The greatness of Tony Brown's bass on Blood on the Tracks

One of the great unsung heroes in Bob Dylan’s catalogue is bassist Tony Brown

Post by Trev Gibb

One of the great unsung heroes in Bob Dylan’s catalogue is bassist Tony Brown. He worked with Dylan just once, but his contribution to the New York Sessions for Blood On The Tracks, and the unique sound made by his lonesome bass chiming and weaving with Dylan’s open tuned guitar have strummed mythic overtones through the decades.

The spookiness of the sonic landscape that Dylan’s voice and lyrics pulse through have rarely been repeated so intensely in Dylan’s vast catalogue and it’s something of that unspeakable mystery — you can feel it in Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, Idiot Wind and Shelter From The Storm — that you feel in those New York songs. Two men on an odyssey, searching the mountain tops for a glimpse of Christ, for the priest on the seventh day, on borderlines, through buttons of coats, howling beasts and back roads, bass throbbing, coat buttons striking the guitar like hoof beats pounding.

Great musicians live inside the song making it come alive as it unfolds, great musicians look out for each other through busting storms of dust slicing flesh and eyes and they soldier on. Brown and Dylan are so locked in, they’re almost one, even if it feels like they’re hanging on for dear life. That’s what you want when your backs to the wall, when death keeps tracking you down, when your identity has been shattered in history’s wilderness, you pour your skull onto a page, you’re looking for someone to help you make it through, someone to go all the way, no questions asked and make it mean something. Brown is a rare beast, one of only few to have gone that deep with Dylan. Paul Griffin was another, the sprinkle of organ on Idiot Wind or back to the greatest piano accompaniment in all of rock n’ roll, One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later).

There would be glimpses again of that same sacred sound that Brown and Dylan made, that same mysterious texture in newer songs like Señor, I Believe In You, Caribbean Wind, Shooting Star, Most of the Time, Standing in the Doorway. Take your pick, slot in your own.

Brown’s bass and the hands that move around it know there’s a trinity, it’s in John Wesley Harding, in Charlie McCoy’s bass it’s in Bruce Langhorne’s sweet chiming almost bass-like Martin acoustic (he had started using a De Armond pickup in his Martin guitar) accompaniment on Its All Over Now Baby Blue, and the vibes Blood touches in New York were there in the Basement Tapes’ haunting I Shall Be Released. All of that bleeds through Dylan’s hands too.

Tony Brown (second from the right) next to Eric Weissberg (right)

Tony Brown is also the brother of Peter Stone Brown, so I’ll let Peter take it from here:

Tony Brown was the bass player for Eric Weissberg and Deliverance. Deliverance recorded one album for Warner Brothers and one single for Epic, the other members of Deliverance present at the New York Sessions were guitarist Charlie Brown and drummer Richard Crooks, with session player Thomas McFaul and Barry Kornfeld making up the unit who played on the first session. After the first session for Blood on the Tracks, Brown was the only member of that group asked to remain for the other sessions. What Bob Dylan had no way of knowing at the time was Tony Brown was a Dylan fan since 1963, had the albums, had sung many of the songs, and being a serious musician had paid attention to what the other players on Dylan albums were doing. In the case of these sessions in particular, he studied Charlie McCoy’s bass playing on John Wesley Harding.

Charlie MccCoy - solo bass ‘John Wesley Harding‘

Tony had also toured with Happy and Artie Traum and recorded with the Woodstock Mountain Revue on the Mud Acres Album, which included the Traums, Maria Muldaur, John Herald and many other musicians. He also toured and recorded with Eric Andersen appearing on his Sweet Surprise album and with guitarist Arlen Roth. He is no longer involved in the music business.