Tag: bob dylan

One Degree of Separation Between Bob Dylan & Twilight Zone: Bonnie Beecher & “Come Wander With Me”

Some of the earliest recordings of Bob Dylan singing were made at the apartment of his college girlfriend Bonnie Beecher, who went on to play some iconic TV roles during her short acting career.

Bonnie Beecher, who was born on April 25, 1941, establishes an interesting connection between Bob Dylan and two classic TV shows, The Twilight Zone and Star Trek.

First, her connection to Dylan. Beecher was friends with and dated Dylan when they both went to the University of Minnesota. One theory is that “Girl from the North Country” may be at least partially about Beecher.

Perhaps most significantly for music history, there is no doubt that some of Dylan’s earliest recordings were made at Beecher’s home in 1961. Below are some of those recordings, including “Omie Wise,” “Wade in the Water,” and the not-to-be-missed “I Was Young When I Left Home.”

After her relationship with Bob Dylan, Beecher had a short successful acting career. Not long after her relationship with Dylan in the 1960s, Beecher pursued an acting career in television. Her biggest role was probably on the episode of The Twilight Zone entitled, “Come Wander With Me” (1964). In the episode, which was the final one of the series filmed, Beecher played a muse haunting a young singer seeking a new song.

Beecher, who beat out Liza Minelli for the role, also sings in the episode. She sings the title folk song that foretells the doom of the young man. Beecher, whose voice appears with Dylan on some of the Minneapolis tapes, had a wonderful singing voice herself.

The song “Come Wander With Me” was written by Jeff Alexander and Anthony Wilson. Most recently, Beecher’s recording of the song was used in the Netflix series Baby Reindeer (2024).

Beecher, however, did not continue with her acting and singing career past the 1960s. Her career ended around 1968, not long after appearing in a Star Trek episode, “Spectre of the Gun.” In that show, she appeared as Pavel Chekov’s love interest (where his love for her character saved his life).

In addition to Bob Dylan (and Chekov), Beecher’s love for another famous man would fill much of her life. Since 1967, she has been married to 1960s icon (and Woodstock MC) Wavy Gravy. She runs charitable organizations and  Camp Winnarainbow with him.  After her marriage to Gravy with whom she has a son, she adopted the name Jahanara Romney.

Finally, below, Beecher tells a funny story about Dylan traveling to Oklahoma.

Happy birthday Ms. Beecher/Romney! Leave your two cents in the comments.

Buy from Amazon

  • Sheila Atim Peforming “Tight Connection to My Heart” (Great Bob Dylan Covers)
  • Bob Dylan’s 1964 Quest
  • Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s Cover of Bob Dylan’s “Brownsville Girl”
  • Vampire Weekend Saluting a Font By Covering Bob Dylan’s “Jokerman”
  • Clarence Ashley: “The Cuckoo” & “Little Sadie”
  • Dylan Releases “Murder Most Foul”
    • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    Sheila Atim Peforming “Tight Connection to My Heart” (Great Bob Dylan Covers)

    Shiela Atim gave an outstanding performance of Bob Dylan’s “Tight Connection to My Heart” when she starred in the play “Girl from the North Country.”

    Before making it to Broadway, the musical Girl from the North Country had its debut in London at the Old Vic and the West End. The play by Conor McPherson, in its various incarnations, featured a number of wonderful covers of Bob Dylan songs. One of those outstanding performances came from Sheila Atim in the 2017-2018 original London production.

    In the play, Atim performed “Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anyone Seen My Love).” The song first appeared on Dylan’s 1985 album, Empire Burlesque. Although few rank the album among Dylan’s best and many criticize its 1980s production, I have always had a fondness for “Tight Connection to My Heart.” I recall it being one of the first Dylan videos I saw on MTV, and it was one of my favorite songs on that channel for some time.

    Dylan’s “Tight Connection”

    Dylan initially recorded an earlier version of “Tight Connection to My Heart,” then entitled “Someone’s Got a Hold of My Heart,” while making his Infidels album. Despite attempting a number of takes of the song, Dylan decided not to release it on that 1983 album. One of the takes would appear on the 1991 box set The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.

    While I like the early incarnation of ths song too, I am especially fond of the Empire Burlesque version with its Gospel backing vocals and synthesizers. Not surprisingly, at least to me, Rolling Stone lists “Tight Connection to My Heart” among “20 Overlooked Bob Dylan Classics.”

    Sheila Atim’s “Tight Connection”

    And now I am a fan of Atim’s version. The play’s slower take on the song is perhaps more similar to Dylan’s original vision of “Someone’s Got a Hold of My Heart” rather than the recorded version of “Tight Connection to My Heart.”

    Taken from the Bob Dylan album and put in the context of the play, “Tight Connection to My Heart” becomes a heartbreaking epic in Atim’s voice. Unlike Dylan’s upbeat recording, the play’s version and music digs deep into the sadness of the lyrics. In choosing the song for the play, McPherson clearly recognized the cinematic aspect of the lyrics. Those lyrics fit well on stage, perhaps, because as Dylan scholar Michael Gray has noted, Dylan included several lines from Humphrey Bogart films in the song.

    In Girl from the North Country, Atim played a pregnant woman abandoned by her lover. As The Guardian explained, “An arrangement for piano and double bass, with a choir of cast members providing gentle harmonies in support of Atim’s direct, unaffected and perfectly poised delivery, helps McPherson locate an essence that the song may never have known it possessed.”

    Atim knew of Dylan’s music before working on Girl from the North Country. But, as you can see from her connection to “Tight Connection to My Heart,” she became a fan of Bob Dylan’s music, finding a deep connection, while working on the play.

    Atim, who was born in Uganda and grew up in the United Kingdom, has had a succussful career on the stage. Additionally, she composes music and plays several instruments. In more recent years, she has made several television and film appearances. With her great talent, we look forward to whatever she does next.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • One Degree of Separation Between Bob Dylan & Twilight Zone: Bonnie Beecher & “Come Wander With Me”
  • Bob Dylan’s 1964 Quest
  • Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s Cover of Bob Dylan’s “Brownsville Girl”
  • Vampire Weekend Saluting a Font By Covering Bob Dylan’s “Jokerman”
  • Clarence Ashley: “The Cuckoo” & “Little Sadie”
  • Dylan Releases “Murder Most Foul”
    • ( Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    Buy from Amazon

    Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s Cover of Bob Dylan’s “Brownsville Girl”

    In 2012 Bonnie “Prince” Billy gave one of the rare live performances of Bob Dylan’s great epic song “Brownsville Girl.”

    Bonnie Prince Billy Brownsville

    In my personal history of being a music fan, my great Bob Dylan awakening came in the 1980s. Perhaps it was not the best time to start out as a Bob Dylan fan. Yet I still have a fond attachment to albums like 1985’s Empire Burlesque. These were the Dylan albums I first heard with everyone else as they were released. Another album from that time was Knocked Out Loaded (1986), which I bought on cassette as it was released. I liked the album well enough, but like many others, I recognized “Brownsville Girl” as the standout masterpiece it was.

    “Brownsville Girl” started out as a song entitled “New Danville Girl,” inspired in part by Woody Guthrie’s song “Danville Girl.” Dylan recorded “New Danville Girl” during the sessions for Empire Burlesque. That version was not officially released until 2021 when it appeared on The Bootleg Series Vol. 16: Springtime in New York 1980–1985.

    For whatever reason, Dylan, though, was not satisfied with “New Danville Girl.” He enlisted playwright Sam Shepard to help add some additional lyrics, and he also added other instrumentation, including saxophone, to the new version, now called “Brownsville Girl,” released on Knocked Out Loaded. This new version has one of my favorite lines from any Dylan song: “The only thing we knew for sure about Henry Porter / Is that his name wasn’t Henry Porter.” In the context of the song, I find it one of Dylan’s funniest lyrics but cannot explain why.

    Even for those who believed Dylan had entered a fallow period in the early 1980s starting with his religious albums, “Brownsville Girl” illustrated that the master was still a master. “Brownsville Girl” incorporates themes of memory, yearning, and lost love, building around images from across the country and the West, including throughout the song several references to a Gregory Peck Western film. The song makes one man’s memories seem as big and as important as the entire country.

    Well, there was this movie I seen one time,
    About a man riding ’cross the desert and it starred Gregory Peck;
    He was shot down by a hungry kid trying to make a name for himself;
    The townspeople wanted to crush that kid down and string him up by the neck.

    Dylan’s version of “Brownsville Girl” on Knocked Out Loaded is sophisticated and beautiful, even though some may prefer the rougher cut of “New Danville Girl.” Dylan scholar Michale Gray calls Dylan’s delivery on the Knocked Out Loaded version “faultless” and “astonishing. Not a false moment, not a foot wrong.” (Micheal Gray, The Bob Dylan Encylcopedia, p. 99 (2006). I agree.

    Because Dylan’s version reaches such heights, and perhaps because of the song’s length at more than eleven minutes, Dylan only performed the song live once. And also because of the song’s length, few artists have attempted to cover the song. For example, Reggie Watts did a shortened version for a 1980s era Dylan tribute album.

    One wonderful version emerged when Bonnie “Prince” Billy (aka Will Oldham) performed the song at Actors Theatre in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky on November 11, 2012. Billy’s performance is part music and part acting, as he conveys the narrator’s feelings and memories. It took a major committment to tackle the epic song. And everything comes together beautifully as Billy is wonderfully backed up by Louisville’s Motherlodge band.

    In the video of the performance, the image is a little grainy and the sound quality is good but not perfect. Yet it is the next best thing to being there for a rare moving performance of a song as great as “Brownsville Girl.”

    And in a world with an endless number of covers of Bob Dylan’s songs, this cover performance by Bonnie “Prince” Billy with Motherlodge is really something special. Check it out.

    Well, we’re drivin’ this car and the sun is comin’ up over the Rockies;
    Now I know she ain’t you but she’s here and she’s got that dark rhythm in her soul;
    But I’m too over the edge and I ain’t in the mood anymore to remember the times when I was your only man;
    And she don’t want to remind me. She knows this car would go out of control.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • They’re Selling Postcards of the Hanging: The Real Lynching in Dylan’s “Desolation Row”
  • One Degree of Separation Between Bob Dylan & Twilight Zone: Bonnie Beecher & “Come Wander With Me”
  • Sheila Atim Peforming “Tight Connection to My Heart” (Great Bob Dylan Covers)
  • Vampire Weekend Saluting a Font By Covering Bob Dylan’s “Jokerman”
  • Clarence Ashley: “The Cuckoo” & “Little Sadie”
  • Dylan Releases “Murder Most Foul”
    • ( Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    Vampire Weekend Saluting a Font By Covering Bob Dylan’s “Jokerman”

    Vampire Weekend highlighted interest in a particular font by covering Bob Dylan’s song “Jokerman.”

    Jokerman Vampire Weekend

    There are many wonderful covers of Bob Dylan songs, but not a lot of artists cover his song “Jokerman.” Vampire Weekend, however, did an excellent live cover of the song during their 2019 Father of the Bride tour for an unusal reason. The band’s lead singer decided to cover this Dylan song out of a fascination with a printing font.

    Dylan’s “Jokerman”

    “Jokerman” appeared as the lead track on Dylan’s 1983 album Infidels, and what a great opening track. At the time, many hailed Infidels as Dylan’s return to secular music following his albums largely devoted to his Christianity. But “Jokerman,” like many Dylan songs to come, still incorporated Biblical imagery. Many have struggled to get a handle on Dylan’s meaning in “Jokerman.” And as in the case of many of his songs, different interpreters hear different things.

    Many of us love the sound of the song and navigate through the twists of the lyrics because its melody is so beautiful. Dylan scholar Michael Gray explained in his Bob Dylan Encyclopedia that “Jokerman” is not “a sermon or a pop song but a real creation, a work you can wander inside, explore, breathe in, pass through, wrap around you. It looks different in different lights.”

    The Odd Reason Vampire Weekend Covered “Jokerman”

    Vampire Weekend adds another light with which to see the song. The video below is from 2019 at the Down the Rabbit Hole music festival. The band’s cover is largely consistent with Dylan’s Infidels version with some instrumental variations near the end.

    But why did Vampire Weekend choose “Jokerman” from the Dylan canon? Vampire Weekend lead singer Ezra Koenig has a particular fascination with the Jokerman font. He has posted about the font on his Instagram account. And interviewed the creator of the font, Andrew Smith, on his podcast.

    Of all of the interpretations of Dylan’s “Jokerman,” Koenig’s performance connecting the song to his fascination with a type font from the 1990s may be the most unusual connection. But it is a fun performance of a great song.

    What is your favorite version of “Jokerman”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • One Degree of Separation Between Bob Dylan & Twilight Zone: Bonnie Beecher & “Come Wander With Me”
  • Sheila Atim Peforming “Tight Connection to My Heart” (Great Bob Dylan Covers)
  • Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s Cover of Bob Dylan’s “Brownsville Girl”
  • Clarence Ashley: “The Cuckoo” & “Little Sadie”
  • Dylan Releases “Murder Most Foul”
  • Jason Ringenberg: “Stand Tall” (Album Review)
    • ( Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    Clarence Ashley: “The Cuckoo” & “Little Sadie”

    Folksinger Clarence “Tom” Ashley left a lasting legacy with his versions of songs like “The Cuckoo” and “Little Sadie,” influencing artists such as Bob Dylan.

    Clarence Ashley was among the folk and blues singers “rediscovered” during the 1950s and 1960s. Ashley, known as “Tom,” began performing in the early 1900’s, singing and playing banjo or guitar. He played with artists such as Doc Watson and lived to see his influence on a range of singers, even sharing a stage with Bob Dylan at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. He is known for his performances of songs such as “The Cuckoo” and “Little Sadie.”

    Ashley was born in Tennessee on September 29, 1895, and he died in North Carolina on June 2, 1967. You may have first heard his voice on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music records, where one of the songs he performs is “The Coo Coo Bird.”

    The song, also with other titles such as “The Cuckoo” and “The Cuckoo is a Pretty Bird,” is an English folk song. The song begins with the bird, which is often associated with spring and with infidelity, and then goes on in various versions to lament about luck in love or gambling. Ashley’s version focuses on the latter.

    I’ve played cards in England;
    I’ve played cards in Spain;
    I’ll bet you ten dollars,
    I’ll beat you next game    .

    In the video below from the DVD “Legends of Old Time Music,” Ashley performs his version of “The Cuckoo.” Also, at the beginning of the clip he is interviewed about his music career. Check it out.

    Another song that Ashley recorded, but with a darker tone, is “Little Sadie.” Ashley recorded the folk ballad in 1928. The singer, named Lee Brown, tells about killing a woman (in some versions his wife), fleeing, getting caught, and ultimately being sentenced by a judge: “Forty-one days and forty-one nights / Forty-one years to wear the ball and the stripes.”

    Music critic Greil Marcus, writing in the liner notes for Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), noted, “There’s something horribly laconic about Ashley’s 1929 recording of “Little Sadie.” Crinklingly ominous banjo notes trace a circle in which every story goes back to its beginning and starts up again, a circle in which every act is inevitable, worthless, and meaningless, a folk nihilism long before existentialism caught on in Paris.” Below is Ashley’s version of “Little Sadie.” Check it out.

    Bob Dylan recorded a version of “Little Sadie” that appeared on his Self-Portrait (1970) album. And two more versions appear on Dylan’s Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), which was released in 2013. On the latter album, Marcus found Dylan’s “In Search of Little Sadie” to be “a revelation.”

    Marcus traces this Dylan version as the voice of a blustering killer, not caring (as in the character in Ashley’s version). But then the murderer finds fear in what may happen to himself.

    In The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, author Michael Gray notes that it is most likely that Dylan’s versions of “Little Sadie” were because of his knowledge of Ashley’s recording. He also notes that Dylan would have known Ashley’s recording of “The Coo-Coo Bird” from the Anthology of American Folk Music.

    Dylan’s versions of “Little Sadie” are not on Youtube, but perhaps the most famous descendant of Ashley’s song is Johnny Cash’s version of “Cocaine Blues.” Singer-songwriter T.J. “Red” Arnall wrote “Cocaine Blues” as a reworked “Little Sadie” and recorded the song in 1947. Here, Cash performs “Cocaine Blues” in 1968 at Folsom Prison.

    I do not believe anyone has yet connected the subject of the folk song “Little Sadie” to a real person. Some have found evidence that the song originated in an African-American community in the South. Wherever the song came from, singers like Clarence Ashley have kept the tale alive in their own ways.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Johnny Cash’s Concerts at San Quentin
  • The First Farm Aid
  • “I’ll Fly Away” and the Prisoner
  • New Old Dylan: “Pretty Saro”
  • Cowboy Jack Clement: “I Guess Things Happen That Way”
  • Pop Culture Roundup (April 2012 Edition)
    • ( Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    Buy from Amazon