"Love and Theft"
Studio album by Bob Dylan
Released	September 11, 2001
Recorded	May 2001
Genre	Folk/Rock/Blues
Length	57:25
Label	Columbia
Producer(s)	Bob Dylan (as Jack Frost)
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link The A.V. Club (Favorable) link Blender (Favorable) Oct 2001, p.102 Robert Christgau (A+) link Music Box link PopMatters (Favorable) link Q (Favorable) Oct 2001, p.122 Rolling Stone RS 878 Spin (Favorable) Nov 2001, p.127 Village Voice (Favorable) 9/26/01
Bob Dylan chronology
The Essential Bob Dylan (2000) "Love and Theft" (2001) The Bootleg Series Vol. 5 (2002)

"Love and Theft" is the 31st studio album by Bob Dylan, released in 2001 by Sony BMG. This is an album cover. ... A studio album is a collection of previously unreleased, studio-recorded tracks by a recording artist. ... Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, and poet who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. ... September 11 is the 254th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (255th in leap years). ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Folk rock is a musical genre, combining elements of folk music and rock music. ... Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes and a repetitive pattern that most often follows a twelve-bar structure. ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... In the music industry, a record producer (or music producer) has many roles, among them controlling the recording sessions, coaching and guiding the musicians, organizing and scheduling production budget and resources, and supervising the recording, mixing and mastering processes. ... Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, and poet who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. ... The All Music Guide (AMG) is a metadata database about music owned by All Media Guide. ... Image File history File links 4. ... The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. ... Blender is an American magazine that bills itself as the ultimate guide to music and more. ... Robert Christgau (2007) Robert Christgau (sometimes abbreviated in print to Xgau), born April 18, 1942, is an American essayist, music journalist, and the self-declared Dean of American Rock Critics[1] His first reviews were published by Esquire in 1967. ... Image File history File links 4_stars. ... PopMatters is an international magazine of cultural criticism. ... Q is a music and entertainment magazinepublished monthly in the United Kingdom. ... This article is about the music magazine. ... Image File history File links 5_stars. ... Spin is a music magazine that reports on all the music that rocks. Founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione, Jr. ... The Village Voice is a New York City-based weekly newspaper featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City. ... Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, and poet who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. ... The Essential Bob Dylan is the fourth official compilation by Bob Dylan, released as a double-CD set in 2000. ... A studio album is a collection of previously unreleased, studio-recorded tracks by a recording artist. ... Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, and poet who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Bertelsmann is a transnational media corporation founded in 1835, based in G tersloh, Germany. ...

The album continued Dylan's artistic comeback following 1997's Time out of Mind, and was given an even more enthusiastic reception. Though often referred to without quotations, the correct title is "Love and Theft". The title of the album was apparently inspired by historian Eric Lott's book, Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, which was published in 1993. Year 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1997 Gregorian calendar). ... Time Out of Mind is Bob Dylans critically-acclaimed comeback album, released in 1997. ... Eric Lott (b. ...

The songs

""Love and Theft" becomes his Fables of the Reconstruction, to borrow an R.E.M. album title," writes Greg Kot in The Chicago Tribune (published Sep. 11, 2001), "the myths, mysteries and folklore of the South as a backdrop for one of the finest roots-rock albums ever made." This article is about the band. ... Front page of the Tribune incorrectly reporting that Dewey won the 1948 presidential election The Chicago Tribune, formerly self-styled as the Worlds Greatest Newspaper, remains the leading newspaper of the Midwest of the United States. ...

The opening track, "'Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum,' includes many references to parades in Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where participants are masked, and "determined to go all the way" of the parade route, in spite of being intoxicated. It rolls in like a storm, drums galloping over the horizon into ear shot, guitar riffs slicing with terse dexterity while a tale about a pair of vagabonds unfolds," writes Kot. "It ends in death, and sets the stage for an album populated by rogues, con men, outcasts, gamblers, gunfighters and desperados, many of them with nothing to lose, some of them out of their minds, all of them quintessentially American.

"They're the kind of twisted, instantly memorable characters one meets in John Ford's westerns, Jack Kerouac's road novels, but, most of all, in the blues and country songs of the 1920s, '30s and '40s. This is a tour of American music -- jump blues, slow blues, rockabilly, Tin Pan Alley ballads, country swing -- that evokes the sprawl, fatalism and subversive humor of Dylan's sacred text, Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, the pre-rock voicings of Hank Williams, Charley Patton and Johnnie Ray, among others, and the ultradry humor of Groucho Marx." John Ford (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973) was an American film director famous for westerns such as Stagecoach and The Searchers and adaptations of such classic 20th century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath. ... Jack Kerouac (pronounced ) (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. ... Tin Pan Alley was the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. ... There have been a number of prominent people named Harry Smith: For the folk-music anthologist, filmmaker, artist, ethomusicologist, and Kabbalist see Harry Everett Smith For the professional wrestler see Harry Smith (son of the famous late professional wrestler Davey Boy Smith) For the American songwriter see Harry B. Smith... For other persons named Hank Williams, see Hank Williams (disambiguation). ... Charley Patton Charley Patton (May 1, 1891–April 28, 1934) was an American delta blues musician, and one of the first mainstream stars of the genre. ... Johnnie Ray from the trailer for one of his few films, Theres No Business Like Show Business (1954) John Alvin Ray (January 10, 1927–February 24, 1990) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. ... Julius Henry Marx, AKA Groucho Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), was an American comedian, working both with his siblings, the Marx Brothers, and on his own. ...

Sheryl Crow would later rework Mississippi's melody, phrasing, and arrangement, and record it for The Globe Sessions, released in 1998, before Dylan revisited it for "Love and Theft". Subsequently the Dixie Chicks would make it a mainstay of their Top of the World, Vote for Change, and Accidents & Accusations Tours, in an approach that substantially followed Crow's. Sheryl Suzanne Crow (born February 11, 1962) is a nine-time Grammy winning American blues rock singer, guitarist, bassist, and songwriter. ... Mississippi is the second song on Bob Dylans 2001 album Love and Theft. It was originally left over from his previous album, 1997s Time Out of Mind. ... The Globe Sessions is the third studio album by American singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow, released in 1998 (see 1998 in music). ... The Dixie Chicks are a thirteen-time Grammy Award-winning female country/rock music trio from the United States comprising Emily Robison, Martie Maguire and Natalie Maines. ... The Top of the World Tour was the Dixie Chicks 2003 worldwide concert tour. ... Concept Vote for Change was a politically motivated American popular music concert tour that took place in October 2004. ... The Accidents & Accusations Tour is a 2006 concert tour by the Dixie Chicks. ...

As Tim Riley of NPR notes, "[Dylan's] singing [on "Love and Theft"] shifts artfully between humble and ironic...'I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound,' he sings in 'Floater,' which is either hilarious or horrifying, and probably a little of both." NPR logo For other meanings of NPR see NPR (disambiguation) National Public Radio (NPR) is a private, not-for-profit corporation that sells programming to member radio stations; together they are a loosely organized public radio network in the United States. ...

""Love and Theft" is, as the title implies, a kind of homage," writes Kot, "[and] never more so than on 'High Water (for Charley Patton),' in which Dylan draws a sweeping portrait of the South's racial history, with the unsung blues singer as a symbol of the region's cultural richness and ingrained social cruelties. Rumbling drums and moaning backing vocals suggest that things are going from bad to worse. 'It's tough out there,' Dylan rasps. 'High water everywhere.' Death and dementia shadow the album, tempered by tenderness and wicked gallows humor." Charley Patton Charley Patton (May 1, 1891–April 28, 1934) was an American delta blues musician, and one of the first mainstream stars of the genre. ...

"'Po Boy,' scored for banjo with lounge chord jazz patterns, 'almost sounds as if it could have been recorded around 1920," says Riley. "He leaves you dangling at the end of each bridge, lets the band punctuate the trail of words he's squeezed into his lines, which gives it a reluctant soft-shoe charm."

The album closes with "Sugar Baby," a lengthy, dirge-like ballad, noted for its evocative, apocalyptic imagery and sparse production drenched in echo. Praising it as "a finale to be proud of," Riley notes that "Sugar Baby" is "built on a disarmingly simple riff that turns foreboding."

Christopher Ricks, a Warren Professor of the Humanities, writes extensively on "Sugar Baby" in his book, Dylan's Visions of Sin. "The song's beat is fourfold, and the rhythm of the instrumental opening is immediately confirmed by there being four syllables in each of the first two units. But the words that provide the title and that later open the refrain, 'Sugar Baby,' have their four syllables two by two, 2 x 2. The rhythm of the words 'Sugar Baby' is a dual rhythm, fourfold and twofold. And in pacing the song, Dylan pauses at certain points so as to make two syllables occupy the time and space that in the basic scheme of things will be expected to be occupied by four syllables. It is this movement in the voicing, with its pauses (contemplative, disconcerted, riven, chary, sardonic, shifting its grounds), that gives to the song its unique gait..." The song also bears the influence of Gene Austin's "Lonesome Road," first copyrighted in 1928; "Sugar Baby" even quotes a line from Austin's song: "Look up, look up and seek your Maker, 'fore Gabriel blows his horn." However, while both songs share a feeling of apocalyptic dread, the phrasing and structure is very different. "At every point in ['Lonesome Road'], the words and the music and the voice are fittingly in place," Ricks writes. "In ['Sugar Baby'], they are at odds. They move as the spirit takes them, and their spirit engages not only with the precious but with the precarious."

Aftermath

In a glowing review for his "Consumer Guide" column published by The Village Voice, Robert Christgau wrote: "Before minstrelsy scholar Eric Lott gets too excited about having his title stolen...he should recall that Dylan called his first cover album Self-Portrait. Dylan meant that title, of course, and he means this one too, which doesn't make "Love and Theft" his minstrelsy album any more than Self-Portrait's dire "Minstrel Boy" was his minstrelsy song. All pop music is love and theft, and in 40 years of records whose sources have inspired volumes of scholastic exegesis, Dylan has never embraced that truth so warmly. Jokes, riddles, apercus, and revelations will surface for years, but let those who chart their lives by Dylan's cockeyed parables tease out the details. I always go for tone, spirit, music. If Time Out of Mind was his death album--it wasn't, but you know how people talk--this is his immortality album. It describes an eternal circle on masterful blazz and jop readymades that render his grizzled growl as juicy as Justin Timberlake's tenor--Tony Bennett's, even. It's profound, too, by which I mean very funny. 'I'm sitting on my watch so I can be on time,' he wheezes, because time he's got plenty of." Christgau gave the album a rare A+. Time Out of Mind is Bob Dylans critically-acclaimed comeback album, released in 1997. ...

Later, when The Village Voice conducted its Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 2001, "Love and Theft" topped the list, the third Dylan album to accomplish this. The Village Voice is a weekly newspaper in New York City featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City. ... The Pazz & Jop critics poll is a highly influential poll of music critics run by The Village Voice newspaper. ...

In 2003, the album was ranked number 467 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. This article is about the magazine. ... The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time is the cover story of a special issue of Rolling Stone magazine published in November 2003. ...

9/11

Unfortunately, when the album's release date finally came, it was not a day of celebration. "Love and Theft" reached stores on September 11, 2001. The World Trade Center on fire The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. ...

Even the political fall-out was seen in "High Water" and "Summer Days"; the former featured verses like "Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew/'You can't open your mind, boys, to every conceivable point of view'/They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five/Judge says to the High Sheriff, 'I want him dead or alive/Either one, I don't care" while the latter had "Politician got on his jogging shoes/He must be running for office, got no time to lose/He been suckin' the blood out of the genius of generosity."

Such interpretations quickly became fashionable, but as other important events have taken shape and the attacks on the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and Shanksville, Pennsylvania recede into history, it's uncertain how long these interpretations will last. In an interview conducted by Alan Jackson for The Times Magazine in 2001, before the album was released, Dylan said "these so-called connoisseurs of Bob Dylan music...I don't feel they know a thing, or have any inkling of who I am and what I’m about. I know they think they do, and yet it’s ludicrous, it's humorous, and sad. That such people have spent so much of their time thinking about who? Me? Get a life, please. It’s not something any one person should do about another. You’re not serving your own life well. You’re wasting your life."

Allegations of "Theft"

In August 2003, The Wall Street Journal had a front page article detailing allegations of plagiarism in lyrics found in "Love and Theft". A number of lines were apparently taken from Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japan's Underworld, a Japanese book written by Junichi Saga. Translated to English by John Bester, the book was a biography of one of the last traditional Yakuza bosses in Japan. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an influential international daily newspaper published by Dow Jones & Company in New York City, New York with Asian and European editions, and a worldwide daily circulation of more than 2 million as of 2006, with 931,000 paying online subscribers [2]. It was the... Confessions of a Yakuza ) is a book by Japanese doctor and author Junichi Saga (1991). ... John Bester, born and educated in England, is one of the foremost translators of modern Japanese fiction. ... Yakuza ), also known as gokudō (極道), are members of traditional organized crime groups in Japan. ...

In the article published in the Journal, a line from "Floater" ("I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound") was traced to a line in the book, which said "I'm not as cool or forgiving as I might have sounded." A number of other examples were listed, all of which can be found here.

Much like similar allegations regarding parts of songs on Dylan's next album, Modern Times, many people have supported Dylan in the context of a larger, older blues and folk tradition of songwriters adapting and using parts of other people's work into new songs. The term Modern Times is used by historians to loosely describe the period of time immediately following what is known as the Early Modern Times. ...

Track listing

All songs by Bob Dylan.

1. "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum" – 4:46
2. "Mississippi" – 5:21
3. "Summer Days" – 4:52
4. "Bye and Bye" – 3:16
5. "Lonesome Day Blues" – 6:05
6. "Floater (Too Much to Ask)" – 4:59
7. "High Water (For Charley Patton)" – 4:04
8. "Moonlight" – 3:23
9. "Honest with Me" – 5:49
10. "Po' Boy" – 3:05
11. "Cry a While" – 5:05
12. "Sugar Baby" – 6:40

Mississippi is the second song on Bob Dylans 2001 album Love and Theft. It was originally left over from his previous album, 1997s Time Out of Mind. ... Bye and Bye is a song written by Bob Dylan, released in 2001 as the fourth track on his album Love and Theft. Musically, Bye and Bye is what Oliver Trager calls an easygoing, lilting ballad. ... Love and Theft is the 31st studio album by Bob Dylan, released in 2001 by Sony BMG. The album continued Dylans artistic comeback following 1997s Time out of Mind, and was given an even more enthusiastic reception. ... High Water (For Charley Patton) is a song from Bob Dylans Love and Theft. ... Sugar Baby is the final song on Bob Dylans 2001 album Love and Theft. ...

Samples

Image File history File links Tweedle_Dee_and_Tweedle_Dum. ... Software development stages In computer programming, development stage terminology expresses how the development of a piece of software has progressed and how much further development it may require. ...

Credits

• Bob Dylan - vocals, guitar, piano
• Larry Campbell - guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin
• Charlie Sexton - guitar
• Tony Garnier - bass
• Augie Meyers - accordion, Hammond B3 & Vox organs
• David Kemper - drums
• Clay Meyers - bongos