A little later today.....got a new work computer,

I wanted to use a song with title reference to the cold north country of Minnesota....hopefully we're saying goodbye to winter and snowstorms for awhile. As with last week, I'm listing an artist twice.......Bob Dylan - the Nashville Skyline/Johnny Cash is distinctly different enough from the original that I'm putting them against each other.

Vote favorite version, not favorite artist.

I voted for Other- Pete Townshend

Other- I love the Mojave 3 version.

I like many of these but nobody does it better than Dylan and Cash.

I voted for Dylan and Cash.
Stills does a nice version as well.

Bob.

I went with Bob Dylan (no Cash), but I like the Eels' live cover a lot.

I went for Leon Russell, but to be honest I don't remember what the CSNY or Counting Crows sound like though i probably own both of them.Did Russell sing lead on it? It is on MD&E, but i think of it as a LR solo.

The Leon Russell/Joe Cocker one is MD&E.
CSN started (I think) on the 2012 tour.....it's on their latest live release.

This is one of those songs of which I'm never sure of the exact title--I'm not at home, but I believe that somewhere in the Dylan catalog it is referred to as "Girl OF The North Country". As mentioned, there is also Pete Townshend's "North Country Girl", which is credited as "Traditional arr. P. Townshend", but which certainly echoes Dylan's version. How original was Dylan's version? He's been called more recently for co-opting old songs.

But I have to vote for the Dylan/Cash version. Dylan's original acoustic version sort of gets lost in the shuffle for me (it sounds an awful lot like "Boots Of Spanish Leather") but I especially love the Dylan/Cash version when looking at it within the overall context of "Nashville Skyline":

1. The beginning of 1969--Dylan has not released an album since "John Wesley Harding" in late 1967. The Basement Tapes material, recorded in mid-1967, was mostly unknown to the public, as the "Great White Wonder" bootleg would not be released until July of 1969. Dylan played publically only one time in 1968--a three-song set with the Band at a Woody Guthrie tribute concert.

2. 1969--the hippie movement is in full swing. The Woodstock concert was planned for Woodstock, New York, based almost entirely on the fact that Dylan apparently lived there. Of course, the concert would wind up being staged in Bethel, but hopes that Dylan might play endured. Probably as a "F-You", Dylan instead elected to play a rare (for that era) concert in the UK that month (8/69), at the Isle of Wight festival.

3. February, 1969--Dylan travels to Nashville and records "Nashville Skyline" in something like nine days. The album is released in April. On the cover of the album, Dylan is actually smiling. Side 1, Track 1 is the Dylan/Cash "Girl From The North Country." Every time I pop this CD into my player, I picture a circle of head-band wearing hippies (probably also wearing yellow-tinted glasses and Nehru jackets a la Greg Brady) passing around a joint and imagine them being seized by a coughing fit as they hear Bob's strange new "crooning" style of singing for the first time--in roughly three years, Dylan has gone from "Visions Of Johanna" and that wild, mercury sound, to "Country Pie" and steel guitars.

Another elaborate "F-You" from Zimmy? I don't doubt it for a second. Even if Dylan's intentions in recording a country record were indeed sincere, I prefer to think of them as anything but.

I ALMOST went that way, but really, it had to be Bob & Johnny.

What? No J.J. Burnel?

Oh, wait - that was "Girl From the SNOW Country." Never mind...

Pete!