Tim Rose Hey Joe

Music documentary from Blues Archive recorded in 1997 featuring Tim Rose in interview and performance.
Tim Rose was an American songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist in the 1960's who merged folk, blues, rock, and country to create an eclectic repertoire that was difficult to pigeonhole. Rose skirted mainstream success but became a legendary cult figure, especially in Europe. He is considered nearly mythical, a musician who produced some of the most inspiring, and at the same time strangely neglected, songs of his time. Rose is regarded as a pioneer of folk-rock, a genre that blends the earnestness and melodic quality of folk music with the instrumentation and rhythms of rock 'n' roll.
Praised as a talented songwriter of works that were characteristically dark and brooding but had elements of tenderness, humour, and optimism, Rose is especially noted as a performer and as an interpreter of the material of other writers. He possessed a soulful, sandpaper baritone of great range and intensity--his voice is compared to those of Ray Charles and Joe Cocker--and he reworked traditional ballads and obscure folk songs by slowing them down and dramatizing their lyrics to great effect. Rose is best known for his interpretations of "Hey Joe (Blue Steel .44)," a murder ballad about a man who catches his wife in an affair and shoots her before escaping to Mexico; "Morning Dew," a song in the public domain that Rose and Canadian folksinger Bonnie Dobson rewrote as a powerful cautionary statement against nuclear war; and a second anti-war song, "Come Away Melinda," that was co-written by Fred Hellerman of the folk quartet The Weavers. "Hey Joe" and "Morning Dew" are considered landmark songs that have spawned hundreds of cover versions. This two- part documentary was recorded by Blues Archive at The Buxton Opera House, Buxton, Derbyshire - the interview 4th May 1997 at The Alexis Korner Memorial Concert and the performance 5th October 1997 at The Rory Gallagher Memorial Concert.