Dylan Song by Song: "Blind Willie McTell" Quiz

Answer: Infidels

Guitarist Mark Knopfler produced the 1983 album "Infidels" with Bob Dylan as well as playing acoustic guitar on the album. "Foot of Pride" was also dropped from "Infidels." Both outtakes were later released in 1991 on "The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3."

"Decades later," Rolling Stone magazine writes, "Dylan's decision" to remove the song from the album "remains inscrutable." The song was ranked number 19 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Bob Dylan Songs of All Time."

"Moondance" is a Van Morrison album.

Answer: Piano

Clinton Heylin, in his 2010 book "Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2006" called "Blind Willie McTell" Bob Dylan's "one indisputable masterpiece of the early eighties." In the bare-bones version on "Bootleg Volume 3," Bob Dylan sits at the piano and plays and sings while Knopfler accompanies on acoustic guitar, and the piano drives the song.

Answer: Blind Willie Johnson

In his book "Song and Dance Man III," Michael Gray calls Blind Willie McTell "a well-kept secret among blues and folk fans in Britain and America since the 1950s." The bluesman's birth name was William Samuel McTier, but he was known professionally as Blind Willie McTell, among many other stage and nicknames, including Blind Sammie, Hot Shot Willie, Red Hot Willie, Eddie McTier, and Georgia Bill.

Blind Willie McTell was born blind in 1898 in Thomson, Georgia and died in 1959. He sang and played twelve-string guitar and slide guitar in the Piedmont blues and ragtime styles. He first began recording in 1927 on the Victor label, and though he never had a hit song, he was a prolific bluesmen who provided inspiration. In his song, Dylan avers that "no one can sign the blues like Blind Willie McTell."

Blind Willie Johnson is a different (and generally better known) gospel and blues singer born in 1897 in Pendleton, Texas.

Answer: Jerusalem

Here, "the arrow on the doorpost," coupled with references to the capital of Israel, draws to mind the Passover in the Bible when the Jews marked their doorposts with the blood of a lamb to ensure the Angel of Death would pass over their homes when killing all the first born children of the Egyptians.

This allusion to the Israelites also ties into the imagery of slavery throughout the song, as the Jews were slaves in Egypt and African slaves in America often expressed their own suffering symbolically in terms of the characters and imagery of Exodus.

Answer: East Texas

In "Song and Dance Man III," Michael Gray writes that East Texas, being just across the border from New Orleans, "sticks in the memory as a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan: a place where black victims were untold martyrs." Thus, the imagery of the song journeys from New Orleans to Jerusalem and back again to nearby East Texas, moving across the globe and through history and time.

Answer: Charcoal gypsy maidens

"Them charcoal gypsy maidens
Can strut their feathers well
But nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell."

This imagery of gypsy maidens complements the nomadic imagery elsewhere in the song of people pulling up tents, as gypsies often moved in caravans. Like the Jews and African-Americans, they were also subject to persecution, a theme that runs throughout the song.

In 1993, Tex Perkins, Don Walker, and Charlie Owen covered "Blind Willie McTell" on "The Triple J Acoustic Session." The song has also been covered by The Dream Syndicate, Scott Holt, Charlie Parr, Barb Jungr, and The Nightwatchman among others.

Answer: The stars above the barren trees

"Well, I heard the hoot owl singing
As they were taking down the tents
The stars above the barren trees
Were his only audience."

This image of "taking down the tents" may recall the Israelites as they wandered in the desert after their liberation from slavery. Given the song's later allusion to the rebel yell, it could also conjure up imagery of soldiers in the Civil War as they packed up camp and moved toward battle in a war that was being fought in part to preserve (or end) the institution of slavery, again tying the imagery of the song intricately into an overarching theme of the continued cycle of oppression and liberation.

Answer: Magnolia

"Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
(And) see the ghosts of slavery ships."

The choice of magnolia pairs well with the Southern imagery, as the magnolia tree is the state tree of Mississippi and the magnolia flower is a prominent bloom to be found throughout the South.

When it comes to the sense of sight, in this verse, in addition to seeing the ghost of slavery ships, the listeners is also urged to "see them big plantations burning."

Answer: The crashing of the waves

"See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
See the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a-moaning
Hear the undertaker's bell
Nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell."

Other sounds evoked in the song include the hoot owl singing and the sound of the rebel yell. Although there is sight imagery of slave ships, there is no reference to the sound of waves.

The moaning tribes of this verse may simultaneously call to mind the wandering, once enslaved tribes of Israel, the African slaves taken from their tribal homelands, and the American Indian tribes driven from their lands. Once again, the flexible imagery of the song can elicit visions of multiple examples of oppression.

Answer: Bootleg whiskey

"There's a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He's dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand
There's a chain gang on the highway
I can hear them rebels yell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell."

This verse evokes images of men forced to work (the chain gang) and men forced to fight (the rebels). The song moves in and out of time with its imagery, from ancient Israel, to modern slavery, to the Prohibition era of "bootleg whiskey." It's morally complex, eliciting sympathy for both slaves and rebels.

Answer: corruptible

"Well, God is in heaven
And we all want what's his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is."

Michael Gray, in "Song and Dance Man III," points out that these first two lines are a bleak reversal of Robert Browning's lines in his poem "Pippa Passes":

"God's in His heaven -
All's right with the world."

The term "corruptible seed" appears in I Peter 1:22-23 (KJV): "See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." Corruptible seed refers to the notion of original sin, the idea that man, after being conceived through his father's seed, is born into sin, because sin is passed down from generation to generation. These biblical verses call on believers to be "born again" of an incorruptible, spiritual seed instead of the corruptible, physical one.

These haunting lines in Dylan's song suggests the sinfulness of mankind, which has been evidenced through the acts of oppression referenced repeatedly throughout the song.

Answer: St. James Infirmary Blues

"I'm gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell."

The origin of "St. James Infirmary Blues" is unknown. Louis Armstrong famously recorded the song in 1928. The tune provides a loose basis for the melody of "Blind Willie McTell," and St. James becomes the name of a hotel instead of an infirmary.

Answer: The Allman Brothers Band

The Allman Brothers Band released their version of Blind Willie McTell's "Statesboro Blues" on their 1971 album "At Fillmore East." Rolling Stone Magazine ranked their version number nine on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time." The Allman Brothers Band also covered Bob Dylan's "Blind Willie McTell" live at the Beacon Theater in 2014.

Answer: The Band

Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine that he started playing "Blind Willie McTell" live because he heard The Band playing it. According to the Official Bob Dylan website, Dylan has played the song live over 225 times, with the first time being on August 5, 1997. The Band played with Bob Dylan from 1965-1967, and they released some of their recordings as "The Basement Tapes" in 1975.

Answer: Mick Taylor

Mick Taylor played on the Rolling Stones' albums "Let It Bleed," Sticky Fingers," and "Exile on Main St." The electric version of "Blind Willie McTell" with Mick Taylor (also an outtake from "Infidels") has a much faster and more upbeat pace and sound to it than the one released with Mark Knopfler, which expresses a highly solemn mood. Bob Dylan even flubs and laughs on the opening line of his performance with Mick Taylor.