Bob Dylan isn’t regarded as one of the best vocalists of all time. His magic lies in other areas of musicianship. That being said, his vocals aren’t completely unorthodox. He has references for his vocals amongst his peers. Dylan once named his favorite singer of all time–which he took a lot of inspiration from. Find out which artist that is, below.
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Bob Dylan Names His Favorite Singer
Dylan has many peers to chose from when it comes to naming his favorite singer. The ’60s and ’70s saw a wide breadth of masterful vocalists in rock, pop, and folk. Nevertheless–in an oh-so-Dylan way–the icon had an unconventional favorite.
Dylan once named an Egyptian singer, Umm Kulthum, as his favorite. Dylan first heard her while in Jerusalem, but she stuck with him even back in the States.
“I like Middle Eastern music a lot, Umm Kulthum, she was a great Egyptian singer,” Dylan once said. “I first heard of her when I was in Jerusalem.”
“I think she is popular all over the Middle East, she did mostly love and prayer-type songs, her father chanted those prayer, she was so good that he allowed her to sing professionally,” he added. “She is gone now but not forgotten.”
Dylan went further to say that Middle Eastern singing–and Kulthum by extension–inspired his own unique vocals.
“Yeah, that’s where my singing really comes from…except that I sing in America,” Dylan once said. “I’ve heard too much Leadbelly really to be too much influenced by the whirling dervishes.”
Dylan isn’t alone in his love of Kulthum. His fellow ’70s icon Robert Plant once sang her praises as well, saying, “The way she sang, the way she could hold a note, you could feel the tension, you could tell that everybody, the whole orchestra, would hold a note until she wanted to change.”
“When I first heard the way she would dance down through the scale to land on a beautiful note that I couldn’t even imagine singing, it was huge: somebody had blown a hole in the wall of my understanding of vocals,” he continued.
Check out Kulthum’s incomparable voice, below. Do you see how Dylan could have used her as inspiration?
(Photo by PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images)
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