Eduardo Monteverdi Ricardo wrote:
I've been walkin' that lonesome valley,
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door
The song below [Lonesome Valley, quoted below] is an old Negro spiritual available at Digital Tradition [a web site].
Does the John the Baptist verse reflect ambivalence about Christian/Jewish identity, do you think?
I am surprised how few people are bothering to post up the allusions they see in this album [Time Out of Mind], it is teeming with them. Is it boring to point them out, or are they just too obvious? Anyone can participate in this trainspotters' game, just join in!
Lonesome Valley
You got to walk that lonesome valley
You got to walk it by yourself
There's no one here can walk it for you
You got to walk it for yourself.
Some say John, he was a Baptist
But I say he was a Jew
It's written there, for all to see it
That he had the gospel too.
Though you cannot preach like Peter
And you cannot pray like Paul,
You can tell the love of Jesus
You can tell He died for all.
Jesus walked that lonesome valley...
Cathrine Yronwode wrote in response:
I think folks ARE posting these allusions (at least a bunch of us are). =
Now here is my take on the "lonesome valley" line in "Trying To Get To Heaven". While the phrase "that lonesome valley" obviously invokes the old spiritual (and you really brought it home by pointing out the Christian/Jew ambiguity in the second verse!) i would like to add that the FORM of the line
I've been walkin' that lonesome valley
calls into play yet another song, "Hard Travelling'," by Woody Guthrie, in which Guthrie sings:
I've been walking that Lincoln highway,
I thought you knowed,
I've been hittin' that 66,
Way down the road
Heavy load and a worried mind,
Lookin' for a woman that's hard to find,
I've been hittin' some hard travelin', lord
[note to non-Americans: the Lincoln Highway (Highway 30; the old northern route) and Highway 66 (the old southern route) were travelled by "Dust Bowl Refugees" headed west during the 1930s.]
Guthrie was OBVIOUSLY quoting/rearranging the "Lonesome Valley" spiritual in his song "Hard Travellin'" -- and Dylan plays with his knowledge of this by copying Guthrie's FORM, but restoring the altered Lincoln Highway lyric to the ORIGINAL Lonesome Valley lyric, while conflating his search for a woman with a search for Heaven's door.
Another Guthrie song that takes an old religious tune and secularizes it is "I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore," which Guthrie re-worked as the dust-bowl ballad, "I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore." =
In the original, religious version:
This world is not my home, I'm only passing through
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
The angels beckon me from Heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.
(The laying up of treasures refers to a sermon Jesus gave about where one's treasures are laid up, there one will go.)
In the gospel song we have shades of both Dylan's "Trying to Get to Heaven" ("before they close the door") and his earlier "Knocking on Heaven's Door" -- but then we must consider Guthrie's take on the old gospel song:
I ain't got no home, I'm just a-ramblin' round
I'm just a wand'rin' worker, I roam from town to town.
The police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road
A hot and dusty road that a million feet done trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
Was a-farmin' on the share, and always I was poor
My crops I laid into the banker's store;
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
Now as I look round, it's mighty plain to see
The world is such a great and a funny place to be;
The gamblin' man is rich and the workin' man is poor
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
Guthrie lays up his crops not at heaven's door, but in the banker's store. But check out that final verse -- here we find the "gambling man" -- who also appears in the previously cited Guthrie song "Hard Travelling" in the line
I've been havin' some hard travelin', hard ramblin', hard gamblin'
This gambler also appears in Dylan's "Trying to Get to Heaven" -- in a verse that evokes the old gospel song "This Train is Bound For Glory," that being the song-title Woody Guthrie chose to reference as the title of his own autobiography!
Here's a verse from Guthrie's version of "Bound For Glory":
This train don't carry no gamblers, this train,
This train don't carry no gamblers, this train,
This train don't carry no gamblers
No hypocrites, no midnight ramblers,
This train is bound for glory, this train.
and Dylan, from "Trying To Get To Heaven":
Some trains don't pull no gamblers
No midnight ramblers like they did before
Then there is another Dylan's line in the same song:
I'm just going down the road feeling bad
and again the link to Guthrie is written in concrete, not floated on the wind, for that line is also Guthrie's, from a song called "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad": =
I'm going down the road feeling bad
I'm going down the road feeling bad
I'm going down the road feeling bad, Lord, Lord
And I ain't gonna be treated this-a-way.
Oh, and let's not forget Dylan's lines
People on the platforms
Waiting for the trains
Those are taken from Guthrie's "Poor Boy," in which he sings:
I'm standing on a platform Smoking a big cigar Waiting for some old freight train Carrying an empty car
(Hey -- that cigar belongs in "Standing In the Doorway," not "Trying To Get To Heaven" ;-))
But wait! -- the very next verse of Guthrie's "Poor Boy" is
I rode her down to Danville town
Got stuck on a Danville girl
You bet your life she was a pearl
She wore that Danville curl
-- and that brings us to Dylan's "New Danville Girl" and her twin-sister, the "Brownsville Girl," who is asked to
Take me all around the world
Evidently the Brownsville Girl complied with Dylan's request, because in "Tring To Get To Heaven," he sings,
I been all around the world, boys
And that, i believe is enough "trainspotting" for this post!!!
Ronnie Keohane wrote:
When I was in Missouri, they would not let me be. I had to leave there in a hurry, I only saw what they let me see" Is this just a play on Missouri being the "Show Me" state.
Maureen wrote in response:
The basic lines are from a Furry Lewis song called "I Will Make Your Money Green."
When I was in Missouri, would not let me be,
When I was in Missouri, would not let me be,
Wouldn't rest content 'till I came to Tennessee
I think Ronnie Keohane is right on the money, and that he's contrasting Missouri, the "show me" state with only seeing what they let him see.
Francois Guillez wrote:
"I've been to Sugartown, I shook the sugar down,
"Now I'm tryin' to get to heaven...."
Any idea what Dylan means when he talks of Sugartown ? I'm trying to translate this in French & publish the translation on my future website, so any help would be very much appreciated...
Lloyd Fonvielle responded:
In southern dialect, black and white, sugar is both a term of endearment and a synonym for affection, as in, "Gimme some sugar", meaning anything from a hug and a kiss to more intimate physical actions.
Sugartown could thus be any place where pleasure is to be found, from a red light district to a city offering more general entertainment. (It may also be a nickname for a particular geographical district or city, but I'm not aware of a specific reference in this regard.)
I think there is also an expression "to shake the sugar tree" -- imagining a tree where sugar grows like fruit that can be shaken off . . . and meaning just having a good time, a sweet time, with amorous connotations . . . shaking having common associations with dancing and other expressions of sexuality. Dylan's line seems to combine the two images. Both almost certainly derive from Southern blues, and that would be the place to look for the origins or earliest uses of the phrases.