Girl From The North Country - Bob Dylan - Don’s Tunes

 Girl From the North Country was recorded at Columbia Recording Studios in New York City on April 24, 1963.

Bob Johnston had produced Bob Dylan’s previous album, Blonde on Blonde, and also took the reigns on Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison. When the two came together for Nashville Skyline, Johnston hoped that an entire album between the two would be recorded. In a way, it was, as Cash and Dylan recorded 15 songs together during a busy session. However, it was only ‘Girl From The North Country’ that actually featured on the final record.

The track tells of a mystery woman and both Cash and Dylan sing of their longing for her. The song had first been written by Dylan when he visited England late in 1962 when he had been completing his second album. Many Dylan fans have deliberated on who the mystery woman in the song really is, with some suggesting it could have been any of his former girlfriends, Echo Helstrom, Bonnie Beecher or Suze Rotolo.

When Dylan was in London, he met folk revivalist Martin Carthy who exposed him to several traditional English folk songs, which Dylan used to inform ‘Girl From The North Country’. Carthy also showed Dylan his own song ‘Scarborough Fair’, and he used the lyrics and melody to inform his track, including the line “Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine”.

The song arrived on 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which Cash, of course, greatly admired. When the opportunity came for Cash to collaborate on one of his favourite Dylan songs in 1969, he simply couldn’t resist, and by offering his deep vocals to the track, contrasting with Dylan’s crooner-like singing employed on Nashville Skyline, he helped to deliver the song’s theme of long-lost love with all the more fervour.

Source: Tom Leatham / Far Out

Photo: Don Hunstein, Don Hunstein Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo, the Freewheelin' session, New York, 1960

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