Credit: Far Out / Alamy

The female singers that drew Bob Dylan into music

Sun 19 November 2023 17:30, UK

Only a handful of musicians have had their music studied quite like Bob Dylan. While many in-depth studies have been made into what made The Beatles tick or what guitars The Rolling Stones were using on different songs, Dylan’s way with words has been picked apart more often than anyone else on the rock scene, occasionally giving way to the most cutting single lines in the rock canon in songs like ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. When Dylan started, though, it was the sound of female singers that drew him into music.

When listening to how Dylan approaches the microphone, it hasn’t always been about paying attention to proper songwriting techniques. At the genesis of his career, Dylan took more than a few trademarks from his heroes like Woody Guthrie, speaking and singing with his trademark husky voice and not putting any vocal adornment on it to make everything sound nice.

As he ventured into his work’s poetic side, many listeners started to appreciate the beauty behind Dylan’s raspy tone. Even though it’s easy to get turned off by someone because of the sound of their voice, people were paying attention more to the words falling out of his mouth, each a condemnation of what the system was delivering to young people worldwide.

That’s not to say that everything Dylan did was devoid of compassion. When looking through his musical inspirations, Dylan considered The Staples Singers among his favourite vocal acts, telling SPIN, “I’ve always been drawn to a certain kind of woman. When everything was blank and void, I would listen for hours to The Staple Singers. It’s that sort of gospel singing sound”.

Compared to Dylan’s voice, the sound of The Staples Singers couldn’t be more different, having a certain sheen on their vocals than before. Outside of the vocal power behind their sound, it’s easy to pick up the passion in their vocals whenever they sing, sounding like they are on the verge of tears in a handful of their greatest songs.

While passion might reign supreme over much of Dylan’s work, he was also indebted to the youthful energy behind acts like The Crystals. Known for making some of the biggest girl group songs of the early 1960s, Dylan was knocked out when listening to lead singer Clyde King. After eventually going out on tour with Dylan as a backup singer, the songsmith would later consider King among the greatest singers that he had ever worked with.

Dylan would also talk about the massive impact Memphis Minnie had on his career as well. Primarily a blues singer, Memphis Minnie was known for interpreting blues the same way that Dylan would interpret his favourite folk singers, eventually turning in landmark performances of songs like ‘When the Levee Breaks’.

Even though many Dylan songs have had a significant slant against the women in his life, like ‘Just Like a Woman’, the influence from these three women helped shape him into the singer that he still is today. While it’s easy to label Dylan as preachy for his screeds against the corrupt, it was always the influence of The Staples Singers, King, and Minnie that helped him express the humanity behind his beliefs.