this blog I mentioned  45 songs that Dylan wrote; possibly a nice selection for a unique CD or to be put on a usb-stick?  Songs mentioned by me cover less than 8% of Dylan's complete oeuvre.

And I am quite certain that at any of his thousands of concerts and gigs Dylan  must have covered songs written by Woody Guthrie.

Dylan and Baez, around 1965

Dylan continues touring the world and he will play at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland this year 2023 during early summer. Although my daughter Kesso Gabrielle lives in this pittoresque town on the Geneva Lake and only half a mile from the theater where he is scheduled to perform....will I go and see him?  Will I be able to go and even get a ticket? Who will play this year...Bob Dylan (his tour is called 'Rough and Rowdy Ways'), also Iggy Popp, Norah Jones, Simply Red, Lionel Richie, Chris Isaak, Buddy Guy, Gilberto Gil and many other celebrities. 

Dylan in his mid seventies

Dylan will be 83 years when he performs in Montreux; not a small feat! 

My personal Top 2000 can also be viewed at my blog  www.nedineurope.blogspot.com.  Published in 2022.

Ton van Zutphen, Leende, NL on 15th April 2023