“Girl from the North Country” is one of Bob Dylan’s early and most enduring songs, written after his first visit to England in late 1962 and recorded for his second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” released in 1963.
In London, Dylan had absorbed a body of traditional British song through folk singers such as Martin Carthy. The imprint is plain in “Girl from the North Country”: its melody and imagery owe a clear debt to old ballads, with the line about being remembered “to one who lives there” echoing “Scarborough Fair” directly. The lyric is a tender, regretful memory of a love left behind in a cold northern landscape; admirers have long speculated about which woman from Dylan’s Minnesota years inspired it.
The song became a standard, recorded most famously as a duet by Dylan and Johnny Cash for the 1969 album “Nashville Skyline.” Its folk roots made it a natural fit for bluegrass; the version heard here is by guitarist Tony Rice, from his 1988 album “Tony Rice Plays and Sings Bluegrass.”
