The Annotated “Flowers” Theme Time Radio Hour - Episode 11 (Part 2)

Being the 2nd Part of a Compleat Transcript with Commentary on Episode #11 of Theme Time Radio Hour, "Flowers"

Original air date: July 12, 2006


***

There's much of note in Episode 11 -- "Flowers" -- of Theme Time Radio Hour, including monster lists, the largest group of def poetry readings in the show's history, quotations from Buddha, Isiah, and H.L. Mencken among others, a mystery laugh, appearances by two Dylan contemporaries from the Greenwich Village scene of the `60s, and some evidence that Our Host was wingin' his commentary as much as reading from a script. 

The transcript/commentary length was way past what I think a typical blog reader would tolerate, so I've split the "Flowers" transcript into two parts.  Part One can be found here. ~ fhb

***

[Commercial clip – Singers: “You’re so much wiser to buy fertilizer where you get the best in price and quality!” Announcer: “Yes and there is a difference in the price and quality of fertilizer! See us for the best in both! ]

Bob Dylan: Tiny Tim was a character who played around Greenwich Village in the Fifties and Sixties. And a lot of people just think that he was a joke. But I’ll tell ya, no one knew more about old music than Tiny Tim did. He studied it and he lived it. He knew all the songs that only existed as sheet music. When he passed away, we lost a national treasure. Here’s Tiny Tim, and the only song that made it to the top of the charts and kept him in the public eye. Here’s “Tip-Toe Through the Tulips” on Theme Time Radio Hour.

[Tiny Tim – “Tip-Toe Through the Tulips”]

Bob Dylan: That was “Tip-Toe Through the Tulips” by Tiny Tim, a song that sold over 200,000 copies. In 19 and 68 when Tiny Tim got married on the Johnny Carson Show it was one of the biggest events in television history. And deservedly so. His daughter from that marriage was named “Tulip.”

Commentary

Dylan’s admiration for Tiny Tim is obvious in this segment, and the Bob Dylan/Tiny Tim connection has a long, rich history, which Dylan alludes to as he introduces "Tip-Toe through the Tulips." In Chronicles, Volume I, Dylan writes about their first meeting,

"One of the guys who played in the afternoons was the falsetto-speaking Tiny Tim. He played ukulele and sang like a girl -- old standard songs from the '20s…"

Tiny Tim was born Herbert Buckingham Khaury, on April 12, probably in 1932, although in various interviews he gave his birth year as anytime between 1922 and 1932. His first performances -- under the name Larry Love -- took place in 1954, where he won several amateur contests. His professional career began in 1963 or '64 at a lesbian cabaret in Greenwich Village called the Page 3. In a short time, Tiny Tim was well-known in the Greenwich Village music scene, although more as a novelty act than for his deep knowledge of American music.

In Chronicles, Dylan goes on to tell about sharing lunch with Tim, "The best part of working with [Fred Neil] was strictly gastronomical -- all the French fries and hamburgers I could eat. At some point during the day, Tiny Tim and I would go in the kitchen and hang around. Norbert the cook would usually have a greasy burger waiting. Either that, or he'd let us empty a can of pork and beans or spaghetti into a frying pan."

In 1967, Dylan and Tiny Tim would meet again, when Tim recorded several songs with The Band for Peter Yarrow’s deservedly seldom-seen rockumentary, "You Are What You Eat." The Band/Tiny Tim collaboration included “Memphis, Tennessee,” the Sonny and Cher classic, “I Got You Babe,” and the Al Jolson standard, “Sonny Boy.”

According to Tim, Dylan renewed their friendship after hearing he was recording with The Band, and invited him to his Woodstock home. Greeting Tim at midnight Dylan’s first words were, "Tiny, I never saw a Toronto Maple Leaf hockey game."

In the course of conversation, Tim serenaded Dylan with Rudy Vallee’s "Maine Stein Song" and "My Time is Your Time" and played Dylan's own "Like A Rolling Stone" - comparing Dylan's popularity to Valle's. According to Tiny Tim, "After he [heard] the comparison to [Rudy] Vallee and what he meant to me Dylan said, 'Look, do you want a banana before you go to bed?' I said, 'No, I have my own fruit with me.'"

Before retiring for the night, Tim sang an Irving Kaufman song from 19 and 23 called "What's Today Got To Do With Tomorrow (When Tomorrow's So Far Away)", and Dylan in turn played "Cool Water” for him. Dylan also offered Tim a minor part in "Eat the Document," for which Tim was paid $22.00.

Tim's performance in “You Are What You Eat” led to his first TV appearance on the popular “Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In,” where he was an instant sensation, although perhaps not in the way he wanted. But that was hard to tell. Tiny Tim seemed to exist in his own space; oblivious to snickers, laughter, and ridicule. In any case, he became a hot TV property, appearing on “Laugh-In” several more times, as well as on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, and, of course The Tonight Show.

In 1969 [not 1968, as Dylan mistakenly says] in front of an estimated 40 million viewers, he would marry Victoria May Budinger, better known as "Miss Vicki," on The Tonight Show. The couple had a daughter, Tulip, as Dylan also mentions on Theme Time, but lived apart, and divorced after eight years of marriage. Tulip is alive and well and living in Pennsylvania with her family.

Although the public's taste for Tim's inherent weirdness faded away by the mid-70s, he never stopped performing wherever and whenever he could, reportedly even joining a circus for a few months in the 1980s. In September of 1996, Tiny Tim suffered a heart attack while performing at the Ukulele Hall of Fame in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Upon his release from the hospital, Tim resumed his concert schedule, but, on November 30 1996, suffered another heart attack in Minneapolis while performing his signature song. He died an hour later. His remains are in the mausoleum of Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

A true eccentric who happened to be in the right place at the right time to become a media star, and a lover of the American songbook who dedicated his life to bringing back old, obscure songs, Tiny Tim never let his personal oddities or public reaction interfere with his main mission… singing the songs he loved.

Bob Dylan: “Beauty itself is a faded flower.” Another flower that faded was “The Wildwood Flower.” We’re going to hear “The Wildwood Flower” by the most influential group in country music history, The Carter Family. They switched the emphasis from hillbilly instrumentals to vocals. Alvin P. Carter, his wife Sara, and his sister-in-law, Mabel, sang pure, simple harmony. A.P. collected hundreds of British-Appalachian folk songs and recorded them, enhancing the pure beauty of these “facts-of-life” tunes. Here’s one of the best, still fresh as a daisy, “Wildwood Flower.”

[The Carter Family – “Wildwood Flower”]

Commentary

“Beauty itself is a faded flower.”

Dylan is paraphrasing Isaiah 28:4, again probably from memory…

“And the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.”

“…the most influential group in country music history.”

Dylan’s commentary on The Carter Family is taken almost verbatim from the first paragraph of their entry in the “allmusic” web site.

Bob Dylan: That was The Carter Family with “Wildwood Flower.” This song was originally a written song from 1860, called “I’ll Twine ‘Mid the Ringlets.” These songs were passed around from person to person over a long period. By the time the tune got to The Carter Family many people claimed to have written it. And like a game of “Telephone,” some of the words stopped making sense altogether. “I will twine and will mingle my weepin’ black hair/ With the roses so red and the lilies so fair/The myrtle so green of an emerald hue/ The pale emanita and violets of blue.” These lyrics are difficult to interpret. There’s no flower named “emanita.” Some hear it as “the pale and the leader.” Somehow, amidst the confusion, the song still makes sense.

Commentary

Most of Dylan’s information appears taken from the Wikipedia page on “Wildwood Flower.” It’s interesting that he specifically cites the “pale and leader” variant of the line, as that was the way the line was sung by Joan Baez on her debut album of 19 and 60. While Dylan was certainly already familiar with the song before meeting Baez, one can imagine the two singing the song together and using that line.

Bob Dylan: I got another song that A.P. Carter composed or found. Another song about roses. This one is called “When the Roses Bloom Again.” It’s by a young singer from Nashville, Tennessee named Laura Cantrell. British disc jockey John Peel called her album, “Not the Tremblin’ Kind, “…my favorite record from the last 10 years… and possibly my life.” “When the Roses Bloom Again,” Laura Cantrell.

[Laura Cantrell – “When the Roses Bloom Again”]

Bob Dylan: “Taking time to stop and smell the roses.” Laura Cantrell, “When the Roses Bloom Again.” Laura became a mother this year, giving birth to young Isabella May. Congratulations, Laura.

Commentary

Cantrell’s daughter was born in May 2006, indicating that Dylan recorded his narrative sometime between that month and the show’s air date of July 12, 2006.  See the entry on “The Sharpest Thorn," which narrows the timeline even further.

Bob Dylan: I was golfing with Ricky Jay, the magician, and he told me something interesting…

Photo: Ricky Jay. Credit: Jesse Dylan

Ricky Jay: Many stage acts made use of flowers, but more interesting than that was a very early Dutch woman – off the top of my head I can’t remember whether she was 17th century or 6th century – named Eva Vlieghan who was supposed to have lived entirely off the scent of flowers. Ate nor drank food or water but lived entirely off the scent of flowers. It was presented as a religious oddity rather than someone you actually paid to see perform. But I think she did… ah, she rather enjoyed if people left donations.

Commentary

“I was golfing with Ricky Jay…”

There have been various reports in recent years that Dylan is an ardent golfer, including speculation that he bought his Scottish mansion because it was right next door to Abernethy (not “Abernathy”) GC, a nine-hole course built in 1893. Both Dylan had Eddie Gorodetsky are friends of Ricky Jay, and Jay’s appearance on TTRH could have been at the invitation of either. The mind boggles at the thought of being on the links and confronted with a threesome composed of Messrs. Dylan, Gorodetsky and Jay, with perhaps the foursome being rounded out by Penn Jillette.

“Eva Vlieghan…”

In the year 1594, at age 19, Eva Vliegen began to eat less and less. Contemporary reports have it that beginning in 1597 she took no nourishment whatsoever. It was said that she lived from the fragrance of flowers, with Eva herself claiming that she was being fed by a honey-sweet substance supplied by Heaven. Her town council attested in writing that their examination of Vliegen proved she was not a fraud.

In early 1614, Vliegen abruptly declared an angel had appeared to her to announce that God was going to punish humankind with “widespread death,” and from that moment forward refused to utter another word, a silence she successfully maintained until her reported death later that year. Reports become confused at this point, with Vliegen apparently somehow discovered alive and well some fourteen years later living in a house with an ample supply of food and drink. She was reportedly arrested and disappeared into the mists of legend.

For centuries a wax figure of Vliegen, nicknamed in Dutch legend “Bessie Meurs,” was exhibited in an Amsterdam garden maze. A mechanism enabled the waxwork to wipe the crumbs from its mouth with its arm, to the accompaniment of a rhyme:

This old crone is Bessie Meurs, most faithless of females
She shakes her head, ay, swears an oath, while spouting her tall tales:
For two and thirty years, she says, she’s eaten not a crust,
She tells a string of barefaced lies, her words you cannot trust.

Eva Vliegen, a woman of obvious attraction to modern mountebanks Ricky Jay and Bob Dylan.

[Geraint Watkins – “Only a Rose” (background)]

Bob Dylan: Well there’s no shortage of rose songs, and here’s one I first heard through the grape vine. It’s from a young Welshman named Geraint Watkins. He played piano and accordion with Dave Edmunds and Shakin’ Stevens. But more recently he’s been in Nick Lowe’s band and has recorded and toured with Van Morrison. Here’s a beautiful song that he wrote, “Only a Rose.” Geraint Watkins.

[Geraint Watkins – “Only a Rose”]

Bob Dylan: Geraint Watkins, “Only a Rose.” And remember, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.

Bob Dylan: Gonzalo Perez from Austin Texas sent us an email. He asks, “Can I plant pansies in the fall?” Well, Gonzalo, traditionally pansies were the first spring annual I set out each year. I eagerly await their appearance at my local garden center. No matter how much I picked and deadheaded, by June they were leggy and limp from the heat and I pulled them to make room for something else. But now, late summer varieties are available. They may go dormant in cold winters, but they revive in the spring. Happy planting from Theme Time Radio Hour.

Bob Dylan: I wasn’t gonna play any more rose songs, but how could I not play this one? It went to Number 3 in 19 and 67 and it’s called “I Threw Away the Rose.” We’ve talked a lot about Merle, so I’m just going to play the record.

[Merle Haggard – “I Threw Away the Rose”]

Bob Dylan: That was Merle Haggard, “I Threw Away the Rose,” with his story of unrequited love. This is Theme Time Radio Hour, and we’re discussing flowers. Buddha said, “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.” Georgia O’Keefe, who knew a little bit about flowers, said that when you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment. On the other hand, according to Mencken, a cynic is a man who when he smells flowers looks around for a coffin. Mencken was definitely not someone who ever let the green grass fool him.

[Wilson Pickett – “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You” (background)]

Bob Dylan: Another person like that is one of the roughest and sweatiest soul singers of the Sixties. Wilson Pickett, “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You.”

[Wilson Pickett – “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You”]

Bob Dylan: That was Wilson Pickett, “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You,” the centerpiece of the 19 and 70 album, “Wilson Pickett in Philadelphia.” He got a bunch of hits on Atlantic Records, but after the hits began drying up he gave a pair of young producers, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, a chance to update his sound.

Bob Dylan: We’re just about outta time here and I gotta get home and water my azaleas. But we got time for one song first. Roses are the most popular flower to give, so let’s hear one more song about `em. Why not make it Allen Toussaint? Allen just did a new album with Elvis Costello, and they wrote a bunch of new songs together. Here’s one of `em, called “The Sharpest Thorn.” “Hot as a pistol, keen as a blade. The sharpest thorn, upon parade.” Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint.

[Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint – “The Sharpest Thorn”]

Commentary

“Allen just did a new album with Elvis Costello…”

“The Sharpest Thorn” was a track on the Costello/Toussaint collaborative album, “The River in Reverse,” released June 6, 2006, further narrowing down the window when Dylan recorded his narrative to roughly sometime between early June and early July 2006.

Bob Dylan: That was Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello, “The Sharpest Thorn” from the album, The River in Reverse,” on Theme Time Radio Hour.

Bob Dylan: Well it’s been an hour, so I gotta make like a tree, and leave. But don’t worry, I’ll be back next week with more dreams, themes, and schemes on Theme Time Radio Hour, your perennial favorite.

[“Top Cat (Underscore)"]

“Pierre Mancini:” You’ve been listening to Theme Time Radio Hour with your host, Bob Dylan. Produced by Eddie Gorodetsky. Associate producer, Sonny Webster. Continuity by “Eeps” Martin. Edited by Damian Rodriguez. Supervising editor, Rob Macomber. The Theme Time research team: Diane Lapson and Bernie Bernstein, with additional research by Lynne Sheridan, Kimberly Williams, and Robert Bower. Production assistance by Jim McBean. Special thanks to Randy Ezratty, Debbie Sweeney, Coco Shinomiya, and Samson's Diner. For XM Radio, Lee Abrams. Recorded in Studio B, The Abernathy Building. This has been a Grey Water Park Production in Association with Big Red Tree. This has been your announcer, Pierre Mancini, speaking. Join us again next week for Theme Time Radio Hour when the subject is..."

The Annotated “Flowers” Theme Time Radio Hour - Episode 11 (Part 1)

Being the 1st Part of a Compleat Transcript with Commentary on Episode #11 of Theme Time Radio Hour, "Flowers"

Original air date: July 12, 2006


***

There's much of note in Episode 11 -- "Flowers" -- of Theme Time Radio Hour, including monster lists, the largest group of def poetry readings in the show's history, quotations from Buddha, Isiah, and H.L. Mencken among others, a mystery laugh, appearances by two Dylan contemporaries from the Greenwich Village scene of the `60s, and some evidence that Our Host was wingin' his commentary as much as reading from a script. 

The transcript/commentary length was way past what I think a typical blog reader would tolerate, so I've split the "Flowers" transcript into two parts, Part Two can be found here. ~fhb

The Woman in Red: It’s nighttime in the Big City. Outside the dogs are barking. A woman walks barefoot, her high heels in her handbag. It’s Theme Time Radio Hour with your Host, Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan: It’s time for Theme Time Radio Hour, and tonight we’re going to be talking about the most beautiful things on Earth – the fine-smelling, colorful, bee-tempting world of flowers: the Bougainvillea, the Passion Flower, the Butterfly Clerodendrum, the Angel’s Trumpets, the Firecracker plant.

Bob Dylan: We’re gonna be talking about rosa rugosa, the Angel Face, All that Jazz, Double Delight, the Gemini, and the Julia Child. We’re going to be talking about the Knockout Shrub, the New Dawn, the Mister Lincoln. And that’s only the roses! We’re also gonna hit on the Silver King, the German Statice, the Globe Thistle, and the Joe Pye Weed. The Violet, the Daisy. The lovely Chrysthanthemum. The Yarrow and the Tansy. We’ll be hittin’ on the Bachelor’s Button, the Coxcomb and the Lion’s Ear, the Love in the Mist and the Victoria’s Sorghum… I just made that one up. (laughs)”

[background laughter]

Bob Dylan: We’re gonna be talkin’ about… flowers. On Theme Time Radio Hour.

Commentary

“We’re gonna be talkin’ about… flowers.”

Richard F. Thomas notes in his 2007 essay, “The Streets of Rome: the Classical Dylan,” that “… Dylan’s surreal humor, consisting of absurdist juxtaposition, has become a trademark feature of his Theme Time Radio Hour... The [Flowers] list is arranged to form a poem, almost a talking blues of flower names.”

Thomas also points out that Gemini is Dylan’s birth sign. Whether that was in his mind or not, the Gemini hybrid tea rose that Dylan names is a favorite of rose exhibitors.

Other plants probably not familiar to the casual listener include the Silver King, commonly known as white sage, the German Statice, favored in dried floral designs, the Globe Thistle, a perennial that produces metallic-blue blossoms with perfectly round flower heads, and the wonderfully named “Joe Pye/Pie Weed” which takes its name from a legendary Indian healer who used the plant to cure typhus fever in colonial America.

Yarrow and Tansy are two inhabitants of old-fashioned herb gardens, the names probably more familiar to Shakespearean scholars than today’s gardeners. The crushed leaves of Yarrow are an astringent, still used by herbalists to help heal cuts. Legend has it that the Achilles used it for healing his soldiers after battle. It is also said to reduce inflammation, increase perspiration and relieve indigestion.

“…and the Victoria’s Sorghum… I just made that one up (laughs)”.

Dylan obviously enjoyed having an audience with him when taping his Theme Time narrative: the sounds of laughter, off-stage voices, even a kitten meowing can be heard during several shows.

The identity of the person heard laughing in the background during some TTRH segments, including this one, is unknown. Candidates include Eddie Gorodetsky, who was reportedly with Dylan during the taping of many of the early shows, and Damian Rodriguez, a San Antonio-based musician and sound engineer who has quietly worked in the background on several major Bob Dylan projects, including Theme Time Radio Hour. Together with XM Radio engineer Rob Macomber and associate producer, “Sonny Webster,” Rodriguez was the third member of the composite who would later be credited as “Studio Engineer, Tex Carbone.”

Bob Dylan: Thomas Beecher said, “Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.” Anything that beautiful is going to inspire a lot of songs, and the next hour is gonna be chock-full of `em. We’re going to start things off with a Morning Glory of a song by the King of Western Swing… the man who pretty much invented it, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys doing his theme song, “The New San Antonio Rose.” A bridal potpourri.

Commentary

“Thomas Beecher said…”

Most authorities cite Thomas Beecher’s sibling, the more famous Henry Ward Beecher, as the originator. Both Beechers were the brothers of the even more famous Harriet Beecher Stowe.

It’s interesting that Dylan mistakes Thomas for Henry, as even a casual web search on the quote brings up Henry Ward Beecher’s name. It’s likely that Dylan already knew the quote, was familiar with both Henry Ward and Thomas Beecher, and inadvertently used the wrong brother’s name on Theme Time when reciting the “Flowers are the sweetest things…” line from memory.

Thomas Beecher was a study in contradictions who would appeal to Gemini Bob Dylan. He was far more politically and socially conservative than his siblings. He opposed both abolition and the woman's rights movement, yet participated in the Underground Railroad and joined the Union army. While strongly against women’s emancipation, he publicly acknowledged his wife's role in running his parish, and accepted a woman as his own minister after he retired.

[Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys - “The New San Antonio Rose”]

Bob Dylan: Bob Wills and “The New San Antonio Rose.” It was called “The New San Antonio Rose” because he recorded a fiddle instrumental called “San Antonio Rose” eight years earlier.

Bob Dylan: Perhaps the most famous rose garden is the one in the West Wing area of the White House. It was established in 19 and 13 by Ellen Deweese [sic, actually “Loise”] Wilson, wife of Woodrow “Woody” Wilson.

Bob Dylan: Let’s move out of the Rose Garden for a second and move over to the boxwood border of the grass and go grazing with the Friends of Distinction. This song was written by South African trumpet player Hugh Masekela, but it became a big hit when it was recorded by The Friends of Distinction. “Grazin’ in the Grass.” “I can dig it, you can dig it.” We can all dig it. Let’s dig it together, shall we?

[The Friends of Distinction – “Grazin’ in the Grass”]

Bob Dylan: That was The Friends of Distinction, “Grazin’ in the Grass.” Speaking of grass, George Jones once had to drive down a freeway on his riding lawn mower. His wife, Tammy Wynette, was sick of his constant drinking. She emptied the house of liquor; she took away his car keys, and made him a virtual prisoner in an attempt to wean him off the booze. One afternoon, alone in the house, George wanted drink. The house was quite a distance from Nashville, too far to walk. So George hopped on the only vehicle he still had the keys to. You could see George heading down the side of the highway, going towards the liquor store on his riding lawnmower. Here’s George Jones with “A Good Year for the Roses.”

[George Jones -- “A Good Year for the Roses.”]



Commentary

The “riding lawn mower” is the stuff of George Jones legend, told not only by Jones in his autobiography, “I Lived to Tell It All,” but also by Tammy Wynette in her autobiography, “Stand By Your Man.” Jones also parodied the incident in his “Honky Tonk Song.”

I saw those blue lights flashin'
Over my left shoulder
He walked right up and said,
"Get off that riding mower."
I said, "Sir, let me explain
Before you put me in the tank.
She took my keys away
And now she won't drive me to drink."

Whether George Jones ever rode a mower to the liquor store – or did so more than once, as Jones also tells the story about his first wife, Shirley Conley, rather than Tammy – it’s too good a story not to tell, whether true or not. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Bob Dylan: “I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick on the cigarette’s there in the ashtray.” “A Good Year for the Roses,” George Jones.

Bob Dylan: Robert Frost had something to say about roses in his poem called, “A Rose is a Rose.” It goes like this:

A rose is a rose
And was always a rose
But the theory now goes
That the apple’s a rose
And the pear is and so is
The plum, I suppose.


The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose
You, of course, are a rose
But were always a rose ~ Robert Frost, frosty poet.

Bob Dylan: ‘Course, Gertrude Stein took it one step further, with her immortal poem, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” And of course there is, “Roses are red, violets are blue. Some poems rhyme. This one doesn’t.”

Bob Dylan: Paul Clayton also has a song about roses. Paul has a lot of songs. He traveled all around the country collecting `em. During the Fifties, he made a collecting tour with Liam Clancy and together they found a whole bunch of blues, ballads and gospel music. I don’t know if this one was among `em, but it sure is a great song. All about young Bonaparte. Concerning the bonny bunch of roses. Paul Clayton.

Commentary

“Paul has a lot of songs.”

Indeed, Paul did have a lot of songs. Clayton and Dylan were contemporaries in the Greenwich Village music scene during the early Sixties. Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” was based on a song Clayton had copyrighted, “Who’s Gonna Buy Your Ribbons When I’m Gone?” While from all reports, Clayton was flattered by Dylan’s appropriation, their respective publishers engaged in a legal battle over who was entitled to the royalties for Dylan’s version. A court eventually ruled that Clayton’s version was based on an even older song, “Who’s Gonna Buy Your Chickens When I’m Gone?” in the public domain.

“During the Fifties, he made a collecting tour with Liam Clancy and together they found a whole bunch of blues, ballads and gospel music. I don’t know if this one was among `em, but it sure is a great song.”

“Bonny Bunch of Roses” was collected by Clayton on that trip in the summer of 1956 and released on his 1957 album, "American Broadside Ballads in Popular Tradition."

[Paul Clayton – “The Bonny Bunch of Roses”]

Bob Dylan: That was Paul Clayton and “Bonny Bunch of Roses” on Theme Time Radio Hour.

Bob Dylan: Roses have been named after a lot of famous people. There’s the Cinderella Rose, the Cary Grant Rose. The General MacArthur Rose. Roses have been named after Judy Garland, Lady Diana, Snow White, Sir Lancelot, and Chevy Chase. However, the Himalayan Blue Poppy has nobody named after it.

Commentary

“Roses have been named after a lot of famous people.”

The Chevy Chase rose was named after the Maryland community and not the comedian. While the Blue Poppy doesn’t have anyone named after it, and even isn’t a rose by any other name, it is associated with the Tibetan Buddhist goddess known as Green Tara, the Buddha of enlightened activity. Perhaps that was what earned the flower a TTRH shout-out, a poppy among a half-dozen roses.

Bob Dylan: Christopher Marlowe wrote in “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”:

Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys groves, hills and fields
Woods or steepy mountain yields


And we will sit upon the rocks
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals


And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle

That’s how Christopher Marlowe said it. Kim Shattuck and her band, The Muffs have another way of putting it.

Commentary

“That’s how Christopher Marlowe said it.”

Dylan appears to be reciting the first three stanzas of “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” from memory. His version of the first stanza varies noticeably from the “official” version:

COME live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.

[The Muffs — “Laying on a Bed of Roses”]

Bob Dylan: That was the Muffs, raisin’ Cain and laying on a bed of roses on Theme Time Radio Hour where we’re talking about flowers. Maybe a little too much about roses. They’re not the only flowers, and we know that. There’s all sorts of flowers, and they’re all beautiful. As a matter of fact, here are some official state flowers:

Bob Dylan: For our friends in Alabama, you got the Camilla. In Alaska, we have the Forget-Me-Not. In Arkansas, it’s the Apple Blossom. California it’s the California Poppy. In Delaware, it’s the Peach Blossom. For our friends in Georgia, it’s the Cherokee Rose. In Minnesota, it’s the Pink-and-White Lady Slipper. Mississippi has the Magnolia. In Nebraska, it’s the Goldenrod. New Mexico of course has the Yucca Flower. In New Hampshire it’s the Purple Lilac and in Tennessee it’s the Iris. “Aloha!” to our friends in Hawaii where the official flower is…. the Pua aloalo. And of course in Wyoming, it’s the Indian Paintbrush.

[Commercial clip: “Surround your home with natural beauty. Add charm to your private world. Landscape for personalized luxury.”]

Bob Dylan: If I was born with the name, Lucius Venable Millinder, I would be happy with that. But he changed it to “Lucky” and fronted one of the swinginest bands that ever played. If nothing else, he was the man who introduced singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe to the American audience. But he made plenty of records on his own, and none of them swung better than this tribute to the fruit-bearing vine of the grape. Which only makes sense, ‘cause Lucky Millinder retired from music and spent his later years as a liquor salesman. Here’s Lucky Millinder, and his “Grape Vine.’ I wondered if he used this as his theme song?

[Lucky Millinder & His Orchestra – “The Grape Vine”]

Bob Dylan: Oooo, I’m starting to see pink elephants on that one. “Milk and honey are mighty fine, but I like the juice from the good grape vine.” Lucky Millinder, “The Grape Vine.”

[Duke Ellington & His Orchestra – “Tulip or Turnip?” (background)]

Bob Dylan: Here’s a song about some choices. “Tulip or turnip? Rosebud or rhubarb? Filet or plain beef stew?” This one’s by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra.

[Duke Ellington & His Orchestra – “Tulip or Turnip?”]

Bob Dylan: That was Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, featuring the great Ray Nance as vocalist. Ray was also a great trumpet player and one of the most famous jazz violinists.

Bob Dylan: The tulip was introduced to Europe in the middle of the 16th century, and soon became very popular in the Netherlands. It rapidly became a coveted luxury item and status symbol. A single bulb could cost as much as a thousand Dutch florins. By 1635, they were worth a hundred times as much. A sale of 40 bulbs was made for 100,000 florins. Just to give you an idea of how much that was a ton of butter only cost a hundred florins. And eight fat swine 240 florins. In February of 1637, tulip traders could no longer get these inflated prices. They began to sell and the bubble burst. It was worse than Black Friday, the stock market crash of 19 and 29. To this day economists use the phrase, “tulip mania” to refer to any large economic bubble. They might have been better off with turnips.

Commentary

Our Host’s information about “tulip mania,” including the line about “eight fat swine” is taken almost verbatim from its Wikipedia article.

[End Part 1 transcript.  Part 2 to come]

The Annotated “Weather” Theme Time Radio Hour - Episode 1

Being a Compleat Transcript with Commentary of the premiere episode of Theme Time Radio Hour

Constant Readers will note that I used bits and pieces of the following for several earlier posts.  I think that there's still enough original content to make this a worthwhile read...

***

First Broadcast Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

[Rain and wind sound effects]

“The Lady in Red” (Ellen Barkin): It’s night time in the Big City. Rain is falling. Fog rolls in from the waterfront. A nightshift nurse smokes the last cigarette in her pack.

Ellen Barkin: It’s Theme Time Radio Hour with your host, Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan: It’s time for Theme Time Radio Hour, dreams, schemes and themes. Today’s show… all about the weather. Curious about what the weather looks like? Just look out your window or take a walk outside.

Bob Dylan: We’re going to start out with the great Muddy Waters, one of the ancients by now whom all moderns prize. One of his early songs on the Chess label, “Blow Wind, Blow,” featuring Jimmy Rogers, Otis Spann, and… Little Walter. From the windy city of Chicago, Muddy Waters, “Blow Wind Blow.” Here’s Muddy.

[Muddy Waters – “Blow Wind Blow”]

Commentary

Although unrelated musically, no one can hear the title of the first song aired on Theme Time without thinking of Dylan’s own Blowin’ in the Wind.

“…one of the ancients by now whom all moderns prize.”

The first shot fired in the great “did Bob Dylan contribute to TTRH scripts?” debate, and a definite point for the “Yes” side.

The line is a paraphrase taken from Alexander Pope’s 1711 poem, “An Essay on Criticism,” an unlikely reference for producer/writer Eddie Gorodetsky to be making in relation to Muddy Waters, no matter how literate the ex-radio jock and comedy writer may be.

The Ancients only, or the Moderns prize:
(Line 394)

There’s much for Bob Dylan to like in “An Essay on Criticism,” including Pope’s argument that all good writing stems from “the imitation of the ancients,” and his contention that bad criticism is much more tiresome to the reader than bad writing.

Dylan may have adapted the “one of the ancients…” line to acknowledge one of the primary tenets of his career: all artists owe a debt to their predecessors, a thread that would run through many Theme Time commentaries.

Although little-remembered in these modern times, “An Essay on Criticism” has made several contributions to the popular lexicon including, “a little learning is a dangerous thing,” and “fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Bob Dylan: Muddy Waters, “Blow Wind, Blow.” Chicago’s known as the Windy City, but it’s not the windiest city in the U. S. The windiest city is Dodge City, Kansas. Other windy cities are Amarillo, Texas, and Rochester, Minnesota. All of which beat Chicago. But you can’t beat Muddy Waters singing “Blow Wind, Blow.”

Commentary

“…the windiest city in the U. S.”

Theme Time Radio Hour sources often can be found by entering a few key words into Yahoo or Google and following the results. Dylan’s list of the windiest cities in the U.S. appears to be from a 2005 USATODAY.com article, one of the top links appearing in Google results for the phrase, “windiest city in the U.S.”

“…the windiest U.S. city is Dodge City, Kansas, with an average speed of 13.9 mph. Other windy cities include Amarillo, Texas (13.5 mph) and Rochester, Minn. (13.1 mph.).”

Using the first results they found on the Web was a habit that would occasionally get the Theme Time researchers into hot water with the show’s more discerning listeners. An unhappy fan pointed out midway through Season 1 that many of Bob Dylan’s stories about the music and musicians were reproduced almost verbatim from Wikipedia articles or other easily identifiable sources. Occasionally the information the TTRH team found would also be dead wrong, with the error repeated on-air by Dylan.

[“Weather” jingle]

Bob Dylan: James Houston Davis, better known as Jimmy Davis. Not only a singer and songwriter, but also the governor of Louisiana, wrote this song. He also wrote a bunch of risqué songs. At his 100th birthday party in 19 and 99 he performed four songs. One of them this one.

[Jimmy Davis – “You Are My Sunshine”]

Bob Dylan: “I dreamed I held you in my arms. When I woke I was mistaken. You make me happy when shies are grey.” “You Are My Sunshine,” Jimmy Davis.

Commentary

"James Houston Davis, better known as Jimmy Davis. Not only a singer and songwriter, but also the governor of Louisiana, wrote this song."

It’s curious that neither Bob Dylan nor Eddie Gorodetsky seemed aware that Jimmy Davis didn’t write “You Are My Sunshine,” a fact which is cited in almost every piece written about Davis, with even the notoriously unreliable Wikipedia getting it right. Maybe the story was simply too complicated to tell, as there are multiple histories about the cloudy origins of "You Are My Sunshine."

According to most accounts, Davis and his pedal steel guitarist, Charles Mitchell, purchased the song from a Paul Rice - who may or may not have composed it himself- for $35 in 19 and 39 and put their own names on it, a not uncommon practice of the era. In his later days, Davis provided a semi-acknowledgement of the truth, claiming that he had been misquoted over the years about writing the song and had been referring to his efforts in popularizing it, rather than in claiming authorship.

Jimmie Davis did perform four songs at his 100th birthday party at Baton Rouge in 1999, including the one he didn’t write but was best-associated with, “You Are My Sunshine.” He passed away in his sleep at his home on Sunday, November 5, 2000, at the age of 101,

"He also wrote a bunch of risqué songs."

Davis recorded a number of risqué songs during his early career, including a paean to monkey glands, which I wish TTRH had aired, a popular impotence treatment of the `30s, in his "Organ Grinder Blues."

Gonna get me some monkey glands,
Be like I used to was;
Gonna run these mamas down,
Like a Dominicker rooster does.

Bob Dylan: All right now. Going out West, where I belong. Get away from the gee-rind. “I walk. They talk. They twist, they shimmy. They’re frisky, frisky ‘Frisco girls.” This here song was a hit by The Riveras. The Ramones covered it many years later. Here’s the original, this is “California Sun” done by Joe Jones.

[Joe Jones – “California Sun”]

Bob Dylan: “Having fun in the ol’ California sun.” Joe Jones. Joe was from New Orleans. He had a hit record with “You Talk Too Much.” Unfortunately, he passed away last year.

Commentary

"Unfortunately, he passed away last year."

Joe Jones died on November 27, 2005, confirming that Dylan recorded his commentary sometime between January 2006 and the show’s air date of May 6, 2006.

Bob Dylan: “I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine.” Dean Martin with Paul Weston and His Dixieland 8. We forget how much Elvis wanted to be Dean. But this is one of the songs that Elvis himself recorded for Sun Records. “I don’t care if the sun don’t shine. We kiss and kiss, and kiss some more. Don’t ask how many times we kiss. There’s no fun with the sun around.” “I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine.” Dean Martin, Paul Weston and His Dixieland 8.

[Dean Martin with Paul Weston and His Dixieland 8. – “I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine”]

Commentary

"We forget how much Elvis wanted to be Dean."

Bob Dylan’s off-hand remark that would prompt me to begin Dreamtime, and eventually attempt a book on Theme Time Radio Hour.

The idea that Elvis had ever wanted to be Dino had never occurred to me, but a little research did show that Martin had, in fact, been one of Presley’s favorite singers and role models.

Jerry Hopkins' “Elvis: A Biography,” relates a story told by the office manager of Sam Phillips' Sun Records studio, Marion Keisker, who said that in Elvis’ first audition he relied so heavily on Dean Martin material she felt that he had deliberately decided "...if he was going to sound like anybody, it was going to be Dean Martin."

“I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine” was originally composed for Disney’s animated film Cinderella, but dropped from the final score.

[The Prisonaires – “Just Walking in the Rain” (excerpt)]

Bob Dylan: The Prisonaires’ lead singer, Johnny Bragg, was sentenced to 99 years for rape when he was just 11 years old. But, you know for a black man in Tennessee in the `40s, rape could have been just looking at the wrong white woman in the wrong way.

Bob Dylan: All right, now get this. The governor of Tennessee heard the Prisonaires sing “Just Walking in the Rain” and arranged for them to record for Samuel Phillips Sun label on June 1st 1953. It hit the airwaves and took off, selling 250,000 copies. Johnny Ray, a very popular singer at the time, covered it for Columbia, selling over two million copies.

Bob Dylan: After the third single, several members of the group were paroled and formed another group called The Sunbeams. In 1955 they changed their names again, to The Marigolds, and recorded a song called “Rolling Stone.” Johnny Bragg, who was out on parole, was sitting in the back seat of a car with a white girl… who was his wife. Which, somehow, violated his parole and he ended up spending the next six years back in the lockup.

Bob Dylan: A sad story. A beautiful song. “Just Walking in the Rain,” The Prisonaires.

[The Prisonaires – “Just Walking in the Rain”]

Commentary

"Johnny Bragg, was sentenced to 99 years for rape when he was just 11 years old."

Dylan misread the script or there was a typo. Bragg was imprisoned at age 17, not at age 11.

"The governor of Tennessee heard the Prisonaires sing “Just Walking in the Rain” and arranged for them to record for Samuel Phillips Sun label on June 1st 1953."

Most histories of The Prisonaires have them discovered by radio producer Joe Calloway, who beat the drum about The Prisonaires to Sam Phillips, and who eventually brought them into the studio on June 1st 1953. After “Just Walking in the Rain” became a hit the band did become favorites of governor Frank G. Clement, and they frequently performed at his mansion.

"Johnny Bragg, who was out on parole, was sitting in the back seat of a car with a white girl… who was his wife. Which, somehow, violated his parole and he ended up spending the next six years back in the lockup."

After his sentence was commuted in 19 and 59 Bragg was in and out of prison on various parole violations, described as both trumped-up and legitimate, depending on the source. Bragg completed his final jail term in 19 and 77, He passed away in 2004.

Dylan missed the opportunity to tell several other stories about Johnny Bragg, including a reported 1961 prison visit from Elvis, who had been captivated by “Just Walking in the Rain.” Another visitor was supposedly Hank Williams Sr. Both stories, as well as the legend that Bragg sold Williams “Your Cheatin’ Heart” for $5, are likely apocryphal but would have been perfect grist for the TTRH story mill.

Time: 17:01

(Storm sound effects)

Bob Dylan: Theme Time Radio Hour. Dreams, schemes, and themes.

Bob Dylan: “After The Clouds Roll Away” by The Consolers, a husband and wife team from Florida. They recorded this song on the Nashboro label. Don’t know what kind of clouds are rolling away, but they’re probably the alto cirrus, or the altostratus, one or the other. The altoculmulus (sic) might be in there too… rolling away.

Commentary

“… but they’re probably the alto cirrus, or the altostratus, one or the other. The altoculmulus might be in there too… rolling away.”

One of the first examples of Dylan’s and Gorodetsky’s fondness for having Dylan recite lists of things, a riff that would be used throughout the series.

Dylan mispronounces “altocumulus,” saying “altoculmulus” instead.

Bob Dylan: “Everything going all right. Before the day is over, clouds cover the sky. Try not to cry. But you know that indeed in each life some rain must fall. Trouble may be waiting ‘long the way.” Here’s The Consolers, “After The Clouds Roll Away.”

[The Consolers – “After The Clouds Roll Away.”]

Bob Dylan: Brother Sullivan Pugh and his wife, Lola. “After The Clouds Roll Away.”

Bob Dylan: Here’s a song by Jimi when he was trying to write a Curtis Mayfield song. Everybody thought that Jimi was a wild man, but this shows his more gentle side. Sometimes the wind whispers “Mary.” Sometimes it cries “Mary.” Here’s Jimi Hendrix, “The Wind Cries Mary.”

[Jimi Hendrix – “The Wind Cries Mary.”]

Bob Dylan: They call the wind Mariah, south of the border. But here it cries, “Mary.”

Commentary

“…when he was trying to write a Curtis Mayfield song.”

As he does throughout the 100 episodes of Theme Time Radio Hour, Dylan studiously avoids making the obvious reference to himself or his own work. He could have as easily said, “…when Jimi was trying to write a Bob Dylan song,” given the Dylanesque turns of phrases Hendrix uses throughout “Mary.”

According to Jimmy Black’s Jimi Hendrix, The Ultimate Experience, the last time Dylan saw Hendrix he remembered, “[Jimi] was slouched down in the back of a limousine. I was riding by on a bicycle. I remember saying something about a song ‘The Wind Cries Mary’…”

The Wikipedia article on the song includes an unsourced quote from Billy Cox, bassist for the Band of Gypsies: "’The Wind Cries Mary' was a riff that was influenced by Curtis Mayfield, who was a big influence for Jimi."

Various other published works also note Hendrix’s admiration for Curtis Mayfield, so Gorodetsky and Dylan may have known the connection without having to consult Wikipedia.

"They call the wind Mariah, south of the border."

“They Call The Wind Mariah” is a song from the musical, “Paint Your Wagon,” and popularized by The Kingston Trio.

[Judy Garland – “Come Rain Or Come Shine” ]

Bob Dylan: Okay, Judy Garland. Just like Prince, she’s from Minnesota. “Come Rain or Come Shine.”

Commentary

"Just like Prince, she’s from Minnesota."

As is, of course, Bob Dylan. The TTRH team apparently had nothing more they wanted to say about Judy Garland, as Dylan would use the exact same line, “…just like Prince, she’s from Minnesota” when introducing Judy’s only other appearance on TTRH, performing “Smile” in the Season 3 “Happiness” episode.

Time: 27:26

Bob Dylan: “I’m gonna love ya like no-body loves ya, come rain or come shine.” Song’s written by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Harold Arlen wrote, “The World On a String” and “That Ol’ Black Magic,” and “One For My Baby, One For the Road.”

Bob Dylan: Johnny Mercer wrote “Accentuate the Positive” and “Stormy Weather,” which we’re gonna hear a little later by The Spaniels. But first, here’s a little more music by Miss Irma Thomas.

Bob Dylan: Irma’s still down there in New Orleans, rebuilding and doing what she’s got to do. Irma’s had a song out called “Ruler of My Heart” that Otis Redding changed into “Pain of My Heart.” And of course The Rolling Stones took Irma’s song, “Time Is On My Side” and had a little hit with that.

Bob Dylan: “Drip drop! It’s raining so hard, raining all night. I guess I’ll have to accept the fact that you’re not here. It’s raining.” Is it raining where you are?

[Irma Thomas – “It’s Raining”]

Commentary

"Irma’s still down there in New Orleans, rebuilding and doing what she’s got to do."

The first reference to the Hurricane Katrina disaster of August 2005 made in this show. Dylan would again refer to Katrina’s impact on New Orleans while introducing Fats Domino’s “Let the Four Winds Blow.”

Bob Dylan: “Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger.” Saint Basil, def poet.

Commentary

The first Theme Time Radio Hour “def poet” reading is from Saint Basil, also known as "Basil of Caesarea" and "Basil the Great,” a 4th century theologian.

Eddie Gorodetsky and Bob Dylan planned Dylan’s def poetry readings as one of the staples of TTRH from the show’s very beginning, making it somewhat ironic that this first “def poet” – Saint Basil – is better-known for his moral homilies than for his poetry.

During Season 1 of TTRH, Dylan would eventually read selections or entire poems from over 25 poets ranging from Anon. to William Butler Yeats. Omnivorous reader Dylan may have supplied the Saint Basil quote. It’s also possible that Eddie Gorodetsky found it through a quick Web search for quotations about the weather, as he apparently did with much of the content used in the "Weather" show,

[Sister Rosetta Tharpe – “Didn’t It Rain?” ]

Commentary

A noticeable omission in the "Weather" episode was Dylan providing neither introduction nor closing mention of the song after playing Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Didn’t It Rain,” an error he would acknowledge 16 episodes later, on the “Friends & Neighbors” show, when he next played one of the Sister's songs.

While it’s possible that both intro and outro were cut during editing, it’s more likely that the mistake was caused by the sequence not being programmed correctly into the XM computer system. XM’s occasional errors exposing Theme Time’s high-tech seams infuriated the TTRH producers, who spent much of their time trying to maintain the illusion that TTRH was produced as many listeners probably imagined it produced, with Bob Dylan in a studio, spinning platters as he provided a running commentary on the songs. In reality, Dylan's narrative was recorded separately from the other show elements and later mixed in, a common technique in modern radio known as “voice tracking.”  When a similar mistake happened in a later show, this time with Dylan's voice introducing one song and another being played, a livid Eddie Gorodetsky called the East Coast at 7 a.m. his time to have the error fixed in later rebroadcasts.

[Sara Silverman promo - “Hi this is Sara Silverman and you’re listening to Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan!”]

Commentary

An unlikely candidate for Theme Time’s first celebrity guest spot, there’s no evidence that pretty but potty-mouthed comedienne Sarah Silverman knows, or even has met, Bob Dylan. It’s more probable that, as with many of the other celebrity guests who would be featured on TTRH, Silverman did the spot at the invitation of Eddie Gorodetsky, who she does know.

Bob Dylan: Excello Records recorded artist Slim Harpo with his harp in the rack., singing ‘bout a swampy rain. “I know I was wrong. Please come home. “Bout to lose my mind. Don’t let me cry in vain. “

Bob Dylan: Slim wrote a bunch of his songs with his wife, Lovelle. (laughs). Boy, wish I had a wife like that – help me write songs.

[Slim Harpo – “Raining In My Heart”}

Bob Dylan: Slim Harpo, with his harp in the rack. On Theme Time Radio Hour, “Raining In My Heart.”

[audio clip from “Taxi Driver.” “Some day a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.”]

Bob Dylan: Lord Beginner! “Jamaican hurricane, oh what sorrows and pain, Jamaica, because of the hurricane. Hundred-mile-an-hour wind is an awful blow.” Calypso is like a rap, or field hollers. Telling the news to people who got no access to the media. Here’s Lord Beginner, Jamaica Hurricane.

[Lord Beginner – “Jamaica Hurricane”]

Commentary

The first example of TTRH’s ongoing love affair with calypso and reggae, music which would be played regularly throughout the show’s three-year run, especially in the later seasons. Dylan would repeat his analogy of music as a means of distributing news in several other shows.

[WSVA ID jingle]

Time: 40:37

Bob Dylan: Here’s Fats Domino, “Let The Four Winds Blow.” We seem to be playing a lot of records from New Orleans. Well, that only makes sense. New Orleans has been hit pretty hard by the weather. Fats Domino himself was missing for a few days, they finally found him and pulled him up in a boat. Here’s Fats to sing, “I like the way you walk. I like the way you talk. Let the four winds blow.”

[Fats Domino – “Let The Four Winds Blow.”]

Commentary

Domino’s 9th Ward home was flooded to the roof during Hurricane Katrina. Due to the confusion caused by the storm and miscommunications – including someone spray-painting “R.I.P. Fats” on his roof – both family and friends thought the missing Fats was likely dead. He was eventually found and rescued on September 1st 2005, taken to the Superdome and later evacuated to Baton Rouge.

[WARM weather jingle]

Bob Dylan: Here’s The Spaniels, “Stormy Weather.” “Life is bare. Gloom and misery everywhere. The blues walked in and met me. Rockin’ chair would get me.” An awfully happy song for gloom and misery.

[The Spaniels – “Stormy Weather”]

Bob Dylan: The Spaniels, with their lead singer Pookie Hudson, were on that ill-fated tour with Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, Link Wray, and a bunch of others… which means probably I saw them. Winter Dance Party, February, 1959. The day the music supposedly died.

Commentary

Dylan apparently isn’t a fan of Don McLean’s “American Pie” if the way he spits out, “the day the music supposedly died” is any indicator.

For reasons known only to the prankster, The Spaniels’ Wikipedia entry is regularly vandalized to include the falsehood that the group was part of the 1959 Winter Dance Party tour. It’s likely that the TTRH research team stumbled across the faked “fact” there.

While it’s entirely possible that Bob Dylan was in attendance at the Winter Dance Party show in the Duluth Armory on January 31st 1959, as he’s claimed on several occasions, he didn’t see either The Spaniels or Link Wray during that show. Neither the group nor Wray were part of the `59 tour either before or after Holly’s death. Dylan is careful to note that he “probably” saw the group, possibly ad-libbing off-script while wondering why he didn’t remember seeing them.

Time: 46:45



Bob Dylan: Here’s “Place in the Sun” by Stevie Wonder, only this is the way you might hear it in Italy…. [Speaks Italian gibberish with mentions of prima della and frittatas]: Stevie Wonder, Place in the Sun.”

[Stevie Wonder – “Place in the Sun (“Il Sole E' Di Tutti”)]

Bob Dylan: Stevie Wonder singing, “A Place in the Sun.” Bueno, Stevie, bueno.

Commentary

A nice demonstration of how you can get away with almost anything just as long as you do it with enough brio. Dylan is neither reciting the song’s lyrics in Italian nor making a metropolitan commentary on “A Place in the Sun” but simply mouthing nonsense Italian, mostly the names of different foods.

While still a student at Emerson College in the late `70s, Eddie Gorodetsky was one of the writers and stars of a parody of Italian art films, “Nino, Nino, Nino.” The dialogue in the hour-long movie was conducted entirely in the same pseudo-Italian Dylan uses, including a heavy reliance on the names of Italian foods.

[Wind sound effects]

Bob Dylan: One of those hot, dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair. Oh yeah, make your nerve jump and your skin itch. Always on the edge of hell fire.

Bob Dylan: It’s hard for people who have not lived on the West Coast to realize how radical the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. West Coast weather is the weather of catastrophe. The Santa Ana winds are like the winds of the Apocalypse.

Commentary

"One of those hot, dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair. Oh yeah, make your nerve jump and your skin itch. Always on the edge of hell fire.


"… It’s hard for people who have not lived on the West Coast to realize how radical the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. West Coast weather is the weather of catastrophe. The Santa Ana winds are like the winds of the Apocalypse."

Given Bob Dylan’s magpie appropriations from other sources for use in everything from his music to Chronicles, it’s not surprising that he borrowed all his Theme Time commentary on the Santa Ana winds from other writers…. all from quotations found in the Wikipedia entry on the Santa Anas.

Dylan’s first remark is a paraphrase of Raymond Chandler’s famous lines on the infamous winds“…it was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch.” His mention of, “…always on the edge of hell fire” is a reworking of a line in Robert Crais’ mystery novel, “Chasing Darkness.” “…a sick desert wind carried the promise of Hell.”

The next set of lines are from Joan Didion’s essay, “Los Angeles Notebook” published in Slouching Toward Bethlehem, the first a near-quote and the latter two lines paraphrased from the same essay, both substituting “West Coast” for “Los Angeles.”

Didion writes, “It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination.…”

“…Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse….


Bob Dylan: But the summer wind that Frank’s singing about… maybe a little lighter. Come on in, Frank…

[Frank Sinatra – “Summer Wind”]

Bob Dylan: The song was originally a Danish song. Written by the legendary Hans Blotki (sic) [Bradtke] from Denmark. The English lyrics were written by our old friend, Johnny Mercer. And sung beautifully by Mr. Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra.

Commentary

"Summer Wind" was indeed originally written in Danish. Dylan mangles original lyricist Hans Bradtke's name while claiming (probably with tongue firmly in cheek after his struggles with the name) that he was a famous Dane. Bradtke was actually German. 

Bob Dylan: Here are The Staple Singers singing “Uncloudy Day.” “They tell me of an uncloudy day.” Pop Staples with his dreamy underwater sound of the tremolo guitar. Tremolo guitar bar – that’s one of the hardest things to master if you’re a singer – the tremolo bar. It’s hardly ever used, you won’t hear anybody use it, because it’s very hard to control. But when you use it the right way, it can be a very beautiful effect, as we can hear from Pop Staples and The Staple Singers, singing “Uncloudy Day.”

[The Staple Singers – “Uncloudy Day”]

Commentary


"...that’s one of the hardest things to master if you’re a singer – the tremolo bar." 

Perhaps another one of those quirky Dylanesque (or Gorodetskyesque) jokes that no one else quite gets.  There is no such bar that a singer could master.  The tremolo bar, better known as the tremolo arm is "a lever attached to the bridge and/or the tailpiece of an electric guitar or archtop guitar to enable the player to quickly vary the tension and sometimes the length of the strings temporarily, changing the pitch to create a vibrato, portamento or pitch bend effect." (Mr. D. isn't the only one with access to Wikipedia).

Bob Dylan: Welllll, the ol’ clock on the wall says it’s time to go. Until next week, you are all my sunshine. If you think the summer sun is too hot, just remember, at least you don’t have to shovel it. We’ll be here next week, on Theme Time Radio Hour

[The Carter Family – “Keep on the Sunny Side”]

59:52

[“Top Cat (Underscore”)]

“Pierre Mancini”: You’ve been listening to Theme Time Radio Hour, with your host, Bob Dylan. Produced by Eddie Gorodetsky. Associate producer, Sonny Webster. Continuity by “Eeps” Martin. Edited by Damian Rodriguez. Supervising editor, Rob Macomber. The Theme Time research team: Diane Lapson and Bernie Bernstein, with additional research by Lynne Sheridan, Kimberly Williams, and Robert Bower. Production assistance by Jim McBean. Special thanks to Randy Ezratty, Coco Shinomiya, and Samson's Diner. For XM Radio, Lee Abrams. Recorded in Studio B, The Abernathy Building. This has been a Grey Water Park Production in Association with Big Red Tree.

This is your announcer, Pierre Mancini, speaking.

Join us again next week for Theme Time Radio Hour, when the subject is, “Mother.”