Blue Monday

To salute the imminent publication of Michael Gray’s Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell, here are some clips of Bob Dylan performing “Blind Willie McTell,” the buried 1980s masterpiece that could have helped rescue Dylan’s Infidels album from the also-ran category that applies to just about all of his 1980s releases. The tune finally surfaced with the release of the first installment of The Bootleg Series, and a still-unreleased electric version can be found on Rough Cuts, the bootlegged outtakes from the sessions that produced Infidels.   

I’ve already sung Gray’s praises on a number of occasions, and many Dylan fans found their way into McTell’s towering blues legacy through Gray’s great essay in Song and Dance Man. I’m sorry to say that none of the Dylan performances available on YouTube — this 2000 rendition from Cardiff, this 2003 version from London or this 2006 performance from Roskilde – can hold a candle to Dylan’s original recorded performance in The Bootleg Series. Mick Taylor, one of the two hired guitar guns on Infidels, actually cuts his former boss dead with this 2006 concert version. 

There doesn’t seem to be any film available of McTell himself in performance, so here’s a clip of the Allman Brothers doing their signature cover of McTell’s “Statesboro Blues,” which has probably introduced a couple of generations to the work of the great Georgia bluesman. Here’s a link to an annual festival in McTell’s honor, and a good biography of McTell on BluesNet.