Sign on the Window isn't the Bob Dylan podcast you need, but it's definitely the one that you want! Each week we select a Dylan song at random, live with the song for a week (or two) and then get together to discuss. This week we close out Robert Johnson Month with Dylan's cover of "32-20 Blues."
This week, Kelly and Daniel talk context (3:00), where Johnson got the song (8:00), an overview of the song's arsenal (11:00), and why Dylan chose this one (18:00). Does it work? (24:00) and our final thoughts on memory, history and all the things we didn't get to discuss (29:00). We talk playlist (41:00), recommend our respective roadtrips (45:30) and choose our next song, three away from 100 episodes!
Next episode: Get plenty of rest
Context (3:30)
Dylan recorded "32-20 Blues" in his garage in Malibu in May 1993. It's an outtake from his World Gone Wrong. In those early 90s records, Dylan reconnects with his influences and Robert Johnson is no different. In Chronicles, Dylan writes:
The songs [of Robert Johnson] were layered with a startling economy of lines. Johnson masked the presence of more than twenty men. I fixated on every song and wondered how Johnson did it. Songwriting for him was some highly sophisticated business. The compositions seemed to come right out of his mouth and not his memory, and I started meditating on the construction of the verses, seeing how different they were from Woody’s. Johnson’s words made my nerves quiver like piano wires. They were so elemental in meaning and feeling and gave you so much of the inside picture. It’s not that you could sort out every moment carefully, because you can’t. There are too many missing terms and too much dual existence.
Throughout the years, Dylan would cover other Johnson songs, like "King Hearted Woman Blues" and "Milk Cow Blues," as well as reference him in works like his "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie" (our Episode 35).
Song Itself (4:00)
Kelly and Daniel use Johnson's "32-20 Blues," recorded on November 26, 1936 in San Antonio, Texas, to compare and contrast with Dylan.
They explore the origins of "32-20 Blues" — from Roosevelt Sykes to Skip James — and after Johnson — from Muddy Waters to Dylan to John Hammond, Jr. They also talk guns, what makes a great Murder Bob song — and if this is one of them?, the darkness and misogyny at plan here (as Kelly said: "I'm gonna put you in a hospital... in a sexy way."), and the Hot Springs and Wisconsin references.
Does this work today? (4:00)
This last section functions as the final words for Robert Johnson Month. While the song may not work, the body of work as a whole and its influence is nearly unrivaled.
Michael Gray writes beautifully about Johnson:
Robert Johnson is not to be knocked off the pedestal on which an appreciation of his incomparable improvisational strengths as a wordsmith and as a guitarist of near-incomprehensible dexterity have placed him. His sound is fluid, sexy, volatile; his songs, which are mostly conjured up from other people’s material (but then, the blues was a communal process), run a dazzling gamut from lone despair to delirious flirtation and intimate communion, and his voice is agile, elastic, light-stepping and yet heartfelt, in touch with both the ancient field holler and trembling, youthful heat.
We discuss his work after his mysterious death, the fight over his estate, and the scant photos we have. Daniel highly recommends Robert Gordon's “Hellhound on the Money Trail,” originally published in LA Weekly in 1991.
Johnson is interesting because he acts like a lightning rod for questions of history and memory, appropriation, and the what could've been.
THE EPISODE’S BOOKLET & PLAYLIST (41:00)
RECOMMENDATIONS (45:30)
Kelly talks about her friend from Florida and the mini-Oregon Coast/California roadtrip.
Daniel talks about his roadtrip from Oregon to Virginia (picking up Grandma in Sioux Falls, SD).
ENDINGS
412 songs left.
Kelly guesses #341 — "This Wheel's on Fire."
Instead, we go to "Nothing Was Delivered."
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