Brownville Girl by Bob Dylan

Brownsville Girl is one of those songs that Bob Dylan could record. Appearing on his Greatest Hits Volume III as well as appearing originally on the 1986 album Knocked Out Loaded the song was co written by Dylan and the playwright Sam Shepard.

While the album itself was not received that well the song is regarded as one of Dylan's best epic songs. Epic being one of the best of the many story talk songs that Dylan has recorded over the years.

Dylan sings about a girl that he still remembers, we assume over the passage of time, and in the course of telling the story of that girl we hear some lines that are classic Dylan. We hear the line " you always said people don't do what they believe in, they do what's most convenient and then they repent." If you think about that line it is as close to the truth as you will hear in a song.

Early in the song we learn about Henry Porter, who while the hero of the song waits for him to return, his woman tells him that " even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt."

Most noted in the song is Dylan's continual references to a movie that he saw and remembered starring Gregory Peck. Throughout the song the protagonist keeps coming back to this point, that he remembers the movie, would see it over and over, and how he would see Peck " in anything, I'll stand in line."

The song will occasionally find it's way out of a playlist of mine or on a special day perhaps even on a satellite channel I am listening to. It is one of those songs that you never turn off, it is a sit in the car and listen to the end kind of song. How many songs can you say that about.

For me a great deal of those songs come to us from Bob.