Dylan, Old Crow, quite the show

So, Seth Burnett told me last night that Bob Dylan himself wrote the classic line from Old Crow Medicine Show's signature tune, "Wagon Wheel."

So, rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel; rock me, mama, any way you feel...

No wonder it put me in mind of another Dylan ditty, "You Ain't Going Nowhere." I looked up The Byrds' version and rocked out awhile this A.M.

Ooo, wee, ride me high; tomorrow's the day my bride's gonna come...

OK, I got a confession to make. I love Bob Dylan's music -- but, mostly, when sang by somebody else. There are a few notable exceptions and I'll get to that in a minute.

It's not that I don't like Dylan's oft-maligned sound. Quite the contrary. The exceptions are "Positively 4th Street" and "Like A Rolling Stone," "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" and virtually everything off of the "Nashville Skyline" album, particularly the poetry that is "Girl from the North Country" (with Johnny Cash).

But I love, love, love Joe Cocker's cover of "I Shall Be Released" and I've already told you about The Byrds. I can go either way on "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" but I give the edge on "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" to John Duffey and the Seldom Scene.

Whatever the case, Robert Zimmerman knows how to pen poetry and you can rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel, and lay, lady, lay across my big, brass bed, and don't think twice it's all right, 'cause any day now, any day now, I shall be released.

Song snippets

It's 1 a.m. and Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash are pining away for the girl from the north country.

She once was a true love of mine.

I'm tired. But I can't sleep.

Now Connie Smith is singing about the only time she wishes he weren't gone.

Once a day, every day, all day long.

I sat on the back porch after dinner and watched the sun sink to its slumber. Van Morrison provided the soundtrack, sailing into the mystic.

And, I wanna rock your gypsy soul, just like way back in the days of old...

Just before bed, or what passes for it, William Lee Golden and the Oak Ridge Boys go with me on the Frisco Silver Dollar Line, takin' our time, headed toward that "Ozark Mountain Jubilee."

Oh, how the years have flown by; oh, how I realize how much of me is gone...