Song Selection
Without the use of notes or lyrics, Dylan recorded a wide range of traditional songs. "Froggy Went A-Courtin'," "Blackjack Davey," and the anti-recruiting "Arthur McBride" were part of the British and Irish tradition of folk songs. "Little Maggie" was a popular bluegrass standard. "Diamond Joe" was well-known thanks to fellow folk revivalist Ramblin' Jack Elliott. "Frankie and Albert" and "Sittin' on Top of the World" both had long, deep roots in folk-blues.
Dylan also covered songs that weren't authentically traditional, such as "Tomorrow Night" (best known for Lonnie Johnson's hit version in 1947 and a version by Elvis Presley released in 1965) and Stephen Foster's "Hard Times."
Though Dylan is credited with all of the arrangements, several arrangements clearly belong to other artists, including the Texas songster Mance Lipscomb. A number of publications, including Folk Roots, criticized the album for making this error. Lipscomb's posthumous oral biography, "I Say Me for a Parable," edited by Glen Alyn, notes that Dylan listened to Mance play backstage at Newport in the early 1960s and then later took the stage and sang Mance's songs as his own.
Read more about this topic: Good As I Been To You
Famous quotes containing the words song and/or selection:
“Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars—all the beauties of creation.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)