The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
If there’s anyone that knows
Is there anyone that cares?
– Bob Dylan (Ballad of Hollis Brown)

The Best Dylan Covers: Nina Simone – Ballad of Hollis Brown

Ballad of Hollis Brown is a song written by Bob Dylan, released in 1964 on his third album The Times They Are A-Changin’. The song tells the story of a South Dakota farmer, who overwhelmed by the desperation of poverty, kills his wife, children and then himself.

Lyrically, this song consists of 11 verses which bring the listener to a bleak and destitute South Dakota farm, where a poor farmer (Hollis Brown), his wife and five children, already living in abject poverty, are subjected to even more hardships. In despair, the man kills his wife and children and himself with a shotgun. A murder ballad if there ever was one, I would love to hear Nick Cave tackle this song.

Your baby’s eyes look crazy
They’re a-tuggin’ at your sleeve
Your baby’s eyes look crazy
They’re a-tuggin’ at your sleeve
You walk the floor and wonder why
With every breath you breathe

 

Critic David Horowitz said of this song in 1964:

Technically speaking, “Hollis Brown” is a tour de force. For a ballad is normally a form which puts one at a distance from its tale. This ballad, however, is told in the second person, present tense, so that not only is a bond forged immediately between the listener and the figure of the tale, but there is the ironic fact that the only ones who know of Hollis Brown’s plight, the only ones who care, are the hearers who are helpless to help, cut off from him, even as we in a mass society are cut off from each other…. Indeed, the blues perspective itself, uncompromising, isolated and sardonic, is superbly suited to express the squalid reality of contemporary America. And what a powerful expression it can be, once it has been liberated (as it has in Dylan’s hands) from its egocentric bondage!

Nina Simone covered the song on her album Let It All Out in 1966. That uses an acoustic guitar as the main instrument, her live versions would be more piano heavy and much better.

Your babies are crying louder
It’s pounding on your brain
Your babies are crying louder now
It’s pounding on your brain
Your wife’s screams are stabbin’ you
Like the dirty drivin’ rain

Album version, Ballad of Hollis Brown (audio, 1966):

Live version (Holland, 1965 or it says so on YouTube, it looks more like the mid 70s I think…but I really don’t know):

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Borntolisten @ Facebook” color=”blue” i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-facebook-official” add_icon=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FJohannasVisions%2F||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_style=”outline” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-link” css_animation=”bounceIn”]Check out:

• MusicThisDay.com
• Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy – Brownsville Girls – The Best Dylan Covers
• Alison Krauss – I Believe In You – The Best Dylan Covers
• Jerry Garcia Band – I Shall Be Released – The Best Dylan Covers
• Roger McGuinn – Up To Me – The Best Dylan Covers
• Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris – Shelter From The Storm – The Best Dylan Covers
• George Harrison – If Not For You – The Best Dylan Covers 
• Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash – It Ain’t Me, Babe – The Best Dylan Covers
• Tom Jones – What Good Am I? – The Best Dylan Covers
• Rodney Crowell sings Bob Dylan covers
• Karl Erik’s expectingrain.com
• Olof’s “Still On The Road“

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