POP CULTURE

Joe Cocker’s Dylan Covers Continue To Reward Listeners

With a little help from his friends.

Joe Cocker and his Grease Band at Woodstock, 1969. Public domain.

Bob Dylan earned the Nobel Prize “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” He not only consumed the music, he re-shaped it, gave it new luster, and shared it in new forms. It would be comparable to inventing and adding new colors to the rainbow.

Now available to all, countless artists have inhaled the new “colors” Dylan gave us and proceeded to take them to new and remarkable places and spaces. One of these performer/interpreters was the incomparable Joe Cocker, who passed from us in 2014 but has not been forgotten.

There are certain performers whose distinctive qualities set them apart as one of a kind, and Cocker was one of them. He’d been around for many years before he exploded on the scene in 1969 with his first United States tour, which included Woodstock. His re-interpretation of “With A Little Help From My Friends” established him as a seriously notable performer. (It didn’t hurt that his friends included Jimmy Page, drummer B.J. Wilson and Tommy Eyre on the organ.)

After three years with his Grease Band, he assembled Mad Dogs & Englishmen, continuing a life of recording and performing. Once Joe Cocker embraced a song…