Ten-time Grammy winner Bob Dylan recently made a rare and revealing speech at MusiCares Foundation's 25th annual benefit in Los Angeles before the 57th annual Grammy Awards. The Grammy-related charitable organization, which assists musicians with their financial, medical or personal needs, honored the legendary rock musician as its 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year.
In his 30-plus-minute speech, posted online by Rolling Stone in its entirety, the 73-year-old rocker began by thanking his supporters and those who inspired him, including the late Johnny Cash. He also offered sharp retorts to those who'd been critical of him.
But Dylan spoke tenderly and affectionately of his close friend -- the late Billy Lee Riley, a lifelong Arkansan. A Pocahontas native, Riley died in 2009 at 75 in Jonesboro.
Dylan wanted to personally thank MusiCares for helping Riley when he was sick for six years and couldn't work.
"He was a true original," Dylan said. "He did it all; he played, he sang, he wrote."
Riley, an artist with Sun Records, would have been a bigger star if Jerry Lee Lewis hadn't come along, Dylan said. Instead, he became known in the music industry as a one-hit wonder with his 1957 song (My Gal is) "Red Hot." Dylan would later cover Riley's hit song as well as "Repossession Blues."
"He was a hero of mine," Dylan said. "I'd heard 'Red Hot.' I must have been only 15 or 16 when I did, and it's impressed me to this day. I never grow tired of listening to it. Never got tired of watching Billy Lee perform, either."
The two first met in 1992, after Dylan tracked Riley down at his home in Newport and asked him to perform "Red Hot" on his first show in Little Rock, held Sept. 8, 1992, at Robinson Center Music Hall.
Dylan introduced Riley during that show as "my hero" and stood in the background, smiling broadly, reported the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Dylan described him as "a hard act to follow."
"I was surprised to learn he was more nervous about meeting me than I was about meeting him," Riley told the paper then. "He had been trying to get in touch with me for years and had even gone to my old house in Murfreesboro, Tenn., right after I had left there to move back to Newport."
Dylan recalled how he'd see Riley a couple of times a year while touring and the two always visited at length.
"We spent time together just talking and playing into the night," he said. "He was a deep, truthful man. He wasn't bitter or nostalgic. He just accepted it. He knew where he had come from, and he was content with who he was."
Dylan described how the foundation helped Riley.
"And I ain't lying when I tell you that MusiCares paid for my friend's doctor bills, and helped him to get spending money. They were able to at least make his life comfortable, tolerable to the end," Dylan said. "That's something that can't be repaid. Any organization that would do that would have to have my blessing."
Contact Linda S. Haymes at (501) 399-3636 or lhaymes@arkansasonline.com
SundayMonday on 02/15/2015