The AKA
Blues Connection
Documenting Rock 'n'
Roll's Roots in the Blues
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Featuring
Blues Connection
Copyright © 2002-2004 |
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The Blues Connections of Bob Dylan In the early sixties, Bob Dylan became famous as a protest singer, writing and performing songs dealing with issues like war and civil rights. Songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" made him a household name. But many people would be surprised to learn that his very first LP (titled Bob Dylan) was not an album of contemporary protest songs. Instead, it contained his interpretations of old folk and blues songs--stuff like "House of the Rising Sun", "Highway 51", and "Freight Train Blues". Recordings of Dylan's protest anthems didn't come out until his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. So how did a white Jewish kid living in Hibbing, Minnesota get into the blues? Radio. As a youngster he explored the world of music with a twist of his radio dial. And one night when he tuned in to a wild R&B show called No-Name Jive, Bob stopped twistin' the dial and started to boogie his bones. Little Richard and other great rhythm and blues stars that he heard on the radio became his heroes. He even became friends with a disc jockey who taught him about the black roots of rock'n' roll. Over the years, Dylan has done a lot of experimentation with his music, but he has usually stayed in close touch with the blues. And no matter how far he has moved away from the blues, he has always returned to the sound and spirit of this music. For instance, when he played the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Bob--who had become the leader of the folk music scene--shocked everyone by showing up with an electric guitar and a rockin' backup group made up of members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Highway 61 Revisited, one of Dylan's greatest albums, contains a string of references to the blues and to blues musicians including Ma Rainey and Bo Diddley. In the early nineties, Bob made a couple of excellent folk blues albums, Good As I Been to You and World Gone Wrong in which he covered a bunch of traditional blues tunes. Dylan's great Time Out of Mind album from 1997 even contains an original composition, "Dirt Road Blues", which he wrote in the old-fashioned 12-bar blues format. Below is a list of some of the blues songs which Dylan has recorded. They are arranged alphabetically by the names of the bluesmen who wrote, originally recorded, and/or popularized them. Bo Carter: Corinna Corinna Mississippi John Hurt (also Jesse Fuller): Stackalee (a/k/a "Stagolee") (Lloyd Price did a modern version of the song titled "Stagger Lee") Blind Lemon Jefferson: See That My Grave is Kept Clean Curtis Jones (also Memphis Slim): Highway 51 Blues (recorded by Dylan as "Highway 51") Blind Willie McTell: Broke-Down Engine (a/k/a "Broke-Down Engine Blues") Mississippi Sheiks (also Howlin' Wolf): Sittin' on Top of the World Mississippi Sheiks: I've Got Blood in My Eyes for You (recorded by Dylan as "Blood in My Eyes") Junior Parker: I Wanna Ramble (recorded by Dylan as "You Wanna Ramble") Henry Thomas: Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance (recorded by Dylan as "Honey Won't You Allow Me One More Chance?) Bukka White: Fixin' to Die Blues (recorded by Dylan as "Fixin' to Die") Georgia White (also Big Walter Horton): Trouble in Mind
Notes
Highway 61 Bob Dylan named one of his very best albums after a road that has great significance in the world of the blues--Highway 61. This road passes through Clarksdale, Mississippi, the most important city in the history of the Delta blues. John Lee Hooker was born there and Muddy Waters was born nearby in Rolling Fork. Clarksdale was the headquarters for the Delta blues. Many early bluesmen travelled a lot, working the juke joints along Highway 61 to make their living, and their favorite place to stop and send some time was this small city. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant recognized the importance of it by naming one of their post-Led Zeppelin albums Walking Into Clarksdale. If you're in Clarksdale and you head north on 61, you end up in Memphis. But if you're in Clarksdale and you head south on 61, you'll end up in New Orleans. Memphis and New Orleans are the two most important cities in the history of rock'n' roll, and the fact that they are connected to each other by Highway 61--also known as The Blues Highway--ain't just a coincidence. One of the greatest bluesmen who travelled 61 was Robert Johnson. According to legend, he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the skills that made him one of the greatest guitar players in the history of the blues. The deal went down just outside of Clarksdale one night at the crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 49. Johnson wrote a song about these crossroads titled "Crossroads Blues", and Eric Clapton's band Cream recorded a well known version of the song. Highway 49 is another famous Mississippi road. The road was heavily travelled by the state's tenant farmers--most of them were black sharecroppers--who often took to the road in search of a better deal after being cheated by the plantation owners. Highway 49 will take you to Parchman Farm, the state of Mississippi's penitentiary, which became notorious for its cruelty and brutality. Several famous bluesmen did time there including Bukka White who wrote the classic blues "Parchman Farm". The body of a fourteen year old black boy named Emmett Till was found a couple of miles from Highway 49. He was tortured and murdered for whistling at a white woman. Bob Dylan wrote a song about the murder titled "The Death of Emmett Till" (a/k/a "The Ballad of Emmett Till"). Dylan's first album includes his interpretation of a song about another important blues road, "Highway 51". Similar to Highway 61, 51 runs north from New Orleans and passes through Memphis. It continues on past Memphis and runs all the way up to the cold midwestern states. It was the road that many southern blacks travelled to escape from the south in hopes of finding a better life. Many of them, including a bunch of blues musicians, took 51 to the north and settled in Chicago which consequently became the home of all the great post-WWII bluesmen including Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. For the black people of America who had suffered through generation upon generation of slavery, the open road was a strong symbol of freedom. Even after slavery was abolished, the south's Jim Crow system kept blacks trapped in lives of misery with little chance of escape. Taking to the highways was a means of escape. And for some, such as blues musicians like Robert Johnson, travelling was a necessary part of making a living. These bluesmen immortalized the highways on which they travelled by writing songs about them. A list of some of these songs and some of the bluesmen (and rock musicians) who recorded them is below.
Fever On November 22, 1980, Bob Dylan did a concert in San Francisco in which one of the highlights was a fantastic rendition of the classic Little Willie John hit "Fever". Willie John's record was obviously very important to Bob--he told the crowd a story about how he first heard it when he was 12 years old. This concert took place during the time that he had become a devoted Christian and was writing and singing songs about Jesus, repentance, and the evils of sin. He even had a group of female singers kicking off his shows with a string of gospel songs before he would appear on stage. Considering Bob's newly found faith and the religious tone of his concerts at that time, it's a bit puzzling that he would sing a song like "Fever" which is practically a showcase for one of the seven deadly sins--lust. It doesn't seem to make sense at first, but it turns out that "Fever" does have a connection to the Christian Church in that it was an early soul record (Little Willie John was one of the first soul singers) and soul music sprang from gospel music. The connection between soul and gospel may be best exemplified by another classic soul record, Ray Charles's "I've Got a Woman". It is well known that Charles wrote this song based on a gospel song. He took the tune of a gospel song and put new words to it--and you might say--he gave it a bit of a different feeling. (Usually, "My Jesus Is All the World to Me" is identified as the source of inspiration for "I've Got a Woman". But the soul and gospel singer Jerry Butler has pointed to a different song, "There's a Man Going 'Round Taking Names", as the inspiration for Charles's soul classic, and it is quite clear that the tunes of "There's a Man" and "I've Got a Woman" match each other.) It is possible to match up other soul songs with gospel songs to illustrate the connection between the two types of music. For example, "Fever" can be easily matched up with the old spiritual "Elijah Rock" which was popularized by one of gospel's greatest singers, Mahalia Jackson. Other gospel songs could be paired up with "Fever", but "Elijah Rock" is a good choice here for several reasons including the fact that Dylan's first album included a song titled "Gospel Plow" which was his interpretation of another song popularized by Mahalia Jackson titled "Keep Your Hand on the Plow" (a.k.a. "Hold On"). (Apparently Dylan was a fan of Jackson because his early repertoire included another song popularized by her, "Jesus Met the Woman at the Well".) There are both lyrical and musical similarities between "Fever" and "Elijah Rock". In particular, a comparison is being made between the original recording of "Fever" which was done by Little Willie John on the King label in 1956 and a recording of a live performance of "Elijah Rock" by Mahalia Jackson during her tour of Europe in 1962 (available on her Gospels, Spirituals & Hymns album on Columbia). (There are various versions of the spiritual with differing lyrics; Jackson's performance is based on an arrangement done by Jester Hairston dating from 1955 which is the year prior to the release of Little Willie John's "Fever".) The lyrical themes of both songs are alike in that both singers are describing the importance of a certain individual to him/her. Little Willie John is singing to his woman about his great desire for her and Jackson is singing the praises of Elijah, an Old Testament prophet who in the Christian tradition is a powerful helper of the oppressed (keep in mind that Negro spirituals were originally sung by slaves). In a certain sense, they are both "torch" songs. Little Willie John's need for his woman is so strong that she gives him a burning fever. And Jackson sings as if her soul is on fire, delivering her song about Elijah--who she descirbes as her "rock" and "shelter"--so passionately that she nearly burns down the house. Lyrically, the two songs are alike in another way. There are several instances in the verses of both songs where the lyrics in the first line are followed by a second line containing lyrics which closely parallel the first. For example, "Fever" contains the lines: Never know how much I love you and the lines: Sun lights up the daytime And "Elijah Rock" has the lines: Some say the Rose of Sharon and the lines: You can call my rock in the morning Also note that both songs make parallels between day and night. In addition to the lyrical similarities between the songs, there are also some musical similarities. Some of the verses sound very much alike musically. For example, compare "Fever's" opening verse ("Never know how much...") to the verse in "Elijah Rock" that begins "You can call my rock...". Another musical similarity involves the repeated use of a three-note riff in both songs. "Fever's" riff closely matches the one in "Elijah Rock". And they are both used in the same way--the riff is played and then followed by a vocal phrase, then the riff is played again and followed by another vocal phrase, and the riff is repeated again and followed by another vocal phrase. In "Fever", this gospel-like call and response sequence occurs in the song's bridge where the lyrics make reference to the sun and moon. In "Elijah Rock", the call and response are used throughout the song. An additional musical similarity occurs in the use of a musical phrase which is known as a turnaround. In the blues, a turnaround is a transitional phrase which signals the completion of a verse and (usually) the beginning of a new verse. In "Elijah Rock", the turnarounds occur when Jackson sings "Hallelujah"; in "Fever",Willie John makes his turnarounds with the phrase "you give me fever". There is another musical similarity between the two recordings which involves the stretching out (or adding) of syllables to words (similar to what Buddy Holly--who happens to have been a big fan of Jackson's--does to the word "well" at the beginning of his classic "Rave On"). In Jackson's recording, she draws out the name Elijah into a long musical phrase: E-li-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-jah. To a lesser degree, Little Willie John uses a similar technique, stretching out three words--fever, morning, and all. And these words are all contained in a single musical phrase which sounds somewhat like the phrase created by Jackson. In addition to the stretching out of syllables, the two phrases are alike in that both singers make a gradual transition from shouting and using higher scale notes to singing in a more subdued tone and using lower scale notes. It is possible to make many similar comparisons between gospel songs and soul songs because soul music comes from gospel. Soul is basically the mixing of gospel with the blues. Therefore, taking into account the strong relationship between the two, Dylan's performance of "Fever" during his Christian period was not so far out of place as it might have at first seemed. Of course, only Bob knows for sure why he did it. Maybe he was just being his plain old unpredictable self, trying to throw everyone for a loop. (It might be interesting to point out that in December of 1979--less than a year before he began singing "Fever" in concert--while being interviewed on Tucson radio's KMGX, Dylan commented that he doesn't sing anything that the Lord hasn't given to him.) There is one other thing that Dylan seems to have been doing by performing "Fever". He was making the spiritual--sexual connection or the "church--bedroom connection" as critic Paul Williams refers to it in writing about "Fever" in his book Rock and Roll: The 100 Best Singles. This connection involves the idea that a woman's love can be a man's salvation. And it's also the idea that romantic love and/or intercourse can be something deeply spiritual. It's a mixing of the sacred and the profane. In the field of American music there are plenty of instances where the sacred , i.e. gospel music, has gotten tangled up with the profane, i.e. sex, love, or money. For example, the father of gospel music was Thomas Dorsey, a man who got his start as a musician playing the devil's music--the blues. He not only played the blues, he wrote and played some of the raciest songs in blues history. Later on in his musical career, he used the blues musical form to write some of the most beautiful and moving sacred songs of all time including "(Take My Hand) Precious Lord" and "Peace in the Valley". Two of the greatest singers in the history of popular music, Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke, are additional examples of the mixing of the sacred and the profane in gospel music. Both (as well as many, many, many more great black singers) got their start singing in church and became great gospel singers, but they attained great fame by leaving gospel behind and crossing over to popular music. Sam Cooke had such a great voice and was so handsome that even when he was still with his gospel group the Soul Stirrers, he was stirring much more than just the souls of the women who heard him sing in church. Another example is Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a very popular gospel singer who was criticized by her church for being too suggestive in her movements. The wonderful old gospel group known as the Five Blind Boys of Alabama recorded a masterful blending of the sacred and the profane when they sang "Amazing Grace" to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun" (a song dealing with a house of prostitution) on their album Spirit of the Century. And if you ever get a chance to see them perform live, you just might see one of the group's members throw out a wild hip-shakin' move--the kind of move that Ed Sullivan would have censored quicker than you can say Elvis. If you've been sparked to give a listen to some of the music discussed above, a few recommendations are listed below. Little Willie John -- Fever: The Best of Little Willie John: This is a great collection from Rhino Records of Little Willie John's recordings for the King label including "Fever", "Need Your Love So Bad" (aka "Grits Ain't Groceries"), and "Leave My Kitten Alone". Mahalia Jackson -- Gospels, Spirituals & Hymns: A 2 CD collection from the person that many people consider to be the world's all-time greatest gospel singer. Includes "Elijah Rock", "Keep Your Hand On the Plow", "Jesus Met the Woman at the Well", and "Take My Hand, Precious Lord". Thomas Dorsey -- Thomas A. Dorsey: Precious Lord: After giving up the blues, Dorsey didn't do much recording. Instead, he concentrated on writing, publishing, and assisting the careers of gospel singers. This CD is an excellent collection of his songs recorded by various gospel singers and groups including Marion Williams, one of gospel's greatest voices. Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers -- The Gospel Soul of Sam Cooke (Vols. 1 and 2): Two nice albums from one of the greatest gospel groups, featuring the voice of Sam Cooke. Five Blind Boys of Alabama -- Spirit of the Century: Featuring the soul turnin' and pew burnin' voice of 70+ year old Clarence Fountain, this great album was recorded in the year 2001. It contains traditional songs like "Amazing Grace", "Good Religion", and "Motherless Child", and versions of songs written by Mick Jagger/Keith Richards, Tom Waits, and Ben Harper. For a double dose of their earlier stuff, get Oh Lord Stand By Me/Marching Up to Zion which combines two great albums that were originally issued quite a few years ago. Aretha Franklin -- Amazing Grace: An excellent double album recorded by Aretha in 1972, years after she had become a soul superstar. Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 (1938-1941): This album is crammed with gospel-blues classics from Tharpe including "Precious Lord Hold My Hand", "Rock Me", "This Train" and "My Man and I". Ray Charles: The Birth of Soul: This boxed set from Rhino contains a ton of classics from brother Ray including "I've Got a Woman", "What'd I Say", and "Hallelujah I Love Her So".
The AKA Blues Connection
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