Cash and Dylan Sing Songs of Remorse: I Hung My Head and I Threw It All Away

When Ken Burns' documentary on Country Music aired on PBS last fall, and Dylan's Bootleg #15 Travelin' Through came out featuring Johnny Cash on two of the three CDs, the world was twice reminded of the manner in which these two careers have routinely intersected.

Maybe intersecting isn't quite the right word. The image that comes to mind is the double helix of a DNA molecule in which the two strands corkscrew around each other like a twisted ladder. There's a sense in which Dylan and Cash have had parallel lives in terms of achievement and fame, sometimes in the foreground and sometimes in the shadows, and frequently connected by those ladder rungs.

It's apparent from their earliest recordings and footage of making music together that there was a mutual admiration society thing going on between them. They sometimes sang one another's songs. They clearly seemed to enjoy one another's company, both on stage or in the studio.

Later in their careers another interesting parallel began to occur. With the inauguration of Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series, a recycling of countless hours of unreleased material was sifted through as they opened the vault to share with a wider public content that had been left on the cutting room floor. This has provided loyal fans the luxury of being continually surprised by the breadth of his imagination.

Something similar occurred with Johnny Cash when he began recording The American Recordings. Cash, with his resonant baritone, was given the opportunity to  take on this project when producer Rick Rubin, better known for heavy metal and rap, saw Johnny Cash perform at the Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary concert in 1992. The deal was this: Cash could do what he wanted and Rubin would produce something exceptional.

This would be a different kind of recycling. Cash would be recycling covers, but adding new dimensions of gravity to the songs. When American IV came out with Cash doing a cover of "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails, an electricity went through the music scene, much like the electrical current that sizzled through Greenwich Village when young Dylan arrived. The net result was that American IV went platinum and many (like us who acquired it) followed up by buying the previous albums in the series, eagerly anticipating those that would follow.

This unlikely marriage--Rubin and Cash--received widespread critical acclaim including multiple American IV platinum and gold awards.

* * * *

Sting's version of "I Hung My Head" is a good song, but--and I mean no disrespect--the cover arrangement and gravelly Cash voice produce a chilling, incomparable effect that is heartbreaking, effectively amping the song to a new high.

It's a story in song, something both Cash and Dylan excel at. It begins innocently enough. The narrator is out one morning messing around, killing time, until he does something stupid that changes everything.

Early one morning with time to kill
I borrowed Jeb's rifle and sat on a hill
I saw a lone rider crossing the plain
I drew a bead on him to practice my aim
My brother's rifle went off in my hand
A shot rang out across the land
The horse, he kept running, the rider was dead
I hung my head, I hung my head

You can imagine the emotions, were this a real life event, your real life accident.

You may not play with guns, but you make mistakes. And not every mistake is deadly, though some can be. They kill something special that was living, and will never live again, perhaps a friendship, or an intimate relationship. So the song continues with an attempt at denial. This can't be real.

I set off running to wake from the dream
My brother's rifle went into the sheen
I kept on running into the south lands*
That's where they found me my head in my hands
The sheriff he asked me why had I run
And then it come to me just what I had done
And all for no reason just one piece of lead
I hung my head, I hung my head

But it is real and there are consequences. In the courthouse he has to explain what he was thinking. Sometimes we don't even understand our own actions, yet must make an account. He recognizes that he's orphaned a man's children and widowed this man's wife. And he's sinking inside.

The final verse has an intriguing twist. It's the day of his hanging, and it proves to be an echo of the event that brought him to this moment.

Early one morning with time to kill
I see the gallows up on the hill
And out in the distance a trick of the brain
I see a lone rider crossing the plain
And he'd come to fetch me to see what they'd done
And we'll ride together to kingdom come
I pray for God's mercy 'cause soon I'll be dead
I hung my head, I hung my head
I hung my head, I hung my head

* * * *

Photo Bob Landy

Bob Dylan's "I Threw It All Away" is a completely different story, but essentially the same lament. Whereas it's true he writes songs that blame the woman for this breakup--"I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul" for example; or the harsh "It ain't me, babe" as sung on Bootleg #5 1975--in this song he takes full responsibility for the end of this meaningful affair of the heart.

I once held her in my arms
She said that she would always stay
But I was cruel, I treated her like a fool
I threw it all away.

It's a beautiful song, recorded for Nashville Skyline. I have a friend who says his favorite "sound of Bob's voice" is here on Nashville Skyline. It was certainly distinctive.

The song evidently remained significant for him as he performed it live nearly fifty times, most recently in 2002, the second tune in a May Rotterdam show.

Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand
rivers of grandeur every day
I must have been mad, I never knew what I had
until I threw it all away

There may be critics who call it sentimental pap, but if you've ever been hit with it deep, how that which you valued was destroyed by your own hand, this captures it.

The bridge is a basic nod to the all-encompassing and life-affirming notion: "Love is all there is, it makes the world go round..." following up with this admonition born of experience:

So if you find someone that gives you all of her love
Take it to your heart, don’t let it stray
For one thing that’s certain
You will surely be a-hurtin’
If you throw it all away

* * * *
These were thoughts I had this weekend as I listened to Johnny Cash American Series IV in conjunction with Dylan's Traveling Through. Both men saw a lot in their lives, both the highs and lows, and both were superb at conveying it in the songs.

Ultimately, it is life itself in the balance. Don't throw it all away.

* The lyrics Sting wrote and recorded were slightly altered here in the Cash rendition. Sting sang "salt lands" and "stream" as opposed to South lands and sheen.

Hear the Heartbreak in Dylan's Walls of Red Wing

Keith Olson, 1940-2018

The other day someone sent me a note about an obituary for Keith Olson, who was born here in Duluth in 1940. During his childhood he began shining shoes at the Spalding Hotel and moved up to bellhop. Family difficulties resulted in his being sent to the Duluth Children's Home on East 5th Street, with events which then led to his being sent to the Red Wing Boys Reformatory school in Red Wing.

The obituary is a beautiful testament to how people who encounter hard circumstances in their childhood can overcome these in surprising ways. He met someone who became the love of his life, whom he considered a gift from God, and whom he says, "saved my life." And experienced very real success in his career, eventually acquiring a beautiful home which also became a labor of love.

For many, if not most, Red Wing has been made famous by the shoe factory there. Red Wing Shoes produces sturdy, reliable work boots and has built an enduring reputation for its comfortably durable products. For Dylan fans though, Red Wing brings a somewhat darker tone to the conversation as we recall to mind Dylan's somber "Walls of Red Wing." Interestingly the obituary cites Keith Olson as stating that he once drove in a car with Dylan from Hibbing to Duluth when they were young.

Although this this can’t be verified, it is not beyond the realm of possibility to imagine that if young Mr. Olson were in a car with Robert Zimmerman, the latter might pick his brain a little about his experiences in the reformatory, internalize it and spill it out later in the form of a song, which he later performed three times in the early Sixties.

When I began investigating this idea thread, a Hibbing High classmate of Bob's sent me a note saying, "Bob and I and our classmates all knew about Red Wing."

* * * *
Hibbing isn't really that far from Duluth, so it's not uncommon for Duluthians to head up to the Iron Range towns and vice versa. We all know the story of how Dylan as a 17-year-old youth came down from Hibbing to see, hear and be inspired by Buddy Holly at the Duluth Armory just days before his untimely death in an Iowa cornfield.

There's an incident in my own life of driving Highway 53 which immediately came to mind when I read this story of Keith Olson. About ten years ago I was driving to Hibbing while listening to the audiobook Cool Hand Luke, which later became the film starring Paul Newman. It's a prison story, not reform school, but the similarity holds. As I was driving North I came upon a hitchhiker. As a former hitchhiker myself I generally try to help when able, though I do so with care, reading their faces and sensing their spirit. He seemed like a good person.

I asked where he was headed and he said Hibbing, as was I. To make a long story short, he'd just been released from prison. In order to get a license to be a cabby in Minneapolis he had have a 30 day residency in Minnesota. He was going to stay with a brother or friend (I've since forgotten) for 30 days. He was a humble man, maybe in his mid-thirties. He had purportedly been dealing LSD, though the crime he'd been arrested for was, he said, rigged.

There were other details, and I considered writing a story about it. Is it possible that Bob heard details in Keith's stories and followed through?

* * * *

The late Keith Olson. (Used with permission)

As I reviewed the obituary again there were more details that seemed to call for my attention, and like an Aha I realized I knew his wife Pat (referred to as Patricia in the obit) and even knew Keith, had once been to an informal party or meal in their beautiful lakefront home on London Road.

One of the surprises of living in the vicinity of a place where a famous person grew up is that you keep running into people with stories, with memories related to the famous person. It shouldn't surprise, because this person--in this case Robert Zimmerman--was not some mythological figure but rather an ordinary person who lived here and did the things others do.

In Olson's case, he didn't wear it on his sleeve but he didn't forget riding in a car with Bob Dylan, getting a glimpse of life and escaping his childhood sorrow. At the end of his life, he was "pressing on, to the higher calling" of his Lord, shaking the dust off his feet and not looking back.

* * * *
"Walls of Red Wing" was originally recorded for Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, famous for its contributions to the emerging folk and protest scene. The song eventually appeared on Bootleg Series 1-3, Rare & Unreleased. Both Joan Baez and Rambling Jack Elliot later covered the song.

Walls Of Red Wing

Oh, the age of the inmates
I remember quite freely:
No younger than twelve
No older ’n seventeen
Thrown in like bandits
And cast off like criminals
Inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

From the dirty old mess hall
You march to the brick wall
Too weary to talk
And too tired to sing
Oh, it’s all afternoon
You remember your hometown
Inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

Oh, the gates are cast iron
And the walls are barbed wire
Stay far from the fence
With the ’lectricity sting
And it’s keep down your head
And stay in your number
Inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

Oh, it’s fare thee well
To the deep hollow dungeon
Farewell to the boardwalk
That takes you to the screen
And farewell to the minutes
They threaten you with it
Inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

It’s many a guard
That stands around smilin’
Holdin’ his club
Like he was a king
Hopin’ to get you
Behind a wood pilin’
Inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

The night aimed shadows
Through the crossbar windows
And the wind punched hard
To make the wall-siding sing
It’s many a night
I pretended to be a-sleepin’
Inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

As the rain rattled heavy
On the bunkhouse shingles
And the sounds in the night
They made my ears ring
’Til the keys of the guards
Clicked the tune of the morning
Inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

Oh, some of us’ll end up
In St. Cloud Prison
And some of us’ll wind up
To be lawyers and things
And some of us’ll stand up
To meet you on your crossroads
From inside the walls
The walls of Red Wing

Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.;
renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

* * * *

Related Links
YouTube video of Dylan performing Walls of Red Wing
DNT obituary for Keith Olson

The  Service for Keith Olson will be held at The First Presbyterian Church 300 E 2nd St. Duluth November 20th at 2 p.m.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

"If you look closer, it's easy to trace the tracks of my tears." ~Smokey Robinson

In the 1930s American composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach wrote the heartbreaking song called "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" for their 1933 Broadway musical Roberta. Though sung on Broadway by Tamara Drasin, it was first recorded by Gertrude Niesen with orchestral direction by Frank Sinatra's cousin Ray. It later went on to be recorded by a whole boatload of stars including Harry Belafonte, Connonball Adderly, Polly Bergen, Clifford Brown, Sarah Vaughn, Tommy Dorsey, Vic Damone, Nat King Cole, Cher, Judy Garland, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman, Al Jolson, Glenn Miller and even Charlie Parker. And this is but a partial list. The list of lesser knowns is twice as long. The version we remember best, however, is the rendition by The Platters, ushering this song to the top of the charts in 1958.

Last night this song came to mind as I began reading a memoir by a writer friend and I wondered to myself, "What's this song about?" For some reason whenever I heard this song I pictured the smoke being referred to as cigaret smoke. I never really listened to the words. I pictured a smoky room, and something tragic happens and the cigaret smoke swirls into the guy's eyes. The song is much more than that when you finally dig into it.

In four concise verses a painful story emerges.

The narrator is a man in whom the flame of love has been burning in his heart, his chest cavity nearly bursting as he strives to contain it. His friends, in the first verse, ask him a question about his lover and how he was so certain the feeling he was feeling was mutual. Perhaps the very fact that this question is being asked should have been a clue for him.

They asked me how I knew
My true love was true
I of course replied
Something here inside
Can not be denied

Unfortunately his confidence is founded on subjective feelings. In the second verse our narrator listens as they continue, summing up that when you love this madly, this deeply, you really don't always see things as they are because the smoke of that internal inferno gets in your eyes.

They, said some day you'll find
All who love are blind
When your heart's on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes

Who hasn't seen this or personally experienced it? The young can be especially susceptible, but hope ignites hearts of all ages. And when it's there verse three presents the usual dismissive reaction... until reality sets in.

So I chaffed them, and I gaily laughed
To think they would doubt our love
And yet today, my love has gone away
I am without my love

When the shadows fall away, when our storyteller finally sees, the picture is far different from what he imagined. This is one of life's hardest moments, especially when the heart is tender and as yet unscarred.

Many a story has been told and song sung about life's first major disillusionment. As the song ends we hear the words again about smoke getting in the eyes. It's not a cigaret. It's not a crowded room. The smoke this time comes from another source... a snuffed out flame that no longer burns.

Now laughing friends deride
Tears I cannot hide
So I smile and say
When a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes

Smoke gets in your eyes

If you've ever experienced this, there's a measure of comfort in knowing you are not alone.
More about the song can be found here on Wikipedia. 

Love Sick Reveals Dylan's Vulnerabiity

“To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

"Love Sick" is the opening cut on Dylan's Grammy Award-winning 30th studio album. Since he had not recorded any new material in seven years, critics hailed it as a comeback album that in retrospect marked a turning point in Dylan's career. At this point in time he's performed the song nearly 600 times in concert.

Dylan sings in a manner indicative of deep anguish. The stark chord-beat scrapes against the walls of a hollowed out heart before he begins the explication of his internal affliction.

This is a very different tone from the leather-hearted drifter who sang "Don't think twice, it's alright." In that song the narrator is obviously someone who moves in and moves on. He is in a relationship with a woman but it's all physical. ("It ain't no use in turning on your light, babe, that light I never knowed.") Perhaps she is in love with him deeply, wants to please him, but is not comfortable with words. She tries to love him as best she knows how, but he's a complicated young man and he has parts of himself he also wants to share. He realizes their incompatibility and a need to bail.

But he's not nice about it. "You're the reason I'm travelling on," is pretty pointed.

In verse three he says, "I once loved a woman, a child I'm told. I give her my heart but she wanted my soul..." She was needy. He took advantage of her neediness and then moved on. She was desperate, but didn't know what to do.

Then there's the last verse, which must have hit her like a punch in the gut.

I’m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
But goodbye’s too good a word, gal
So I’ll just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

The song is sung in a manner that is just too casual for the kind of thing that was going on. And in "Love Sick" there is nothing casual about Dylan's lament whatsoever. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, now that he's on the receiving end of having a heart broken, he sings a different tune.

I’m walking through streets that are dead
Walking, walking with you in my head
My feet are so tired, my brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping

Not only is the pain within himself, it's as if the whole of creation is suffering with him. But it's complicated and confusing. He's uncertain about things.

Did I hear someone tell a lie?
Did I hear someone’s distant cry?
I spoke like a child; you destroyed me with a smile
While I was sleeping

When he reaches the chorus he laments,

I’m sick of love but I’m in the thick of it
This kind of love I’m so sick of it

Verse two is a classic description of what it's like to be hurting. Why is it that when we are most miserable we become so aware of others' contentment?

I see, I see lovers in the meadow
I see, I see silhouettes in the window
I watch them ’til they’re gone and they leave me hanging on
To a shadow

* * * *

Going back to "Don't Think Twice" it should be noted that not all of Dylan's songs of that era were of that ilk. Even in "Don't Think Twice" he's not the bullydog that Mick Jagger was in "Under My Thumb" or "M
idnight Rambler" where he screams, "I'll stick my knife right down your throat, and baby, it hurts."

In contrast, the many-times covered "Girl From The North Country" shows that tender side of Dylan's heart, as do many other such as "Tomorrow Is A Long Time."

As the film I'm Not There attempted to creatively depict, Dylan has many personas. The manner in which he sings "Love Sick" and others of this ilk suggest that he's familiar with the terrain of heartbreak.

* * * *

Verse after verse Dylan lays down layers of pain, each chorus beginning with "I'm sick of love." And finally the last verse concludes thus:

I'm sick of love; I wish I'd never met you. 
I'm sick of love; I'm trying to forget you.

You can see him wrestling with himself, like he's trying to talk himself out of caring so badly. He's sick of love. He's sick of the pain it causes to care. He wishes he didn't care, wishes he could forget. But in the end he confesses how it really is.

Just don't know what to do
I'd do anything to be with you.

* * * *

Here are two versions of the song on video. The first, on YouTube, is Dylan performing the song in what appears to be a staged setting. He successfully achieves the emotional torment that he captured in the original recording.

Meantime... life goes on all around you.

Mumbai Heartbreak Hotel

"The way in which the world is imagined determines at any moment what people will do." ~ Walter Lippman

The story broke on Twitter. Evidently someone in the middle of the Mumbai massacre was tweeting. Long before CNN could get a correspondent on the scene, the chatter was spreading 'cross the Internet. http://tinyurl.com/5g2a3n Terrorists went on a spree with assault rifles in Mumbai's financial district killing more than a hundred, leaving hundreds more wounded and bleeding.

One blog entry I came across stated this was a night life hot spot, with the upscale Oberoi and Taj Mahal Hotels being where the action was. American and British citizens were being sought as potential hostages. Other stories described the chaos and fear. There were photos accompanying some stories that showed blood stained sidewalks and streets.

It must have been a horrible thing to go through. But one of the stories I came across had a statement that especially surprised me:

"THE US State Department has consistently listed India as the country with the second-highest number of terrorism casualties after Iraq. However Western media has given scant regard to the problem and this is sometimes resented in India." ~ Sydney Morning Herald

Second highest number of terrorism casualties after Iraq. Wow. Something shifted in my thinking about India the fall. My image of India was painted by Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat when he describes a golf fairway there with large corporate logos on the left and right of a long scenic fairway. 400 million Indians are moving into the Middle Class. These are people with money, brains, talent. This is a country on the move. The picture in my head was modern times.

This image ruled my mental pictures till recently when I read of the harsh and brutal assaults on Christians by Hindus in Orissa. The Orissa horror has gone relatively unreported. And despite the State Department warnings cited in the Sydney Herald, Americans are not reading about all these things in the news. More than a thousand churches have been burned. Missionaries and pastors hide in the jungles to avoid being slaughtered by very dangerous people.

Then we have this week's highly visible event, which did make world headlines... But how much can we understand what it all means if we have no context? It would be bad public relations for India tourism and commerce if Americans saw India as "dangerous." But if our State Department is calling it dangerous, how come no one knows this? How can we make decisions where we'll be vacationing if we are not told of the dangers in those places we're enticed to see? How can we feel safe on business trips if we're not told that Americans are being kidnapped there?

When the story broke, many people probably wondered where in the world is Mumbai. Well, it's old Bombay, with a new name. Externally, the city glitters, but at its heart there is grief.