You First: You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

Bob Dylan & The Band: You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

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Bob Dylan (with Happy Traum): You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

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Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (with Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman): You Ain't Going Nowhere

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Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Roseanne Cash: You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

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Cracker (with Adam Duritz and Joan Osborne): You Ain't Going Nowhere

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Folks who know me well know that my current favorite pastime is sitting around with other musicians playing and singing songs. In the past few years, I've found several groups of people to play with on a regular or semi-regular basis. With every group, I've brought this old Dylan song. Some people know it, some don't, but it always goes over well. It's easy to play (just three chords), fun to sing, and offers plenty of room for solos.

Dylan first recorded it with what became the Band during his 1967 Woodstock time-out, but the first released version was by the Byrds, who countrified it for their groundbreaking Sweetheart of the Rodeo the following year. Bob's version was eventually released on The Basement Tapes in 1975, but before that, he recorded a radically different version with Happy Traum on banjo for his Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 album (complete with a dig at Roger McGuinn for messing up the lyrics on the Byrds' version).

Since then, the song has been covered by many, and it's usually the Byrds' version that's followed, and that's the template used by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (with Byrds Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman), Cracker (with Adam Duritz and Joan Osborne) and the trio of Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Roseanne Cash.