"West Texas" by Bob Dylan

I posted this in the Expecting Rain website, but no one had an answer, so I thought I would try here.

I was listening to the "Live at the Gaslight" CD and trying to find out information about the songs. Most of the traditional songs have plenty of information about them out on the web. But there is absolutely nothing about "West Texas" that I could find. Is this truly a traditional song? If so, somebody else surely would have performed it. But Dylan is the only one I could find. I even searched individual lyrics, but only found reference to this track from the Gaslight tapes.

Is it possible that this is a Dylan original? Although it's credited as traditional, that may have just meant that the compilers didn't know who was the composer. Note that they credited "John Brown" as traditional, when this is a Dylan original.

Thanks for any information you may have.

 

I'm curious about this, too.

I'm away from my Dylan books right now--I'll do a bit of research in a couple of hours. But no doubt someone will have an answer before then.

 

are you a fan of Bruce's Hotsauce?
i love it too!

dig a pony

 

Actually, I haven't tried it yet. I was looking for info on Bruce Langhorne, and saw the page for his hot sauce. The web site says it is currently out of stock. But I liked the picture, and I like hot sauce, so there you go.

 

from "The Bob Dylan Copyright files 1962-2007" by Tim Dunn
http://www.amazon.com/Bob-Dylan-Cop...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240251603&sr=8-1

 

The only thing I'll add is something Paul Williams indicates in his book Performing Artist: "["West Texas" is] another example of Dylan living in a world of his own, linguistically and geographically."

Williams refers to the line, "I'm goin' down to West Texas/ Behind the Louisiana line."

Good stuff.

 

I don't know Bob's song of this title but Big Bill Broonzy sings of west Texas in his version of 'Key to the Highway'

"Now help me/sweet mama
with this heavy load
I'm due in West Texas
Gotta be on that road

Gonna run/to West Texas
down behind the sun
gonna ask the good Lord
what evil have I done?"

A song Bobby would have known well and it clearly has some vivid imagery
right up Bob's (metaphorical) street.

 

I just looked up Dylans lyrics to this song 'West Texas' and clearly he's got a couple of 'floating' verses in there ('you never miss your water...) which was very common amongst folk singers.
My guess is that he constructed the song from half-heard/half-remembered songs that he'd picked up from the folk archivist crowd he was hanging out with (and pinching records from). One might quite easily mis-hear the "going down behind the sun" line and superimpose the 'Louisiana' tag.
The 'West Texas' lines in the Broonzy song certainly stuck with me, and struck me as a nice textual hook. Enough so that I'm replying to this thread about a Dylan song I haven't even heard!!

 

I suspected much the same thing: that Dylan took some generic folk or blues lyrics and fashioned a song out of them. I'm familiar with "Key to the Highway", and it may be true that Dylan took some lines from it. But the music is very different, at least to my ears. The Dylan song is more raw and driving. My feeling is that the music is original, with those floating verses being used as lyrics. Unless someone comes up with a basis for the tune...