Reaching way back here: “Mighty Quinn” by Manfred Mann.
The song has a bit of a history. Dylan recorded a few takes for the Basement Tapes sessions, but never released it. The first public release of the song was by Manfred Mann. Dylan’s own recording was not released until the album Self Portrait, an album Bob Dylan called something of a joke intended to get people to quit looking to him as the spokesperson of a generation. But even then it was a live recording: one of the Basement Tapes studio versions, backed by The Band, wasn’t released until Dylan’s 1985 box set Biograph. Dylan’s releases of the song vary between the titles “The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)” and “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn).” This last title is the one Dylan chose for his Biograph album.
Dr. James Rovira is higher education professional with twenty years experience in the field in teaching, administration, and advising roles. He is also an interdisciplinary scholar and writer whose works include fiction, poetry, and scholarship exploring the intersections of literature and philosophy, literature and psychology, literary theory, and music and literature.. His books include Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism (Routledge, 2023); David Bowie and Romanticism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022); Writing for College and Beyond (a first-year composition textbook (Lulu 2019)); Reading as Democracy in Crisis: Interpretation, Theory, History (Lexington Books 2019); Rock and Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, and Rock from Dylan to U2 (Lexington Books, 2018); Rock and Romanticism: Post-Punk, Goth, and Metal as Dark Romanticisms (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); and Blake and Kierkegaard: Creation and Anxiety (Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2010). See his website at jamesrovira.com for details.
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3 thoughts on “Song du jour: Manfred Mann, “Mighty Quinn””
Like many other songs it’s aka another title. The Grateful Dead’s version is “Quinn the Eskimo”
Reaching way back here: “Mighty Quinn” by Manfred Mann.
The Philosophy of Contemporary Song 
Like many other songs it’s aka another title. The Grateful Dead’s version is “Quinn the Eskimo”
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Ha, gad, I think I just screwed up. Time to Edit. Of course it’s a Dylan song.
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Wow, no… actually, MM released the song with the title “Mighty Quinn” after all. Interesting.
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