Dylan Goes Twang, Part Four

The Dylan Goes Twang series has been running across four entries now. The first three covered the folk period, the move to the electric and its country underside, and the Basement Tapes era. Part Four focuses on Nashville Skyline.

Nashville Skyline was released in April 1969. Dylan had recorded it in Nashville with the same circle of session musicians who had worked on the two preceding albums, John Wesley Harding and Blonde on Blonde. The recording took five days.

The record is unambiguous about what it is: country music. Not country-influenced rock. Not folk with country elements. Country music, played in Nashville with Nashville musicians, in the country production style of 1969.

The voice

Dylan's voice on Nashville Skyline is the most discussed thing about it. He had developed a smooth, warm crooning quality that was completely different from the nasal, urgent voice of the mid-1960s work. The explanation he gave at the time was that he had stopped smoking. Whether that is the full story is impossible to verify.

The voice on Nashville Skyline is a country voice. It fits the music without effort. Lay Lady Lay, the album's most successful single, would work as a straight country recording if you did not know who was singing.

The duet with Johnny Cash

The album includes a duet with Johnny Cash, Girl from the North Country. Cash contributes a verse, and the two voices — Cash's bass and Dylan's newly warm baritone — occupy different registers without competing.

The relationship between Dylan and Cash was genuine and long-running. Cash had appeared on the Nashville Skyline session out of respect for the music Dylan was making and some recognition that the road Dylan was traveling was one Cash knew well.

Part Four of Four

The four-part Goes Twang series for Dylan covers the arc from the acoustic folk beginnings to this Nashville destination. The country thread runs through all of it. Nashville Skyline is the record where Dylan put it on the surface rather than underneath.

Previous parts: Part Two and Part Three. Full Mixtapes index.