When I was a little fellow, I was very taken with Bob Dylan's "Watching the River Flow" and especially the piano work. I asked my brother (not sure now which brother) who was playing it, and he said that it was Bob Dylan's brother John. Now this was a pretty shrewd answer. I'm not sure that all little kids worship all with their own first name nor that all little kids believe everything they are told, but I did and I did and in I think that in my heart of hearts I believed this until maybe a week ago.
What brought it to mind was hearing a cover which my song identification app said was by Ben Waters on a tribute CD to Ian Stewart. Naturally I took this to mean that the piano part had been played by Ian Stewart and that the mystery was solved. Nothing like that simple! Turns out that the song was on the tribute record because Stewart had been quoted as saying that the song was the only decent thing that Dylan had ever done. And the part was actually played by Leon Russell. As he was already famous as the leader of Mad Dogs and Englishmen and a major contributor to the Concerts for Bangladesh, both of which I knew about (I wasn't THAT damn little) and would be famouser a year later for "Tightrope," I think I could have handled the actual personnel information. But then, we didn't have Wikipedia back then, did we? Excuse me, I have to go looking for John Zimmerman piano records...
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