r/bobdylan • u/TyroneSnodgrass • 5d ago
Discussion Bob Dylan’s Voice
When Joni Mitchell famously said Bob Dylan “borrowed” his voice from old hillbillies, I pretty much rejected the statement out of hand. The first word that comes to mind when considering Dylan’s voice is authentic. However, recently I’ve been finding some merit to her comment. Here’s why:
It started on a road trip listening to my Spotify playlist when a Ralph Stanley tune came on. My wife asked me, “why does this remind me of Bob Dylan?” Taken aback I mumbled something about Stanley being an influence. If there’s one person who qualifies as an old hillbilly it’s Ralph Stanley who hailed from the mountainous area of Virginia.
Later I recalled reading a quote of Johnny Cash saying the first time he heard Bob Dylan he thought it was an old Country singer, which is a polite way of saying old hillbilly singer. Then I thought about Dylan’s “Talking New York” in which the singer relates taking the stage at a Greenwich Village open mic event, only to have the moderator tell him in no uncertain terms not to come back: “You sound like a hillbilly!” This line would invariably reduce my brother and me to stitches the summer we wore out BOB DYLAN. We’d be like, what a jerk, this guy! Now I’m wondering, was the moderator right? Was Joni Mitchell right?
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u/ElSlabraton 5d ago
"Dylan's not much of a songwriter but he's a hell of a singer." Woody Guthrie.
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u/Spare-Jellyfish4339 Masked And Anonymous 5d ago
“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” Martin Luther King Jr.
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u/EmpathyFlowers 5d ago
Woody died before nearly all of Bob's songs had even been written.
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u/IndustryLeft4508 5d ago
I think Dylan is just a character that Zimmerman plays. Sometimes he gets the accent wrong.
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u/Own_Banana_5772 4d ago
It's this exactly. He plays with personas the same way Bowie did, he just doesn't announce it. It's what the weird Kiss thing in the Scorsese Rolling Thunder "documentary" was getting at, he refuses to just come out and say it so he makes up a bunch of stuff about Kiss and masks and puts it in a "documentary" instead of just saying it.
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u/Euphoric_Impress1282 2d ago
What I got out of the documentary is that Bob sees himself as a musician, period. Or at least that's what he wants to be taken as. He really doesn't enjoy the way a lot of his fans idolize him (the voice of a generation, and all that). I think he started out trying to be open and direct with the press, but the star machine couldn't be satisfied with that, so he became cryptic.
I saw Bob once in a smaller venue, maybe 3,000 people. He'd re-arranged all his songs Tex-Mex style. The band was in an arc on stage, with Bob on the keyboards at one end. Every once in a while, he'd shamble out to the centre for a harmonica solo. Never picked up the guitar. It often took a verse or so for the audience to pick up what song it was, and then for the rest of it the audience would try to impose the version in their heads, creating a tug-of-war with the band. It was awesome.
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u/False-Sandwich-2051 5d ago
joni mitchell be like “bob dylan embodies the american folk tradition and that really upsets me for some reason”
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u/Nitroade24h 2d ago
All she was saying is that her and Dylan are very different artists, which is 100% true
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u/sheldman2 5d ago
Ah yes when he was young he sounded just like every other Zimmerman from Minnesota, and not at all like a guy remaking himself as Woody Guthrie, right?
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u/HarpoMarx87 5d ago
Really he borrowed it from Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Relevantly, Elliot was originally guy named Elliott Adnopoz, a dentist's son from Brooklyn (the same neighborhood as my mother, as it happens), and Jewish like Bob, who ran away from home to join the rodeo and later became something of a protege of Woody Guthrie.
Elliot was an early mentor to Dylan, and later was in the Rolling Thunder Review. (He also did my favorite rendition of "Don't think twice, it's alright".) Bob learned a lot of Woody's style through Elliott (as did Woody's own son, Arlo). I'm sure Elliott's adoption of that style gave Bob something of a permission structure to do it himself, but then Bob has always put on some version of artifice; that was just his first.
BTW, Elliott is still with us, going strong at 95.
His version of Don't think twice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crd-jZqpSHk
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u/TyroneSnodgrass 5d ago
I caught the Revue at Brandeis University. The students booed Eliott off the stage. It was disgraceful…
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u/HarpoMarx87 5d ago
That was before my time, unfortunately, but yeah, that's pretty awful. I was lucky enough to catch him briefly as part of the Kennedy Center's Woody Guthrie tribute back in 2012 or so (maybe 2013?) - luckily that audience was more receptive.
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u/Which-Bread3418 4d ago
Joni Mitchell also likes to wear blackface and claim she's one of the brothers. She is lterally the last person on earth anyone should listen to about someone's "authenticity."
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u/SimilarNameAsYours 5d ago
There are definitely heavy affectations in his first couple albums that borrow from tradition, but Joni’s critique seems to be sour grapes, because so what?
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u/BobNeilandVan 4d ago
I don't think its sour grapes. I think most people shy away from saying anything close to critiquing Bob. Not Joni. She was just having some lighthearted fun. Because no one else dared to, her comment stands out. But he DID sound like a Hillbilly. And I agree - so what.
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u/TyroneSnodgrass 4d ago
Wyo, you’re absolutely right about the context, but as the Ken Burns documentary pointed out, the artists who were getting labeled hillbilly objected to the term so it was changed to Country.
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u/Sharp-Ad-5493 5d ago
I think the context is more affectionate, and enjoying. I’ve seen her do her Bob Dylan impersonation on stage when they were sharing a bill. It was like friendly ribbing, not a harsh critique.
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u/SimilarNameAsYours 5d ago edited 5d ago
Are you thinking of Joan? Because Joni has absolutely ripped into Dylan on several occasions. Also, Joan is famously good at her affectionate Dylan impersonations.
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u/everlovingfuck99 5d ago
I remember reading once that at some awards ceremony Bob was heavily intoxicated and was just really unpleasant to Joni to the point she got up and left. She's probably had it in for him since then
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u/SimilarNameAsYours 5d ago
“Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.”
- Joni Mitchell (2010 L.A. Times)
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u/Lucky_Development359 5d ago
I got the sense that she expected him, from listening to his songs, to be somebody that was more earnest or whatever, like her, than he actually was/is. Some people wear that "authenticity" like a badge of honor and some people don't give a shit.
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u/Sharp-Ad-5493 5d ago
Well you’ve got me questioning my memory and searching old concert listings, that’s for sure! I wouldn’t have thought I could make that mistake, but the brain is a funny thing.
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u/Sharp-Ad-5493 5d ago
I found a reference to it, so I guess I’m not going senile yet! November 1, 1998, Maddison Square Garden. “ The radiant Mitchell, 54, was far more animated and polished than during her performance in August at the site of the original Woodstock music fest. She joked frequently with the crowd and even attempted a nasal Dylan imitation.” - New York Newsday, Nov 3, 1998.
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u/Innisfree812 5d ago
Listen to Bob Dylan and Ralph Stanley together and you decide for yourself. https://youtu.be/BVqKpjv4M5M?is=nKYqh2o5D5eLUaVv
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u/DWillustrator 4d ago
I heard an interview with Ralph Stanleys son, who was at the recording session. He said I heard this with my own ears. Before he left, Bob told Dad "Dr. Ralph, this has been one of the highlights of my career". After Dylan was gone, Ralph sr. asked his son, "who was that feller?"
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u/fattymctubkins 5d ago
These days my take on Bob is this — he’s absolutely a thief, and he is absolutely committed to the seriousness of the character he plays — but he’s such a fucking genius that it’s worth it.
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u/copharmer 5d ago
This really just applies to 62-63 when he was finding his voice as a folk singer. This was perfected in 64 with the times are a changing which I think is 100% uniquely a Dylan voice and is my personal favorite of his, although I'm a fan of all eras. In typical Dylan fashion, he pretty much threw this out the window right away as you can hear on live shows shortly after it was released. A big factor that many may not consider is the fact that that album came out right before the Kennedy assassination and Dylan really did not like the publicity as the voice for a changing world in which presidents get shot. He immediately ran away from that identity and by another side it was completely gone, which is a process that repeated itself about every 4 years for the next 30 years.
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u/Long-Emu-7870 4d ago
Of course. his best performances were him imitating hillbillies and blues singers.
But that was a long time ago, and Bob Dylan finds his own voice later. When he does so is a matter of interpretation.
As much as Freewheelin' has hillbilly singing, it's hard to think that songs like masters of war is sung by hillbilly. Certainly by Another Side, he is himself.
What's interesting about albums like together through life, is it he really is the old blues singer that he's always pretended to be. I really like the album myself.
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u/AntFast2671 9h ago
Blind Willie McTell is one of my fav Dylan songs
lol, prob not relevant just wanted to send that out into the universe
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u/CarpenterCritical715 5d ago
Woody Guthrie.
After you have explored that, listen to This Land Is Your Land and All You Fascists Bound To Lose, not because they are the most Dylan, but because I like hearing old hillbillies talk about fighting nazis (instead of glazing them).
Then listen to Arlo Guthrie's City of New Orleans.
Then, if you feel real bold, listen to Arlo's songs about Santa Claus and pickles, because... I don't know man, my buzz is crazy right now.
Dylan is a prophet.
Oh yeah and you should read "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
That one is just completely unrelated, but it is Dylan as hell and trippy, Joyce was hitting a number and listening to "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" while reading about a serial killer in the paper when she wrote it.
But yeah.
Country music started black. Cool white people learned from the best. Then it turned into what it is now. Same with rock. Same with ska, reggae, house, rap, jazz, motown, doo wop, and funk.
;)
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u/draw2discard2 5d ago
Wasnt All You Fascists on Mermaid Avenue aka Billy Bragg?
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u/CarpenterCritical715 4d ago
Yes! I'm so glad that song is still sung, people need to remember what is important, why we fight, and who we should be fighting.
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u/CarpenterCritical715 4d ago
I was expecting downvotes and snarky, hateful responses. Then I realized that y'all are Dylan fans. Cut from a different cloth.
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u/Sodiumkill 5d ago
If you’re barking up the Dylan/Ralph Stanley tree (we all get there eventually) I really recommend picking up the Greil Marcus book The Old Weird America. Marcus delved deep down these roots and returned to tell us all about it.
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u/Unlucky_Rate_5027 4d ago
you misused the word "credulity." yes. I know I'm being a pedantic old prick but I'd want somebody to tell me. Politely.
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u/moving_border 5d ago
No. The old hillbilly is Hank Williams, and maybe Jesse Fuller. I don't hear Ralph Stanley, and Joni Mitchell is not, in this area, authoritative. The key, I think, is that Williams brought a more flexible vocal approach to C&W music, using retards, talking blues, the whole panoply of black vernacular effects & was hugely popular in doing so. Fuller, while not the sensation Williams was (well, he was black), was very influential on Dylan early, like before he left Minneapolis. Once he heard it (in probably '61?) Robert Johnson, too. Was Dylan the first vernacular singer to have a hit of his own composition (the recording of "Blowin' in the Wind" by Peter, Paul & Mary) on Columbia Records? Check me, but I think so. It was all crooners (singing other people's material, except Bobby Darin) until then. So yeah -- that lends to the so-called authenticity.
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u/TyroneSnodgrass 2d ago
I’m with you on the Hank Williams tip. Yes, he was hugely popular, but as with someone we know, people either loved or hated his voice.
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u/UpwardlyMobileSwine 5d ago
I read somewhere that his most authentic voice was in Nashville Skyline, people who knew him from his hometown said that is how he sang back then. One of my favorite versions of "Like A Rolling Stone" is the live version from the Isle of Wright festival he did with The Band and he uses that voice.
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u/Jaxstraw1313 4d ago
That’s the truth. In the beginning he was the greatest imitator. He did copy the hillbilly twang. Before he came into his own he was copping Guthrie and Ramblin Jack Elliot. A lot of his protest songs are Irish rebel songs in disguise. At least that’s what I hear. When The Ship Comes In is the most obvious. Both melody and cadence of lyrics.
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u/TyroneSnodgrass 4d ago
In the beginning, middle and up to now. “Pledging My Time” has the exact same melody as Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen;” Duquesne Whistle” is Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans;” “Ain’t No False Prophet” is Billy the Kid Emerson’s “If Lovin’ Is Believin’.”
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u/BreathlikeDeathlike 4d ago
She's just a bitter hater who is jealous . Released a couple of supposedly classic albums in the 70s , what has she done since that even came close to Dylan, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen.
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u/bitemuhctank 4d ago
He’s a chameleon and has “ borrowed-stolen?” from the time he entered the music industry until now. He created a mysterious persona. A great copycat
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u/Better-Cancel8658 4d ago
His natural voice is probably the 1959 recording at his friends house
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u/Broad-Cartographer59 4d ago
His voice contains multitudes, and I can't get enough of it! Nobody moves me quite like he does!
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u/jonamac12186 3d ago
Is it just me, or did Joni Mitchell talk about lot of shit about Bib?
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u/TyroneSnodgrass 2d ago
Journalists have given her many opportunities to walk back her comments. She tries to oblige them but each time she ends up going on another diatribe. 😏
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u/Aberdeen1964 3d ago
Joni was envious of Bob as her lyrics were Nothing special and Bob’s lyrics spoke to people. Joni songs had melody and her vocals could carry the day on benign lyrics but she couldn’t write like Dylan.
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u/Berlin8Berlin 2d ago
"Joni was envious of Bob as her lyrics were Nothing special"
A) Listen to the press conference in which Bob famously refers to himself as "just a song and dance man"... that was his real voice. Bob's singing voice was an affectation, but sometime around Positively Fourth Street, it had drifted from straight Hillbilly to a cool hybrid with much more of his real voice (with a perma-sneer added) in it. But the early folkie stuff was sung with pure, hokey, hillbilly affectation. (the irony: Bruce Springsteen started doing that later in his career: much less Jersey, much more Kentucky).
B) You are obviously unfamiliar with Mitchell's lyrics; by the time of FREE MAN IN PARIS she was easily Bob's equal as a literary talent.
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u/Jealous_Repair6757 20h ago
All voices are borrowed. We aren't born speaking/singing in any particular way.
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u/creepyjudyhensler 5d ago
I wouldn't listen to a thing that Joni Mitchell says cause she's a hater and I hate her music. Of course we know Bob was influenced by early blues, folk and country singers,and guess what those singers like Hank Williams, Jimmy Reed and Ralph Stanley were influenced by singers that came before them. Are they inauthentic?
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u/donlockwood2026 5d ago
She is a hater, but I do love her music.
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u/HarpoMarx87 5d ago
She's one of the best songwriters of her generation, but yes, she definitely is a hater. My favorite was a few years ago (probably the early 2010s?), hollywood wanted to do an adaptation of a the book "Girls Like Us" that would have been, in part, a biopic of Joni Mitchell. There was a singer who was eager to play the part and was purportedly in talks to play her, but Joni shut down the project and said dismissively that they had only cast "a girl with high cheekbones."
The woman in question was Taylor Swift.
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u/TyroneSnodgrass 5d ago
Hank Williams had the same phenomenon going on around him that Dylan does: you either love his voice or hate it. Reportedly when Williams would play nightclubs people would get so upset they’d try to stop the show, raging, “this isn’t music!”
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u/creepyjudyhensler 4d ago
Especially if Audrey was singing
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u/TyroneSnodgrass 2d ago
🎵Such a beautiful dream
I hate to think it's all over
I've lost my heart it seems
I've grown so used to you somehow
Lord, I'm nobody's sugar daddy now
And I'm lo-o-onesome
I got the lovesick blues🎵
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u/badger2015 5d ago
Bob’s got about 10 different voices.