Joan Baez and Phil Spector - You've Lost that Loving Feeling

This one ranks right up there with Patti Smith doing You Light Up My Life for weird, unexpected pleasure. The night, as the promo poster has it, "when the in crowd turned out to see the in crowd." Filmed at The Moulin Rouge Club in Los Angeles, sometime in 1966, and released in October of that year. A very nervous - or stoned, he appears to be holding a joint - Donovan introduces Joanie who does maybe not the best version of The Righteous Brothers classic, but certainly pulls off a journeyman's job, and it's nice to see her attempting to work out of her comfort area.

It made me wonder whether the idea for the cover came out of her recording sessions with brother-in-law Richard Farina, who was producing a so-called "rock-'n-roll" album for her at the time of his death, the same year as The Big T.N.T Show was filmed. Baez ultimately decided not to release the sessions, citing that the material was too different in style for her, and not very good. But it's more likely simply to have been that Phil Spector, who is backing Joan on piano, co-wrote the song, and produced The Big T.N.T. Show.

As well as Baez, Spector, and Donovan, the Byrds, Ray Charles, Petula Clark, Bo Diddley, The Lovin' Spoonful, David McCallum - who was a teen heart throb at the time thanks to The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and conducted a big band version of Satisfaction - Roger Miller, The Modern Folk Quartet, the Ronettes, and Ike and Tina Turner all appeared in the 93-minute concert film. Notables in the audience included Frank Zappa and Series of Tubes favorite, Sky Saxon of the Seeds. The Big T.N.T. Show occasionally shows up on one of the cable channels, usually when TMC or the like is having a rock-and-roll theme night. If you get the chance to catch it, go for it.

Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo

A nicely-done fan created slideshow from a series of photographs taken of a very young Dylan and his then girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. It's obvious that Dylan was on a full James Dean kick at the time, especially in the scholarly poses with glasses, looking just like a studious Dean. According to Joan Baez, Dylan's eyesight was so poor he could barely see anything without glasses, but seldom wore them, even when driving.

Rotolo is now an artist who teaches at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. After decades of relative silence about her relationship with Dylan, Rotolo has given several interviews in recent years discussing their time together in Greenwich Village. She and her husband also were involved in putting on a memorial event for Dave Van Ronk after the singer's death in 2002.

Rotolo has a memoir coming out in 2008 - A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties - described as a "wonderfully romantic story of their sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressure of Dylan’s growing fame."

Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem: Farewell Angelina

Farewell Angelina is one of those songs -- and Dylan certainly wrote more than one of them-- where an early challenge any singer has to face is, who the heck is this person singing the song? What point of view is this, and how does it all work together? Then there's the music to underpin it, to help the words make sense-- or words to help the music make sense, if you will. Here's Rani Arbo coming up with her unqiue approach to those tasks backed by an arrangement by Anand Nayak, the guitar player you see here. Other members of daisy mayhem are Scott Kessel on percussion and Andrew Kinsey on bass. The band has recorded the song on their latest CD, which is a really excellent bit of acoustic music, songwritng, harmony, and other fine stuff. It is called Big Old Life.

Patti Smith - You Light Up My Life

Not a typo, no. and not from some alternate universe. Patti Smith doing an irony-free cover of the Debby Boone chestnut.

I love Patti, and the interview she gives on Kids Are People Too before she sings is a primo example of why. Smith is someone who is so in love with the idea of rock-and-roll that when she embraced it, it in turn it embraced her.

James Van Streeter And His Wig Poppers

Not Illinois Jacquet as the YouTube title claims, who in style and looks he does somewhat resemble, but James E. Streeter, who billed himself Germanically as both "Van" and "Von" Streeter with several members of his wonderfully-named band, The Wig Poppers, who for the purposes of the movie are going under the group alias "The Fisherman."

This is a scene from the classic 1950 noir film, D.O.A., and might have been Streeter's breakout opportunity, but his cuts were unusable for the soundtrack and were overdubbed by another saxophonist. Streeter, a heroin addict, would die in 1960.

Karen Dalton - God Bless the Child

Good news for fans of the lady - Karen Dalton - who Dylan called one of his favorites when he was performing at the Cafe Wha?. There's a new 2-CD set coming out chronicling Dalton's 1962 performances at a Boulder, Colorado club.

According to the latest news Cotton Eyed Joe will be released - at least in Europe - on August 27, 2007. No word from the U.S. distributors, Delmore Recordings, on their release, but hopefully around the same time frame. The U.S. package reportedly will include a DVD with "live footage of Karen Dalton circa 1969-70." This appears to be the material from a French documentary that was included on the 2006 European re-release of Dalton's album, In My Own Time, but was not part of the U.S. package. The clip above of Dalton doing God Bless the Child is from that documentary, as is the earlier clip we posted of Dalton doing It Hurts Me Too.

Eddi Reader: My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose

Really, this needs no words from me (though I'll have more to say about Eddi Reader later on). Just listen.