A Hard Rain, Lord Randall, and the Start of a Revolution

Dylan Hard Rain In singer Dave Van Ronk’s memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, he tells about his experiences playing music in New York City in the 1960s and of those he encountered.  He also writes fondly of his memories of the young Bob Dylan.

Writing about Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Van Ronk notes that he does not love all the lyrics. He reveals that the phrase “clown who cried in the alley” reminds him of a velvet painting.

But Van Ronk concludes that the overall effect of the song is “incredible.” He also explains that the tune comes from an old Anglo-Scottish Ballad.

“Lord Randall”

The English Ballad “Lord Randall” opens with similar a structure that Dylan would emulate in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” with the singer asking questions and then responding with answers. The song begins, ““O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son? / And where ha you been, my handsome young man?” Sound familiar?

Like Dylan’s song, “Lord Randall” is melancholy in both sound and theme. The ballad recounts a tragic love story. Lord Randall sings of a broken heart, and by the end of the song we learn that he is dying because his lover has poisoned him. Here is a performance of “Lord Randall” by UK artists Vicki Swan and Jonny Dyer at The High Barn on February 2013.

“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

In Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Oliver Trager describes Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” as “”[a]s stark a piece of apocalyptic visionary prophesy as anything ever committed” to any media. It was unlike anything else Dylan had written up that time.

Dylan’s song features a conversation between a father and a son, with alternating descriptions of life and death. Some believe that Dylan started writing the surrealistic poem during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

In the liner notes to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan though, Dylan explained that each line starts a whole new song.  He remembered: “[W]hen I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all these songs so I put all I could into one.”

Trager finds some “brightness” among the dark images of the song, including the final stanza when the narrator claims he will “tell it and speak it and breathe it/ And reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it.” It is an ending of defiance in the face of the darkness.

Here is Bob Dylan’s singing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” from a 1963 performance at Town Hall.

I have always loved the song and found it powerful, but I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to hear it in the early 1960s coming from Dylan standing on stage in a club. When Van Ronk first heard Dylan sing it at the Gaslight, he writes, “I could not even talk about it; I just had to leave the club and walk around for awhile. It was unlike anything that had come before it, and it was clearly the beginning of a revolution.”

Do you agree that Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is incredible? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Garth Hudson Returns to Big Pink in 2014

    Big Pink

    Rolling Stone magazine recently visited the legendary Big Pink with The Band’s Garth Hudson, returning to the house for the first time since he moved out. In the video, Hudson talks about his experiences at Big Pink with The Band and with Bob Dylan, explaining more about the recording of the famous Basement Tapes.

    The video coincides with Bob Dylan’s recent release of The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11. Check out the video of Garth Hudson visiting Big Pink once again, concluding with him playing the piano in the basement.

    For more on Big Pink, you may head over to Mashable to check out a short video showing the trip from New York City to Big Pink, narrated by Jeff Bridges.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel”: How Broonzy, Crudup, Dylan, OCMS and a School Band Made a Hit Song

    Wagon Wheel

    Darius Rucker recently had a hit with “Wagon Wheel,” a song is so catchy that when you hear it you believe that you have heard it all your life. Although the song has not been around forever, it has been around for quite some time, going back through an unfinished Bob Dylan recording to an even earlier time.

    When Bob Dylan was recording music for the soundtrack to Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) (an underrated Western gem), he put together what he later called a “sketch” of a song that came to be known as “Rock Me Mama.” He never finished the draft of the song, but you may hear it below.

    Reportedly, Dylan credited the title phrase in the song to Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (1905-1974), who in turn apparently developed it from Big Bill Broonzy‘s “Rock Me Baby.” Broonzy claimed he got the idea for the song from an older source, but Broonzy’s is the earliest version we know about.

    Crudup’s version of “Rock Me Mama” does not have much similarity to Dylan’s version beyond the title. Yet, Crudup’s song is important for not only influencing Dylan, but it also influenced Elvis Presley. When Presley showed up at Sun Studios, the young man impressed Sam Phillips by knowing Crudup’s “Rock Me Mama.”

    Although Dylan never released his version of “Rock Me Mama,” it was passed around as a bootleg, eventually catching the attention of Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. Secor liked the music and some of the words that he could make out in Dylan’s mumbled version. So, he decided to finish the song.

    At the time he worked on the song, Secor was going to school in the Northeast, so he incorporated his homesickness for the South in a song about a someone hitchhiking from the North to the South to see his lover. The song, now entitled “Wagon Wheel,” then appeared on Old Crow Medicine Show’s 2001 EP Troubles Up and Down the Road and then on 2004’s O.C.M.S.

    “Wagon Wheel” became a bluegrass staple, and country artists and others took notice too. In 2012, Irish singer Nathan Carter recorded a version of “Wagon Wheel” for an album of the same name.

    Eventually, the song came to the attention of Darius Rucker in the midst of his post-Hootie & the Blowfish successful career in country music. Darius Rucker has reported that while he is a fan of Old Crow Medicine Show, he did not think much about “Wagon Wheel” until he heard a faculty band at his daughter’s school perform the song. Inspired by the performance, Darius Rucker decided to record the song himself in 2012.

    Rucker put “Wagon Wheel” on his 2013 album, True Believers. Then, his version became a big hit, and he won the Grammy Award for Best Country Solo Performance at the Annual Grammy Awards held in 2014 for his version of the song.

    So, forty years after Bob Dylan recorded some ideas from Arthur Crudup and Big Bill Broonzy, the recording evolved into a song heard by millions of listeners. Secor reports that while he has not had an extensive conversation with Dylan about the song, his sense is that Dylan is pleased with the results. So are a lot of people.

    And that’s the story behind the song.

    Photo via public domain. Which is your favorite version of “Wagon Wheel”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    The First Farm Aid

    farm aid On September 22, 1985, the first “Farm Aid” was held in Champaign, Illinois. Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp organized the benefit concert for struggling American farmers. Performers at that concert included a broad range of performers, including Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Hoyt Axton, Don Henley, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Billy Joel, Waylon Jennings, John Denver, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Charley Pride, Sammy Hagar, George Jones, and Lou Reed.

    Reportedly, the idea for Farm Aid began when Bob Dylan played at Live Aid earlier in the year in July and suggested some of the money from that concert should go to American farmers. While some — including Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof — were upset that Dylan exploited the stage of a worldwide televised concert in support of African famine relief to focus on Americans, other artists used the comment as inspiration for the Farm Aid concert. And Farm Aid benefit concerts continue to this day.

    That September 22 in 1985, the performers did not know that the work would continue for decades. But they joyously sang and played to try to give something back. Below is one of the performances that day in Illinois, featuring Willie Nelson, Arlo Guthrie, and Dottie West singing “City of New Orleans.”



    What is your favorite Farm Aid performance? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Bob Dylan’s 1964 Quest

    Dylan 1964
    In 1964 on the Toronto television show Quest, 23-year-old Bob Dylan performed several of his now-classic songs. At the time, he was promoting his latest album, The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964). Quest was a regular series, initially called Q for Quest, that featured various artists and ran on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) network during 1961-1964.

    In 1964, Robert Whitehead hosted the series. But for Dylan’s segment, the producers offered Dylan the entire 30 minutes for his music with no interviews. So Dylan performed throughout the show in a rustic cabin-like setting with various actors in the background. The music, though, is fantastic.

    In the entire 30-minute program, Dylan performed “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Talkin’ World War III Blues,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” “Girl from the North Country,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” and “Restless Farewell.” The version of “Girl from the North Country” from this show appears on the DVD release of Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home (2005). [Update: The video of the entire show is no longer available, so below is the opening song of the show, “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”]

    According to the TV Talkin’ website about Dylan’s early recorded performances, this Quest show is the earliest video of a full Dylan performance available. The TV Talkin’ website lists the date of the show as January 2, 1964, although that may be the date of the recording instead of the broadcast. Another website, Queens’ Film and Media, lists the date of the Dylan show as March 10, 1964, which is probably the broadcast date.

    The audio for the show is available on the 10-CD Man on the Street bootleg (Thanks to one of our readers for this information!).  It appears on the eighth CD under ” Quest Canada CBC-TV (Feb. 1, ’64).”  So it puts the date somewhere between the January and March dates listed above.

    Dylan’s special TV episode was the last one executive producer Daryl Duke did for Quest before leaving the show. He went on to produce The Steve Allen Show, where Dylan would appear on February 25, 1964.

    Reportedly, prior to these TV appearances, Dylan had appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in summer or late 1963. But no video survives of that appearance and nobody seems even to know what Dylan sang then. Fortunately, though, this Quest performance from the same period survives.

    What is your favorite song in the segment? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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