Bob Dylan and the Band – “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) – take 2” from A Tree with Roots (1967/2001) and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)” from The Best of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (1996)
Rock went through some profound changes in the 1970s: genres like jazz and funk seeped into mainstream sounds, musicians became more proficient with rock instruments, and new technologies like the synthesizer changed the timbre of popular rock.
This shift is illustrated well by Bob Dylan’s “Quinn the Eskimo” recorded by Dylan with the Band in the basement of Big Pink in 1967 and a live version performed by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1978.
Also see Manfred Mann (sans Earth Band) performing it on TotP in 1968.
Posted by Jordy
Jordy, ever since you posted “Quinn the Eskimo,” I’ve been hearing it EVERYWHERE, in stranger and stranger versions (lounge-jazz at Borders? huh?)
Yeah – I find the Basement Tapes remarkable in that so many of the songs seem like Dylan wrote them as silly, compositional asides but they appear over and over again as covers (Quinn the Eskimo, You Ain’t Goin Nowhere, Million Dollar Bash, etc.)
Dylan had so many melodies in his head, even his throwaways were genius.