John Brown (Bob Dylan song)

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"John Brown"
Song by Bob Dylan
RecordedFebruary 1963 at Broadside Records, New York City (original studio version)
Genre Folk, Anti-war song
Songwriter(s) Bob Dylan
Audio
"John Brown" (Live at the Gaslight, 1962) on YouTube

"John Brown" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Written in October 1962, the song was not included in sessions for Dylan's studio albums in the 1960s, but it was released, under his pseudonym "Blind Boy Grunt" on the by Folkways Records compilation album Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1 (1963).

Contents

It is an anti-war song that draws on traditional tunes and themes, and narrates the tale of a mother who is proud to see her son go off to war. He returns badly injured and reflects on how the enemy looks just like him, before dropping his medals into his mother's hands. The song has received a mixed reception from critics, with some finding performances impactful and others criticizing the callowness of the lyrics.

According to his official website, Dylan has performed the song in concert 180 times, most recently in 2012. Live performances have been officially released on MTV Unplugged (1995), Live at The Gaslight 1962 (2005), and Live 1962–1966 – Rare Performances From The Copyright Collections (2018). A demo version was issued on The Bootleg Series Vol. 9 – The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (2010). "John Brown" was covered by The Staple Singers for their 1967 album Pray On.

Composition and recording

For contractual reasons, Dylan (pictured in 1963) used a pseudonym, "Blind Boy Grunt", for "John Brown" on Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1 (1963) Joan Baez Bob Dylan (cropped to Dylan).jpg
For contractual reasons, Dylan (pictured in 1963) used a pseudonym, "Blind Boy Grunt", for "John Brown" on Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1 (1963)

Bob Dylan wrote "John Brown" in October 1962. [1] Whilst the lyrics are original, the tune is a traditional one. [1] Around this time, Dylan often drew on traditional songs when writing his own. [2] The melody is based on "Rueben's Train", or the longer version from "900 Miles", a well-known song in the US folk music community. [1] [3] [2] [lower-alpha 1] When the song was published in Broadside magazine in March 1963, an accompanying note read "Tune, much like '900 Miles'." [5]

"John Brown" is an anti-war song. [6] The lyrics are influenced by "Mrs. McGrath", [1] which relates how a young Irish soldier is maimed after fighting in the British Army against Napoleon's forces. [2] In Dylan's song, a soldier's mother expresses her pride at him going off to war. [7] He returns home from a war overseas, badly injured and wearing a metal brace around his waist. [2] He tells his mother that "I couldn't help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink/ That I was just a puppet in a play"; authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon remark that this couplet is echoed in Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game" (1963). [2] The soldier reflects that "when my enemy came close/ I could see that his face looked just like mine". [7] The song ends with the soldier dropping his medals into his mother's hand. [7] In a live May 1963 radio interview with Studs Terkel, during which he performed the song, [8] Dylan said that it was based on the true case of a contemporary soldier, [5] but the historian Sean Wilentz, author of Bob Dylan in America calls the song "wholly fictional". [9]

A live version recorded during his show at The Gaslight Cafe, New York, in October 1962 was eventually released on Live at The Gaslight 1962 (2005). [10] In response to an open invitation from the folk music Broadside magazine for recordings, Dylan recorded a version of "John Brown" in February 1963 that was released on the compilation album Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1 (1963) and later included on The Best Of Broadside 1962–1988 (2000). [11] A pseudonym, "Blind Boy Grunt", was used by Dylan due to contractual issues; Dylan was signed to Columbia Records but Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1 was released by Folkways Records. [12] He did not attempt the song at the recording sessions for his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album which had started in April 1962 and concluded in April 1963, or for its successor The Times They Are a-Changin' which happened in August and October 1963. [13] A demo of the song performed for publishing company M. Witmark & Sons in August 1963 was officially released in 2010 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 9 – The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 . [14] The music scholar Todd Harvey compared five performances of "John Brown" from 1962 and 1963 and concluded that after The Gaslight Cafe show, only the eighth verse continued to change. [5]

Critical comments

In The Vancouver Sun in 1970, the critic Al Rudis referred to "John Brown" as "one of the best yet least known Dylan protest songs", calling the Broadside Ballads version "chilling", and comparing it's subject to Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun . [15] Dylan's biographer Robert Shelton wrote that "Although the ironies of battlefield heroism are timeworn, the story is effective." [16]

The critic Jim Beviglia considered what he described as the intense bluegrass version of "John Brown" the highlight of the Unplugged album. [17] He opined that despite the stark and harsh of the lyrics, Dylan's capacity for empathy can be detected. [18] The song was also picked as a highlight from the album by Mark Robinson of the Reno Gazette-Journal , who felt it was impactful despite a failure on Dylan's part to deliver the final line as the "brutal punchline" it should have been. [19] Dave Ferman of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote that the song was delivered with a "wonderful, hushed urgency". [20] The critic John Nogowski gave the Unplugged version an A rating, considering it superior to The Bootleg Series Vol. 9 take which he rated as C+. [21]

Authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon commented that Dylan, who was 21 when he composed the song, "had little life experience" at that point. [2] The Dylan scholar Michael Gray compared it unfavorably to "Arthur McBride", covered by Dylan on Good as I Been to You (1992), arguing that "John Brown" is "polemical and built upon lurid stereotypes to the exclusion of all real observation". [22] Gray expresses surprise that Dylan had decided to perform "John Brown" in concert in the 1980s and 1990s, dismissing it as "too awful" for inclusion on one of Dylan's official albums, and the "cringe-making" nadir of early Bob Dylan bootleg recordings. [13] The song was denigrated as "crass" by Dylan's biographer Clinton Heylin. [23] Mike Marqusee criticized the quality of the lyrics, but found that the song's "repugnance at jingoism, glancing references to class, filial rage, and anguished opening to an internationalist vision, the song shows Dylan working to synthesize something new, a contemporary folk music that was emotionally raw and politically uncompromising". [24]

Live performances

According to Bob Dylan's official website, he has performed "John Brown" in concert 180 times. [25] It lists the 1962 Gaslight Cafe performance as the live debut, followed by a second live rendition at the Town Hall, New York in April 1963. [25] The latter performance was due to be included on Bob Dylan in Concert, an album planned for 1964 but never issued. [26] It was, however, included on Live 1962–1966 – Rare Performances From The Copyright Collections (2018). [27]

The song was absent from Dylan's live sets from around 1964 until 1987. [13] During rehearsals for the Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead 1987 Tour, Jerry Garcia the Grateful Dead had suggested that they play the song. [13] He continued to include the song in some setlists on the 1987 Temples in Flames Tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and on the Never Ending Tour from 1988. [7] In 1994, Dylan recorded the song for his MTV Unplugged episode, [6] and it was included on his MTV Unplugged album and video release of the show in 1995. [28] [29] As of September 2023, his most recent live performance of the song was in October 2012. [25]

Credits and personnel

Witmark Studio recording, August 1963

Credits adapted from the Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track book. [2]

Musicians

Technical personnel

MTV Unplugged

Credits adapted from the MTV Unplugged page at Bob Dylan's official website, and from AllMusic . [30] [31]

Musicians

Technical personnel

Cover versions

The Staple Singers covered "John Brown" on their 1967 album Pray On. The Los Angeles Times critic Pete Johnson praised the lead vocals for "achiev[ing] a delicate balance between pathos and understatement". [32] [lower-alpha 2] A 2021 Variety listing of "The 80 Best Bob Dylan Covers" included it, with Chris Morris describing the cover as a "restrained, haunting treatment". [34] The Staple Singers version influenced Maria Muldaur's cover on her 2008 album Yes We Can!, which was described by Andrew S. Hughes of as The South Bend Tribune as a "chilling, visceral rendition". [35] Muldaur told Hughes that Dylan was her favorite songwriter, and praised Dylan's "John Brown", "Masters of War" (1963) and "License to Kill" (1983) as "eloquent expressions of the anti-war sentiment. [35]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Folklorist Norm Cohen writes that while 900 miles is the most common distance referenced in the traditional song, other distances including 400 miles, 500 miles and 10,000 miles are also used in versions. [3] He notes that the tune for "900 Miles" is twice as long as that for ""Rueben's Train". [4]
  2. ↑ Johnson identifies Roebuck Staples as the lead singer, [32] but Greg Kot writes that it was Pervis Staples. [33]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Harvey 2001, p. 54.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Margotin & Guesdon 2022, p. 142.
  3. 1 2 Cohen 2000, pp. 506–507.
  4. ↑ Cohen 2000, p. 505.
  5. 1 2 3 Harvey 2001, p. 55.
  6. 1 2 Nogowski 2022, p. 189.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Heylin 2009, p. 100.
  8. ↑ Scaduto 1971, p. 143.
  9. ↑ Wilentz 2010, Search phrase "wholly fictional".
  10. ↑ Nogowski 2022, pp. 198–199.
  11. ↑ Trager 2004, p. 338.
  12. ↑ Trager 2004, p. 84.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Gray 2000, p. 852.
  14. ↑ Corbett, Ben (October 22, 2010). "Album Reviews: Bob Dylan, Bootleg Series Vol. 9, The Witmark Demos 1962–1964 and The Complete Mono Recordings". Crawdaddy. Archived from the original on December 25, 2010. Retrieved November 30, 2010.
  15. ↑ Rudis, Al (June 1, 1970). "Bob Dylan's secrecy spurs a bootleg album boom". The Vancouver Sun . p. 25. Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  16. ↑ Shelton 1987, p. 158.
  17. ↑ Beviglia 2013, p. 14.
  18. ↑ Beviglia 2013, p. 15.
  19. ↑ Robinson, Mark (May 25, 1995). "Dylan's 'Unplugged' on target". Reno Gazette-Journal . p. 1E. Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  20. ↑ Ferman, Dave (May 5, 1995). "When he's got it, he's got it". Fort Worth Star-Telegram . p. ST12. Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  21. ↑ Nogowski 2022, pp. 189, 292.
  22. ↑ Gray 2000, p. 730.
  23. ↑ Heylin 2011, p. 103.
  24. ↑ Marqusee 2005, p. 68.
  25. 1 2 3 "Setlists that contain John Brown". Bob Dylan's official website. Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 4, 2023.
  26. ↑ Williams 2004, pp. 97–98.
  27. ↑ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Live 1962–1966: Rare Performances from the Copyright Collections Review". AllMusic . Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 4, 2023.
  28. ↑ "John Brown". Bob Dylan's official website. Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 2, 2023.
  29. ↑ "MTV Unplugged [Video]". AllMusic . Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 4, 2023.
  30. ↑ "MTV Unplugged (1995)". Bob Dylan's official website. Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  31. ↑ "MTV Unplugged: Credits". AllMusic . Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  32. 1 2 Johnson, Pete (March 19, 1967). "Gospel group issues new album". Los Angeles Times . p. C27. Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  33. ↑ Kot 2014, p. 117.
  34. ↑ Morris, Chris (May 24, 2021). "The 80 Best Bob Dylan Covers: 16 – The Staple Singers, 'John Brown'". Variety . Retrieved September 4, 2023.
  35. 1 2 Hughes, Andrew S. (September 26, 2008). "Muldaur says 'Yes We Can' solve world's problems". The South Bend Tribune . p. D3. Archived from the original on September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.

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