If you are interested in Dylan’s work from a particular year or era, your best place to start is Bob Dylan year by year. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
(Try imagining a place where it is always safe and warm). We also have a very lively discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook with over 2000 active members. The index to all the 590 Dylan compositions and co-compositions that we have found on the A to Z page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture. You’ll find some notes about our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. It really does show a very natural talent just bursting to get out – and as we quickly found – travelling in every direction at once. Now being reminded that I had not included Talkin New York in the chronology of Dylan songs, I once more can see an incredible maturity of writing – although of a very different kind – in this talking blues. “Ballad for a Friend” which turned up the following year is, for me, an absolutely incredible piece of writing, and I have often wondered where such maturity came from. And that is not the first time I have thought that in reviewing Dylan’s early songs. “Talkin New York” is funny and clever and very mature for a young song writer. For after Loudon Wainwright III was called the ‘new Bob Dylan’ he recorded ‘Talkin’ New Bob Dylan’ in 1992, at the time of Bob turning 50.īut to return to Bob. So once more a million thanks to Bob to introducing me to that tradition (I don’t think we ever really had it in England).īut that’s not quite the end. So yes, I do still find Bob’s “Talkin New York” entertaining, witty and fun, and when I first heard it as a youngster I was completely taken by it, having no idea that it came from a rich tradition. Which leads neatly into the East Orange discourse, which fortunately we still have available…
He was ravin’ about how he loved m’ soundĪ lot of people don’t have much food on their table “Man there said, “Come back some other day And it gives him a chance to explore the notion of expressing a spot of irony: Sister’s in the cellar squeezin’ up the hopsīrother’s at the window just a-watchin’ for the copsĪnd the fact that Guthrie recorded so many talking blues must have attracted Dylan to the form. Over the years the format didn’t change too much. But even if you can only take a few seconds of listening it is worth it just for the historical context. The quality is very poor – but then it comes from the earliest days of these sorts of recording. Talking blues goes way back to the mid 1920s when music was almost totally live performance, although oddly (given what I have just said about it being a form of music suitable for live performance) there is a recording of Chris Bouchillon’s talking blues available – probably the first (or at least one of the first) talking blues of all. And that something of course is a melody.
If you could fill in any others I’d be grateful.Ĭoming back to it after many years of not listening to Talkin New York, it feels fresh, funny, interesting… but still feels to me much more of a song that would be great in performance rather than being something I want to hear each time when I play the LP all the way through (and yes, I still have that original LP.) And for me that is the main point about the talking blues – it is still good fun in live performance, but once you know it off by heart it lacks something to pull me back in.
Those six span 1961 to 1964 but I have a feeling I have missed something – just as I missed New York until now. Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues.I’m not at all sure that this is the complete list of Bob’s talking blues, but a quick review suggests to me these are the songs in this format that got recorded: It was written, I think, just after “Song to Woodie” the other Dylan composition on the first album, composed probably after he had left New York following his first attempt to get work there. Apparently Talkin New York came out of an uncompleted Dylan song “NYC Blues”, and it is the first Dylan talking blues to make it onto an album.