the best Dylan covers

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

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy aka Will Oldham – Brownsville Girl – The Best Dylan Covers

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Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy aka Will Oldham – Brownsville Girl – The Best Dylan Covers

“Brownsville Girl” is a song from Bob Dylan’s 1986 album, Knocked Out Loaded, recorded in May of that year. It is notable for its length, over 11 minutes, and for being co-written by playwright Sam Shepard. The song is an overdubbed version of a December 1984 outtake from the Empire Burlesque sessions entitled “New Danville Girl”.

bob dylan knocked out

While as an album Knocked Out Loaded was poorly received upon release, “Brownsville Girl” is considered one of Dylan’s best pieces by some critics. Music critic Robert Christgau praised “Brownsville Girl” as “one of the greatest and most ridiculous of Dylan’s great ridiculous epics. Doesn’t matter who came up with such lines as ‘She said even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt’ and ‘I didn’t know whether to duck or to run, so I ran’ — they’re classic Dylan.”

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Jerry Garcia Band – I Shall Be Released – The Best Dylan Covers

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” the somber, nearly claustrophobic strains of I Shall Be Released burst with the fiery force of spiritual transcendence.”
– John Metzger / Music Box

Jerry Garcia Band – I Shall Be Released – The Best Dylan Covers

 

I Shall Be Released is a 1967 song written by Bob Dylan.

The Band recorded the first officially-released version of the song for their 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink, with Richard Manuel singing lead vocals, and Rick Danko and Levon Helm harmonizing in the chorus. The song was also performed near the end of the Band’s 1976 farewell concert, The Last Waltz, in which all the night’s performers (with the exception of Muddy Waters) plus Ringo Starr and Ronnie Wood appeared on the same stage. Additional live recordings by the Band were included on the 1974 concert album Before the Flood and the 2001 expanded CD reissue of Rock of Ages.

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Roger McGuinn – Up To Me – The Best Dylan Covers

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Roger McGuinn – Up To Me – The Best Dylan Covers

Up To Me was released on the album Cardiff Rose, a solo studio album by  ex-The Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn, released in 1976. The album, produced by Mick Ronson, was recorded on the heels of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue 1975 tour, in which both McGuinn and Ronson had participated  (the personnel on the album also include Rob Stoner, Howie Wyeth, and David Mansfield from the Rolling Thunder tours). The album includes a pirate tale “Jolly Roger”, a song about King Arthur’s “Round Table”, and a classic version of Joni Mitchell’s “Dreamland”.

Stylistically, the album varies from traditional sounding folk and sea chanty music (such as the aforementioned “Jolly Roger”) to hard, gritty rock tunes strongly influenced by the burgeoning punk rock movement (such as “Rock and Roll Time” that sound very much like a Clash song!). Continue reading “Roger McGuinn – Up To Me – The Best Dylan Covers” →

Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash – It Ain’t Me, Babe – The Best Dylan Covers

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Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash – It Ain’t Me, Babe – The Best Dylan Covers

 

“You say you’re looking for someone
Never weak but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain’t me, babe”

 

It Ain’t Me Babe is a song by Bob Dylan that originally appeared on his fourth album Another Side of Bob Dylan, which was released in 1964. According to music critic Oliver Trager, this song, along with others on the album, marked a departure for Dylan as he began to explore the possibilities of language and deeper levels of the human experience.

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Tom Jones – What Good Am I? – The Best Dylan Covers

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““What good am I if I’m like all the rest?” the 70-year-old singer nearly whispers to open the album. Is the question rhetorical? Is he talking to himself? The performance, a cover of a somewhat obscure Dylan tune where Jones is backed up by only a sparse rhythm section, is almost prayer-like in its gentle quietness and with its heartfelt vocals. Yet no answer is given to this or Jones’ other questions throughout the song, leaving the listener to ponder the answers and making it a quite haunting piece of music.”
– Adam Sheets (NoDepression)

Tom Jones – What Good Am I? – The best Dylan covers

Bob Dylan released What Good Am I? on his classic album, Oh Mercy in 1989.

Oh Mercy is notable for its sustained moodiness and resignation, often in relation to romantic dissolution. This is immediately apparent on the atmospheric Most of the Time, which features the richest production on the album. Described as “magisterial” by Allan Jones of Melody Maker, the narrator in Most of the Time sings of an estranged lover whom the narrator can’t quite shake from his memories. The song addresses an irreconcilable, personal relationship, and this theme would continue through What Good Am I?, a frank look at the narrator’s moral worth.

What good am I some like all the rest
If I just turn away when I see how you’re dressed
If I shut myself off so I can’t hear you cry
What good am I?

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