BOB DYLAN SAYS THE FOLLOWING ABOUT RAMBLIN' JACK ELLIOTT
IN HIS NEW BOOK BOB DYLAN CHRONICLES

 

The world I was heading into, although it would undergo a lot of changes, was really the world

of Jack Elliott and Joan Baez.  However true that might have been, I , too, had the axe in my

hands and needed to tear out of there (Minneapolis), head off to where life promised something

more--felt that my own voice and guitar would be equal to the situation.

"The record he took out and played for me first was Jack Takes the Floor on the
Topic label out of London--an imported record, a very obscure one.  There were probably
only about ten of these discs  the whole U.S.A., or maybe Pankake had the only one in the
country.  I didn't know.  If Pankake hadn't played it for me most likely I would have never
heard it.  The record started to spin and Jack's voice blasted into the room.  "San
Francisco Bay Blues," "Ol' Riley" and "Bed Bug Blues" go by in a flash.  Damn, I'm thinking,
this guy is really great.  He sounds just like Woody Guthrie, only a leaner, meaner one, not
singing the same Guthrie songs, though.  I felt like I'd been cast into sudden hell.

Jack was some master of musical tricks.  The record cover was mysterious, but not in an
ominous way.  It showed a character with certain careless ease, rakish looking, a handsome
saddle tramp.  He's dressed like a cowboy.  His tone of voice is sharp, focused and
piercing.  He drawls and he's so confident it makes me sick.  All that and he plays the
guitar effortlessly in a fluid flat-picking perfected style.  His voice leaps all over the room in
a lazy way and he is explosive when he wants to be.  You could hear that he had Woody
Guthrie's style down pat and more.  Another thing-he was a brilliant entertainer, some-
thing that most of the folk musicians didn't bother with.  Most folk musicians waited for
you to come to them.  Jack went out and grabbed you.  Elliott, who'd been born ten
years before me, had actually traveled with Guthrie, learned his songs and style first hand
and had mastered it completely.

Pankake was right.  Elliott was far beyond me.  There were a few other Ramblin' Jack
records that he had, too--one where he sings with Derroll Adams, a singer buddy of his
from Portland who played banjo like Bascom Lamar Lunsofrd and sang in a dry and
laconic witted style suiting Jack perfectly.  Together they sounded like horses galloping...
Jack alone was something else, though.  On the cover of his record Jack takes the Floor,
you could almost see his eyes.  They were saying something, but I knew not what.
Pankake let me listen to the record repeated times.  It was uplifting, but it was being
thrown down at the same time.  Pankake said something earlier, like Jack being the king
of the folksingers, the city ones, anyway.  Listening to him, you wouldn't doubt it.  I don't
know if Pankake was trying to enlighten me or put me down.  It didn't matter.  Elliott
had indeed already gone beyond Guthrie, and I was still getting there.  I had nothing
near the compelling poise of self that I heard on the record.

I sheepishly left the apartment and went back out into the cold street, aimlessly walked
around.  I felt like I had nowhere to go, felt like one of the dead men walking through
catacombs.  It would be hard not to be influenced by the guy I just heard.  I'd have to
black it out of my mind, though, forget this thing, tell myself I hadn't heard him and he
didn't exist.  He was overseas in Europe, anyway, in a self-imposed exile.  The U.S.
hadn't been ready for him.  Good.  I was hoping he'd stay gone, and I kept hunting for
Guthrie songs.

A few weeks later Pankake heard me playing again and was quick to point out that I
didn't fool him, that I used to be imitating Guthrie and now I was imitating Elliott and
did I think in some way that I was equivalent to him?  Pankake said that maybe I
should go back to playing rock and roll, that he knew I used to do that.  I don't know
how he knew--maybe he was a spy, too, but in any case, I wasn't trying to fool any-
body.  I was just doing what I could with what I had where I was.  Pankake was right,
though.  You can't take only a few dance lessons and then think you are Fred Astaire.

Whatever I heard people say was irrelevant--both good or bad--didn't get caught up in
it.  I had no preconditioned audience anyway.  What I had to do was keep straight
ahead and I did that.  The road ahead had always been encumbered with shadowy
forms that had to be dealt with in one way or another.  Now there was another one.  I
knew Jack was up there someplace and I hadn't missed what Pankake had said about
him.  It was true.  Jack was the King of the Folksingers.

from Bob Dylan Chronicles