Bob Dylan

Is It Rolling, Bob? an album of Bob Dylan songs featuring a roll call of reggae's most popular acts, will be released this summer by Sanctuary/RAS Records, Gary Himelfarb, founder of RAS Records, told the Observer last week.

The 16-track compilation hears performers such as Beres Hammond, Sizzla, Gregory Isaacs, Michael Rose, Yellowman and Abijah re-working some of the folk singer's most cherished songs which are played by a top-notch band that includes drummer Sly Dunbar, keyboardist Robbie Lyn and guitarist Earl "Chinna" Smith.

Beres

"Bob Dylan has always been my favourite artiste, he was a voice of the oppressed in the 1960s just as Bob Marley was a voice of the oppressed in the 1970s," said Himelfarb.

Work on Is It Rolling, Bob? started in Kingston last April at producer Gussie Clarke's Music Works studio. Additional recording took place at the Ariwa Studios in London and at Lion and Fox in Washington DC where RAS is based.

Issacs

Himelfarb says he hand-picked a band he believed would do justice to Dylan's unique sound and arrangements. In addition to Dunbar, Lyn and Smith, other musicians who played on the album are bassist Glen Browne, Steve Golding on rhythm guitar, saxophonist Dean Fraser, percussionist Christopher "Sky Juice" Blake and Lee Jaffe, who contributes harmonica on four songs. Jaffe was a member of the Bob Marley and The Wailers' inner circle in the early 1970s and played harmonica on songs like Rebel Music 3-O'Clock Roadblock from the group's Natty Dread album.
Three of the songs from the album have already been released in Jamaica through Dynamic Sounds. They are Subterranean Homesick Blues by Sizzla, Knocking On Heaven's Door by Luciano and Just Like a Woman, which is covered by Hammond.

Sizzla

The other songs on the set are The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carrol (Michael Rose); Maggie's Farm (Toots Hibbert); Blowing In The Wind (Don Carlos); Mr Tambourine Man (Gregory Isaacs); One Too Many Mornings (Abijah); The Times They Are A-Changing (Apple Gabriel); Gotta Serve Somebody (Incline); The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest (Yellowman); A Hard Rains A Gonna Fall (Billy Mystic); Don't Think Twice, It's Alright (J C Lodge) and I And I, a song from Dylan's 1983 Infidels album which featured Sly and Robbie. There is also a dub version of I And I.
Himelfarb, who founded RAS in 1979, says Dylan has given the album his blessing. "He loves it, he feels it is a solid treatment of his work," he said.

Is It Rolling, Bob? is a line from the Nashville Skyline album Dylan and country legend Johnny Cash recorded in 1969. Himelfarb says the album will be released simultaneously in the United States, Europe and Asia with the initial batch of releases expected to be around 50,000 copies.

Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmermann in 1941, is recognised by musicologists and sociologists as one of the most influential artistes of the 20th Century. Strongly influenced by another folk singer, Woody Guthrie, Dylan created a stir in the early 1960s with acoustic songs like Like A Rolling Stone and The Times They Are A-Changing. The latter reportedly drove Sam Cooke to write the magnificent A Change Is Gonna Come.

One of Dylan's songs, I Shall Be Released, was covered in the early 1970s by Jamaican group The Heptones and was a big hit here.
RAS Records is one of the largest distributors of reggae music in the world. Their catalogue includes albums by stalwart roots acts such as Bunny Wailer, Dennis Brown, Black Uhuru, Jacob Miller, Hugh Mundell and Augustus Pablo.

Last year, the company was bought by the London-based Sanctuary Group but Himelfarb, known popularly as "Dr Dread", retains creative control of the company.
The RAS project is not the first time reggae acts have paid tribute to a rock act. There is a cover albums of songs by psychadelic group The Grateful Dread and last year a reggae version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon album was released in the United States and Europe.

Jamaican Folk Singers concert season September 6-14

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