Joni Mitchell: Everything about Bob Dylan is fake
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annie
metal maniac
Said by a 20-year old...
annie
metal maniac
All you have to do is Google the words "Dylan" and "plagiarism" together and you get 1,460,000 hits. Here is one example, revealed in 2009.
A poem supposedly written by Bob Dylan as a teenager is an old country song, it emerged yesterday. The bombshell came just 24 hours after the original handwritten version of Little Buddy was put up for auction by Christie's. It had been touted as an example of Dylan's "brilliance even as a 16-yearold". But, as a country fan pointed out, most of the words were from a song by Canadian Hank Snow, whose song was recorded in 1948 - 11 years before Dylan submitted his poem to a Jewish summer camp newspaper in Wisconsin.
I have heard about Dylan using other musicians and their lyrics as long as I can remember, and that is a looooooooooooooooooooooong time. I first heard it in regard to Woody Guthrie. Dylan's "Song To Woody" on his first album is attributed to Bob Dylan, but uses the music to Woody Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" without any attribution. Also, "With God On Our Side" does the same with "The Patriot Game".
In late 1961, Bob Dylan recorded "House of the Rising Sun" for his first album, Bob Dylan, released in March 1962. Dylan claims a writer's credit for the song. Actually, the authorship of "The House of the Rising Sun" is uncertain. Some musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads such as the "Unfortunate Rake" of the 18th century which were taken to America by early settlers. Alan Price of the Animals has claimed that the song was originally a sixteenth-century English folk song about a Soho brothel, and that English emigrants took the song to America where it was adapted to its later New Orleans setting.
And so on....
A poem supposedly written by Bob Dylan as a teenager is an old country song, it emerged yesterday. The bombshell came just 24 hours after the original handwritten version of Little Buddy was put up for auction by Christie's. It had been touted as an example of Dylan's "brilliance even as a 16-yearold". But, as a country fan pointed out, most of the words were from a song by Canadian Hank Snow, whose song was recorded in 1948 - 11 years before Dylan submitted his poem to a Jewish summer camp newspaper in Wisconsin.
I have heard about Dylan using other musicians and their lyrics as long as I can remember, and that is a looooooooooooooooooooooong time. I first heard it in regard to Woody Guthrie. Dylan's "Song To Woody" on his first album is attributed to Bob Dylan, but uses the music to Woody Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" without any attribution. Also, "With God On Our Side" does the same with "The Patriot Game".
In late 1961, Bob Dylan recorded "House of the Rising Sun" for his first album, Bob Dylan, released in March 1962. Dylan claims a writer's credit for the song. Actually, the authorship of "The House of the Rising Sun" is uncertain. Some musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads such as the "Unfortunate Rake" of the 18th century which were taken to America by early settlers. Alan Price of the Animals has claimed that the song was originally a sixteenth-century English folk song about a Soho brothel, and that English emigrants took the song to America where it was adapted to its later New Orleans setting.
And so on....
Nice detailed examples Annie, I didn't know that before, then again I am not a big Dylan fan. I wonder why he hasn't set the record straight though, just come clean like Zeppelin did when they were caught on their debut using other peoples material without giving them credits, later editions of the vinyl did correct that oversight and LZ is still a legendary band.
Craig in Indy
Your cool Uncle
Excellent examples, Annie. You fleshed out in detail what I had generalized when I talked about the liberal "borrowing" practices of early American folk music.
Lynch
Here for the cookies and the tunes
I don't hold either Dylan or Mitchell in very high regard, so when I read this, it makes me chuckle.
I like Court & Spark more than anything Dylan recorded myself.
Now that you have had your laugh Lynch, offer your opinion, should Dylan come clean and admit to some of his pillaging of other works, or just "Walk On"? I think I can anticipate your answer.
Now that you have had your laugh Lynch, offer your opinion, should Dylan come clean and admit to some of his pillaging of other works, or just "Walk On"? I think I can anticipate your answer.
Flower
retired
From Wikipedia ~
The House of the Rising Sun" is a folk song from the United States. Also called "House of the Rising Sun" or occasionally "Rising Sun Blues", it tells of a life gone wrong in New Orleans. The most successful version was recorded by the English rock group The Animals in 1964, which was a number one hit in the United Kingdom, United States, Sweden and Canada.
Origin and early versions
Like many classic folk ballads, the authorship of "The House of the Rising Sun" is uncertain. Some musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads such as the "Unfortunate Rake" of the 18th century which were taken to America by early settlers. Many of these had the theme of "if only" and after a period of evolution, they emerge as American songs like "Streets of Laredo".
Alan Price of the Animals has claimed that the song was originally a sixteenth-century English folk song about a Soho brothel, and that English emigrants took the song to America where it was adapted to its later New Orleans setting.
The oldest known existing recording is by versatile Appalachian artists Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster and was made in 1933. Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley. Alger "Texas" Alexander's "The Risin' Sun," recorded in 1928, is sometimes mentioned as the first recording, but is a completely different song.
The song might have been lost to obscurity had it not been collected by folklorist Alan Lomax, who, along with his father, was a curator of the Archive of American Folk Song for the Library of Congress. On an expedition with his wife to eastern Kentucky Lomax set up his recording equipment in Middlesborough, Kentucky in the house of a singer and activist called Tilman Cadle. On September 15, 1937 he recorded a performance by Georgia Turner, the 16 year-old daughter of a local miner. He called it "The Risin' Sun Blues." Lomax later recorded a different version sung by Bert Martin and a third sung by Daw Henson, both eastern Kentucky singers. In his 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, Lomax credits the lyrics to Turner, with reference to Martin's version. According to his later writing, the melody bears similarities to a traditional English ballad, "Matty Groves."
Roy Acuff, who recorded the song on November 3, 1938, may have learned the song from Clarence Ashley, with whom he sometimes performed. In 1941, Woody Guthrie recorded a version. A recording made in 1947 by Josh White, who is also credited with having written new words and music that have subsequently been popularized in the versions made by many other later artists, was released by Mercury Records in 1950. In late 1948 Lead Belly recorded a version called "In New Orleans" in the sessions that later became the album Lead Belly's Last Sessions (1994, Smithsonian Folkways). In 1957 Glenn Yarbrough recorded the song for Elektra Records. The song is also credited to Ronnie Gilbert on one of the Weavers albums with Pete Seeger that was released in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Frankie Laine recorded the song then titled "New Orleans" on his 1959 Balladeer" album. Joan Baez recorded it in 1960 on her eponymous debut album. In 1960 Miriam Makeba recorded the song on her eponymous RCA album.
In late 1961, Bob Dylan recorded the song for his first album, Bob Dylan, released in March 1962. Dylan claims a writer's credit for the song. In an interview on the documentary No Direction Home, Dave Van Ronk said that he was intending to record it at that time, and that Dylan copied his version. He recorded it himself soon thereafter on Just Dave Van Ronk.
I had learned it sometime in the 1950s, from a recording by Hally Wood, the Texas singer and collector, who had got it from an Alan Lomax field recording by a Kentucky woman named Georgia Turner. I put a different spin on it by altering the chords and using a bass line that descended in half steps—a common enough progression in jazz, but unusual among folksingers. By the early 1960s, the song had become one of my signature pieces, and I could hardly get off the stage without doing it.
—Dave Van Ronk
Nina Simone recorded her first version on Nina at the Village Gate in 1962. In 1965 Colombian group Los Speakers recorded a version in Spanish called "La casa del sol naciente", which was also the title of their second album. They earned a silver record (for sales of over 15,000 copies). The Chambers Brothers recorded a version on "Feelin' The Blues", released on VAULT records.
An interview with Eric Burdon revealed that he first heard the song in a club in Newcastle, where it was sung by a Northumbrian folk singer called Johnny Handle. The Animals were on tour with Chuck Berry and chose it because they wanted something distinctive to sing. This interview refutes assertions that the inspiration for their arrangement came from Dylan. The band enjoyed a huge hit with the song, much to Dylan's chagrin when his version was referred to as a cover—the irony of which was not lost on Van Ronk, who went on record as saying that the whole issue was a "tempest in a teapot," and that Dylan stopped playing the song after The Animals' hit because fans accused Dylan of plagiarism. Dylan has said he first heard The Animals' version on his car radio and "jumped out of his car seat" because he liked it so much.
Lynch
Here for the cookies and the tunes
If he really has been pillaging the works of others, then yes of course my opinion would be to come clean.
personally, I don't have an issue with someone using someone else's work, but there should be two things involved:
1) get permission (may not always be easy if the originator has passed on)
2) at the VERY least, give credit where credit is due.'
Admittedly, I'm looking at this from very simplistic terms (being someone who is NOT a songwriter)
personally, I don't have an issue with someone using someone else's work, but there should be two things involved:
1) get permission (may not always be easy if the originator has passed on)
2) at the VERY least, give credit where credit is due.'
Admittedly, I'm looking at this from very simplistic terms (being someone who is NOT a songwriter)
Foxhound
retired
That's a cheap shot. Twenty year olds can be right too. And the very fact that even twenty year olds have heard of Bob Dylan but not necessarily Joni Mitchell tells you that Bob's pedestal is much higher than Joni's.
