The musical dialogue between Bob Dylan and Black America [View all]

The musical dialogue between Bob Dylan and Black America
"Highway of Diamonds" showcases decades of Black artists reshaping and sometimes radically reframing Dylan's work

By Caryn Rose
Published February 24, 2026 12:00PM (EST)


(Salon) “​​Highway of Diamonds – Black America Sings Bob Dylan” is the latest release in Ace Records’ “Black America Sings…” series. Ace is a small but mighty UK label that specializes in reissues and vintage catalog material, prioritizing physical releases that feature thoughtful annotations and liner notes. Their previous Dylan entry in the series (2010’s “How Many Roads”) features several of the same artists on “Highway of Diamonds,” and that’s not because they were limited for choice, but because there are simply so many excellent covers to choose from.

The songs on “Highway of Diamonds” span from the early ’60s to almost the ’90’s (“Oh Mercy” is the most contemporaneous of the albums represented, with Bettye LaVette’s brilliant “Everything Is Broken”) and the renditions themselves extend across an even larger continuum; some — like the Staple Singers’ “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” — were recorded not long after the originals, but there’s representation in every decade here, which points to the kind of longevity and relevance that any songwriter would envy. Not every presentation is a home run, but they’re all worth more than a few listens.

As the liner notes explain, Dylan is the third-most popular covered songwriter ever, outranked only by The Beatles and Duke Ellington. And an interesting way to approach listening to this volume is perhaps to try to envision a world in which Bob Dylan was making his living as a songwriter, selling his songs alongside the other tunesmiths who’d set up shop in the Brill Building. That’s hard if not impossible to do, given the presence of some of these songs in our lives, but it’s a fun exercise to try to detach the recording from history and evaluate it as a song or as a performance.

....(snip)....

Nina Simone, even in 1969, carried a power and presence that she had well earned at that point, and her interpretation of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” feels more grounded at a soul level, so she can simply (okay, it’s not simple, but she makes it seem that way) drop right in and quietly — but powerfully — inhabit the composition, whereas Bob delivers it at a full jittery throttle. You can hear the differences in lives and backgrounds and upbringing, of men and women in the ’60s, of class and Jim Crow, it’s all in there. They’re both equally enmeshed in the piece; they’re both bringing their own individual mojo, and it’s utterly fascinating to hear what she heard and let her take you in the side door on this song so you can see it through her eyes. .......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/02/24/the-musical-dialogue-between-bob-dylan-and-black-america/