Jimmie Rodgers is one of those names banded around by artists of an older generation. They were on the living room radio and have imprinted themselves on those impressionable minds. Few would go on to cover Rodgers’ work on stage, but Bob Dylan is no usual artist. His cover of My Blue-Eyed Jane is just one piece of a sweet live compilation but it stands out as one of the many left-field choices Dylan has made when it comes to covers. Be it not knowing the words but still hammering away at Dancing in the Dark or frequent appearances of Grateful Dead material, cover work is a frequent addition to the stage production and style Dylan now feels for. It was certainly big in the 1990s, where this cover comes from. Ripped from Birmingham, Alabama, My Blue-Eyed Jane feels about right for the city.
A soft swing tune adapted into country and folk fundamentals is the likely route, and the one taken for this Dylan cover. It would later feature on a compilation album of Rodgers covers, but this live version is a gentle yet softly staggering piece of live work. A sweetheart song where tributes are paid to some nondescript woman. Who Jane is, now, is meaningless. What matters now is the image this faceless woman presents, the idealisation of a singer looking for love or conviction. Plenty of songs now feel like a committed appeal to the heart without a clear figure in mind, and they are all better off in the hands of artists moved by them, covering them decades later. Such is the case for Rodgers, and compilations which feature Dylan and Jerry Garcia are proof of this. Sweet things and whispered positivity are the chance for love here.
But surely it is not this simple. Dylan may be moved by the simplicities of it, there is no doubt the audience here and those listening today are, but there is a sense of grief to it. This desire to bottle up the time, to have no extra memory affects the image of Jane. Death? Departed? Who knows. Separation and the anxiety which follows it has us paint strange pictures and this could be the case for Dylan who, no doubt, taps into those early years when he first heard the song to make heads or tails of it here. He comes out the other end with a twisted yet calming country swing, one which does not, at first, share the wealth of doubt and risk found on a return listen. Go again, pick it out, those suggestions of staying the same sound factual, controlling, rather than loved-up eyes refusing to age.
My Blue-Eyed Jane is a song of complexities disguised as a plain old, hard-working love story. Dylan sees through this and cuts on during this Alabama-based performance. He holds the same themes in songs of his own, in those moments where the plainer loves and facts are easy to disguise, and necessary to. Take a swing at love, the risk of it is too hard for some to handle and Rodgers, later Dylan, understood this. Blue eyes. Something about the eyes is what we were meant to remember people by. It is on My Blue-Eyed Jane. No other striking experience. No interest in anything but the eyes. It sounds innocent on paper but then the guilt and gut-wrenching sense of something afoot begins to seep in. Dylan does well to mount those feelings which come from those wanting more from the plain ditties of the time.
