Rory Block - Positively 4th Street: A Tribute To Bob Dylan

(Stony Plain Records, 2024)

Amazon

Rory Block has street creds out of the wazoo when it comes to considering Bob Dylan. As a child, she lived two doors down from him on Positively 4th Street in Greenwich Village, where her father had Allan Block Sandal Shop in the heady days of the early 1960s when the Village approximated the Rive Gauche in the heated 1920s. Block details much of this in her harrowing and intimate autobiography When A Woman Gets The Blues (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011).

Speaking of the blues, its interpretation and performance have been Block’s métier for 50 years. Her pristine slide guitar playing and laconic growl have appeared on over 30 recordings including two notable thematic series: The Mentor Series which includes tribute collections for six Ur-blues artists that Block had met in person and the Power Women Of The Blues series on which the singer digs deeply into the fertile loam of blues women often overlooked (see the selected discography below).

A tribute to Bob Dylan was a project perhaps a little out of Block’s comfort zone as the singer was steeped in the authentic reproduction of music committed to heavy shellac 78s a century ago. Like many other artists, the COVID pandemic changed many things, affording Block plenty of time to consider this recording. Block had been including Dylan's songs in her streamed weekly shows and had subsequently received requests for more resulting in Positively 4th Street.

Block proves perfectly capable of interpreting Dylan, her talent, voice, and conviction are best expressed in “Everything Is Broken” from Oh Mercy (Columbia, 1989), the title piece, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (Columbia, 1963), and Dylan’s 20-minute-plus “Murder Most Fowl” from Rough And Rowdy Ways (Columbia, 2020). The album’s psychic center falls within her arresting performance of “Not Dark Yet” from Time Out Of Mind (Columbia, 1997). Block draws together her considerable powers; voice, slide guitar, and performance, and presents the shadow contained in the lyrics:

“I was born here and I'll die here against my will
I know it looks like I'm movin' but I'm standin' still
Every nerve in my body is so naked and numb
I can't even remember what it was, I came here to get away from

Don't even hear the murmur of a prayer
It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there.”

Gratefully, there is no “All Along The Watchtower,” “Just Like A Woman,” or “I Shall Be Released.” The low-hanging fruit she did choose, “Hey Mr. Tamborine Man” and “Like A Rolling Stone” ring true to Block’s heart. She plays all instruments on the recording, which is starkly arranged. Her pristine slide guitar playing serves the Dylan lyrics well. Block is an authentic voice from an authentic time, singing to an uncertain future.