Mick Hartley

Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour is now being broadcast on BBC 6 Music. I’d already been downloading the shows: most I’ve listened to at least three or four times by now. Some thoughts:

That deep croaky voice is not the easiest to get on with. It seems to be an American thing, the deep male voice. Manly, rugged, self-reliant, trustworthy. It’s the voice of a thousand adverts. Personally, for me, it grates, but there you go. It’s also a retro thing, which is very much in keeping with the spirit of the show: very fifties, harking back to the golden age of radio. I think maybe they’re having some fun with it: Ellen Barkin with her husky little night-time vignettes at the start of the show; the producer “Pierre Mancini” at the end, “You have been listening to….” in a classic fruity old-style male announcer voice. “With special thanks to Sampson’s Diner. Recorded in Studio B, the Abernathy Building. Studio engineer Tex Carbone….” Well thanks for that, Pierre.

He’s just enjoying himself, playing the music he likes. Input may also come from producer Eddie Gorodetsky. No personal reminiscences, no insights into the “real” Dylan. No politics either. After playing Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl”, he mentions that he’s heard it’s a song president Bush has on his playlist. “I’m glad he’s got good taste in music,” is all the comment he makes.

Jokes are corny (“got a friend studying ballet, says he’s coming on by leaps and bounds”), listeners’ e-mails are of dubious authenticity, but funny (“Got an e-mail here from Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School, asking where Buck Owens got his start”: “Johnny Depp of Paris, France asks, Who was the father of modern Communism? Well, Johnny, Karl Marx was the father of modern communism…”).

The retro feel extends to Dylan’s eclectic taste in music. The emphasis is on old stuff, but it’s not always what you’d expect. Yes, there’s blues from Sonny Boy Williamson, Charlie Patton, Memphis Minnie; country from the Carter Family, the Louvin Brothers, George Jones (“Looking through my record collection the other day, I’ve got about 70 George Jones albums. If you look at ’em all, it gives you a great history of men’s haircuts.”), as well as classic R’n’B, soul, western swing, doo-wop…but then he’ll play “How Much is That Doggy in the Window” from Patti Page, or “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” from Tiny Tim, or Bing Crosby, Sinatra, Dean Martin. And what’s nice is, how good they all sound. If there’s one thing the show’s trying to do, it’s to open ears and tear down musical barriers. One of my favourite revisionist moments was “Jackson”, by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, (in episode 20, Musical Map) which I’d always dismissed but is really a superbly witty and well-written song. Then again, some prejudices can’t be overcome: God knows I’ve tried with Tom Waits, but I just can’t get past that absurdly mannered beat-style hard-drinking croak. It’s that old deep male voice thing again, but played the other way, as a mark of outsider hip.

Naturally enough the show concentrates on the US, but Britain creeps in, as does Jamaica. No Beatles, interestingly, but the Stones have had a few plays (and get the honour, I think, of being the only ones referred to as “my good friends”) plus the Kinks, Van Morrison – if he counts as British – Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds, Squeeze, Elvis Costello, etc.. Jamaican stuff is early only, mainly ska and bluebeat before the Seventies golden age, with Prince Buster, Dandy Livingstone, Alton Ellis, the Melodians, and a very young Delroy Wilson. The only other non-Americans that come to mind are Charles Aznavour, and Kraftwerk [update: no, not Kraftwerk]. Oh, and Celia Cruz gets a play on the double Christmas show.

It’s really worth it though for those obscure oldies: “I Used to Work in Chicago”, by Tin Ear Tanner, Sol K Bright & His Hollywaians, Zeke Manners & His Swingbillies, Little Miss Cornshucks, Eddie Seacrist & the Rolling Rockets – all the glorious byways of American 20th Century popular music.

[For more detail, RightWingBob has an excellent series of posts on the shows]