Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts

The first Dylan song I heard. I remember the video.

 

I always enjoyed this song. Black Diamond Bay as well. His delivery really makes it come alive.

 

Fwiw, I go with Colt and steady.
Musically, it's much about sustained tempo, and the interplay between the consistent rhythms of the acoustic guitar in the left channel, the bass guitar (stand up?) in the center, and the drums in the right channel, with the lead vocal, organ, and mouth organ providing melodies. It sounds like a light but brisk, folkish, rolling, and gently swinging acoustic rockabilly. It's also too short, . What is neat about it musically, imo, is the juxtaposition, of what feels like a toe tapping hoedown with the guitar, but the acoustic guitar is quickly strummed with at times what feels like a sixteenth note pattern. Meanwhile the organ just floats between it all sometimes playing chords of longer duration. Musically, imo, it's much about alternate timings intersecting and about sustained tempo, and then there's Dylan lyrics

 

A revolver would remain cold, and make only a clicking sound, if the bullets had been removed. (As opposed to a revolver that had just fired a live round, the barrel of which would become warm.)

In Dylan's song, I always assumed it was Rosemary that removed the bullets from Big Jim's gun prior to the final confrontation in the dressing room. The Jack of Hearts bursts into the room, Big Jim fires, impotently, then Rosemary sticks a penknife in her husband's back. "She was with Big Jim, but she was leaning to the Jack of Hearts." It's a brilliantly emotive scene.

 

This song is so good for so many reasons. Brilliance.

 

Definitely a Colt revolver, and studying rather than steady in is what I always thought and makes more sense. I always thought highly of this song. Apparently, Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter does too, as he covered it at a show I saw in Seattle (along with Shelter From the Storm either the previous or next night). I'd rate a few other songs on Blood on the Tracks a little higher but the competition is as tough as it gets.

 

According to Wikipedia:

One popular interpretation of the song and its plot is that "The Jack of Hearts" is Lily, who disguised herself as a man to carry out criminal activities and to carry out an affair with Rosemary. Lily killed Big Jim when he caught her in drag with Rosemary, who fainted and was framed by Lily for Jim's murder while she escaped to reunite with her criminal gang. Lily based her male alter-ego off of her father, hence her thinking about him in the wake of Rosemary's hanging.

This seems way off-base, to me, and I've never come across anyone who interpreted the song this way.

Anyone here subscribe to the Lily as male impersonator and bank robber, carrying on a lesbian affair with Rosemary, theory?

 

Only when I put on my tinfoil hat.

 

What I always appreciated about it was the subtle, throw away lines regarding the "drilling in the wall".

The first one comes in the second line. At that point there's nothing to reference for meaning.
Not again until the 37th line, "drillin' in the wall kept up, but no one paid it any mind."
Lastly the 50th line where Lily says, "Be careful not to touch the wall there's a brand new coat of paint.".

So we now know Lily was in on it too.

"Lily had already taken all the dye out of her hair.
She was thinkin' 'bout her father who she rarely ever saw.
Thinkin' about Rosemary, thinkin' about the law.
But most of all she was thinkin' 'bout the Jack of Hearts."

And she's about to leave (to meet the Jack of Hearts?)

 

Thank you.

 

The "Colt" vs "cold" discussion reminded me:
For the longest time, I thought Rosemary combed her hair and took a cabbage into town.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one:
www.kissthisguy.com/rosemary-combed-her-hair-and-took-a-cabb-misheard-14285.htm

 

Great timing for this thread as I just gave this song a listen yesterday and as always...it floored me ...

I don't need to know the true meaning. It seems to me like a deliberate melding of contradictions anyway. I enjoy the story for what it is and how it gradually unfolds, forcing you to ask internal questions the entire time.

And I love the machine gun rapid , near manic paced, forward thrust of the music .

Nothing much here really. Just a musical genius plying his trade....masterfully...

 

To me, the song plays like a movie. The way the characters and action come and go and the plot line develops throughout the song is amazing. To me, this is one of his most brilliant pieces.

 

I love the song and the performance. Those that knock it usually do so because it's just so much different from the rest of the songs on Blood On The Tracks. There's nothing wrong with that, if you don't like the song you can always skip it but I love it and play it every time.

 

A friend in college said he thought Dylan had to insert himself into the narrative somehow, so he was the leading actor. Just a bit of a stretch..........

 

My favourite song on Blood..., one of my favourite ever Dylan songs, and my favourite story song by anyone. Song writing brilliance at work and the driving force of the music, especially the bass, is infectious; I love the MFSL SACD

 

Of course the click of the revolver could just be the pulling back of the hammer. No need to insert a whole, extra-textual narrative about removing bullets, dramatic as that would have been.

L.

 

For the uninitiated, this is why Dylan is widely regarded as being perhaps the greatest lyricist in the history of rock music.
And I know what you're all thinking: Is Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts more coherent than Last Kiss? Well, my friends, that's a topic for another thread...

D.D.

 

I agree about how great those throw-away reminders are, but how is the remark about the brand new coat of paint a reference to the drilling? Doesn't that conversation happen in her dressing room, while the drilling is still going on? That is, before the shooting and before the boys finally make it through the wall.

I suppose it's possible that Lily is planning to meet up with "Jack," who we know is gone by that point in the story, and the detail about the dye in her hair suggests some sort of subterfuge (but then again she's an entertainer, so it doesn't suggest that necessarily), but the little conversation between "Jack" and Lily in her dressing room suggests that they really have not seen each other in a long time, so whatever they might or might not have agreed to afterwards, it seems unlikely they were in cahoots from the start.

L.

 

Sorry Ms Bear, that's the way I roll with Bob.

 

That's one of the silliest things I've ever heard about the song, but it does make sense once you think about Rosemary carrying a cabbage.

L.

 

Previous verses establish Rosemary's premeditation, so it makes sense, to me, that she would weigh the odds in her favour by disabling Big Jim's firearm ahead of time. There are many things that go unsaid in this song.

I will change my original analysis of the final confrontation slightly, though. Upon reflection, and taking into consideration the verse excised from the album version, I would say that it's Big Jim that bursts into the dressing room, where he finds Lily with the Jack of Hearts. Big Jim then attempts to shoot the Jack of Hearts, but is knifed in the back by Rosemary.

If you were Big Jim, and you burst into the dressing room with the intention of killing an adversary, would you not cock the trigger on your revolver before opening the door, to give yourself a vital few seconds' advantage?

 

What's amazing to me is that no one has attempted to turn this into a movie. Like Ode To Billie Joe or Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger, I can almost see it in my head. Who would play the roles? I see a who's who.

 

A agree that removing the bullets would be a clever move--assuming that Jim would never have checked the gun at any time between whenever she had a chance to do that (during the night while he was asleep in her bed? While he was eating breakfast that morning?) and when he decided to go to the dressing room and use the damn thing--and you're right that there's nothing in the song that makes it impossible the Rosemary did such a thing and pulled it off. But it is a lot to bring to the song to explain a detail that can be explained more easily, simply, and symbolically.

That said, I've thought about when someone in Jim's situation might cock the hammer, and you're right that the prudent thing to do would be to cock it before opening the door (for that matter the really prudent thing would have been to check to see if it was fully loaded--something a really prudent gunman would have done before strapping the thing on that morning). On the other hand, and thinking with the same dramatic imagination that leads to the plot device of bullets being removed from the gun, he might have wanted to stage that dramatic moment by stepping into the room and then clicking the revolver. Happens that way in movies all the time, of course, though not so much in life. But the song's story is much more rooted in movies (and ballads) than it is in real life.

And yes. It has to be Lily and "Jack" in the dressing room. Lots of peripheral details are left to the imagination, and we're given lots of room to supply psychology, motivations, etc.--not to mention more symbolic and philosophical interpretations--but the basic bones of the story are solid and clear.

L.

 

Well, I took the "brand new coat of paint" as just her reason to keep anyone from the wall, where they might feel or otherwise sense the drilling. (In fact, I misremembered it as the "humming in the wall.) Otherwise that line is meaningless. How many meaningless lines are there in this song?
As to where this conversation takes place isn't relevant to me without knowing the building's floor plan.

Them's my thoughts on it.
When do we get to ruminate on "Black Diamond Bay"?
I'm ready to pull out some Bobby D. For the first time in a long time.