Bob Dylan first recording session for “John Wesley Harding”Posted on October 17, 2012 by Egil | 10 Comments

I heard the sound that Gordon Lightfoot was getting, with Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey. I’d used Charlie and Kenny both before, and I figured if he could get that sound, I could…. but we couldn’t get it. (Laughs) It was an attempt to get it, but it didn’t come off. We got a different sound… I don’t know what you’d call that… It’s a muffled sound.
~Bob Dylan to Jann Wenner November 29, 1969

45 years ago Bob Dylan started recording “John Wesley Harding”.

Some background from wikipedia:

Dylan went to work on John Wesley Harding in the fall of 1967. By then, 18 months had passed since the completion of Blonde on Blonde. After recovering from the worst of the results of his motorcycle accident, Dylan spent a substantial amount of time recording the informal basement sessions at West Saugerties, New York; little was heard from him throughout 1967. During that time, he stockpiled a large number of recordings, including many new compositions. He eventually submitted nearly all of them for copyright, but declined to include any of them in his next studio release (Dylan would not release any of those recordings to the commercial market until 1975′s The Basement Tapes; and by then, some of those recordings had been bootlegged, usually sourced from an easy-to-find set of publisher’s demos). Instead, Dylan used a different set of songs for John Wesley Harding.

It is not clear when these songs were actually written, but none of them has turned up in the dozens of basement recordings that have since surfaced. According to Robbie Robertson, “As I recall it was just on a kind of whim that Bob went down to Nashville. And there, with just a couple of guys, he put those songs down on tape.”

Those sessions took place in the autumn of 1967, requiring less than twelve hours over three stints in the studio.

Dylan brought to Nashville a set of songs similar to the feverish yet pithy compositions that came out of the Basement Tapes sessions. They would be given an austere sound sympathetic to their content. When Dylan arrived in Nashville, producer Bob Johnston:

“he was staying in the Ramada Inn down there, and he played me his songs and he suggested we just use bass and guitar and drums on the record. I said fine, but also suggested we add a steel guitar, which is how Pete Drake came to be on that record.”

Dylan was once again recording with a band, but the instrumentation was very sparse. During most of the recording, the rhythm section of drummer Kenneth A. Buttrey and bassist Charlie McCoy were the only ones supporting Dylan, who handled all harmonica, guitar, piano, and vocal parts.

“I didn’t intentionally come out with some kind of mellow sound……. I would have liked … more steel guitar, more piano. More music … I didn’t sit down and plan that sound.”
~Bob Dylan 1971

The first session, held on October 17 at Columbia’s Studio A, lasted only three hours, with Dylan recording master takes of “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine”, “Drifter’s Escape”, and “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest”.

Studio A
Columbia Recording Studios
Nashville, Tennessee
October 17, 1967, 9 pm – 12 midnight.

Produced by Bob Johnston

Songs:

• Drifter’s Escape
• Drifter’s Escape – JWH
  
  “Dylan once again demonstrated his distaste for the legal process, preferring to leave Judgment to Him on high. Reversing “Percy’s Song” and “Seven Curses,” he makes the judge compassionate but powerless. He also sets the drifter free, not at the whim of the judge, but via that most traditional of devices, the deus ex machina. A bolt of lightning causes everyone else to pray, allowing the (presumably faithless) drifter to escape.
  Dylan had found a way to tell a five-act story in just three verses.
  Enthused by what he had achieved, he began writing a whole set of
  songs along similar lines.”
  ~Clinton Heylin (Revolution in the Air)
  
• Drifter’s Escape
• Drifter’s Escape
• Drifter’s Escape
• I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
• I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
• I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
• I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine - JWH
  The song .. is a work of art, extremely moving, totally original.
  ~Paul Williams (Performing Artist – 60-73)
  -
  Not only is “St. Augustine” a eulogy of sorts, it is exquisitely sung
  (even if Dylan and his fellow Americans don’t know how to pronounce the saint’s name, rhyming it with “mean,” not “sin”).
  ~Clinton Heylin (Revolution in the air)
  
• The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest - JWH
  Unusually for a Dylan song, “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” ends with a moral, telling the listener “the moral of this story, the moral of this song, is simply that one should never be where one does not belong”, to help one’s neighbor with his load, and “don’t go mistaking Paradise/for that home across the road.
  (from wikipedia – read more here)
  
  
  -
  

Personnel:

• Bob Dylan (vocal, guitar & harmonica),
• Charlie McCoy (bass),
• Kenneth Buttrey (drums).
  

Notes:

• 3, 4 are false starts.
• 6 is interrupted
• Only released tracks are in circulation.
  

-

鲍勃迪伦被称为“当代贝多芬”。

回复 shinelb 的帖子

Marshall 这间公司与摇滚乐，与JAZZ渊源已久。时至今日，Marshall还在生产胆机的Guitar Head和Combo 吉他音箱。
我手上的Marshall El34, 乃俄罗斯生产。
音色清甜，力度好，听古典和Jazz都可以。

谈到Bob，在北京金融界的洲际酒店6楼酒吧，驻唱乃一英国老牌绅士。他唱Bob Dylan感情丰富，腔调十足。

   

Marshall El34
color4 发表于 2012-11-26 18:30

请问兄台贵吗？感兴趣。我正有一对书架箱，想搞个胆机。

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http://www.audion.co.uk/Mono%20b ... y%20KT88%20PSE.html
胆机版本不同1-2W 港币

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单端300B就非常贵，代理通常搭配Sid smith前级卖
   

香港和台湾朋友比较喜欢胆机的，经常有香港朋友来深圳这边买胆机的，他们除了喜欢胆机，还认为深圳这边的胆机以及配件性价比很高。我认识的一些香港朋友，他们并不是大手大脚乱花钱的，相反他们很理性。他们有时还选择国产的CD机的。他们对待发烧比较理性和成熟。

一般情况下，玩胆机主要还是侧重味道的，推动力始终不能和晶体管机相比的。香港人喜欢胆机，这和他们的居住条件有关。因为一般情况下，香港人的居住环境要小一些，这样，很难玩大型系统。所以书架箱和胆机就比较受欢迎。香港人很喜欢瑞宝，35A这些音箱的。

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讲的太对了。小弟这一套胆机，就是住在香港公寓时候添置的。
   

回复
讲的太对了。小弟这一套胆机，就是住在香港公寓时候添置的。
color4 发表于 2012-11-29 17:37

日本人也是这样的，签名版B&W805就是B&W专门为日本发烧友设计的书架箱。日本人喜欢B&W。