Bob Dylan / Sam Shepard / 11:03
Musicians: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar; Ira Ingber: guitar; Vince Melamed: keyboard; Steve Douglas: saxophone; Steve Madaio: trumpet; Carl Sealove: bass; Don Heffington: drums; Carolyn Dennis, Madelyn Quebec, Elisecia Wright, Queen Esther Marrow, Muffy Hendrix, and Peggi Blu: backup vocals / Recording Studios: Cherokee Studios, Hollywood, California: December 6, 10, and 11, 1984 / Topanga Skyline Studio, Topanga, California: May 14, 1986 (Overdubs April 30, May 1–2, 16, 19–20, 1986 Producer: Sundog Productions / Sound Engineers: George Tutko (Cherokee) and Britt Bacon (Skyline)
Bob Dylan co-wrote “Brownsville Girl” with playwright Sam Shepard, whose collaboration with Dylan dates back to the Rolling Thunder Revue of the mid-1970s. “Brownsville Girl” is, without exaggeration, among Dylan’s masterpieces. With cinematic allusions, the narrator reconnects with his past. Once he loved a woman, the mysterious “Brownsville Girl” (Brownsville is a town in Texas on the border with Mexico) who is now gone. At the end of the third verse, Dylan sings, “The memory of you keeps callin’ after me like a rollin’ train,” and he fondly recalls their time together—a kind of road movie via San Antonio, the Alamo, Mexico, and the Rocky Mountains.
Being Dylan, he does not name the film: “Well, there was this movie I seen one time / About a man riding ’cross the desert and it starred Gregory Peck.” It is definitely the 1950 Western The Gunfighter, directed by Henry King and starring Peck in the role of trigger-happy Jimmy Ringo, who encounters numerous obstacles as he searches for his wife and son, whom he has not seen for years. Dylan and Shepard’s genius is to blend the experience of the narrator with Ringo’s life. Both have the same quest, as if reality and fiction were one. “Brownsville Girl” may also be a reference to the 1946 film Duel in the Sun, directed by King Vidor, where two brothers, Lewt (Gregory Peck) and Jess (Joseph Cotten), fight for the love of the young Pearl Chavez, a half–Native American girl (Jennifer Jones).
“Brownsville Girl” is clearly the song on the album. Unlike the other titles, this tune did not suffer too much from the 1980s production style. Its success comes from Dylan’s vocal and the excellent, transcendent performance of the backup vocalists. Dylan started working on “Brownsville Girl” during the sessions for Empire Burlesque in December 1984. A year afterward, he and his band reworked the rhythm track at Topanga Skyline Studio. This beautiful song deserved another mix.