Background: By 1969, Bob and Sara Dylan were the parents of 4 young children and in December of that year Jakob, the fifth and last child would be born. Little had been heard from Dylan since John Wesley Harding. In the meantime, it seemed, the world had moved on. Viet Nam. Haight-Ashbury. The Summer-of-Love-Flower-Power-psychedelia-Timothy Leary. Watergate, for heaven’s sake! Where was ‘The Voice of the Generation’ when you needed him? “For the public eye, I went to the bucolic and the mundane as far as possible. In my real life I got to do the things that I loved best and that was all that mattered…” (Chronicles, Vol. 1, p 123.)
The Recording: A new voice. (Rumor has it that he stopped smoking to achieve this smoother tenor sound.) Twanging guitars. Charlie Daniels. JOHNNY CASH! And, among the tunes, the song that, for me, emerges as Dylan’s sexiest: Lay Lady Lay. Bob’s been hitting the sourmash, for sure, but what surfaces here is not to be scoffed at. Nashville Skyline Rag, his first full-length instrumental, is a foot-tapper, Peggy Day, To Be Alone With You, One More Night and Country Pie are also upbeat and harken back to an earlier decade. There’s a similar, slightly melancholy flavor present in I Threw it All Away, Tell Me it Isn’t True, and Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You all of which reflect a more serious side of the sing/songwriter. If a Conway Twitty had come out with this album no one would have thought twice about it, but once again Dylan is playing musical chameleon and people take notice. Even if, as one looks back, there’s a more than a hint that this is the direction he’s taking in John Wesley Harding the fence that that album straddled stood much closer to old mountain ballads than it did to fifties or sixties C&W.
Conclusion: Another surprise, but just the fact that it is is in its own way predictable, as far as Dylan’s music goes. Taken at face value, it’s a pleasant listening experience; taken as a Dylan album, one gets the feeling that there’s something more up his sleeve. That grin he’s wearing on the album cover as he tips his hat says, “Wait ‘til you hear what’s inside—I’ve been having fun!
The Recording: A new voice. (Rumor has it that he stopped smoking to achieve this smoother tenor sound.) Twanging guitars. Charlie Daniels. JOHNNY CASH! And, among the tunes, the song that, for me, emerges as Dylan’s sexiest: Lay Lady Lay. Bob’s been hitting the sourmash, for sure, but what surfaces here is not to be scoffed at. Nashville Skyline Rag, his first full-length instrumental, is a foot-tapper, Peggy Day, To Be Alone With You, One More Night and Country Pie are also upbeat and harken back to an earlier decade. There’s a similar, slightly melancholy flavor present in I Threw it All Away, Tell Me it Isn’t True, and Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You all of which reflect a more serious side of the sing/songwriter. If a Conway Twitty had come out with this album no one would have thought twice about it, but once again Dylan is playing musical chameleon and people take notice. Even if, as one looks back, there’s a more than a hint that this is the direction he’s taking in John Wesley Harding the fence that that album straddled stood much closer to old mountain ballads than it did to fifties or sixties C&W.
Conclusion: Another surprise, but just the fact that it is is in its own way predictable, as far as Dylan’s music goes. Taken at face value, it’s a pleasant listening experience; taken as a Dylan album, one gets the feeling that there’s something more up his sleeve. That grin he’s wearing on the album cover as he tips his hat says, “Wait ‘til you hear what’s inside—I’ve been having fun!
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