I have been enjoying listening to the new Bob Dylan release, The Cutting Edge 1965–1966: The Bootleg Series Vol.12 (2015). The new package in the Bootleg series — which is available as a 2-CD, 6-CD, or 18-CD set — features outtakes, rehearsal tracks, and alternate versions of songs from the sessions for Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965), and Blonde On Blonde (1966). So, while thinking about those classic albums, it is a good time to revisit the album cover for Blonde on Blonde.
In this video, Bob Egan from PopSpots interviews Jerry Schatzberg, the photographer who took the classic photo of Dylan that appeared on the cover of Blonde on Blonde. Together, the two men travel the streets of New York City to tell the story of how the album cover photo came to be. Check it out.
You may check out a similar video about the story behind the photograph on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited.
In one of the rare touching moments in Quentin Tarantino’s film The Hateful Eight (2015), the captured fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) picks up a guitar and sings a song about a prisoner on a ship. Although Domergue eventually adds a few lines of her own about getting revenge upon her captor John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and escaping to Mexico, the song itself is a traditional Australian folk song called “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” or sometimes simply “Jim Jones.”
“Jim Jones at Botany Bay”
The song refers to the first Australian penal colony, Botany Bay, where England sent convicts beginning in 1788. Star Trek fans may recognize the name because the ship that carried Khan Noonien Singh and his comrades was named the S.S. Botany Bay after the penal colony.
In “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” the singer Jim Jones is an English convict who has been sentenced to ride the ship to the penal colony, although the judge first threatened to hang him. On the trip, the men on the ship repel a group of pirates, but Jones thinks, “I’d rather joined that pirate ship than come to New South Wales.”
Jones dreams of escaping and joining “the bold bushrangers there Jack Donahue and Company.”
And some dark night when everything is silent in this town, I’ll kill the tyrants one by one and shoot the floggers down; I’ll give the law a little shock, remember what I say; They’ll yet regret they sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay.
The song was first published in 1907, although The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature notes that scholars speculate that the song was written around 1830 because of the reference to the bushranger Jack Donahue (sometimes spelled “John Donohoe”). Donahue was an Irishman sentenced to Australia in 1825. But he later escaped, forming gangs that stole from wealthy land owners. He eventually was killed in a shootout in New South Wales.
So, the song would have been around during the years after the Civil War, which is the setting for The Hateful Eight. And it might not be unusual for someone like Daisy Domergue to be fond of a ballad about another outlaw.
Versions of the Song
“Jim Jones at Botany Bay” has been performed and recorded by a number of singers. Bob Dylan recorded “Jim Jones” for his Good As I Been To You (1992) album. You may hear a clip of Bob Dylan’s version on his website.
The video below features Old Crow Medicine Show performing the song at Byron Bay Bluesfest in 2010. Check it out.
For a complete recording of “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” below is a version by Australian singer-songwriter Gary Shearston.
In modern decades, the song has been used as a song of defiance as it was in The Hateful Eight. For example, English folksinger A.L. “Bert” Lloyd sang ““Jim Jones at Botany Bay”” at London’s Westminster Hall during a rally in support of releasing political activist Angela Davis in the 1970s. So, whenever you are feeling a bit rebellious, crank up “Jim Jones at Botany Bay.”
One of Bob Dylan’s greatest songs is “Every Grain of Sand.” There are several wonderful versions of the song. But one unique aspect of the version that appeared on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991 is that you get to hear Dylan’s dogs barking in the background.
So give a listen to this version of “Every Grain of Sand.” If you are interested in the dogs’ part, pay special attention starting around the 2:14 mark. Also, listen at around the 3:09 mark.
Check it out.
“Every Grain of Sand,” which Dylan first released on Shot Of Love (1981), was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the ten best Dylan songs of the 1980s. It comes in at number three.
Photo by Chimesfreedom.What is your favorite version of “Every Grain of Sand”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In advance of the release of Bob Dylan’s The Best Of The Cutting Edge 1965 – 1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12, rock scholar Bob Egan of PopSpots has been telling the stories behind the covers of the Bob Dylan albums of that mid-1960s era. In the latest mini-documentary, Egan explains how the cover of Highway 61 Revisited (1965) came to be.
In the video below, Egan walks the path taken by Dylan and photographer Daniel Kramer before they ended up outside an apartment owned by Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman. Egan also explains how Dylan’s friend Bob Neuwirth ended up standing behind Dylan in the photo. For the most part, it seems, there was little planning that went into the iconic album cover photo. Check out the story behind the cover of Highway 61 Revisited.
The Best Of The Cutting Edge 1965 – 1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12 will be released on November 6, 2015 in three different versions. The new album focuses on the period when Dylan first went electric, featuring outtakes from the albums Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965), and Blonde on Blonde (1966).
What is your favorite Bob Dylan album cover? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Last night, on David Letterman’s next-to-last Late Show With David Letterman, Bob Dylan appeared as the final regular musical guest for the show. Dylan performed the appropriately named “The Night We Called It a Day” from his latest album of jazz standards, Shadows In The Night.
Some reviewers have claimed Dylan’s performance was “bizarre,” noting the way Dylan stands distant when the retiring host greets him. Other reviewers have labeled the performance “beautiful” and “haunting.” Probably only Bob Dylan, who first appeared with Letterman in 1984, could provoke such a diverse reaction, but in my mind, it was a nice musical sendoff to one of the all-time greats of late night.
Interesting, after Letterman introduced Dylan as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan sang a cover song, as “The Night We Called It a Day” was written by Matt Dennis and Tom Adair in 1941. In 1942, Frank Sinatra released the song as his first solo recording.
What did you think of Dylan’s performance of “The Night We Called It a Day”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In one of the rare touching moments in Quentin Tarantino’s film The Hateful Eight (2015), the captured fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) picks up a guitar and sings a song about a prisoner on a ship. Although Domergue eventually adds a few lines of her own about getting revenge upon her captor John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and escaping to Mexico, the song itself is a traditional Australian folk song called “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” or sometimes simply “Jim Jones.”
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is that you get to hear Dylan’s dogs barking in the background.
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