Bob Dylan is one of the most prolific artists of all time. He has written more than 600 songs throughout his career and has sold millions of records worldwide. Over the past six decades, he has been an inspiration to countless artists, many of whom have covered his songs—sometimes even creating versions that surpassed the original. Bob himself liked many of those covers but there is one that he said was his favorite one.
The cover of one of his songs Bob Dylan said was his favorite
Bob once said that Johnny Rivers‘ version of Positively 4th Street was his favorite cover of one of his songs. “Of all the versions of my recorded songs, the Johnny Rivers version of ‘Positively 4th Street’ was my favorite. It was obvious that we were from the same side of town, had been read the same citations, came from the same musical family and were cut from the same cloth. I liked his version better than mine.”
“Most of the cover versions of my songs seem to take them out into left field somewhere. But Rivers’ version had the mandate down; the attitude and melodic sense to complete and surpass even the feeling that I had put into it. It shouldn’t have surprised me, though. He had done the same thing with ‘Maybellene’ and ‘Memphis,’ two Chuck Berry songs. When I heard Johnny sing my song, it was obvious that life had the same external grip on him as it did me,” Bob Dylan said in his book “Chronicles“.
“Positively 4th Street” was released by Bob in 1965 as a single. Three years later, in 1968, Johnny Rivers covered the track, being featured on his album “Realization”.
Johnny Rivers was quite happy about Bob’s statement
Johnny Rivers was obviously quite happy with Dylan’s compliment and mentioned that a few years ago in an interview with Las Vegas Magazine. He said that people who knew him told him about Dylan praising his song in the book.
“I need to polish (songs) it a lot because all the facts and the datelines are right. But it needs to be polished into an interesting. You know, how you write a book just like Dylan had somebody… Speaking of books, Bob Dylan’s book, you know, ‘Chronicles: (Volume) One’.”
He continued:
“He wrote a whole paragraph on me and he said my recording of “Positively 4th Street,” of all the recorded versions of his songs, that was his favorite. You ought to look that up. It’s on page 61, I think. Read what he said. Everyone called me after tha and said, ‘Wow, did you see what Bob Dylan wrote about you in his book?'”
“It’s a pretty good compliment. There’s thousands of recordings of his songs. Everybody back in those days, especially in the ’60s, recorded at least one Dylan song on their album, even the jazz singers. So for him to say out of all of those recordings, mine was his favorite … I think he said he liked it better than his record, or something,” Johnny Rivers said.
Rivers curiously said once that he wasn’t into to Rap music but that he believed Bob Dylan was one of the first rappers. The reason were his lyrics, like for example “Maggie’s in the basement, mixing up the medicine…”
Rivers toured and recorded from 1956 to 2023 and had many successful hits. Some of them are “Memphis”, “Secret Agent Man”, “Mountain of Love”, “The Poor Side of Town” and more.
He has a total of nine top 10 hits and 17 top 40 hits in the United States charts from 1964 to 1977. His farewell tour was announced in 2019 and the last show happened in 2023 at the Commerce Casino near Los Angeles.
