Hi folks
Hope you enjoy this! This is the ‘audio version’ of my blog on Bob Dylan’s rather fabulous
and certainly under rated 1976 song BLACK DIAMOND BAY….
The whole text can be found at https://chrisgregory.org/articles/black-diamond-bay-another-hard-luck-story/
EXCERPTS (FULL TEXT HERE….)
Black Diamond Bay…
One of Dylan’s most distinctive qualities- as shown in songs like Desolation Row, Stuck Inside of Mobile and All Along the Watchtower – is his ability to create and use characters in his songs. Sometimes these figures are invented but they may also be historical, mythical or literary figures. This allows him to create individual ‘dramatic worlds’ within which disparate individuals interact. In Black Diamond Bay the characters can easily be identified as stock figures in old movies. The unnamed woman who appears throughout the song is memorably described in the opening line as wearing …a necktie and a Panama hat…
A number of well known female film stars of the 1940s often wore men’s clothing onscreen in stylish and often successful attempts to amplify their sexual mystique. Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Bette Davis all wore both items of apparel in various movies. Another major player is the guilt ridden character referred to only as ‘the Greek’, who one can imagine being portrayed by Sydney Greenstreet or Anthony Quinn. The ‘soldier’ is a hard bitten figure who might be a ‘shoe in’ for Humphrey Bogart, whereas the ‘tiny man’ would be a good fit for the sinister Peter Lorre. Perhaps Claude Rains, ever the smooth villain, could portray the ‘desk clerk’. The ‘loser’ and the ‘dealer’ in the casino might be natural parts for Dana Andrews and Edward G. Robinson.
Black Diamond – A Hard Luck Story
The whole song has recounted a ‘hard luck story’ which makes the listener, who is presumably attuned to expect the usual closure of a Hollywood movie story, increasingly curious as to the details of the intrigues that are unfolding. But the final verse, with its brilliantly deadpan dismissal of the significance of it all, supplies a wonderfully comic twist. The outstanding feature of the song is the attention to detail in the lyrics, which build up as if we are watching a moody film noir thriller. The final image of the Panama hat and the shoes is particularly resonant, and is reminiscent of the ending of Citizen Kane, which dwells on the protagonist’s childhood sled ‘Rosebud’ which, like the entire plot of Black Diamond Bay, remains an enigma.
The neglect of the song is surprising as it is one of Dylan’s most accomplished comic narratives. It consists of six verses that relate the story and a final coda that acts as a framing device for and a reflection on the events it relates. Each verse follows a similar rhythmic pattern. The unusual rhyme scheme allows the narrator the chance to ‘tease’ the audience before delivering the rhymes in a very unusual rhyming pattern of ABCCBDEFEGGG. At first the listener has to wait for the rhymes, which then begin to arrive with more regularity before they finally settle into a pattern of repetition.
This structure helps to engage the listener, despite the song’s lack of musical variation. The final rhyming lines add tongue-in-cheek comic emphasis to the action. The couplets that end each verse give us plenty of clues that a disaster is at hand. The rhyming couplet at the end of the verse begins to set up the oncoming disaster. We first hear that the ‘last ship’ has sailed and we see the moon ‘fade away’. Meanwhile, ominously …the storm clouds rise and the palm branches sway… In successive verses…the rain beats down and the cranes fly away…, …the sun went down and the music did play…, …the stars fell down and the fields burned away… and …the fire burns on and the smoke drifts away…But the characters in the song carry on with their complicated lives regardless, oblivious of the looming danger.
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