The most mysterious song Bob Dylan has ever heard: “It was like the fog rolling in”
There’s always been a shroud of mystery over almost everything that Bob Dylan has put out.
As much as he loves the idea of being one of the heroes of music that has continued on the rich tradition of songwriting, everyone is under the impression that they’re never going to see the full man that was hiding underneath that thick musical mask. Dylan was going to be the first to let someone know what he felt comfortable with, but there were certain songs that seemed to restructure what he thought about what music was able to do when he was first woodshedding his own tunes.
But when looking at his track record for classics, there are many of his songs that already had different pieces that were almost impossible to decipher. Dylan draped almost everything he did in metaphors, so even if there were straightforward stories behind some of his greatest tunes, there were also a fair amount of lyrics that were just for him that he knew no one was ever going ot fully figure out.
That might frustrate the fanatics to no end, but that’s always the way that Dylan preferred to do it. He didn’t like the idea of someone trying to figure him out whenever they got done listening to one of his records, and even his heroes like Woody Guthrie had their fair share of tunes that said one thing but could mean several different things based on the slight inflections they put into their voice or the decision to change a single word of the line.
You didn’t find those kinds of songs in rock and roll all that often, but even before Dylan came along, some of the biggest names in music were managing to make songs that had a lot more meaning. Chuck Berry had laid the groundwork for making meaningful pop songs like ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’, and even when looking through the best pop songs on the charts, there were plenty of other groups coming out of the US that had something to say other than generic party music.
Brian Wilson had been making masterpieces with The Beach Boys, but something about the Staples Singers struck a nerve with Dylan when he first heard them. The way that they sang touched him in a much deeper way than any other girl group, and when he heard them singing ‘Uncloudy Day’ for the first time. The whole song would be about the parting of the clouds, but Dylan could feel a much different spirit coming off the tune.
Compared to other pop songs, he felt that this was ushering in a much different kind of ride than what the normal pop tunes were supposed to be, saying, “One night, I remember listening to the Staple Singers, ‘Uncloudy Day.’ And it was the most mysterious thing I’d ever heard. It was like the fog rolling in. What was that? How do you make that? It just went through me. I managed to get an LP, and I’m like, ‘Man!’ I looked at the cover, and I knew who Mavis was without having to be told. She looked to be about the same age as me. Her singing just knocked me out.”
Before you start, no, Dylan didn’t end up making songs that were approved by the biggest names in soul music. Mavis Staples was one-of-a-kind whenever she sang, but when you hear the kind of power that Dylan was trying to get out of his voice, you could hear him shooting for songs that hit with the same kind of precision as Staples, especially when he got more biting with his criticism in the mid 1960s.
There wasn’t anyone on this Earth that was going to say that Dylan was a more accomplished singer than the true greats, but the beauty of Staples is her ability to inspire what he would do. Not many people could match what she had done, but even if someone shot for her style and completely missed, they were bound to still hit on a sound that was equally as powerful whether they knew it or not.
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