David Blue - So Easy She Goes By (live)

A rare live recording at the Unicorn Cafe.
Full performance available: http://guysands.blogspot.com/2010/07/david-blue-live-at-unicorn-cafe-1967.html

David Blue 1941-1982. Leonard Cohen wrote this elegy for him:
He died running, he fell beside the square, to the street where, many years before he had begun to sing, he fell in the fullest expression of vanity and discipline. Many of us, in our songs, had touched on the type of man that he became. Dylan raised up such a ragged hero many times before he turned to solace in the shadow of American Chistianity. Joni Mitchell had spoken simply of that constant ambiguous lover, spoken of him over and over, before she entered the beautiful technology of jazz and virtuosity. Kris Kristofferson had described that gambler playing his way from Nashville to Hollywood, where finally the dangers of the game were too coarse for poetry.

David Blue was the peer of any singer in this country, and he knew it, and he coveted their audiences and their power, he claimed them as his rightful due. And when he could not have them, his disappointment became so dazzling, his greed assumed such purity, his appetite such honesty, and he stretched his arrm so wide, that we were all able to recognize ourselves, and we fell in love with him. And as we grew older, as something in the public realm corrupted itself into irrelevance, the integrity of his ambition, the integritv of his failure, became, for those who knew him,increasingly important and appealing, and he moved swiftly, with effortless intimacy into the private life of anyone who recognized him, and our private lives became for him the theaters that no one would book for him, and he sang for us in hotel rooms and kitchens, and he became that poet and that gambler, and he established a defiant style to revive those soiled archeypes. In the last few years, something happened to his voice and his guitar, something very deep and sweet entered, his timing became immaculate and vwe knew that we were listening to one of the finest, one of the few men singing in America and I was happy then and perhaps happier now to say that I told him that.

He did not put away his cowboy boots. He did not take a part-time job, he was fully employed in his defiance and his originality and his faithfulness to a ground, a style, an image of which he himself was the last and best champion exponent, a style that many of us had wanted, courted, and had not won.And finally, toward the end of his short and graceful life, he had the grace to recognize the woman to whom he had always been singing, and he courted and married Nesya and because a woman of talent and beauty does not choose lightly, she made manifest for all to plainly see the qualities of love and generosity that he had forced out of his distress. The death of such a man unifies us, and recalls to us how precious we are to one another

Leonard Cohen

Category:

Music

Tags:

• folk
• dylan
• 60's
• rare
• live

[sauquoit13456]

David Blue was born on this date in 1941. {Feb. 18th}

Sadly, Mr. Blue passed away on December 2nd, 1982... May he R.I.P.

[NewWaver80014]

@yukonnoka It's a toughie but I think that is in fact our David.

Bob and Mike B. moved in almost completely different circles - I'm not sure they really even knew one another that well. Now if we'd been talking about, say, Paul Butterfield and Mike I could see it! :)

[jcisbell]

@yukonnoka I think you're right.

[PalaverTwist]

@indnjake Cool!

[PalaverTwist]

If Dylan would have left the singing to David and others and kept with writing the lyrics... IF but that's okay. Dylan brought more to the table than anyone in history with his phenomenal lyrics. I have to admit. The mutton chops brought a chuckle and the song brought back memories. Well actually, the mutton chops did  too. LOL! Thank you for sharing! Best regards, Naomi

[yukonnoka]

i think that's actually Mike Bloomfield @ 0:45...

[indnjake]

It was David Blue and the American Patrol, i was at that gig

[willgonow]

spend all his time in dylan's shadow,

a maybe man !!!!

[nimkii4444]

David Blue, a brilliant wordsmith and singer songwriter. Rest in peace brother.

[brendanseanbarry]

Thank you so much for posting this brilliant recording. So many of the greatest moments in rock music are so obscure and in danger of never being able to receive even a fraction of the recognition that they desreve. And so many of the so-called minor artists from that era are actually musical giants, worthy of serious investigation. Thanks also to Youtube for making all this possible. P.S. I'd love to hear 'Dancing Girl' and 'Any Love At All' if anyone has them.