Will Bob pay tribute to Nina?

Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 01:54:00 +1000
Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan
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Last night on ABC TV in Sydney, the late night news review programme,
Lateline, played a clip of Nina Simone singing a verse of Dylan's I
Shall Be Released. A touching tribute by the "Dylan plant" inside the
ABC TV network who continues to use Dylan as often as is comfortably
possible. In light of the sad passing of Ms Simone, I wonder if Dylan
will pay her a personal tribute of sorts with an appropriate song in
Houston. Not sure if he's ever performed it but I'd like to hear him do
the version of Trouble In Mind I'll never tire of hearing Nina perform:
(1927) Richard Jones
Trouble in mind, I'm blue
But I won't be blue always,
'Cause the sun's gonna shine
In my backdoor some day.
I'm all alone at midnight
And my lamp is burnin' low
Ain't never had so much
Trouble in my life before.
Trouble in mind, that's true
I have almost lost my mind,
Life ain't worth livin,
Sometimes I feel like dyin'.
Goin' down to the river
Gonna take my ol' rockin' chair
And if the blues don't leave me
I'll rock away from there.
You been a hard-hearted mama
Great God! You been unkind
Gonna be a cold, cold papa
Cause you to lose your mind.
I'm gonna lay my head down
On some lonesome railroad line
And let the two nineteen
Pacify my mind.
Well it's trouble, oh trouble
Trouble on my worried mind,
When you see me laughin'
I'm laughin' just to keep from cryin'.
Given both Dylan and Simone travelled similar paths with the civil
rights movements - at least for a short time in the early 60s - there
doesn't appear to have been much interaction between them as artists or
friends, apart from the crossover covers as outlined below.
>The following is a review by Christopher Rollason from the rmd archives
>in October 2000 in which he outlines the Dylan connections on a 1997
>Simone compilation:
I would like to draw rmd people's attention to a Nina Simone compilation
called 'The Masters' (Eagle Records, 1997; EAB CD 017, mid-price). Of
course there are any number of Simone anthologies on the market, but
this one is of particular Dylan interest.
The 20 tracks are all drawn from the years 1967-71. They include 4 Dylan
covers and 3 songs officially covered by Dylan, plus George Harrison's
'Here Comes The Sun' (which Bob has performed live) and a number called
'Since I Fell For You' (credited to 'Johnson') which sounds
tantalisingly like a source for 'Till I Fell In Love With You'. The
also-covered-by-Bob songs are 'House of the Rising Sun', 'Mr Bojangles'
and 'Let It Be Me'.
The four Bobcovers are: 'I Shall Be Released', 'Just Like Tom Thumb's
Blues', 'Just Like A Woman' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin' (original
release dates: 1969, 1969, 1971 and 1969). All are very impressive
renditions, taken in a slowed-down jazz/gospel vein. Nina omits no
stanza
from any of the songs, but does make one or two curious lyric changes.
In
'Released', the man-who's-been-framed in the third stanza is 'hollerin'
so
loud'. In 'Just Like A Woman', a number of minor alterations and a shift
into first person for the final appearance (only) of the refrain ('I
take
just like a woman ..') probably reflects the uncertainty that female
vocalists often seem to feel when covering male-penned first-person
lovesongs (compare Emmylou Harris' cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Ballad of
the
Absent Mare/Runaway Horse' or Baez's 'Famous Blue Raincoat').
The most interesting lyric changes are in 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues',
where 'Housing Project Hill' has become (if I hear aright) 'Heartache
Hill', while the person arriving from the coast is no longer Angel but
'my brother Carl' (who?? - a strange alteration, which is, however,
paralleled by Nana Mouskouri's replacement of Prince Philip by Mitch
Ellis - who??? - on her rendition of 'Dignity').
Nina has also done 'The Ballad of Hollis Brown' (1965; available on a
various-artists Bobcovers compilation, 'The Bob Dylan Songbook', 1991 -
Connoisseur Collection VSOP CD 158), and, no doubt, other Bobsongs. Her
interpretative powers shine beyond all doubt: meanwhile, I'd quite like
to
know who 'brother Carl' might be ...
CR
--
_ _ _
Christopher Rollason, M.A., Ph.D.
Metz, France
Ray.