Michael Gray (born 25 August 1946) is a British author who has written extensively about Bob Dylan and popular music.
Gray was born in Bromborough, Wirral. He grew up on Merseyside, attended Birkenhead School, and read History and English Literature at the University of York. He subsequently lived and worked in North Devon, Birmingham, West Malvern, London and North Yorkshire. He is married to the food writer Sarah Beattie. In 2008, they moved to South-West France.
In 1972, Gray published the first critical study of Dylan's work, Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan; this work was greatly expanded into Song & Dance Man III: The Art Of Bob Dylan (1999, 2000). In 2006, Gray published the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia , which received favourable reviews from the music press and newspapers. [1]
In 2007, Gray published Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes - In Search of Blind Willie McTell, both a travelogue and a detailed biography of the influential blues singer Blind Willie McTell. [2] This work was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography in 2008. [3]
Gray was the Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoner at Girton College, Cambridge, in 2005. [4] He established a Bob Dylan blog in 2006. His official website was created in 2011. In 2015 he received the higher doctorate of D.Litt. (Doctor of Letters in English) from the University of York.
In 2021, Gray published Outtakes on Bob Dylan, a selection of his writings on Dylan from 1967 to 2021. It contained a new 60-page assessment of Dylan's album Rough and Rowdy Ways .
Blind Willie McTell was an American Piedmont blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues. Unlike his contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from the harsher voices of many Delta bluesmen such as Charley Patton. McTell performed in various musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music, and hokum.
Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know ". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
"Blind Willie McTell" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Named for the blues singer of the same name, the song was recorded in the spring of 1983, during the sessions for Dylan's album Infidels; however, it was ultimately left off the album and did not receive an official release until 1991, when it appeared on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 1961–1991. It was also later anthologized on Dylan (2007).
Time Out of Mind is the thirtieth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 30, 1997, through Columbia Records. It was released as a single CD as well as a double studio album on vinyl, his first since The Basement Tapes in 1975.
Infidels is the twenty-second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on October 27, 1983, by Columbia Records.
Oh Mercy is the twenty-sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 12, 1989, by Columbia Records. Produced by Daniel Lanois, it was hailed by critics as a triumph for Dylan, after a string of poorly reviewed albums. Oh Mercy gave Dylan his best chart showing in years, reaching No. 30 on the Billboard charts in the United States and No. 6 in Norway and the UK.
Dylan is the thirteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, which is made up of outtakes he recorded for earlier albums. Columbia Records compiled it with no input from Dylan and released it on November 16, 1973. The album followed the artist's departure from Columbia for Asylum Records, and the announcement of his first major tour since 1966. In Europe the album was re-released in January 1991 with the title Dylan .
Charlie McCoy is an American harmonica virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist in country music. He is best known for his harmonica solos on iconic recordings such as "Candy Man", "He Stopped Loving Her Today", "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool", and others. He was a member of the progressive country rock bands Area Code 615 and Barefoot Jerry. After recording with Bob Dylan in New York, McCoy is credited for unknowingly influencing Dylan to decide to come to Nashville to record the critically acclaimed 1966 album "Blonde on Blonde".
World Gone Wrong is the twenty-ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on October 26, 1993, by Columbia Records.
Larry Campbell is an American singer and multi-instrumentalist who plays many stringed instruments in genres including country, folk, blues, and rock. Campbell is best known for his time as part of Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour band from 1997 to 2004, his association with Levon Helm of The Band, and the musical director of the Midnight Rambles.
"Highway 61 Revisited" is the title track of Bob Dylan's 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. It was also released as the B-side to the single "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" later the same year. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song as number 364 in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
"Ballad of Hollis Brown" is a folk song written by Bob Dylan, released in 1964 on his third album The Times They Are A-Changin'. The song tells the story of a South Dakota farmer who, overwhelmed by the desperation of poverty, kills his wife, children and then himself.
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter. Often considered to be one of the greatest songwriters, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 60-year career. He rose to prominence in the 1960s, when songs such as "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Initially modeling his style on Woody Guthrie's folk songs, Robert Johnson's blues and what he called the "architectural forms" of Hank Williams's country songs, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". His lyrics incorporated political, social and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture.
"Love Sick" is a minor-key love song by American musician and Nobel laureate Bob Dylan. It was recorded in January 1997 and appears as the opening track on his 30th studio album Time Out of Mind (1997). It was released as the second single from the album in June 1998 in multiple CD versions, some of which featured Dylan's live performance of the song at the 1998 Grammy Awards. The song was produced by Daniel Lanois.
Kate McTell was an American blues musician and nurse from Jefferson County, Georgia. She is known primarily as the former wife of the blues musician Blind Willie McTell, whom she accompanied vocally on several recordings. She may have recorded as Ruby Glaze, but there is some uncertainty about whether she and Glaze were the same person, despite the fact that she claimed to be Glaze.
"Things Have Changed" is a song from the film Wonder Boys, written and performed by Bob Dylan and released as a single on May 1, 2000, that won both the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. It was also anthologized on the compilation albums The Essential Bob Dylan in 2000, The Best of Bob Dylan in 2005 and Dylan in 2007.
The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989–2006 is a compilation album by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan released on Legacy Records in 2008. The sixth installment of the ongoing Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, it was originally released as a double-disc set, a limited edition triple vinyl album, as well as a three-disc expanded version. This latter edition of Tell Tale Signs includes a detailed 56-page book annotating the recordings by Larry Sloman, a book of photos The Collected Single Sleeves of Bob Dylan drawing on Dylan releases from around the world, plus a 7-inch vinyl single comprising two tracks from the set: "Dreamin' of You" and "Ring Them Bells".
Eugene "Buddy" Moss was an American blues musician. He is one of two influential Piedmont blues guitarists to record in the period between Blind Blake's final sessions in 1932 and Blind Boy Fuller's debut in 1935. A younger contemporary of Blind Willie McTell, Curley Weaver and Barbecue Bob, Moss was part of a coterie of Atlanta bluesmen. He was among the few of his era whose careers were reinvigorated by the blues revival of the 1960s and 1970s.
"One Sided Love Affair" is a song by Elvis Presley from his 1956 debut album Elvis Presley.
Cora Mae Bryant was an American blues musician. She was the daughter of another American blues musician, Curley Weaver. Bryant released two solo albums in her lifetime on the Music Maker label.