Where Fruit, Cats and Happiness Meet Money, Blood and War...

Bob Dylan transformed songwriting in the 20th century by dumping everything into a creative blender, from beat poetry to ancient ballads restrung with vibrantly new lyrics, and he has been inherently post modern, well aware-even if it was by accident-of how to navigate the emerging ocean of pop culture and the blessing/curse of celebrity. And he's done it with his integrity and privacy intact--quite a feat. And he's done it, for the most part, in public-he releases studio albums regularly, tours in never ending fashion, and since 2006, he has hosted Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour on the airwaves. His shows aren’t just some celebrity DJ spinning favorite records (although Dylan obviously loves what he spins on the air) but are really concise history lessons in American music in all genres and eras, from blues, folk and country to jazz, R&B, soul, rock & roll, bebop, country, and even rap and spoken word, embracing the entire spectrum of ordered recorded sound from the early 1900s forward. Releases like this one, which collects 110 of the sides Dylan has spun on his show, reveal just how impressive all of it is. From an incredibly diverse litany of recording artists that includes Mel Blanc, Lefty Frizzell, Ike Turner, Brenda Lee, Steve Allen, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, Cousin Emmy, Billie Holiday, Peppermint Harris and many, many others, Dylan clusters songs around themes ranging from powerful topics like money, war and happiness to whimsical ones like fruit, cats, sugar and candy, until what he has assembled is a delightfully varied playlist of what we have been singing about, complaining about, celebrating, berating, adoring and bemoaning about for the past two hundred years. Dylan’s own recorded legacy is a testament to his searching intelligence and vision, but so, too, is his radio show. He instinctively understands that the whole history of recorded music is available in the 21st century, that it is, in a sense, all of it contemporary, and all of it is swept together on the digital highway. His show sorts through it and finds connections. Call it a fascinating call and response dialogue with America. Hopefully everyone is listening.