Tag Archives: music

Make You Feel My Love–

Posted on by
Reply

Jack gets in over the wire again in time – –

I thought I’d heard most all of Bob Dylan’s songs, but one seems to have escaped me.

Regular readers of this blog or listeners to my weekly radio show will know that I’m a big fan of Mr. Zimmerman and have been ever since his first album appeared in the early 1960s.

I was always aware that he adopted British folk song melodies as the carriers for many of his most popular early songs, and that’s partly what first intrigued me about him. But then I heard ‘Blind Willie McTell,’ where he adapted the melody of ‘St. James Infirmary’ to make my very favorite song by him. That was a twist because the origins of ‘St James’ were in Britain!

I love that like many Americans he was able to re-invent himself and has continued to do that throughout his life.

His guitar accompaniments were very basic back when he arrived in New York, but they have become much more sophisticated since then – which brings me back to this song – –

A good friend suggested I should listen to “Make me feel your Love,” sung by Joan Osborne, and I was astonished. I had never heard of her, but it was great. Then I saw it had been written by Bob! The chord sequence behind the words is incredible – a descending series, but not predictable.

Portrait of American singer-songwriter Joan Osborne, Haarlem, Netherlands, 26th March 2018. (Photo by Paul Bergen/Redferns)

The lyrics are very different from anything else I have heard from him and seem very heartfelt.

As someone once said – ‘The answer, my Friend – – –

Take a listen…

Come back next Wednesday for more from Jack

Rolling Along on the Airwaves

Posted on by
Reply

Jack’s Wednesday guest post written in between trick or treaters showing up – –

A few weeks ago I posted about the odd and strange ways that I found myself singing songs all around Europe and America.

Much the same is true of my radio experiences over the years. That started in the late 1980s when my good friend Rab Noakes was working as a producer at the BBC in Glasgow. He got the idea of a weekly folk music program on a Friday night but with knowledgeable guest presenters taking turns. He asked me to do some of them. I didn’t need to learn how to work any equipment – Rab did that.

Not too long after that, another friend got in touch. Alan Brown was doing a weekly show on Heartland fm in Pitlochry called ‘Scene Around,’ but the American lady who subbed for him once a month had moved away. So I ended up replacing her!

Meanwhile my good buddy Wayne Bean had started presenting ‘Keltik Korner’ – a weekly Celtic music program on WETS.fm in Johnson City, Tennessee, and asked if I could send him my Heartland shows. They were taped onto cassettes in the Heartland office as they aired live then mailed across the Atlantic (no internet or cloud back then). When Wayne gave up his show, another one started, and it was presented by Denise Cozad, who continued to take my mine.

Of course, when Wendy and I moved to England it was no longer possible to present a live Sunday lunchtime radio show in Pitlochry. But a few years later we moved to Big Stone Gap in Virginia – just an hour from WETS.fm in Johnson City. I noticed that they no longer had a locally produced Celtic music program, so I emailed the station manager saying where I was and asking was he interested. Within a couple of months I was pre-recording twelve Celtic Clanjamphries and thought that might be the end of the story.

Well – –

It’s been fourteen years and approaching eight hundred programs, and my show now airs on two different NPR stations. And now I work with a good friend, who became my engineer back in Wise, who lives in South Carolina now. Quarterly, Wendy and I travel to SC to hang with Dirk Wiley and his wife, Martha. Wendy, Dirk, and Martha all do guest shows, so it’s become something of a family affair.

Come back next Wednesday for more from Jack