Two months later they followed it up with another Dylan cover, All I Really Want to Do which hit number four. The following year The Byrds, comprising Jim McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, Michael Clarke and Chris Hillman, burst into the UK chart with a cover of Bob Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man which went to number one. All those clanging, steel guitars – they sound like bells.”Īs Pete said, it was first cut by the Limeliters in 1962 and one of the backing singers was Jim McGuinn (later using his middle name Roger) who first rearranged the song for Judy Collins who recorded it in 1964 and Jim played guitar on here version. I liked the Byrds’ record very much, incidentally. And I got a letter from him the next week that said, ‘Wonderful! Just what I’m looking for.’ Within two months he’d sold it to the Limelighters and then to the Byrds. This is the only kind of song I know how to write.’ I pulled out this slip of paper in my pocket and improvised a melody to it in 15 minutes and I sent it to him. I sat down with a tape recorder and said, ‘I can’t write the kind of songs you want. I call it the greatest book of folklore ever given, not that there isn’t a lot of wisdom in it and you can trace the history of people poetically.” He added: “I got a letter from my publisher, and he says, ‘Pete, I can’t sell these protest songs you write,’ and I was angry. I leaf through it occasionally and I’m amazed by the foolishness at times and the wisdom at other times. In 1988 Paul Zollo interviewed Pete Seeger who explained, “I don’t read the Bible that often. They were altered slightly by Seeger who also added six words of his own – I swear it’s not too late – and paired with his music to make the song. The music was written by the influential protest folk singer Pete Seeger in 1959, but its lyrics go way back and are taken from a passage from the book of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8) in The Bible. We do know, however, that Mike Oldfield’s 1975 Christmas hit In Dulci Jubilo originates from the German mystic Heinrich Seuse around 1328, but it’s likely that the oldest song was a hit exactly 10 years before Mike Oldfield and comes courtesy of the Byrds with their 1965 hit Turn Turn Turn (To Everything There Is A Season). It is often asked what is the oldest recording to make the UK chart and there is no real definitive answer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |