In honor of Martin Scorsese, Dylan performs “Blind Willie McTell” at the Critics Choice Awards tribute to Martin Scorsese.
By Stephen Pate – At the 2012 Critics Choice Awards, Director Martin Scorsese was the honoree for the category of Music + Film.
Bob Dylan performed “Blind Willie McTell” for Scorsese and the ceremony.
After years of trying to sound like an ancient blues singer, Dylan today sounds like Willie McTell.
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Olivia Harrison gives Bob Dylan a rousing introduction. Scorsese is the director Dylan trusted to tell his story in the documentary Bob Dylan – No Direction Home.
Dylan appeared Scorsese film about The Band’s “The Last Waltz” two decades before.
Martin Scorsese Critics Choice Awards 2012
Olivia was there to celebrate Martin Scorsese winning best documentary for film Scorsese did about George Harrison .
Scorsese also won an award for combining film and music as he did for Dylan, The Band and his blues film Martin Scorsese presents The Blues – A Musical Journey
It was considered a coup yesterday that Dylan announced he would attend the Critics Choice Awards at the last-minute.
Dylan’s performance is masterful. He has become the ancient artist he affected as a young man.
The harp breaks are extra special. The band is awesome as usual.
Blind Willie McTell
Dylan wrote Blind Willie McTell about 1983 and recorded the song at the Infidels session. Inexplicably it was left off the album.
Blind Willie McTell became an underground classic before its official release in 1991 on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991
The melody is similar to and based on St. James Infirmary Blues and Dylan makes sure we get the point in the last verse “I’m gazing out the window of the St. James Hotel.” Bob Dylan
Blind Willie McTell is a kaleidoscope of images of the American South and slavery with references to gypsy maidens and slavery ships.
Dylan enigmatically calls the McTell song incomplete. “I started playing it live because I heard the Band doing it. Most likely it was a demo, probably showing the musicians how it should go. It was never developed fully, I never got around to completing it. There wouldn’t have been any other reason for leaving it off the record. It’s like taking a painting by Monet or Picasso – goin’ to his house and lookin’ at a half-finished painting and grabbing it and selling it to people who are ‘Picasso fans.'” (Rolling Stone).
The refrain “No one can sings the blues like Blind Willie McTell” has intrigued many people. Willie McTell is considered one of the more obscure blues artists with a slight body of work.
Dylanologist Michael Gray, not content with writing about the song in his encyclopedia, has written a complete book on the topic Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell
“By the time he died in 1959, Blind Willie McTell was almost forgotten. He had never had a hit record, and his days of playing on street corners for spare change were long gone. But this masterful guitarist and exquisite singer has since become one of the most loved musicians of the prewar period, spurring Bob Dylan to write, “Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell.” Now this richly evocative and wide-ranging biography illuminates for the first time the world of this elusive and fascinating figure, a blind man who made light of his disability and a performer who exploded every stereotype about blues musicians.”
Other References
All performances copyright Bob Dylan and used for news reporting and critical analysis as provided under copyright law in the United States and Canada.
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