Bob Dylan began his most recent XM Radio show by providing a long list of flowers which I wouldn’t even attempt to transcribe. However, the show was mostly laden with roses, with a couple of tulips popping up here and there, and some grass growing between them.

Dylan kicked things off with a “mornin’ glory of a song,” that being Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys (first appearance I believe?) with “New San Antonio Rose.”

Later:

Speaking of grass, George Jones once had to drive down the freeway on his ride-on lawnmower. His wife, Tammy Wynette, was sick of his constant drinking. She emptied the house of liquor, she took away his car keys, and made him a virtual prisoner in an attempt to ween him off the booze. One afternoon, alone in the house, George wanted a drink. The house was quite a distance from Nashville, too far to walk. So George hopped on the only vehicle he still had the keys to. You could see George heading down the side of the highway, going towards the liquor store, on his ride-on lawnmower.

That preceded Jones’ “Good Year For The Roses.” That’s a song Elvis Costello once covered, and, jumping ahead, Dylan also later played a hot-off-the-presses song from Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, called “The Sharpest Thorn.”

Dylan read us some Robert Frost:

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose -
But were always a rose.

Robert Frost, frosty poet. Of-course Gertrude Stein took it one step further, with her immortal poem, “a rose is a rose is a rose.” And then of-course there’s:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Some poems rhyme
This one doesn’t

More poetry later:

Christopher Marlowe wrote, in “The Passionate Shepherd To His Love,”

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant poises,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

… that’s how Christopher Marlowe said it. Kim Shattuck and her band, The Muffs, have another way of putting it.

Cue the highly energetic tune, “Laying On A Bed Of Roses.”

Dylan gave us another long list I won’t try to reproduce, of official state flowers. Edifying indeed.

I guess we had to hear from Dylan’s old partner in crime circa Greenwich Village in 1961, i.e. Tiny Tim. Dylan paid tribute to the fact that “no one knew more about old music than Tiny Tim did. He studied it, and he loved it. He knew all the songs that only existed in sheet music. When he passed away, we lost a national treasure.” Cue “Tip Toe Through The Tulips,” which “sold over 200,000 copies in the year nineteen and sixty eight.”

Dylan introduced the Carter Family for the first time in this series (he had played “Keep On The Sunnyside” without an introduction on his first show). He called them “the most influential group in country music history,” and said they …

… switched the emphasis from hillbilly instrumentals to vocals. Alvin P. Carter, his wife Sara, and their sister-in-law Maybelle, sang pure simple harmony. A.P. collected hundreds of British Appalachian folk songs, and recorded them, enhancing the pure beauty of these facts-of-life tunes. Here’s one of the best, still fresh as a daisy: “Wildwood Flower.”

The guest spot was from magician Ricky Jay, who talked briefly about a woman who claimed to live off of only the scent of roses.

The email this week was from “Gonzala Perez, from Austin, Texas,” asking if he could plant “pansies in the fall.” Bob gave him a proper horticultural answer.

“We’ve talked a lot about Merle, so I’m just going to play the record,” Bob said, before Haggard’s “I Threw Away The Rose.”

Bob signed off thusly:

Well, it’s been an hour, so I have to make like a tree and leave … but don’t worry, I’ll be back next week, with more dreams, schemes and themes, on Theme Time Radio Hour, your perennial favorite.

Playlist:

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys - New San Antonio Rose
Friends of Distinction - Grazing in the Grass
George Jones - Good Year For The Roses
Paul Clayton - Bonnie Bunch of Roses
The Muffs - Laying On A Bed Of Roses
Lucky Millinder - The Grape Vine
Duke Ellington & His Orchestra - Tulip Or Turnip
Tiny Tim - Tip Toe Through The Tulips
The Carter Family - Wildwood Flower
Laura Cantrell - When The Roses Bloom
Geraint Watkins - Only A Rose
Merle Haggard - I Threw Away The Rose
Wilson Pickett - Don’t Let The Green Grass Fool You
Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint - The Sharpest Thorn

Next week’s theme: CARS

Theme Time Radio Hour with your host, Bob Dylan, on XM Radio.

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