Let’s get this out of the way right up front. This is not a “best of” list. I’m not above suggesting that my own personal opinions on music do, in fact, constitute what is best on any given topic – but not with Dylan. That field is too vast. There are too many songs. Too many interpretations. You could probably pick any one of several dozen different songs written by Bob Dylan and do a “ten best” just for that one song. Like – “the ten best covers of ‘Gotta Serve Someone.’”
And that’s from a period in his career that most people don’t think is particularly good.
This isn’t a “best" list. It’s a “really interesting” list. Eclectic covers from wide-ranging sources give just an inkling of how diverse, flexible, and truly universal Bob Dylan’s songs are. I mean, they don’t give you a Nobel for writing “Johnny B Goode” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand” no matter how much they may have changed popular music. You get the Nobel in Literature for a vast body of writing that transcends genre and infiltrates the entire cultural bloodstream.
20th century covers of Bob Dylan songs that are absolutely fantastic
Bob Dylan released his first album in 1962 and his most recent collection of original material in 2023. That’s more than sixty years worth of songs. 40 studio albums and twice that many if you count live recordings, EPs, and bootlegs. It would probably be quicker to list the important artists who have NOT covered at least one Bob Dylan song than to try and list all those who have.
Suffice it to say that from the mid-1960s on, artists from every genre of music and every corner of the globe have been singing Bob Dylan songs.
In an odd chronological quirk, Dylan is a bit like Shakespeare. Both straddled two centuries. Shakespeare lived a much shorter life, so his work was more compressed but he wrote about half of his plays prior to 1600 and the other half after.
Dylan put out most of his original albums prior to 2000, but he has still managed to be productive, releasing ten new albums in the new millennium, along with a massive amount of other material – live albums, bootlegs, and compilations.
With that in mind, we’re going to split this discussion of interesting covers into two parts. Today, we do eight covers from the 20th century. Some of these come from a time when Dylan was just being recognized. Others came when he was well-established. Some are from giants themselves, but many are from unknowns – or little-knowns. They are just all very cool takes on some very good songs.
Today, we’ll discuss eight covers from the 20th century.
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” by Odetta (1965)
Odetta was among the first to devote serious attention to the scruffy-voiced poet from Greenwich Village. She was a groundbreaking folk/blues singer whose deep, authoritative voice became one of the signature sounds of the Civil Rights movement. She had begun performing with the likes of Harry Belafonte in the 1950s, so transitioning to Dylan’s protest songs in the ‘60s seems logical in retrospect.
But that voice was so unlike Dylan's. It saturated his songs with a gravitas beyond the original recordings and helped audiences see the depth that each contained. Odetta did an entire album of Dylan covers in 1965.
On Odetta Sings Dylan, she certainly does the political – “Masters of War,” “With God on Our Side,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’” – but my favorite is this jazzy take on Dylan’s brilliantly passive-aggressive breakup song from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1962). It has a playfulness that isn’t always associated with Odetta.
“(It’s All Over Now) Baby Blue” by the 13th Floor Elevators (1967)
Proving that Dylan was never considered sacrosanct, even from the very early days, the revolutionary Texas band, 13th Floor Elevators, takes another breakup song – this one from the earth-shattering 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home – and turns it into a spacy, psychedelic trip.
Roky Erickson's impassioned vocals are a hallmark of all Elevators' songs, but the secret ingredient is Tommy Hall’s other-worldly electric jug, which was creating oddly compelling soundscapes decades before other artists would employ synthesizers to do the same. Stacy Sutherland also has a signature wandering guitar riff that takes the song into spacier and spacier territory. The short-lived Elevators didn’t do many covers, but when they did, they usually made it count.
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