Black Crow Blues

Infobox Song
Name = Black Crow Blues


Caption = Album cover
Type =
Artist = Bob Dylan
alt Artist =
Album = Another Side of Bob Dylan
Published =
Released = 1964
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Recorded =
Genre =
Length =
Writer = Bob Dylan
Composer = Bob Dylan
Label = Columbia Records
Producer = Tom Wilson
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Tracks =
#"All I Really Want to Do"
#"Black Crow Blues"
#"Spanish Harlem Incident"
#"Chimes of Freedom"
#"I Shall Be Free No. 10"
#"To Ramona"
#"Motorpsycho Nitemare"
#"My Back Pages"
#"I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)"
#"Ballad in Plain D"
#"It Ain't Me Babe"
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Misc = "Black Crow Blues" is a song written by Bob Dylan, released on his 1964 album "Another Side of Bob Dylan".

Usually considered a minor work in Dylan's oeuvre, "Black Crow Blues" is the first song he released in which he plays the piano. In fact, that is the only accompaniment for his voice, as he is alone in the recording, like in most of his first four albums. This song is in the key of F# major. Oliver Trager calls this song "A funky little piano blues that Dylan plays in his wonderfully untutored style (his first on a commercial release and one that in some odd way alternately recalls the lilting calypsos of Harry Belafonte and piano boogie-woogies of Meade "Lux" Lewis)..."

Michael Gray, internationally recognized as among the foremost of Dylan critics, maintains thus::"Black Crow Blues" is itself terrific for the way that it tears into the blues structure with something so fresh, so invigoratingly off the wall, that it makes you laugh just to hear it. At the same time, and without sacrificing any of the hipness paraded by "wasted and worn out" of "My wrist was empty / But my nerves were kickin' / Tickin' like a clock", he nevertheless brings to it, particularly in the last verse, a special rural feel:::"Black crows in the meadow"::"Across the broad highway."::"It's funny, honey,"::"I don't feel much like a"::"Scarecrow today":so that in the end it is a strange sort of "country" blues.

As of and through 2005, Dylan has never performed "Black Crow Blues" live.

References

* [http://bobdylan.com/index.html Bob Dylan's official page]
*Michael Gray. "Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan". Continuum, 2000.
*Oliver Trager. "Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia". Billboard Books, 2004.