Written by Bob Dylan
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 256 Kbps

In May 2011, BBC Radio broadcast a special season of programmes to celebrate Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday. There were around 25 in total. Some were purely music shows, others took a more documentary style and there were some discussion programmes which looked at different aspects of the man's life and career.

I’m in the midst of uploading all of these in the order they were broadcast (with the exception of the 6-part Bob Dylan Story and Blowin’ in the Wind: Bob Dylan’s Spiritual Journey, both of which are already available on Demonoid).

This is upload number 8, Bob’s Ballad Bases from BBC Radio 2. In this programme, Julie Fowlis examines and celebrates the influence of British and Irish folk songs and folk music on Bob Dylan’s music, from Pretty Peggy-O on his first album, to Highlands in the 1990s and beyond, and she hears from people involved in folk song who knew Dylan.

Liam Clancy and Jean Redpath met him in New York's Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and we hear Bob himself acknowledge a debt to Liam as he performs a Scottish folk song, Lang A-Growing, at his first major New York concert in 1961.

Bob's visit to London in 1962 is recalled by Martin Carthy, who introduced him to a number of variants of English songs. The publisher demos, recorded soon after his return to the USA, include the earliest recordings of landmark songs such as Girl from the North Country and Bob Dylan's Dream, which were informed by his UK visit.

Other contributors include singers Christy Moore and Linda Thompson; the author Clinton Heylin, who has written many books on Dylan and his songs; while Rab Noakes, a singer-songwriter and this documentary's producer, demonstrates how The Times They Are A-Changin' was possibly influenced by Hamish Henderson's 51st Farewell to Sicily.