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Forever Freewheelin': Dylan as Improviser by Kevin Whitehead The story goes that Bob Dylan was in the studio a few years ago with a top record producer. While the singer warmed up on a tune, the producer heard a turn of phrase he especially liked, and persuaded a reluctant member of Dylan's band to ask him to do it the same way for the record. Dylan blew up at the messenger: "Don't you know by now I never sing anything the same way twice?" Musicians have been covering the singer's tunes for almost 40 years - even Duke Ellington, Marlene Dietrich, and Spike Jones cut "Blowin' in the Wind" - and are still at it: The new A Nod to Bob: An Artists' Tribute to Bob Dylan on His 60th Birthday features a brace of folkies; jazz clarinetist Michael Moore is preparing his all-Dylan CD, Jewels and Binoculars. But Bob remains his own best and most ruthless interpreter. For Dylan, those iconic old songs are mutable objects, to be remade every time he performs them. Compare multiple (early vs. late, studio vs. live, acoustic vs. electric) versions of, say, "Like a Rolling Stone," "Tangled Up in Blue," or "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine." From one to another, he may vary the melody, phrasing, feel, and even lyrics so much, a song's identity can blur before your ears. It's a daredevil routine, singing like Dylan. Rather like one idol, Jimmie Rodgers, country-music progenitor as steeped in African-American music as Dylan is, he may leisurely stretch out the words in the first part of a line, then dare himself to squeeze a clown-car full of syllables into the back half. (He might even throw in a few unnecessary words to give himself that much more to inject, as in "Visions of Johanna": "And the country music station plays soft/ But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off.") Meanwhile, from year to year he might alter the quality of his voice itself; remember how the Woody Guthrie mumble of the early protest songs gave way to the gleeful heckling of Blonde on Blonde to his Nashville Skyline soothing croon. And those transformations are but first steps toward his Gabby Hayes sandpaper voice on '90s discs World Gone Wrong (where he became one of the weathered old bluesmen the album pays tribute to) and Time out of Mind. The premium he places on improvised melody and a changing timbre recalls a great jazz soloist - for example saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, who recast a melody every time he played it, and altered his signature sound several times over his long career. |
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