The singer that Bob Dylan said “made the world small”
Bob Dylan was never going to win any prizes for being a show-stopping belter whenever he sang his songs. Everyone knew that they were listening to someone’s take on life whenever he got behind the microphone, but outside of his own musical deficiencies, he could still appreciate when anyone was singing from the heart.
After all, Dylan came from the class of songwriters that focused on the character portraits that were being painted every single time someone opened their mouth. Whether it was Joan Baez singing standards or Woody Guthrie guiding everyone through one phase of history, he saw real people behind those voices that had genuine takes on life that no one else could replicate. And when Dylan set his sights on doing the same thing, he left everyone else in the dust.
Despite everyone still claiming that the man doesn’t have a voice, that’s almost besides the point when tunes like ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ or ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ come on. Dylan always flirted with the idea of preaching in many of his songs, but unlike most other songwriters that tried to tell people how to live their lives, Dylan simply describes the lives of those he sees around him and leaves it up to the listener to decide what to take out of it.
But whereas Dylan acted as the blunt observer in rock and roll, the story-driven nature of folk music was never that far away from country music. Both genres start with people who have an acoustic guitar in their hands, and when listening to someone like George Jones, it’s not hard to draw a few parallels with Pete Seeger’s brand of music, albeit with some drastic lyrical differences.
Because if folk was trying to speak to the people, many country artists spoke for the people. There were countless Americans that were going through the same struggles Hank Williams talked about in his songs, but when Dylan looked at his own record collection, he always came back to what Johnny Cash was singing.
Although Cash was a far darker presence than anything else in country or even rock and roll, Dylan felt that he had complete control over any audience once he opened his mouth, saying, “[He] sounds like he’s at the edge of the fire. Johnny’s voice was so big, it made the world grow small.” And when looking through Cash’s discography, every one of his successes comes when he uses that voice to speak for the downtrodden.
At Folsom Prison might be the most memorable piece of his discography, but what makes it so special was how down-to-earth he could be with that voice. There’s a lot of emotional weight that goes into someone that plays music for hardened criminals in a prison, but the minute he starts singing ‘Give My Love to Rose’, suddenly the grizzly killers in the audience turn into everyday people happy to hear some music.
And while Dylan always had a standoff-ish relationship with Cash’s later material with Rick Rubin, it’s not like his voice ever faltered during that period, either. Because whether he was singing in his prime about shooting a man in Reno or reinterpreting Trent Reznor’s words for a new generation of artists, there was no doubt that he meant every single line that he ever spoke.
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