"Black Crow Blues" is a song written by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

, released on his 1964

1964 in music

-Events:*January 1 – Top of the Pops is broadcast for the first time, on BBC television.*January 3 – Footage of the Beatles performing a concert in Bournemouth, England is shown on The Jack Paar Show....

 album Another Side of Bob Dylan

Another Side of Bob Dylan

Another Side of Bob Dylan is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. It was released August 8, 1964 by Columbia Records....

.

Usually considered a minor work in Dylan's oeuvre, "Black Crow Blues" is the first song he released in which he plays the piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

. In fact, that is the only accompaniment for his voice, as he is alone in the recording, like in most of his first four albums. This song is in the key of G major

G major

G major is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has one sharp, F; in treble-clef key signatures, the sharp-symbol for F is usually placed on the first line from the top, though in some Baroque music it is placed on the first space from the bottom...

. Author Oliver Trager calls this song "A funky little piano blues that Dylan plays in his wonderfully untutored style". Black Crown Blues, argues Trager, is reminiscent of "the lilting calypso

Calypso music

Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago from African and European roots. The roots of the genre lay in the arrival of enslaved Africans, who, not being allowed to speak with each other, communicated through song...

s of Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte

Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...

 and piano boogie-woogie

Boogie-woogie

Boogie-woogie has the following meanings:*Boogie-woogie, a piano-based music style*Boogie-woogie , a swing dance or a dance that imitates the rock-n-roll dance of the 1950s*"Boogie Woogie" , a song by EuroGroove and Dannii Minogue...

s of Meade "Lux" Lewis".

Michael Gray

Michael Gray (author)

Michael Gray is a British author who has written extensively about popular music.Gray grew up on Merseyside, attended Birkenhead School, and read History and English Literature at the University of York. Gray subsequently lived and worked in North Devon, Birmingham, West Malvern, London and North...

maintains thus:

"Black Crow Blues" is itself terrific for the way that it tears into the blues structure with something so fresh, so invigoratingly off the wall, that it makes you laugh just to hear it. At the same time, and without sacrificing any of the hipness paraded by "wasted and worn out" of "My wrist was empty / But my nerves were kickin' / Tickin' like a clock", he nevertheless brings to it, particularly in the last verse, a special rural feel:

Black crows in the meadow

Across the broad highway.

It's funny, honey,

I don't feel much like a

Scarecrow today

so that in the end it is a strange sort of country blues.

Dylan has never performed "Black Crow Blues" live.