There’s beauty in the silver singin’ river, there’s beauty in the sunrise in the sky, and there’s richness in the simple beauty of this stellar song Bob Dylan penned as a 21-year-old.
About ten days ago I was listening to the Judy Collins station on Pandora when her version of this song played and it made me wish to share it. It’s almost incomprehensible how many songs Dylan wrote as an emerging artist those first years in New York, songs so timeless and evocative that they are still being sung today.
According to The Story Behind Every Song, Dylan played this song for Artie Mogull, an A&R record exec involved in Dylan’s signing, and Mogull’s first thought was that it would make a great number for a young Judy Collins whose star was also on the rise. Mogull called Collins to come hear it, and when she did she cried. She was first to record it as a result, and would not be the last.
Though Dylan recorded the song himself, it was part of a series of sessions never released called The Witmark Demos, which emerged in 2010 as Bootleg Series Volume 9, one of my favorite sets in the Bootleg Series.
Though tapes of these sessions circulated amongst hard core Dylan circles as bootlegs, the first version of the song to arrive on vinyl appeared on his 1971 Greatest Hits, Volume II, a live…
