Wednesday July 1, 2020 “Black Diamond Bay” Bob Dylan

I enjoy a good story song and this one from Bob Dylan is a doozy...isn’t that just such an odd word, doozy.

 Bob is going to take us to Black Diamond Bay and this place is much more like the setting for a Fellini film than a tropical resort. Pay attention because there is some stuff going on there that you won’t want to miss.  There’s a mysterious woman of a certain age in a Panama hat, a Greek man with a nefarious plan, a soldier, a tiny man, forbidden love, a gambler, a volcano, Walter Cronkite...give it a listen there is just a lot going on here.

 Bobby Vee (“Take Good Care of My Baby”, Rubber Ball”) was hired to fill in for Buddy Holly after the tragic plane crash that took Holly’s life (remember“American Pie”) and as artistically different as Bobby Vee’s top 40’s pop tunes might be from Bob Dylan, Vee had a young keyboard player in some of his early shows who was using the stage name of Elston Gunn (Bob Dylan).  Bobby Vee and Bob Dylan remained friends from those early days until Vee’s passing in 2016.

 Here’s something to try and visualize, at Elizabeth Taylor’s 55 birthday Bob Dylan performed with Micahael Jackson, now that’s a duet you can’t even imagine. 

 Dylan is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, has been nominated for forty Grammy’s and won eleven of them, he has an Oscar, a Pulitzer and a Nobel as well as two honorary Doctorate of Music degrees among many other awards.  He has sold over 100 million records and at age 79 continues to tour almost incessantly.

 Take the trip to Black Diamond Bay, it has a classic Dylan payoff at the end of the journey.

 This is a difficult song to find on YouTube so excuse the cover link below and coming in at over seven minutes it’s a bit of a commitment, but worth the trip.

Up on the white veranda

She wears a necktie and a Panama hat

Her passport shows a face

From another time and place

She looks nothing like that

And all the remnants of her recent past

Are scattered in the wild wind

She walks across the marble floor

Where a voice from the gambling room is callin' her to come on in

She smiles, walks the other way

As the last ship sails and the moon fades away

From Black Diamond Bay

 

As the morning light breaks open, the Greek comes down

And he asks for a rope and a pen that will write

Pardon, monsieur, the desk clerk says

Carefully removes his fez

Am I hearing you right

And as the yellow fog is lifting

The Greek is quickly heading for the second floor

She passes him on the spiral staircase

Thinking he's the Soviet Ambassador

She starts to speak, but he walks away

As the storm clouds rise and the palm branches sway

On Black Diamond Bay

 

A soldier sits beneath the fan

Doing business with a tiny man who sells him a ring

Lightning strikes, the lights blow out

The desk clerk wakes and begins to shout

Can you see anything

Then the Greek appears on the second floor

In his bare feet with a rope around his neck

While a loser in the gambling room lights up a candle

Says, open up another deck

But the dealer says, attendez-vous, s'il vous plait

As the rain beats down and the cranes fly away

From Black Diamond Bay

 

The desk clerk heard the woman laugh

As he looked around the aftermath and the soldier got tough

He tried to grab the woman's hand

Said, here's a ring, it cost a grand

She said, that ain't enough

Then she ran upstairs to pack her bags

While a horse-drawn taxi waited at the curb

She passed the door that the Greek had locked

Where a handwritten sign read, do not disturb

She knocked upon it anyway

As the sun went down and the music did play

On Black Diamond Bay

 

I've got to talk to someone quick

But the Greek said, go away, and he kicked the chair to the floor

He hung there from the chandelier

She cried, help, there's danger near

Please open up the door

Then the volcano erupted

And the lava flowed down from the mountain high above

The soldier and the tiny man were crouched in the corner

Thinking of forbidden love

But the desk clerk said, it happens every day

As the stars fell down and the fields burned away

On Black Diamond Bay

 

As the island slowly sank

The loser finally broke the bank in the gambling room

The dealer said, it's too late now

You can take your money, but I don't know how

You'll spend it in the tomb

The tiny man bit the soldier's ear

As the floor caved in and the boiler in the basement blew

While she's out on the balcony, where a stranger tells her

My darling, je vous aime beaucoup

She sheds a tear and then begins to pray

As the fire burns on and the smoke drifts away

From Black Diamond Bay

 

I was sitting home alone one night in L.A.

Watching old Cronkite on the seven o'clock news

It seems there was an earthquake that

Left nothing but a Panama hat

And a pair of old Greek shoes

Didn't seem like much was happening

So I turned it off and went to grab another beer

Seems like every time you turn around

There's another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear

And there's really nothing anyone can say

And I never did plan to go anyway

To Black Diamond Bay