When a teenage Bob Dylan first heard Elvis Presley, he said it felt like “busting out of jail.”
“When I first heard Elvis Presley’s voice, I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss,” recalled Dylan. “Dylan later recorded Presley’s Bill Trader-penned “(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such As I” during the Basement Tapes (with the Band) and Self-Portrait sessions before eventually releasing it on Dylan in 1973.
“The highlight of my career,” added Dylan. “That’s easy: Elvis recording one of my songs.”
Presley ended up recording and performing four of Dylan’s songs from the mid-’60s through early 1970s. Here’s a look behind the four Dylan classics recorded by the King during this period.
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[RELATED: The Song The Band’s Rick Danko Wrote With Bob Dylan in a Basement]
“Tomorrow is a Long Time” (1966)
Originally, Presley recorded Dylan’s “Tomorrow is a Long Time” for his album How Great Thou Art, but it was later used for Spinout, the soundtrack to the 1966 film of the same name, which he also starred in. In the film, Presley plays a part-time racecar driver and rock star who has three women vying to marry him.
Recorded in May 1966, Presley’s arrangement picks up the tempo slightly, settling the Dylan ballad into a steady country processional. Presley first heard the song from session musician Charlie McCoy, who worked with Dylan on the Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde sessions, and played the 1965 version by Odetta (Odetta Sings the Blues) for the King.
Dylan said hearing Presley cover “Tomorrow is a Long Time” was one of his “proudest achievements” and one of his favorite covers of one of his songs by another artist. At the time, Dylan had only released the song as a demo in ’62 for his publisher, with another live version a year later.
“Elvis Presley recorded a song of mine,” said Dylan in a 1969 interview with Rolling Stone. “That’s the one recording I treasure the most. It was called ‘Tomorrow Is A Long Time.’ I wrote it but never recorded it.”
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” (1973)
On May 16, 1971, Presley recorded Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan classic “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Nearly a decade after its original release, Presley’s version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” accelerates Dylan’s folk ballad and was the closing track on his 1973 album, Elvis.
“I Shall Be Released” (Recorded in 1971; released in 1995)
The earliest official release of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” was by singer Boz Burell (King Crimson, Bad Company) in 1968. Dylan originally recorded “I Shall Be Released” with The Band as part of their Basement Tapes sessions and first released it on the 1991 compilation, The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3. A remixed version of “I Shall Be Released” later appeared on Dylan’s The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete in 2014.
Presley also recorded a very bare-bones version of “I Shall Be Released” on September 24, 1971, at RCA Studio B in Nashville, but it wasn’t officially released until 1995 on the compilation, Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential ’70s Masters. At the very end of the recording, Presley says ‘Dylan.”
“Blowin’ in the Wind” (Recorded in 1966; released in 1997)
In 1966, Presley also recorded Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” His stirring rendition was released more than three decades later on the 1997 compilation, Platinum – A Life In Music, 20 years after Presley’s death.
Unfortunately, Presley and Dylan never met. Dylan turned down meeting his idol even when he was “sent for” by Presley, whose health was declining at the time.
“I never met Elvis because I didn’t want to meet him,” said Dylan in 2009. “Two or three times, we were up in Hollywood, and he had sent some of the Memphis Mafia down to where we were to bring us up to see Elvis, but none of us went.”
Dylan continued, “I don’t know if I would have wanted to see Elvis like that. I wanted to see the powerful, mystical Elvis that had crash-landed from a burning star onto American soil. The Elvis that was bursting with life. That’s the Elvis that inspired us to all the possibilities of life. And that Elvis was gone, had left the building.”
Presley’s death in 1977 also had a profound effect on Dylan. “I went over my whole life,” he said. “I went over my whole childhood. I didn’t talk to anyone for a week after Elvis died. If it wasn’t for Elvis and Hank Williams, I couldn’t be doing what I do today.”
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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