Bob Dylan has a new book out, titled “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” in which he proffers nonlinear essays of original and freewheeling exegesis of sixty-six mostly 20th century songs. The book is a mosaic of writing and photographs, the pics spread thematically throughout the pages (many from Stock or Getty; tracking them all down to their original source would be a mountainous research climb). There is a table of contents, showing the titles of the songs, but no index. There are no footnotes.
The book should be read aloud. If you’ve heard any of Dylan’s introductions featured in his now defunct Theme Time Radio Hour, you’ll know how the orality of the work is so important to its content. I’m reading the book aloud with Susan evenings this Fall. And I created a playlist on my YouTube Music channel of the sixty-six songs, so that we can listen to each song as we read the Dylan essay on it from the book.
Dylan’s sixty-six songs don’t amount to a best-of list. Each song is approached with a creative reading and listening analysis and appreciation. But why the song was selected, made the list, fished up out of the overstocked pond of popular songs – well, I don’t know. The underlying philosophy might be that any song has a story behind the story, an environment it came out of, that warrants description and understanding and an in depth discursive discussion of its time and place, and some songs lend themselves to this kind of analysis more than others. There is a kind of, not formula, but song archetype that’s uncovered, that might teach us how better to listen.
Here’s the playlist. Give it a listen, and get the book.
The 66 songs from The Philosophy of Modern Song, Bob Dylan, Simon & Schuster, 1 Nov 2022.
I recently subscribed to the YouTube Music streaming app, and have been making playlists. There are now many music apps to choose from. I was using Tidal and before that Spotify. To the neophyte, they’re all pretty much the same, click and listen. But for messing around, collecting music, forming playlists, using the app as a reference and research tool, YouTube Music seems to be working well, with one major caveat: lack of performer credits and original recording info easily obtainable while listening – but in that regard, neither Spotify nor Tidal were much better (Prime Music has some info, but lacks detail amid glitzy formatting, while YouTube Music has imported some Wiki discussion). The YouTube Music library is huge, and the search engine responds intuitively, bringing up at least as often as not what I’m looking for, and when not, the discoveries are a pleasure.
I created a YouTube channel to post my playlists. The playlists I’m making are referenced to songs pulled from my music book collection: songs and pieces from readings from books on music, with a special emphasis on guitar.
The first two playlists I made contain pieces adapted from Jerry Silverman instruction manuals, books I’ve managed to keep around me over the years: The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide: An Instruction Manual by Jerry Silverman, Based on the Folkways Record by Pete Seeger (an Oak Publication, New York, 1962), and The Art of the Folk-Blues Guitar: An Instruction Manual by Jerry Silverman (Oak Publications, New York, 1964, Library of Congress # 64-18168). These two books are similar in format, the old black and white pictures alone worth the price of admission, and include notes, tablature, chord diagrams, lyrics, musical analysis, and historical discussion.
In his introduction to his Folk-Blues guitar book, Silverman outlines his predicament at the time: “… there is more information on blues in general in the New York Public Library, for example, in German and French than there is in English!” (11). And Silverman goes on to describe the problem, how, for example, working on his 1955 New York University Master’s Thesis on blues guitar, and his book “Folk Blues” that followed, discussion was limited to piano arrangements, since it was thought that “bona fide guitar arrangements would limit the book’s general usefullness.” This should come as no surprise – Julian Bream, the classical guitarist, when studying music at the Royal College of Music, in the early 1950’s, was told to leave his guitar at home, literally. The school had no guitar classes, no guitar program; the guitar was not considered a viable, virtuous instrument. There was no academically established canon of guitar music available for study or performance. This prejudice against the instrument, in spite of its obvious public popularity, was no doubt also pervasive and included in the States in attitudes opposed to black music, initially of rock and roll music, and of folk music in general, though what is now called the American folk music revival, lasting from the 30’s to the 60’s, did much to mainstream the popularity of the guitar and of blues and folk music.
Silverman also describes his purpose as follows: “Naturally, some basis of what to listen and watch for and whom to imitate must be laid. Throwing the fledgling bluesnik into the turbulent waters of Bluesville without the necessary basic information and technique would render a distinct disservice to the general cause – not to mention the specific aspirant” (11). Of course whole rivers of water have passed under cities of bridges since Silverman’s early 1960’s comments. But the following statement explains something that has not changed: “To get to know how things really are done you must actually observe the player in action. Since there are so many individual styles one never stops learning if one can get to see as well as hear as many guitarists as possible” (Folksinger’s Guitar Guide, p. 5).
The academic bias against the folk guitar may have been somewhat justified considering Woody Guthrie’s description of his method (quoted by Silverman in Folksinger’s Guitar Guide, p. 6): “Leadbelly learnt to play the guitar the same way I did, by ‘ear’, by ‘touch’ by ‘feel’, by ‘bluff’, by ‘guessin”, by ‘fakin’ and by a great crave and drive to keep on playing.”
Well, these were real folks, with real blues. Hearing the lyrics, the stories, of these old tunes one may be surprised to learn or be reminded of how real and how blue. In creating my playlists, I want to stay true to original material but also to benefit from new styles and covers of these old songs.
Give them a listen:
Songlist adapted from Jerry Silverman’s The Art of the Folk-Blues Guitar, 1964
Songlist adapted from Jerry Silverman’s The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide, 1962
No more blues no more longing for you I’ve had it up to here with salt in my beer waiting for you to come back home your breadcrumb gifts lead up to my door no no more blues I’m sitting at home not hitting the road and going it alone not painting the town in red white and blue no no more poems and no more roams no no no no more tomes and no longing tones no no more blues I’m going away but then yet again today I just may stay one more day and then I’ll go on no more blues for you in my own bed at home across the dusty floor I’ll push a lonely broom no no more blues I’ve paid all my dues besides I’ve not a clue what I’d do without you I’d be up a tree I don’t know how to flee I’ll never be free but I’ve paid all my fees I’ve thrown away the keys to my orange heart I’m sitting all alone at the top of the world no no more blues no more longing for you Chega de Saudade goodbye sadness I want peace and beauty to go away too anyway peace is far from here and beauty gone to seed a kiss is silence the flicker is still under the green fern I’m going to pick it up and put it in the compost no no more blues give me orange and gold apricots and marigolds sapphron and yellow the sober sun of morning.
Note: The lyrics to the song “No More Blues” is an adaptation, or a rewrite, by Jessie Cavanaugh and Jon Hendricks, of the 1957 Bossa song Chega de Saudade, music written by Antônio Carlos Jobim and lyrics by Vinícius de Moraes (O Poetinha, “The little poet” of Brazil). Hundreds of versions have been recorded. Literally translated, chega de saudade would read in English enough of longing. A comparison of Moraes’s original lyrics with those of “No More Blues” shows how interpretive the Cavanaugh Hendricks rewrite of “Chega de Saudade” is, and the two songs seem to be a conversation between the one who went away but hears the call of the one who stayed home. It was while working on “No More Blues” for the jazz band Tunes Tardes that I wound up writing my own “version,” even further from the original, this one a poem, namely, as seen above, “Give Me Oranges.”
I talk to myself, but I’ve not much to say. I talk to myself, just like to say hey. I talk to myself, and oh by the way, I put in a good word for you.
When I’m on the road behind the wheel, I talk to myself and away I peel. When I’m standing in line at the DMV I talk to myself like you wouldn’t believe.
I talk to myself, but I’ve not much to say. I talk to myself, just like to say hey. I talk to myself, and oh by the way, I put in a good word for you.
All around town as I walk down the street I talk to myself while I meet and greet. After midnight and I’m awake in bed I talk to myself in the back of my head.
I talk to myself, but I’ve not much to say. I talk to myself, just like to say hey. I talk to myself, and oh by the way, I put in a good word for you.
In the evening the sun is placed over 60th and Belmont walking down the middle of the street into the powdery scene I snap a few pics with my phone cam:
Autumn Equinox 2022 from SE Belmont and 68th
Earlier in yard I cut feather grass as dry as a lint trap and the spent summer daisies cringed crinkled into dust as I yanked on the stiff stems like the barber at my gone to seed hair a mess she said.
Looking west over downtown to West Hills from SE 68th and Stark
End summer evenings still too hot to walk but coming of Fall equinox portable air conditioner quiet fan spins cooler nights tiny blue eyes charge to pay to keep cool to sleep.
A day later, a bit cooler, orange to blue, Morrison and 68th
So it goes Vonnegut said so it goes around and around on old vinyl the needle finishes its drive toward the center the turntable still spinning the needle clicking back and forth wanting to stop but caught in the groove.
Caught in the groove walking around and around
No one understands Universe least of all physicists who must talk a taught tongue while the rest of us find rhymes and rhythms as we dance around and around until the moon goes down as Chuck Berry said around and around until the sun goes down and the moon comes up.
I was reading through the Wiki entry for Frank Zappa, can’t remember why, and came across this quote from his autobiography, “The Real Frank Zappa Book”:
Since I didn’t have any kind of formal training, it didn’t make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin’ Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels …, or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music.
The title of the Zappa book might contain a reference to the musical fake and real books, collections of a kind of shorthand lead sheets used by players as sketch or blueprints to cover pieces. These music books usually fit any song on one page, and show melody notes and chord symbols. The original fake/real books differed from songbooks in that they did not include lyrics and were mostly used by jazz players who only needed guidelines, not strict written scores that might have gone on for pages and still only approximated what one had heard or wanted to hear.
The many versions of fake and real books published over the years complicates a description; suffice to say they provide a recipe for the song, but the musician still needs to do the mixing and cooking. They don’t work like player pianos. That reading above of the title is layered below the obvious one, that so much had been said and written about Frank that he decided to sort the wheat from the chaff and clarify what the real Frank Zappa was all about. I’ve not read it, but I’ve put a copy on hold.
Meantime, what about the part of that quote that says, “all good music.” What is good? What is music?
Starbucks, have you any coffee for me, can’t you see I am very sleepy, won’t you tell me where a barista might be, is there a cappuccino and a table, an umbrella, and a seat?
Starbucks, can I sit outside your door, on the sidewalk with a napkin and pen, writing my poem that no one will read, doodling my time away to an ambiguous ending.
And when the barista comes out, asking me if I’d like some frothy whipped cream, wonderful cream like the fall of moonlight, the garden lanterns are lit, while a gypsy jazz trio plays dans les nuages.
Starbucks, I don’t know if you have what I need, a lonely table under a carob tree, where I’ll sit and sip a cold coffee, my heart squeezed through a napkin ring, wishing for skylark wings to fly away and sing.
(“Skylark” is a 1942 jazz standard song, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Hoagy Carmichael.)
The Coming of the Toads 