Mick Hartley

As the second series comes to an end (that’s 75 shows in all) here’s everything you wanted to know about Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour. Most played artist: George Jones – “Kind of a cross between a modern-day Prometheus and a possum. The closest thing Country music has to a bushidō. The flat-top wonder”. Followed by Tom Waits, Dinah Washington, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, Louis Armstrong, Van Morrison, Buddy Johnson, Elvis Costello, Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Louis Jordan, Muddy Waters, Porter Wagoner, The Rolling Stones, Anita O’Day, Buck Owens, Howlin’ Wolf, James Brown, The Stanley Brothers….

50% of the songs he’s played were recorded before 1960…Only 9% songs were recorded in the 1980s or later.

One of the comments is interesting:

One history lesson from Bob Dylan that people should pick up on is that what he presents as his own words may not actually be original.

Compare these quotes on Hank Williams –

Dylan: “Hank could be headstrong and willful, a backslider and a reprobate, no stranger to bad deeds. However, underneath all of that, he was compassionate and moralistic.”

Colin Escott: “If Hank Williams could be headstrong and willful, a backslider and a reprobate, then Luke the Drifter was compassionate and moralistic, capable of dispensing all the sage advice that Hank Williams ignored.”

…There are dozens of similar examples throughout Theme Time Radio Hour.

Bob has sticky fingers.

Well, we knew that. As I’ve argued before, part of the pleasure of Theme Time Radio Hour, and something I think Dylan takes pleasure in, is listening out for where he nicked some of his lines from.

What’s that saying? – “hacks borrow, geniuses steal”.