Bob Dylan: Bluesman?
by Mike Bodner
I think Bob Dylan is the best blues performer alive. There - it's out.
Better to say it in print and avoid being subjected to The Bob Dylan
Impersonation. Nearly everyone has heard this and can reproduce it
themselves. There are good reasons for it, I suppose - Dylan has sung
like a siren with laryngitis at rare but very public moments in his
career. In the last ten years, his renowned lyrics have sometimes been
delivered in Dylanese, a personal dialect undecipherable to most of the
English-speaking world. What is it, then, about this guy's music that I
find so captivating?
Well, to start with, the singing is not always like that. Bob Dylan can
hit notes. Whether or not you like the voice is a personal matter. It
has become rather "ragged and dirty" recently, as is shown on his recent
solo acoustic album World Gone Wrong (which features songs that are all
traditional, mostly blues). On this album, I think the voice fits
perfectly. You may not catch every word, but compared to blues greats
like Charley Patton, Bob articulates like a tortured reference
librarian. Knowledge of Bluespeak is, of course, an asset.
When Bob Dylan sings, the best thing he has going for him is the
strength of conviction. No one I've heard can emote as well as Dylan,
and thus no one makes me empathize more. Once I got over the notion
that singers must sound a certain way in order to be beautiful and/or
powerful, the vibrant impressionism of Dylan's singing gave me many
near-terminal cases of goosebumps. Sometimes all it takes is a
heartfelt "Lordy Lord" to make me grin ecstatically with watery-eyed
recognition.
Adding to the excitement is Dylan's unpredictability as a singer. He
commented in 1991 that he has no idea where his voice will go when he is
singing. This is not to say that he can't control his voice - he simply
is not interested in singing a song the same way twice. The melodies,
based around a skeleton idea of the song, are endlessly varied
spontaneously in different versions or verses. A good example is the
song "Delia" from World Gone Wrong : each verse ends with the the line
"All the friends I ever had are gone". Ten or twelve verses yield ten
or twelve different melodies for that one line. This unpredictability
mirrors the traditional vocal style of African-Americans, who vary the
strength and melody of their singing to suit their changing emotional
intensity.
Alongside his singing is Dylan's quirky guitar playing. Often based
around simple strumming, Dylan's arrangements of the traditional songs
on the World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You albums are not
likely to attract the ears of blues guitar aficionados. My own ears
perk up because I hear a pulse that often gets buried under complex
arrangements. Most of it may sound fairly simple (to a guitar player),
but to me the simplicity of the playing is as illusory as the simplicity
of a good haiku.
Dylan's approach to the provocative simplicity of traditional lyrics is
similar. In the liner notes for World Gone Wrong , he poetically
describes what each song means to him personally. Many of the
connections are loose; characters barely mentioned in a song may be
surrealistically depicted with traits not even hinted at in the text.
The point here is that his interpretation of the songs illustrate how
Dylan approaches the minimalism of traditional lyrics - the songs are as
little or big as you want them to be. Dylan chooses big.
To me, this choice translates very nicely into an intense performance.
Dylan can twist the words to mean whatever he wants. For example, when
covering the Mississippi Sheiks' song "I've Got Blood In My Eyes For
You", the chorus of "Hey hey baby, I've got blood in my eyes for you...I
don't care what in the world you do" undergoes a semantic change from
lust in the Sheiks' version to overtones of psychosis and desperation in
Dylan's version. Naturally, Dylan's private connections don't always
get across, but what does get across is the largeness of the song
itself. As a listener, the songs begin to grow for me in a way that
they wouldn't if they were performed by anyone else.
Maybe part of this phenomenon is also due to Dylan's song selection. He
avoids songs that don't translate well into our age, such as the
numerous double-entendre blues songs that would offend many. In the
1960's, many folk music figures exposed Dylan to obscure material, and
he in turn passes the cultural savings on to us. All of the songs seem
relevant and alive to me, whereas other singers' lyrics often sound so
cliched.
To be sure, there is value in keeping old traditions alive; preserving
the past and presenting it as it was then, with the same attitude as the
originators. Dylan is not so far from this approach as I might have
conveyed. I think he sounds quite a bit like some of the old time
country blues players. Most importantly to me, he matches the terrific
intensity that they conveyed in their music.
Yet Dylan is not content to be a singing historian. He stays within the
tradition, but on his own terms. The traditional music thus evolves
horizontally, not becoming better or worse, but simply changing because
(as the bank says) the times they are a-changin'. Evolution also keeps
the tradition alive, and it does so in a way that is far more
interesting for me.
In 1984 Dylan sang that "Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie
McTell", praising McTell while at the same time reminding us that our
voices are unique; imitations of others will always fall short of the
mark. Dylan's voice has certainly aged, but it retains its power to
hit me with a shot of recognition. No one can sing the blues like Bob
Dylan.
Photos from Bob Dylan Approximately by Stephen Pickering & Dylan by
Jonathan Cott (text) and Pat Stuppi (design)
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