Buy this early Dylan masterpiece at https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000024RQ/salusund-21
If my websites - okay, blogs if you must - began with Salut!, they do not end here. I try to avoid posting too much about football, folk music or the North East since they are covered adequately in their own habitats (except for poor, neglected old Salut! North and its infrequent memories of/thoughts on the North East).
But amid all else, I am keen to push Salut! Live a little. I have put a lot more effort into it of late and this has been rewarded, if only modestly, by an increase in readership.
Switch off now if you really loathe folk music, folk-rock and folk's occasional tributaries.
But I know some of Salut!'s readers do quite like at least some of the music I write about at Salut! Live. And everyone has opinions on which is the better version of this or that song. That is the subject of a current series. So far, I have looked at:
* Don't Think Twice It's All Right - my unfashionable view is that Joan Baez does it better than Bob Dylan, her former boyfriend and the song's writer (though another ex inspired the song), and not just because she is unquestionably a more accomplished singer.
* From Clare to Here: a lovely song of Irish emigration, in this case telling the story of a navvy who works and lives hard in London while missing what he has left behind in County Clare. Versions considered: those by the song's writer Ralph McTell, the American singer and songwriter Nanci Griffith and, my favourite, the North East's own Bob Fox.
* Long Lankin a chilling example of what the English folk tradition calls "murder ballads".
Steeleye Span did it as folk-rock, quite brilliantly in my view, but I have just come across a sensational version by the Wainwright Sisters.
* Our Town: I have no idea whether Iris DeMent had in mind Paragould, Arkansas, where she was born, or Cypress, California, where she grew up, when she wrote the song. I love her singing of it - but slightly prefer Kate Rusby, who could be singing only about Barnsley.
Please give the series a look - it's at http://www.salutlive.com/cover-story/ - and see if you like any of what it present. Let me know, here or there, what you think.
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