Bob Dylan is not a
blues musician, of course, and this album is not, as its title might imply, a disc on which he performs a set of traditional
blues songs. It is, rather, a compilation of previously released
Dylan originals spanning more than 35 years that illustrates the influence of the
blues on his music. (The album was released exclusively through bookseller
Barnes & Noble.) It would be possible to assemble such a collection relying entirely on songs from
Dylan's catalog that have the word "blues" in their titles --
"Bob Dylan's Blues," "North Country Blues," "Black Crow Blues," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Outlaw Blues," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "Tombstone Blues," "Call Letter Blues," "Lonesome Day Blues," and all those "talking blues" songs, such as
"Talking World War III Blues." But none of those songs are found here. Instead, there are songs that are
blues in construction, even if they don't sound much like
blues, such as the opener,
"She Belongs to Me" from 1965's
Bringing It All Back Home, and songs that make reference to or borrow lines from the
blues, such as
"High Water" from 2001's
Love and Theft and
"Blind Willie McTell," a song intended for 1983's
Infidels that finally earned legitimate release on
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) 1961-1991. Practically any
Dylan fan could compile an equally valid album with entirely different tracks, but that isn't to say this one doesn't hang together well. In fact, it includes several songs that would be on most fans' lists of
Dylan's best songs of their eras; the '80s, for example, didn't get much better for
Dylan than
"The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar," "Blind Willie McTell," and
"Everything's Broken." As long as the album is taken as a
Bob Dylan blues collection rather than the
Bob Dylan blues collection, it's fine, and the modest price and limited distribution encourage that assessment.
Dylan fans can consider it just someone's mixtape and enjoy it on that basis before making their own. ~ William Ruhlmann