DAVID BLUE: OUTLAW MAN
Years ago, I thought of doing an article to be called "Where's David Blue?" It seemed that after twenty years dead, he was being forgotten, while other 60s singer/songwriters were being gathered into retrospective box sets and being reconsidered. Now, years later, Blue is slowly but surely making his way back to some degree of public consciousness.
But there is still a lingering problem that is as much Blue's fault as it is the lazy arrogance of our ever-ready-to-pontificate bar stool critics (for whom the Net has proven a godsend against people telling them to shut up and go home.) That problem is Blue's unshakable tag as a Dylan clone.
For David Blue had his own original voice and lyric style; just a cursory listen to Elektra Records Singer/Songwriter Project which Blue recorded under his real name Cohen) will show it: his early classic I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning, Don't Get Caught in a Storm, and especially More Good Men Going Down (a song repeatedly referenced by Eric Andersen as an inspiration for his own Blind Fiddler) show a flat voice that is not an imitation of Dylan, as it is a revelation of their common roots (Dock Boggs, and especially for Blue, Luke Faust.) The writing derives from no one but Blue, as far as I can discern; those are his unique turns of phrase, as shown in later albums, when his own style reasserted itself.
So the question is really, Why? Why, in heaven's name, would someone put aside his own distinctive style, and deliberately choose to embody the sound of the Big Kahuna's most iconic period, for his own debut album--the album that should have been the opening statement of his own artistic strengths and concerns?
At the risk of playing armchair psychologist, I would guess that Blue, as an overweight misfit in a troubled family situation, struck out for the New York of 1960, intent on become an actor. How many before and after him came for the same reason--to express themselves in a medium that would allow them to 'forget' themselves by assuming other characters? In doing so, what Blue found was a congenial atmosphere for unbridled creativity. It was also where he first made the acquaintance of another young man working out his own creative intents--Bob Dylan. We know now from various sources that it was Blue who aided Dylan in the composition of Blowin' in the Wind by strumming the chords over and over as Dylan completed the lyrics (a service not unlike the one Al Kooper performed for Dylan while he worked out the lyrics for Blonde on Blonde in a Nashville motel room.) It seems Blue was overwhelmed by Dylan's creative powers and his force of personality, resulting in a subject Blue the actor could emulate. A lasting misfortune for Blue the singer-songwriter.
It would take a longer piece of exegesis to examine these ramifications, because after that first album, Blue put together a group called the American Patrol which proved to be the forerunner of glam and other, more theatrical modes of rock performance. This was followed by These 23 Days of September, which showed Blue's own originality resurfacing, but still hampered by Blue's physical emulation of Dylan's 1966 appearance, i.e. the high teased hair. By the time his next 3 albums--his greatest work (Me, recorded under the name of S. David Cohen; Stories and Nice Baby and the Angel) --surfaced, they were rounded ignored, despite Rolling Stone hailing Stories, as one of the best albums of 1972. The damage had been done, and Blue's achievement would ever be obscured by the "Dylan clone" tag.
Maybe one day, I, or someone, will get around to writing a real piece of work analyzing the validity and value of that achievement--how even on the debut album, songs like The Street, Midnight Through Morning and Grand Hotel pointed less toward Dylan's surrealism and more to Blue's own growth as an artist and the expansion of his own powers (at the very least, showing the world there was way more to him than Outlaw Man, thanks to the Eagles's cover of that vaunted tune.)
In the meanwhile, Blue has surfaced on YouTube (a live recording of So Easy She Goes By from a performance at the Unicorn and numerous posts of Blue singing and talking with Jackson Browne on a radio show) as well as a MySpace page that has live performances that may be the recorded remains of the American Patrol.
No, he wasn't the game-changer his frenemy Dylan was, but the self-assessment of that other Dylan--Thomas, to be sure--as "the captain of the second eleven" might apply here--he was strong, unique and nothing like Dylan when you gave a close listen, as was the case with so many succeeding "New Dylans". The Mass Mind will always be lazy and sniping, content with surface trivialities to pin an image in the public consciousness, easily digestible bites of bull that our current electronic medium has legitimized to such unreasonable extremes.
May David Blue finally prevail against all that. He, and we, deserve better.
http://folk.uio.no/alfs/blue.html
http://www.richieunterberger.com/davidblue.html
davidbluecohen@MySpace
Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito
