Bob Dylan Best Songs from the 60s – 4 different lists (Rolling Stone, Uncut, The Guardian and Mojo)

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The original lists aren’t actually made up of songs only from the 1960s, but I’ve pulled out the songs recorded in the 1960s and ranked accordingly.

The Guardian

From the list “Bob Dylan’s 50 greatest songs – ranked!” – April 2020
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    1. Like a Rolling Stone – Highway 61 Revisited – recorded June 16, 1965
    2. Visions of Johanna – Blonde On Blonde – recorded February 14, 1966
    3. Subterranean Homesick Blues – Bringing It All Back Home – recorded January 14, 1965
    4. Desolation Row – Highway 61 Revisited – recorded August 04, 1965
    5. Positively 4th Street – Single only – recorded July 29, 1965
    6. Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands – Blonde On Blonde – recorded February 16, 1966
    7. It Ain’t Me Babe – Another Side of Bob Dylan – recorded June 09, 1964
    8. Girl From the North Country – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – recorded April 24, 1963
    9. The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll – The Times They Are a-Changin’ – recorded October 23, 1963
    10. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – Bringing It All Back Home – recorded January 15, 1965
    11. One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) – Blonde On Blonde – recorded January 25, 1966
    12. Ballad Of A Thin Man – Highway 61 Revisited – recorded August 02, 1965
    13. Mr. Tambourine Man – Bringing It All Back Home – recorded January 15, 1965
    14. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – recorded December 06, 1962
    15. I Threw It All Away – Nashville Skyline – recorded February 13, 1969
    16. Chimes of Freedom – Another Side of Bob Dylan – recorded June 09, 1964
    17. I Want You – Blonde On Blonde – recorded March 10, 1966
    18. All Along the Watchtower – John Wesley Harding – recorded November 06, 1967
    19. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – recorded November 14, 1962
    20. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – Bringing It All Back Home – recorded January 15, 1965
    21. Love Minus Zero/No Limit – Bringing It All Back Home – recorded January 14, 1965
    22. The Times They Are a-Changin’ – The Times They Are a-Changin’ – recorded October 24, 1963
    23. One Too Many Mornings – The Times They Are a-Changin’ – recorded October 24, 1963
    24. Blowin’ in the Wind – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – recorded July 09, 1962
    25. My Back Pages – Another Side of Bob Dylan – recorded June 09, 1964
    26. This Wheel’s on Fire – The Basement Tapes – recorded May-October 1967

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The Best Songs: Come On In My Kitchen by Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson by Robert Crumb

 

If I hadn’t heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down—that I wouldn’t have felt free enough or upraised enough to write.

— Bob Dylan
Chronicles: Volume One

Wikipedia:

Come On in My Kitchen” is a blues song by Robert Johnson. Johnson recorded the song on November 23, 1936 at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas – his first recording session. The melody is based on the song cycle by the string band the Mississippi Sheiks, “Sitting on Top of the World” (1930)/Things About Coming My Way (1931)/I’ll Be Gone, Long Gone (1932)/Hitting The Numbers (1934).

Johnson’s arrangement on slide guitar (in open tuning, commonly thought to be open G) is based on Tampa Red’s recording of the same tune with the title “Things ‘Bout Coming My Way”. Tampa Red had recorded an instrumental version in 1936, and the song had been recorded earlier by him in 1931, and by Kokomo Arnold in 1935 (Tampa Red may in fact have been the first to use the melody with his song “You Got To Reap What You Sow” (1929) based on Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell’s version).

Johnson’s recording was released on the Vocalion label (no. 03563) as a “race record” – cheap records for the black consumer market. The song was among those compiled on the King of the Delta Blues Singers LP in the 1960s. (A slower alternate take was also later found and released on CD collections; this version also has ten extra lines of lyrics.)

Come on in my kitchen by Robert Johnson:

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The Best Songs: Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)


[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

The problem with that song is that I’ve forgotten the actual triangle. Whether it was my own – of course, I always felt that there was an invisible male seducing the woman I was with, now whether this one was incarnate or merely imaginary I don’t remember, I’ve always had the sense that either I’ve been that figure in relation to another couple or there’d been a figure like that in relation to my marriage. I don’t quite remember but I did have this feeling that there was always a third party, sometimes me, sometimes another man, sometimes another woman. It was a song I’ve never been satisfied with. It’s not that I’ve resisted an impressionistic approach to songwriting, but I’ve never felt that this one, that I really nailed the lyric. I’m ready to concede something to the mystery, but secretly I’ve always felt that there was something about the song that was unclear. So I’ve been very happy with some of the imagery, but a lot of the imagery.
~Leonard Cohen (BBC Radio Interview 1994)

Sometime in the early 1970s, a thief stole Leonard Cohen’s old raincoat from Marianne Ihlen’s New York apartment. God only know what happened to it, but the thief almost certainly had no idea he was stealing an object that belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, if not the Smithsonian. It was that very coat that inspired Cohen to write one of his most beloved and mysterious songs. It’s written in the form of a letter, possibly to the narrator’s brother, who stole his lover, Jane.
~rollingstone.com[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Famous Blue Raincoat (from the album – Songs of Love and Hate)

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