Song of the Day 1/11: Bob Dylan, “Barbara Allen”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

“Barbara Allen” is the best known of all the old ballads, its different versions collected more than any other folk song by preservers of the past. Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist and biographer of Samuel Johnson, felt “perfect pleasure” when he heard a young woman sing it at a New Years Eve party in 1666. Greenwich Village hipsters heard Bob Dylan sing it at the Gaslight Cafe in 1962 and knew the kid had something going on.

The Anglo-Scottish tune was first printed in this country in 1836. Rural folks in Appalachia embraced it as their own. “It traveled west in every wagon,” folklorist Alan Lomax said.

Jean Ritchie, an Appalachia native who spread the old ballads to New York, recorded a version in 1961. Joan Baez sang it more or less the same way later that year, just before Dylan’s Gaslight performance, and it became an icon of the era’s folk revival.

Dylan had recently returned from a visit to England, where he picked up pointers from Martin Carthy and other folk singers. It became a significant part of his stage repertoire over the years. “Without ‘Barbara Allen’ there’d be no ‘Girl From the North Country,” he once said.

It’s a pretty song but not a gentle one. Two young people die. Barbara Allen rejects the affections of Sweet William on his deathbed. The song was male-centric as things usually were then. A single kiss would save him, he says (whines). After rejecting him she’s wracked by guilt and also dies. An early alternate title was “Cruel Barbara Allen.”

At the end of most versions, a rose grows from his grave, a briar from hers. They become entwined. That kind of imagery appealed to Dylan.

Traditional music “comes about from legends, bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death,” he has famously said. “All these songs about roses growing from peoples’ brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels, they’re not going to die.”

The list of those have recorded it is long. It includes Art Garfunkel, Dolly Parton, Glen Campbell, Richie Blackmore’s Blackmore’s Night, the Everly Brothers, Jim Moray, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, June Tabor, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Emmylou Harris, the King’s Singers, Lucy Wainwright, the Mary Wallopers and even John Travolta and Doris Day. It plays a featured role on the soundtrack of “Scrooge,” the classic 1951 film based on “A Christmas Carol.”

Here’s Bob Dylan’s performance in 1962. It anticipated the long narrative songs of his own that he would record throughout his career. He was recording his breakthrough album “Freewheelin’” at the same time.

Emmylou Harris sang a more modern version with a mellow bluegrass flavor for the 2000 movie “Songcatcher.”

Art Garfunkel was typically angelic.

Here’s the “Christmas Carol” scene with Alastair Sim where a reformed Scrooge visits his nephew as the song plays in the background.