Did Uncle Tom fit the bill with one more cup of coffee – or should he be scarlet-faced in town?
Lock-down blues … We’ve been having a long chat on Zoom – and on this site – with friends and fellow Dylan fans. Some of us were drinking beer, others whisky and rum … and one couple were drinking coffee. They are coffee aficionados and good on them. They are a quite animated pair, smiley and full of beans, if I may be so bold.
But better to be a coffee-head than a couch potato, eh!
Anyway, we got to analysing Tom Jone’s version of One More Cup of Coffee … I said Tom failed abysmally to interpret the song. But of course others like it … so it got me thinking about what is One More Cup of Coffee actually conveying…
I know he wrote it without Jacques Levy who was working with him on songs like Isis at the time.
Dylan had just visited a ‘gypsy king’ in France.
The man was on the peripheries of his own society and was being shunned by his people because of age and frailty …
Bob was also breaking up with Sara … and isn’t that what the songs about?
Abandonment, loss, how love can become cold? How you enter another and mysterious world in the valley below? Depression and a wandering in the unknown, made all the more harsh and cold by the banality, the politeness, the perfunctoriness of the phrase… ‘one more cup of coffee’ (a very city-fied allusion amongst the wildness of the whole setting)… with the finality and deadly certainty of ‘before you go’?
Share what you think the song is about, I’d be really interested – did Tom, a singer I admire, just miss the point?
HEAR BOTH VERSIONS BELOW
ONE MORE CUP OF COFFEE
Your breath is sweet
Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky
Your back is straight, your hair is smooth
On the pillow where you lie
I don’t sense affection
Nor no gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me but to the stars above
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee before I go
To the valley below
Your daddy, he’s an outlaw
And a wanderer by trade
He’ll teach you how to pick an’ choose
And how to throw the blade
He oversees his kingdom
Where no stranger does intrude
His voice it trembles as he calls out
For another plate of food
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee before I go
To the valley below
Your sister sees the future
Like your momma and yourself
She never learned to read or write
There’s no books upon her shelf
And her pleasure knows no limits
Her voice is like a meadow lark
But her heart is like an ocean
So mysterious and dark
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee before I go
To the valley below
#bobdylan #tomjones #jacqueslevy #gypsyking #france #onemorecupofcoffee #valleybelow #sara #divorce
3 Replies to “Did Uncle Tom fit the bill with one more cup of coffee – or should he be scarlet-faced in town?”
Eero-Juhani Huttunen
Not bad at all, but isn’t it surprisingly conventional interpretation, is it? The style of the arrangement goes between James Bond themes songs and Sergio Leone soundtracks. Could be used by Quentin Tarantino. And, yes, agreed: No one sings the blues like Bob Dylan
Phil Howells
Good to hear another singer taking on Dylan’s work. It’s OK but it seems to be spoken rather than sung. He did touch on this in a recent interview on BBC Radio Wales to mark his 80th birthday.
This sog is a hymn to the Goddess of the Underworld – together with he mother and sister (as mentioned in the song) they are the tripke goddess of pre-patriarchal times. And pre-literate – hence “you’ve never learned to read or write, there are no books upon your shelf”. The Underworld is where the springs of creativity are hidden, and only heroic artists are prepared to go there in search of them.