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Roy Orbison passed away not long after Traveling Wilburys   Vol. 1  was completed, but the remaining quartet of George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan carried on. Even without their operatic voiced, pop singing bandmate the Wilburys were still the most star-studded, rock supergroup of all time. Orbison was easily the strongest singer of the five, and the former Sun Records prodigy was definitely missed when it came time to record the band's follow up. Both Harrison and Lynne sing well enough to get the job done - but neither one is outstanding - and at times Petty and Dylan can sound a little similar to each other. To play a joke on their fans, the ex-Beatle - the Wilburys' founder and nominal leader of the band - decided to name their second and final album Vol. 3 . It wasn't a hilarious joke, but it received a few light chuckles from me and some other fans. That light-hearted album title kind of matches the music found on...

A few days ago I saw  A Complete Unknown , the new film biography on Bob Dylan. As a movie with a coherent storyline, fabulous acting - especially by its star,  Timothée Chalamet - you couldn't ask for more. Unusually, for a mainstream Hollywood film, it's mostly accurate. That  means a lot to me because I've always been a curmudgeon when movies and TV shows play too fast and loose with historical facts so much that the viewer gets a totally skewed view of real events. Because I liked the movie a lot and wanted to continue liking it, I began researching its historical accuracy online after I got home.  I'm OK with the  liberties  director James Mangold took because he didn't change the intent of the storyline. According to the website, Shortlist , it doesn't matter that actress Elle Fanning's character, Sylvie Russo, is an entirely different woman than Suze Rotolo who was Dylan's real first girlfriend in New Yor...

Together, Crosby Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young) had more chart success than The Traveling Wilburys, but based on their prior fame - and all of their earlier critical and commercial accomplishments - you would have to admit The Wilburys were the most super of all of the super groups. What a sensational lineup! If you don't already know, The Wilburys were Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. Sadly, only Dylan and Lynne are still with us today. For most of The Wilburys their days of reaching the coveted top spot on the Hot 100 were long over. Still, you would expect a much better chart performance for a great song like "Handle With Care" than only peaking at #45. It did better in Britain (#21), and in Canada the single made it all the way to #2. Fortunately, the debut CD from which it came hit #3 on the Billboard album chart, so it's possible the album's success may have actually hurt the single's sales. The band was started b...

There is no need here to discuss Bob Dylan as a musician or as a legend. Plenty has been written about him for more than half a century by people way more qualified than me. Yes, Dylan is rock's second most influential act after The Beatles but despite all of the accolades he's received the man has never been a top player on the singles charts. While the singer-songwriter, who just celebrated his 80th birthday a couple of weeks ago, has had his share of hits, being a highly successful singles act is not what he is known for, nor is it what he ever aspired to be.  Deservedly, Dylan's  Blood On The Tracks  is one of his most celebrated albums, and one of that record's most beloved songs is the minor hit single, "Tangled Up In Blue," the classic LP's opening track. Sadly, it never climbed higher than #31 on Billboard's Top 100 in 1975 even though Rolling Stone Magazine later listed it at #68 on their list of all time great songs.  Dylan had recently separ...

I wasn't going to discuss Diamonds & Rust -  Joan Baez's most important and popular album after featuring its title track as an Almost Hits  entry a little over a year ago - but I've changed my mind because of the huge influence this record had on my musical life. Diamonds & Rust  came out in 1975 as my college days were winding down and I was immediately attracted to it in large part because of Baez's sublime vocals. I've always been a sucker for great singing and conversely, vocals are one of the reasons I had a whole lot of trouble listening to many of the highly regarded singer-songwriters of the day. Based only on their voices I mostly found Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Randy Newman, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, and a few others quite taxing on my ears. I didn't care if these artists had anything important to say because I couldn't get past their voices. I asked myself, why, oh why, are so many of the most highly regard...

Emma Swift is an Australian singer-songwriter currently living in Nashville with her partner, veteran, English rock n' roller, Robyn Hitchcock. Swift released her self-titled, debut EP in 2014 and it wasn't until August of this year that she released an eight song set of Bob Dylan covers that is generating a lot of positive press. She cleverly named it  Blonde On The Tracks . I'm not usually one to sit through unappealing vocals but Dylan is one of the few bad singers I can stomach. Even so, it's always rewarding to hear someone with a great set of pipes cover his work. Swift has a strong but feminine voice surrounded by tight folk-rock arrangements that are totally satisfying. Swift applies an eclectic touch to this record. She didn't always redo the most obvious songs and that's a good thing. Much of Dylan's most loved and famous works have been covered way too often so she decided to keep things...

Stevie Ray Vaughan, center, with Double Trouble & John Hammond on right It took over a year for my wife and I to clean out my late father-in-law's house that was loaded with five decades of possessions he never threw away. It was extremely time consuming. Just like everyone else, we've been stuck at home lately so we decided it's now time to clean out our house. We want to do it now because in the future, when there is possibly only one of us, the survivor will not have to spend more time than necessary getting rid of stuff that is no longer needed or wanted. We were also inspired to purge -  believe it or not - by Ringo Starr. A few years ago the drummer and his wife decided to sell a lot of his memorabilia including the famous drum kit he used while rising to international superstardom with The Beatles. It was the set you see in hundreds of pictures, the one he used to record many of their early hits. It's the one he played on The Ed Sullivan Show . I decided that...

Joan Baez was never known for having hit singles yet she was a truly popular artist with a golden voice and she proved it with Diamonds & Rust , the title track from her most popular album. Baez was always a composer of note although she recorded far more cover versions of other people's work than many of her songwriting contemporaries. If the singer-activist believed in a song she wouldn't hesitate to record it regardless of its roots. She even covered rock songs. Her treatment of Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms" is a totally satisfying surprise. Folk musicians (i.e. Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie) mostly sang about traditional cultures, politics, or social ills and primarily employed acoustic instruments whereas the singer-songwriters who rose to prominence in the 1970s (i.e. Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Carole King) often sang about more personal issues, looking inward for their material that was sometimes influenced by rock music. The two genres fre...

I believe it's an easy assumption that lead vocals play a huge part in determining whether a listener enjoys a particular song or artist. This is particularly true of the more casual music fan. I remember a Philadelphia DJ making that same statement a few years ago while discussing 90s alt-rock band, Counting Crows. He said whether a listener is a fan of the band or not depends almost exclusively on how he or she views the voice of lead singer Adam Duritz. If you don’t find his vocals appealing the band is generally not your cup of tea regardless of whatever songwriting talent or musical chops the rest of the band may possess. I thought it ironic that Counting Crows was the band he used as an example because I've been quite opinionated about disliking Duritz's voice. I wrote the band off my list years ago for the sole reason I find his singing to be highly grating. Most conventional pop music singers from the birth of recording to the dawn of rock and roll tended ...

Last week I wrote that in my younger days I hated it when other artists recorded cover versions of Beatles' songs . Ironically, the opposite holds true with Bob Dylan. I learned to appreciate his music mostly through other artists covering his work. While I've always liked Dylan I could never be counted among his most ardent fans and that is because of one very obvious reason: his voice. Regardless of how easy it is to write the man off as a vocalist there is no denying this giant's talent as a songwriter. His tremendous contributions to both rock and folk music are undeniable. The following list of Dylan covers is not as diverse as the one I compiled for The Beatles and that is because artists like The Byrds, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Austin's Jimmy Lafave (who Dave Marsh said is the best ever interpreter of Dylan songs) all have a special instinctive talent for performing his catalog. Those four appear here multiple times. One song, "All Along...