38_toom/heaven_comments.htm

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  16
  17 <h1 class="songtitle">Trying To Get To Heaven <a href="heaven_comments.htm#;-)">;-)</a></h1>
  18
  19 <p>Words and music by Bob Dylan<br>
  20 Tabbed by Eyolf &Oslash;strem</p>
  21
  22 <p>Note: This is a version with textual commentaries on the lyrics. If you're just
  23 looking for the chords (incl. the 2000 live version), you can walk down <a href="trying_to_get_to_heaven.htm">this</a> lonesome valley.</p>
  24
  25 <hr>
  26
  27 <pre>The air is gettin' hotter, there's a rumblin' in the skies.
  28 I've been wadin' through the high muddy waters, <a href="heaven_comments.htm#1">[1]</a>
  29 But the heat riseth in my eyes.
  30 Everyday your memory goes dimmer,
  31 It doesn't haunt me like it did before.
  32 I've been walkin' through the middle of nowhere,
  33 Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.<a href="heaven_comments.htm#2">[2]</a></pre>
  34
  35 <pre>When I was in Missouri, they would not let me be.[<a href="heaven_comments.htm#3a">3a</a>/<a href="heaven_comments.htm#3b">3b</a>]
  36 I had to leave there in a hurry, I only saw what they let me see.
  37 You broke a heart that loved you, <a href="heaven_comments.htm#3c">[3c]
  38 </a>Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore.<a href="heaven_comments.htm#4">[4]
  39 </a>I've been walkin' that lonesome valley,<a href="heaven_comments.htm#5">[5]
  40 </a>Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.</pre>
  41
  42 <pre>People on the platforms, waitin' for the trains. [<a href="heaven_comments.htm#6a">6a</a>/<a href="heaven_comments.htm#6b">6b</a>]
  43 I can hear their hearts a-beatin', like pendulum swingin' on chains.
  44 When you think that you've lost everything,
  45 You find out you can always lose a little more.
  46 I'm just going down the road feelin' bad, <a href="heaven_comments.htm#7">[7]
  47 </a>Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.</pre>
  48
  49 <pre>I'm goin' down the river, down to New Orleans.
  50 They tell me everything is gonna be all right,
  51 But I don't know what all right even means.
  52 I was ridin' in a buggy with Miss Mary Jane, <a href="heaven_comments.htm#8">[8]
  53 </a>Miss Mary Jane got a house in Baltimore.
  54 I've been all around the world boys,
  55 I'm tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.</pre>
  56
  57 <pre>Gotta sleep down in the parlor, and relive my dreams.
  58 I close my eyes and I wonder, if everything is as hollow as it seems.
  59 Some trains don't pull no gamblers,
  60 No midnight ramblers like they did before. <a href="heaven_comments.htm#9">[9]</a>
  61 I've been to Sugartown, I shook the sugar down,<a href="heaven_comments.htm#10">[10]
  62 </a>Now I'm tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.</pre>
  63
  64 <hr align="left">
  65
  66 <p><a name="3a"></a><strong>[3a]</strong><em> From a post to r.m.d. from Rob Lake:</em></p>
  67
  68 <p>I may have missed it but I don't think anyone has posted the connection between the
  69 line in &quot;Tryin' To Get To Heaven&quot; and this opening verse from a blues called
  70 &quot;Turn Your Money Green&quot;:</p>
  71
  72 <p><em>I was in Missouri, would not let me be <br>
  73 I was in Missouri, would not let me be <br>
  74 I could not rest content, till I came to Tennessee</em></p>
  75
  76 <p>I have this song on a Tom Rush album called &quot;Take A Little Walk With Me&quot;
  77 where the songwriter is credited as Ric Von Schmidt. </p>
  78
  79 <p>(<em>note: Ric Van Schmidt is one of Dylan's early influences in his first New
  80 York period. He learned the song &quot;Baby let me follow you down&quot; on his first
  81 album from Von Schmidt. E&Oslash;.)</em></p>
  82
  83 <p><a name="1"></a><strong>[1] </strong>A later verse goes:</p>
  84
  85 <p><em>I looked over muddy waters, believe I spied dry land <br>
  86 I wade muddy waters, trying to reach dry land <br>
  87 I said if you don't love me, lets shake hand in hand</em></p>
  88
  89 <p>which may be a source for the earlier line about high muddy water.</p>
  90
  91 <p>This is the Tom Rush album that has a musician called Roosevelt Gook playing piano on
  92 the &quot;electric&quot; side 1. At one stage it was thought that this might be Dylan,
  93 because he is mentioned in the liner notes as visiting the studio during the sessions, and
  94 Dylan refers to Roosevelt Gook during one of the interviews in the 60's (Bob Fass phone in
  95 if my memory is correct). I think Al Kooper, who plays electric guitar on the album, later
  96 admitted Roosevelt Gook was him - perhaps credited under a different name for payment
  97 reasons?</p>
  98
  99 <p>The album also includes Statesboro Blues (&quot;turn your lamp down low&quot;), a song
 100 called Suger Babe, and another Ric Von Schmidt tune &quot;Joshua Gone Barbadoes&quot;
 101 which Dylan performed as part of the basement sessions.</p>
 102
 103 <p>The album has some similarities with BIABH, with an electric &quot;rock and roll&quot;
 104 side and an acoustic side, and signalled Tom Rush's move to performing songs by
 105 contemporary songwriters with electric arrangements. It's well worth a listen.</p>
 106
 107 <p>Incidentally, does anyone know if the Dylan/Von Schmidt tape listed in Tangled Up In
 108 Tapes (based on an article in Telegraph #44) ever emerged?</p>
 109
 110 <p>Rob</p>
 111
 112 <hr align="left">
 113
 114 <p><a name="8"></a><strong>[8]</strong> <em>From a post to r.m.d. from Seth Kulick:<br>
 115 <br>
 116 </em>As a followup to Peter's earlier posting, here are the lyrics to &quot;Miss Mary
 117 Jane&quot;, from &quot;The Folk Songs of North America&quot; (Alan Lomax). <br>
 118 <br>
 119 Ridin' in the buggy, Miss Mary Jane<br>
 120 Miss Mary Jane, Miss Mary Jane<br>
 121 Ridin' in the buggy, Miss Mary Jane<br>
 122 I'm a long way from home<br>
 123 <br>
 124 (chorus)<br>
 125 Who moan for me?<br>
 126 Who moan for me?<br>
 127 Who moan for me, my darlin'?<br>
 128 Who moan for me?<br>
 129 <br>
 130 Sally got a house in Baltimo',<br>
 131 Baltimo', Baltimo'<br>
 132 Sally got a house in Baltimo'<br>
 133 And it's three stories high<br>
 134 <br>
 135 Sally got a house in Baltimo',<br>
 136 Baltimo', Baltimo'<br>
 137 Sally got a house in Baltimo'<br>
 138 An' it's full of chicken pie</p>
 139
 140 <p><em>From a post by spjohnny: </em></p>
 141
 142 <p>This may be obvious, but is it reasonable to assume that Miss Mary Jane's got a
 143 &quot;house&quot; in the sense of &quot;House of the Rising Sun&quot;? And that because he
 144 is &quot;tryin' to get to heaven,&quot; the singer is going to &quot;sleep down in the
 145 parlor&quot; rather than sleep upstairs with a prostitute? If that is reasonable, and
 146 given all the &quot;sun&quot; references on this album, it seems almost as if he's learned
 147 a lesson from Frankie Lee's &quot;soulful, bounding leap&quot; in that &quot;house as
 148 bright as any sun.&quot; But even though he knows the difference between a house and a
 149 home and paradise, he has no home and has to bide his time in houses.</p>
 150
 151 <hr align="left">
 152
 153 <p><a name="5"></a><strong>[5]</strong> <em>From a post by catherine yronwode </em></p>
 154
 155 <p>Eduardo Monteverdi Ricardo wrote:</p>
 156
 157 <p>The song below is an old Negro spiritual available at Digital Tradition. Does the
 158 John the Baptist verse reflect ambivalence about Christian/Jewish identity, do you think?</p>
 159
 160 <p><strong>Lonesome Valley</strong> </p>
 161
 162 <p>You got to walk that lonesome valley <br>
 163 You got to walk it by yourself;<br>
 164 There's no one here can walk it for you <br>
 165 You got to walk it for yourself. </p>
 166
 167 <p>Some say John, he was a Baptist <br>
 168 But I say he was a Jew <br>
 169 It's written there, for all to see it <br>
 170 That he had the gospel too. </p>
 171
 172 <p>Though you cannot preach like Peter <br>
 173 And you cannot pray like Paul, <br>
 174 You can tell the love of Jesus <br>
 175 You can tell He died for all.</p>
 176
 177 <p>Jesus walked that lonesome valley...</p>
 178
 179 <p>Now here is my take on the &quot;lonesome valley&quot; line in &quot;Trying To Get To
 180 Heaven&quot;. While the phrase &quot;that lonesome valley&quot; obviously invokes the old
 181 spiritual (and you really brought it home by pointing out the Christian/Jew ambiguity in
 182 the second verse!) i would like to add that the FORM of the line </p>
 183
 184 <p><em>I've been walkin' that lonesome valley</em></p>
 185
 186 <p>calls into play yet another song, &quot;Hard Travelling',&quot; by Woody Guthrie, in
 187 which Guthrie sings: </p>
 188
 189 <p><em>I've been walking that Lincoln highway, I thought you knowed, <br>
 190 I've been hittin' that 66, Way down the road <br>
 191 Heavy load and a worried mind, <br>
 192 Lookin' for a woman that's hard to find, <br>
 193 I've been hittin' some hard travelin', lord</em></p>
 194
 195 <p>[note to non-Americans: the Lincoln Highway (Highway 30; the old northern route) and
 196 Highway 66 (the old southern route) were travelled by &quot;Dust Bowl Refugees&quot;
 197 headed west during the 1930s.]</p>
 198
 199 <p>Guthrie was OBVIOUSLY quoting/rearranging the &quot;Lonesome Valley&quot; spiritual in
 200 his song &quot;Hard Travellin'&quot; &ndash; and Dylan plays with his knowledge of this by
 201 copying Guthrie's FORM, but restoring the altered Lincoln Highway lyric to the ORIGINAL
 202 Lonesome Valley lyric, while conflating his search for a woman with a search for Heaven's
 203 door. </p>
 204
 205 <p>&lt;snip&gt;</p>
 206
 207 <p><a name="9"></a><strong>[9] </strong>The gambler also appears in Dylan's &quot;Trying to Get to
 208 Heaven&quot; &ndash; in a verse that evokes the old gospel song &quot;This train is Bound For
 209 Glory,&quot; that being the song-title Woody Guthrie chose to reference as the title of
 210 his own autobiography!</p>
 211
 212 <p>Here's a verse from Guthrie's version of &quot;Bound For Glory&quot;: </p>
 213
 214 <p><em>This train don't carry no gamblers, this train, <br>
 215 This train don't carry no gamblers, this train, <br>
 216 This train don't carry no gamblers <br>
 217 No hypocrites, no midnight ramblers, <br>
 218 This train is bound for glory, this train.</em></p>
 219
 220 <p>-- and Dylan, from &quot;Trying To Get To Heaven&quot;: </p>
 221
 222 <p><em>Some trains don&lsquo;t pull no gamblers <br>
 223 No midnight ramblers like they did before</em></p>
 224
 225 <p><a name="7"></a><strong>[7] </strong>Then there is another Dylan's line in the same song: </p>
 226
 227 <p><em>I'm just going down the road feeling bad</em></p>
 228
 229 <p>-- and again the link to Guthrie is written in concrete, not floated on the wind, for
 230 that line is also Guthrie's, from a song called &quot;Going Down the Road Feeling
 231 Bad&quot;: </p>
 232
 233 <p><em>I'm going down the road feeling bad <br>
 234 I'm going down the road feeling bad <br>
 235 I'm going down the road feeling bad, Lord, Lord <br>
 236 And I ain't gonna be treated this-a-way. </em></p>
 237
 238 <p><a name="6a"></a><strong>[6a] </strong>Oh, and let's not forget Dylan's lines</p>
 239
 240 <p><em>People on the platforms <br>
 241 Waiting for the trains</em></p>
 242
 243 <p>Those are taken from Guthrie's &quot;Poor Boy,&quot; in which he sings: </p>
 244
 245 <p><em>I'm standing on a platform <br>
 246 Smoking a big cigar <br>
 247 Waiting for some old freight train <br>
 248 Carrying an empty car</em></p>
 249
 250 <p>(Hey &ndash; that cigar belongs in &quot;Standing In the Doorway,&quot; not &quot;Trying To
 251 Get To Heaven&quot; ;-)) But wait! &ndash; the very next verse of Guthrie's &quot;Poor
 252 Boy&quot; is</p>
 253
 254 <p><em>I rode her down to Danville town <br>
 255 Got stuck on a Danville girl <br>
 256 You bet your life she was a pearl <br>
 257 She wore that Danville curl</em></p>
 258
 259 <p>-- and that brings us to Dylan's &quot;New Danville Girl&quot; and her twin-sister, the
 260 &quot;Brownsville Girl,&quot; who is asked to</p>
 261
 262 <p><em>Take me all around the world</em></p>
 263
 264 <p>Evidently the Brownsville Girl complied with Dylan's request, because in &quot;Tring To
 265 Get To Heaven,&quot; he sings, </p>
 266
 267 <p><em>I been all around the world, boys</em></p>
 268
 269 <p>And that, i believe is enough &quot;trainspotting&quot; for this post!!!</p>
 270
 271 <p>catherine yronwode<br>
 272 </p>
 273
 274 <hr align="left">
 275
 276 <p><a name="6b"></a><strong>[6b] </strong><a href="mailto:rthomas@fas.harvard.edu"><em>Richard Thomas</em></a>
 277 <em>comments:</em></p>
 278
 279 <p>On Trying to Get to Heaven, I think spjohnny is right in connecting that house in New
 280 Orleans with the one in Baltimore. If so then why not connect</p>
 281
 282 <p>&quot;The Rising Sun Blues&quot; Folk Songs of North America (Lomax) p.290:</p>
 283
 284 <p><em>One foot is on the platform <br>
 285 The other one on the train, <br>
 286 I'm going back to New Orleans <br>
 287 To wear that ball and chain</em></p>
 288
 289 <p>with Get to Heaven's</p>
 290
 291 <p><em>People on the platforms, <br>
 292 waiting for the trains. <br>
 293 I can hear their hearts a-beatin' <br>
 294 like pendulum swingin' on chains</em></p>
 295
 296 <hr align="left">
 297
 298 <p><a name="3c"></a><strong>[3c] </strong>Also from <a href="mailto:rthomas@fas.harvard.edu"><em>Richard
 299 Thomas</em></a>:</p>
 300
 301 <p>The one line of &quot;Get to Heaven&quot; that seemed to me closer to Dylan of Blood on
 302 the Tracks, e.g., than to his remarkable folk, blues and spiritual intertexts on this
 303 amazing song was:</p>
 304
 305 <p><em>You broke a heart that loved you</em></p>
 306
 307 <p>But then I found in &quot;Folksongs of Alabama&quot; on the song &quot;Golden
 308 Chain&quot; (anyone else notice how many &quot;chains&quot; there are on TOOM?):</p>
 309
 310 <p><em>You have recked a heart that loved you <br>
 311 And no others bride I'll be; <br>
 312 Heaven's blessings rest upon you <br>
 313 You are nothing more to me.</em></p>
 314
 315 <p><a name="3b"></a><strong>[3b] </strong>By the way, on &quot;they would not let me be&quot; in the
 316 same verse of &quot;Get to Heaven&quot; Robert Johnson's &quot;Kindhearted Woman
 317 Blues&quot; has the line:</p>
 318
 319 <p><em>But these evil-hearted women man, they will not let me be</em></p>
 320
 321 <p><br>
 322 </p>
 323
 324 <hr align="left">
 325
 326 <p><a name="10"></a><strong>[10]</strong> <em>From a post to r.m.d. from <a href="mailto:jenigen@ix.netcom.com">Jim Jenigen</a> </em></p>
 327
 328 <p>Sorry I did not see the original post. But if you're referencing the line I've been to
 329 sugartown, I shook the sugar down), I have found what I think is the source.</p>
 330
 331 <p>Dylan: <em>&quot;I've been to sugartown, I shook the sugar down&quot;. </em></p>
 332
 333 <p>Song: &quot;<strong>Buck-Eye Rabbit</strong>&quot; <br>
 334 in Byron Arnold: <em>Folk Songs of Alabama</em>, University of Alabama Press, 1950, p. 120.
 335 This is the date of the anthology. The songs date much earlier.</p>
 336
 337 <p><em>I wanted su-gah ver-y much, <br>
 338 I went to Sug-ah Town, <br>
 339 I climbed up in that sug-ah tree <br>
 340 An' I shook that sug-ah down.</em></p>
 341
 342 <p><a name="4"></a><strong>[4]</strong> Here's another.</p>
 343
 344 <p>Dylan: &quot;Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore.&quot;</p>
 345
 346 <p>SONG: <strong>John The Revelator</strong>, third verse<br>
 347 From: Alan Lomax: <em>Our Singing Country</em>, Macmillian, N.Y.,194, p. 22. </p>
 348
 349 <p>Seal up your book, John, <br>
 350 An' don't write no more, <br>
 351 O John, John, <br>
 352 An' don't write no more.'</p>
 353
 354 <p><a name="2"></a><strong>[2]</strong> Indulge me for one more.... The Best One.</p>
 355
 356 <p>Dylan: &quot;Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.&quot;</p>
 357
 358 <p><strong>Song: The Old Ark's A-Moverin</strong>', verse seven <br>
 359 From: Lomax: <em>The Folk Songs of North America, </em>Doubleday,N.Y. 1960.<br>
 360 Heard in Negro churches in the South-West in the 1930's, this song is of Civil War
 361 vintage.</p>
 362
 363 <p><em>Look at that sister comin' 'long slow, <br>
 364 She's tryin' to get to Heaven fo' they close the do'.</em></p>
 365
 366 <p>Well that will do for now, though I do have more. In fact I have references to 19
 367 lines. The ones above are the most interesting to me right now. This is an incredible
 368 song. In my opinion this song alone should be consideration for the Nobel. This writing is
 369 so very cleverly crafted it has become my favorite of the record with Not Dark Yet a close
 370 second. Even though I have a favorite track I really think this is a record that plays as
 371 a whole. I've waited a long time for this kind of record. Thanks Bob.</p>
 372
 373 <p>Peace, Jim Jenigen Richmond VA Asheville Bound</p>
 374
 375 <hr align="left">
 376
 377 <p><a name=";-)"></a><strong>;-)</strong> (<strong><em>I actually intended to include only specific
 378 references, not general comments, but this one is too good to exclude</em></strong>:<em>)</em></p>
 379
 380 <p><em>From &quot;R. Bentz Kirby&quot; to rec.music.dylan:</em></p>
 381
 382 <p>Today, on the way home from soccer game, I slipped TOOM into the play mode right after
 383 the Dreaded Wallflowers. My 8 year old daughter commented on Trying to Get to Heaven. Her
 384 comments were something like this:</p>
 385
 386 <p>Well they better not close the door to heaven. At least not until everyone is in. [She
 387 thinks for a while and then says] Well, I guess it would be ok, as long as they open it
 388 when the next person comes. But, why would they do that. Open and close it. Close it and
 389 open it. I think they ought to just leave it open.</p>
 390
 391 <p>So do I.</p>
 392
 393 <p>Peace, <a href="mailto:bocelts@scsn.net">Bentz </a></p>
 394 </body>
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