CDVS: Jim White Vs. Bob Dylan

Chances are, Johnny Cash didn't write poems for a lot of dudes. Granted, he wrote a few about working-class heroes like John Henry and Joe Bean, but he probably wasn't partial to whipping out Petrarchan sonnets about his friends and colleagues. It just doesn't seem like the Man in Black's style, which makes it all the more amazing that Cash would write a poem about Bob Dylan.

Reproduced as the liner notes to Dylan's ninth studio longplayer, Nashville Skyline, Cash calls Dylan "a hell of a poet" who could feel "the hate of flight, the love of right and the creep of blight at the speed of light." Never mind that Dylan (formerly, Bob Zimmerman) looks like a homeless rabbi on the album's cover; Cash was so taken with his new chum that he lent his rusty baritone to the lead track, "Girl from the North Country." Ironically, Nashville Skyline is Dylan's simplest album--free from the lyrical witticisms and revolutionary bluster of earlier classics like Blonde on Blonde--but perhaps this is what appealed to Cash. Nashville Skyline is a country record pure and simple--from the plaintive lope of "Lay Lady Lay" to the barnyard two-step of "Country Pie" and "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You."

To his credit, Jim White has some skill with a pen, as well--although he tends to be a bit more long-winded than Dylan. Not a single song on Drill a Hole in that Substrate and Tell Me What You See--a mouthful in itself--clocks in at less than four minutes, whereas none on Nashville Skyline exceeds that mark. While this makes for some overlong opuses, it also gives White the space to cultivate narratives like "That Girl from Brownsville Texas" and "If Jesus Drove a Motor Home." (Incidentally, White claims a road-wizened Jesus would listen to Bob Dylan on cassette.) Or dig this line from "Combing My Hair in a Brand New Style": "I don't want no hoodoos, no voodoo gurus, no spooked out priesty-beasty, no strippers with pasties, self-professed saviors of my soul..." It goes on like that for another 50 or 100 words, but you get the idea: White has a way with words. He also has a heck of an ear for instrumental arrangements, which explore everything from country gospel to funky, inner-city jazz. Yeah, when he was alive, Johnny Cash would definitely have liked Jim White--just not enough to write a poem about him.--Newt Briggs