DEATH OF JIM DICKINSON

The great Jim Dickinson died yesterday (Saturday 15 August), aged 67. A properly music-based report is here.

And as it says in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (p.481) Dickinson said he'd been a Dylan fan for 35 years before he got to play on a Dylan record, namely Time Out Of Mind, on which he played piano, Wurlitzer electric piano and pump organ, appearing on every track except 'Standing In The Doorway', 'Cold Irons Bound' and 'Make You Feel My Lurve'. And according to Daniel Lanois (Harp Magazine, May 2003), Bob said to him,"If you've got Dickinson, you don't need anybody else."

Jim Dickinson was also the first to point out that the cover of Together Through Life uses the same shot as Big Bad Love, a book of short stories by Mississippi writer Larry Brown, of whose work Dylan told Dickinson he had "read every word". (Dickinson was also a friend of the splendid Georgia-based writer Stanley Booth, whose collection Rythm Oil is tremendous. And both men knew and helped Furry Lewis and Sleepy John Estes back in Memphis...)

I note that Jim Dickinson died on the 25th anniversary of the death of Norman Petty, a crucial figure in the studio for another white southern blues/country/rock crossover artist, the late great Buddy Holly.