Dr. John Rudoff is a cardiologist in Oregon, but before he entered medical school, he was the staff photographer at
The Main Point, a coffeehouse in Bryn Mawr, PA associated with the early 1960s folk revival in the Philadelphia area. His photographs of the Philadelphia folk scene include
unidentified local folkies, but also touring folk singers such as
Dave van Ronk and
John Hammond. Eventually, Rudoff got a press pass to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he took photos of
Mary Travers sharing a moment with Mimi and Dick Fariña and
Joan Baez with a pre-psychedelicized Chambers Brothers, but the most amazing discovery of all are the photos of
when Bob Dylan "went electric." And now you can see
Rudoff's whole collection, thanks to the magic of Flickr.
posted by jonp72
on May 7, 2009 -
13 comments
Back in 1963, a TV special called "Folk Songs and More Folk Songs" aired, which featured a cross section of the "folk" artists who were at that time just beginning to receive wider media exposure. Aside from the squeaky-clean, white bread embarrassment of groups like
The Brothers Four, the show redeemed itself with performances by a very young Bob Dylan, who sang
The Ballad of Hollis Brown (with banjo and bass accompaniment) and
Man of Constant Sorrow. And here's two more very early Dylan TV appearances, from Canada, 1964:
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall and
Girl From the North Country. Here's the same
Girl From the North Country performed years later, once again on broadcast TV, in duet with Johnny Cash, from the Johnny Cash Show.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Oct 4, 2008 -
23 comments
... After take seventeen, Dylan heeds the producer Johnston’s advice to start with a harmonica swoop. Crescendos off of an extended fifth chord, led by Paul Griffin’s astonishingpiano swells (“half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart” an astute critic later wrote), climax in choruses dominated by piano, organ, and Bobby Gregg’s drum rolls; Robbie Robertson’s guitar hits its full strength at the finale. Intimations of the thin, wild mercury sound underpin rock & roll symphonics. Johnston delivers a pep talk before one last take—“keep that soul feel”—and Gregg snaps a quick click opener, and fewer than five minutes later, the keeper is in the can.
Mystic Nights - The Making of Blonde On Blonde In Nashville An account of how the many strands of that thin, that wild mercury sound were woven. And the
annotation goes on.
Via email via St Urbain's Horseman
posted by y2karl
on Sep 28, 2007 -
36 comments
Aside from the usual crap, YouTube has a great selection of
one the
most
covered
song of all time:
All Along the Watchtower. Classics like Hendrix (
live and
studio), Neil Young (at
DailyMotion
with better sound) and
U2--and some great contemporary versions like Keziah
Jones' blazingly-fast
version,
Bradley Fish's 12-instrument (including Chinese Zither)
version, Michael Hedges’
reason-to-be-excited
cover, and
even a quite good version of DMB's much-maligned
cover. What doesn't really rank: Dylan's original.
posted by FeldBum
on Jul 2, 2007 -
43 comments
"If you had Bruce playing with you," Dylan wrote, in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles, "that's all you would need to do just about anything."
Bruce Langhorne has quite the
discography. And a
hot sauce, to boot. And he's led quite the life. Here is Richie Unterberger's interview with Langhorne in Parts
One and
Two. And
here he talks with Unterberger about working with
Mimi and Richard Fariña.
On a personal note, I will add that his hot sauce is hot indeed. Will buy it again.
posted by y2karl
on Apr 13, 2007 -
6 comments
On
"Love and Theft" & On
On "Love and Theft" and the Minstrel Boy &
The Annotated Love And Theft... In melody,
Bye and Bye comes by way of Billie Holiday's
Having Myself A Time and
Floater by way of Bing Crosby's
(& Eddie Duchin's & Kate Smith's & Isham Jones's...) Snuggled On Your Shoulder--and lyrically, by way,
in part, of Junichi Saga's
Confessions Of A Yakuza, which was not a crime novel, as
StupidSexyFlanders once surmised, but an outright
As told to memoir, which makes it four or five degrees from Yakuza to Dr. Saga to translator to Dylan to
Plagiarism in Dylan, or a Cultural Collage? Oh, who's going to throw that minstrel boy a coin ?
posted by y2karl
on Apr 14, 2005 -
18 comments
Be careful what you wish for, the cliché goes. Having aspired from early youth to become stars, people who achieve that status suddenly find themselves imprisoned, unable to walk down the street without being importuned by strangers. The higher their name floats, the greater the levy imposed, the less of ordinary life they can enjoy. In his memoir, Bob Dylan never precisely articulates the ambition that brought him to New York City from northern Minnesota in 1961, maybe because it felt improbable even to him at the time. Nominally, he was angling for Leading Young Folksinger, which was a plausible goal then, when every college town had three or four coffeehouses and each one had its Hootenanny night, and when performers who wowed the crowds on that circuit went on to make records that sometimes sold in the thousands. But from the beginning Dylan had his sights set much higher: the world, glory, eternity—ambitions laughably incommensurate with the modest confines of American folk music. He got his wish, in spades... 'I Is Someone Else'
posted by y2karl
on Feb 19, 2005 -
34 comments
"It was surprising how thick the smoke had become. It seems like the world has always needed a scapegoat --someone to lead the charge against the Roman Empire. But America wasn't the Roman Empire and someone else would have to step up and volunteer. I really was never any more than what I was -- a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze. Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me." -- from
Bob Dylan's new autobiography,
Chronicles, with a brief
interview, via
Newsweek
posted by digaman
on Sep 26, 2004 -
14 comments
My Back Pages--Interesting in his own right
Eyolf Østrem still maintains the fan's fan tab, chords and music site, the standard by which all others are judged. I just revisited it the other night, while trying to recall how that little run in Dylan's version of
Delia went, and dang, if it didn't have the
back story of that ballad. I love this kind of stuff. The source of that account, John Garst, is the folklorist king of such research--he puts
John Henry at a railroad tunnel near Leeds, Alabama, just east of Birmingham on September 20, 1887, for example. Murder and heroic death ballad back stories are of extreme interest to me, so I decided to post a few more here:
Frankie and Albert,
Frankie and Johnny,
Casey Jones and
Stagger Lee. Did I say I love this kind of stuff?
posted by y2karl
on Sep 23, 2004 -
10 comments
The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the 'Blonde on Blonde' album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up.
Bob Dylan 1978
Blonde On Blonde--Seven mixes, four or five covers, four or five women,
some missing photographs and one leather coat...
(story within)
posted by y2karl
on Nov 19, 2003 -
26 comments
Bob Dylan Live at Newport, 1965: Maggie’s Farm. 10 MB Quicktime mp3 A
notorious and historic
moment, that began a legendary year of
touring , stolen moments of which are available in
several sometimes bootlegged formats .Sometimes, perhaps
revised ,
stories differ at
what happened, and, now,
post-
ironically enough, He appears at
Newport again
this Saturday.
posted by y2karl
on Aug 2, 2002 -
35 comments
American Magus Without Harry Smith I wouldn’t have existed!
Bob Dylan
… I put Harry Smith with the three most dear to me GRAND INTELLIGENCE!! Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Harry Smith…These were sharp motherfuckers… and heavy… talk about heavy!!
Gregory Corso
Harry Smith, a central figure in the mid-20th-century avant-garde, was a complex artistic figure who made major contributions to the fields of sound recording, independent filmmaking, the visual arts, and ethnographic collecting. Along with Kenneth Anger, Jordan Belson, and Oskar Fischinger, Smith is considered one of America’s leading experimental filmmakers. He would often hand-paint directly on film creating unique, complex compositions that have been interpreted as investigations of conscious and unconscious mental processes. Smith began as a teenager to record Native American songs and rituals. He is best known for his Anthology of American Folk Music, a music collection widely credited with launching the urban folk revival.
The Anthology is the focus here, but Harry Smith, the artist, avant garde film maker, polymath, musicologist and quintessential hipster must be mentioned, too.
Details Within
posted by y2karl
on Jul 10, 2002 -
32 comments
