“Girl From The North Country” by Bob Dylan with Johnny Cash

Bob Dylan cut "Girl from the North Country" at Columbia's New York studios in April 1963, and a month later it sat second in line on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan: just that sandpaper voice, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, with John Hammond producing. It's a tender love song, about as gentle as young Dylan got, and the question of who inspired it has kept writers digging ever since. Echo Helstrom and Bonnie Beecher, both from the days before he left for New York, get named, and so does his New York girlfriend Suze Rotolo.

He never let it go. By his own website's count he played it 569 times on stage between 1963 and 2019, and in February 1969 he sang it again with Johnny Cash, a duet that opens Nashville Skyline.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.