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23/02/2006

Dylan - curator of American popular music

The announcement of Dylan’s first tour 2006 dates, in the SW USA – four gigs from 1 April with his own band, followed by dates with support from Merle Haggard – will have raised the pulse rate of aficionados around the world. “When will he be coming this way…?”

And though Merle Haggard doesn’t register in my list of top 1,000 musicians (neither, for that matter, does Willie Nelson, another occasional ageing cowboy Dylan sidekick) I’m eternally grateful to the Bard of Hibbing for exposing me over the years to a whole range of country performers.

Quite apart from the other attributes which make him such an important figure, Dylan is the unofficial curator of the archive of American popular musics. Thanks to his championing, countless listeners have been introduced to the joys of genres well outside the mainstream - folk, blues, gospel and bluegrass, as well as country – which might otherwise have been ignored beyond their natural habitat.


Gerry Smith

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