Day #31: Dylan's Real People

Jimmy Tomasello and fiend

Last Friday, Peggy and I dressed up (I wore a tie) and while properly intoxicated enjoyed a virtual Dylan Songbag with Jimmy Tomasello. In the old days, we would go down to the Old Town School, grab a meal and some beverages at The Grafton  and play and sing Dylan...familiar, obscure or just new to us. We've done religious songs, Rolling Thunder Revue , the 2019 tour and Christmas Songs. (For a good time, click on this Must Be Santa link.)

This Songbag was special to me because I suggested the theme. Here are the songs we played.



"I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine"  ( video of Joan and Bob during Rolling Thunder.) Recorded in 1967 for the John Wesley Harding album. The tune and the opening couplet are recognizable as "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night. Joe Hill was a union organizer executed in 1914. Joan Baez played the song at Woodstock in 1969.  St. Augustine nee Augustine of Hippo converted to Christianity in 386 CE at the age of 31. Augustine took a bible and opened it at random.

Romans 13: 13-14: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.[84]

It has been suggested that Augustine's religious awakening from years of debauchery resonated with Dylan after his motorcycle accident in 1966 (at age 25)

Unauthenticated photo

Did Dylan really meet Elvis as recounted in "Went to See the Gypsy?" (click that link for a long rabbit hole) There are conflicting accounts. Ron Cornelius, a session musician on New Morning, "reported that he asked Bob Dylan what ‘Went to See the Gypsy’ was about and Dylan replied that it was about going to see Elvis in Las Vegas."

Then there is the lyric..."he did it in Las Vegas and he can do it here," that states that the "meeting" took place somewhere other than Vegas, probably in the "little Minnesota town (Hibbing, MN?)

In a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan refutes the story. "I never met Elvis, because I didn’t want to meet Elvis. Elvis was in his Sixties movie period, and he was just crankin’ ’em out and knockin’ ’em off, one after another. And Elvis had kind of fallen out of favor in the Sixties."

Poetic license. Vivid dream. Faulty memory. Good story.

During a flight from California around 1970, I sat next to a "straight" (as opposed to a hippie). The guy was an English professor and for some reason we talked about Dylan.  I remember him quoting. Desolation Row, Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk. I can't remember what he said about it. It had something to do with myth, relativity, and the atomic bomb. Which I guess it does.

One of the coolest things about the Dylan Songbag is just being able to play songs like Desolation Row. It's like Berkeley in the 70s.

Speaking of the 1970's I remember reading an autobiography of George Jackson. He had been killed in prison escape attempt. from San Quentin. And a pretty bizarre one.  In 1971 during a prison visit, his attorney, "allegedly passed a handgun and several clips of ammunition to Jackson, who slipped the weapon under a wig. When the visit was over, Jackson used the gun to take a guard prisoner, and forced him to unlock the cells of more than two dozen prisoners." When it was over, 3 guards and 2 inmate had been killed along with Jackson. The Black Panther Party paid the attorney's fees for the survivors of the melee during their numerous trials as the San Quentin Six.   


Dylan's song peaked at #33 on the Billboard charts in January 1972. It's most memorable lines...
Sometimes I think this whole world
Is one big prison yard.
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards.

3.75 Million. Used to be a lot of money

We hadn't heard Catfish, the 1975 outtake from Desire (click to read Rolling Stone's not great review) This bluesy number is remembered by Eric Clapton who was present for 3 takes of the tune (but not the one that was released in 1991 bootleg collection  Clapton recalled, "He (Dylan) was just driving around, picking musicians up and bringing them back to sessions. It ended up with something like 24 musicians in the studio, all playing these incredibly incongruous instruments - accordion, violin... It was very hard to keep up with him. He wasn't sure what he wanted. He was really looking, racing from song to song."

Jim 'Catfish' Hunter  began his career with the Kansas City Athletics who became the Oakland Athletics. Hunter lead the Oakland A's to three World Series, 1972-1974. I attended my first and only World Series games and sat in the left field bleachers. In 1974, Hunter through a loophole in his contract was able to become a free agent, a rare instance. way back when. He went on to star with the New York Yankees. Sadly he died at age 53 of ALS.

We played Joey from Desire. Another favorite from my 1970s living room jam sessions. What can be better than being really high and singing....

"Joey, Joey,
King of the streets, child of clay.

Joey, Joey,
What made them want to come and blow you away?"

Joey Gallo  began his mafia career working for the Profaci crime family until he kidnapped them. The song follows his career in and out of prison until his untimely death by mob execution at Umberto's Clam House in 1972.

Scarlet Rivera's violin really soars in the album's recording. During our virtual Songbag, Peggy was unmuted and provided cool backing and fills on her bowed dulcimer.

I hadn't heard the song, Blind Willie McTell until a previous Dylan Songbag. It has since become a favorite of mine. McTell (born William Samuel McTier; May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959) was not only a blues musician, he played ragtime and religious music. He also became "an accomplished musical theorist, able to both read and write music in Braille."

The tune was inspired by (or appropriated from) the song St. James Infirmary which itself has a long and distinguished career. An outtake from 1983's Infidels, the song was released in 1991 Bootleg Series.


Julius and Ethel was also an outtake from Infidels. It was a new one for us. It has a surprising punk-pop feel to it as it relays the story of the Rosenbergs who were executed in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to the then Soviet Union. There were international protests against their arrest, conviction and trial. Some saw it as anti-Semitic and others an example of the post-war anti-Communist frenzy.

 Many Americans agreed with President Eisenhower who wrote in denying clemency, “I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world."

Dylan's take seems pretty apt.

Someone says the fifties was the age of great romance
I say that's just a lie, it was when fear had you in a trance 

The last song of the night was the recently released masterwork, Murder Most Foul, which I previously blogged about on March 30 and March 31. Jimmy and Vera traded verses of this retelling, reconceptualizing, and great narrative catalogue of the music, movies and event of the era.

A truly inspiring end to an evening to remember what we love about music and not think about all this other shit going on.

Here are the songs and chords for Dylan Song Bag.