World Gone Wrong - Bob Dylan (1993)
I’m skipping the 1980s in my Dylan story. Album-wise, the 80s produced 2 of his top-tier albums, 1983’s Infidels (one I was going to include this week til I realized how close it was in relation to yesterday’s Slow Train Coming) and 1989’s Oh Mercy (which I never tire of talking about but about which I’ve already written). around these two were five other studio records, each with a few excellent songs but not exactly classics (a lot of people like Empire Burlesque more than I do, to be fair). The headline story of the 80s comes in 1987 when, as he described it in his memoir, Dylan rediscovered his love of performing. He broke out of the album -> tour -> album rock star loop by playing relentlessly and playing a different setlist every night of his own extensive catalog as well as covers, 200 dates a year, launching what people call the “never-ending tour.” It was in the midst of that renaissance that he cut Oh Mercy, a triumphant return to form with many of his best latter-day songs. But it also energized him to explore the landscape of folk and blues and traditional music that he’d always been obsessed with but hadn’t returned to in the previous 20 years.
The release right before this one, Good As I Been To You, is also a collection of traditional tunes. In contrast to that one, however, this was recorded at his home studio, self-produced, and leans much more into the blues end of the traditional music spectrum.
This one and its predecessor are the first and only solo acoustic records Dylan would record since his Greenwich Village folk singer days. His older voice and the worlds of experience he’d gained make this a very different affair.
As I’ve mentioned extensively, there aren’t many people who can match Dylan’s encyclopedic knowledge of American music. His version of Blind Willie McTell’s Broke Down Engine is clearly based on the original 1931 side, with the “rapping” on the wood of the guitar and the last verse that isn’t included in the 1949 re-recording that I knew. Delia here is not the same song as Delia’s Gone, which Johnny Cash would bring back to memory the next year, but rather an entirely different song likely also inspired by the same murder of Delia Green on Christmas Eve, 1900. Similarly, Stack a Lee is one of countless variations of the song recounting pimp Stack Lee (or Stagger Lee)’s barroom execution of the man who’d stolen his hat in 1895 (also at Christmas. Remember how I mentioned that American folk traditions have interesting and bizarre ways of co-opting the Christian mythos?). Jack-a-Roe goes even deeper, a story song that can be traced back to 1830s Scotland.
The songs of love and hardship and anger and resignation fit excellently into Dylan’s catalog. Even if he didn’t write the songs himself, his music is shot through with his love of this material.
If you’re interested in any of this, I’d highly recommend The Philosophy of Modern Song, which features Dylan’s inimitably weird writing on more than 100 songs from all over the 20th century.
