Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members

Ray Padgett Interviews Dylan's Musicians

Ramblin' Jack Elliott sums up the consensus of some people

Ray Padgett

speaks to in his book Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members (EWP Press, 2023). Ramblin' Jack, now 92, is a Brooklyn-born Jewish cowboy singer, a former compatriot of Dylan's idol Woody Guthrie. Elliott met Dylan in his earliest days in Greenwich Village.

In 1975, Elliott joined the first leg of the traveling musical carnival known as the Rolling Thunder Revue.

Elliott wanted to play the second leg, too, in 1976, but despite his status in Dylan's cosmology, earned no special treatment from the leader.

"I did want to go on it. I was a glutton for punishment," Elliott said. "I visited Bob at his house and asked if there was any chance of me going along with them on tour . . . He said, "I don't know what the plan is. I heard that Joan Baez is going to be there. And Kinky Friedman." He was, in his own way letting me know that I wasn't going to be on the tour. Kinky Friedman replaced me."

Padgett asks: "Was Bob Dyla…