"
Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" is a 1967 folk-rock song written by
Bob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was, at first, an informal chronicler and then an apparently reluctant figurehead of social unrest...
during
The Basement TapesThe Basement Tapes is a studio album by Bob Dylan and The Band, released in 1975 by Columbia Records.As Dylan recovered from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident in July 1966, he summoned the Band and began to record both new compositions and traditional material with them...
sessions. The song became a hit in 1968 for the
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
band
Manfred MannManfred Mann were a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboard player and founder, who later led the successful 1970s follow-on group Manfred Mann's Earth Band.-Beginnings :...
, who released it as a single using the title "
Mighty Quinn".
The subject of the song is the arrival of the mighty Quinn (an
eskimoEskimos or Esquimaux are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia , across Alaska and Canada, and all of Greenland....
), who changes despair into joy and chaos into rest, and attracts attention from the animals.
"
Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" is a 1967 folk-rock song written by
Bob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was, at first, an informal chronicler and then an apparently reluctant figurehead of social unrest...
during
The Basement TapesThe Basement Tapes is a studio album by Bob Dylan and The Band, released in 1975 by Columbia Records.As Dylan recovered from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident in July 1966, he summoned the Band and began to record both new compositions and traditional material with them...
sessions. The song became a hit in 1968 for the
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
band
Manfred MannManfred Mann were a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboard player and founder, who later led the successful 1970s follow-on group Manfred Mann's Earth Band.-Beginnings :...
, who released it as a single using the title "
Mighty Quinn".
The subject of the song is the arrival of the mighty Quinn (an
eskimoEskimos or Esquimaux are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia , across Alaska and Canada, and all of Greenland....
), who changes despair into joy and chaos into rest, and attracts attention from the animals. The metaphorical lyrics have prompted suggestions that Quinn is a drug dealer or simply a village elder. Dylan himself has said that the title character refers to
actorAn actor or actress is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
Anthony Quinn'sAnthony Quinn was a Mexican-American actor, as well as a painter and writer. He starred in numerous critically acclaimed and commercially successful films, including Zorba the Greek, Lawrence of Arabia, and Federico Fellini's La strada...
role as an
EskimoEskimos or Esquimaux are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia , across Alaska and Canada, and all of Greenland....
in the 1959 movie
The Savage InnocentsThe Savage Innocents is a 1960 film, adapted from the novel Top of the World by Swiss writer Hans Rüesch.The screenplay was mainly written by its director, Nicholas Ray, who shot the film in the Canadian Arctic...
. Dylan has also been quoted as saying that the song was nothing more than a "simple nursery rhyme".
More recently, Dylan in his autobiography
Chronicles Volume One (published 2004), makes further reference to the song: "On the way back to the house I passed the local movie theater on Prytania Street, where
The Mighty Quinn (film) was showing. Years earlier I had written a song called "The Mighty Quinn" which was a hit in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and I wondered what the movie was about. Eventually I'd sneak off and go there to see it. It was a mystery, suspense,
JamaicaJamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length and as much as in width, amounting to 11,100 km
2. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harboring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
n thriller with
Denzel WashingtonDenzel Hayes Washington, Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter, director and film producer. He has garnered much critical acclaim for his work in film since the 1990s, including for his portrayals of real-life figures, such as Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Rubin Carter, Melvin B...
as the Mighty
Xavier Quinn a detective who solves crimes. Funny, that's just the way I imagined him when I wrote the song The Mighty Quinn, Denzel Washington".
Manfred Mann and Dylan versions
Dylan originally recorded the song in 1967 during the
Basement Tapes sessionsThe Basement Tapes is a collection of over 100 songs recorded by Bob Dylan in 1967 with members of his former backing band, The Hawks, soon to be known as The Band....
, but did not release a version for another three years. Meanwhile, the song was picked up and recorded by the British band
Manfred MannManfred Mann were a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboard player and founder, who later led the successful 1970s follow-on group Manfred Mann's Earth Band.-Beginnings :...
, who released it under the title "Mighty Quinn." The Manfred Mann version reached #1 in the
UK Singles ChartThe UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record industry. The full chart contains the top 200 singles based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 of this list...
for the week of February 14, 1968, and remained there the following week. It also charted on the American
Billboard chart, peaking at #10, and reached #4 in
Cash Box.
A later incarnation of Manfred Mann,
Manfred Mann's Earth BandManfred Mann's Earth Band is a jazz/rock group formed in 1971 by Manfred Mann.-Formation:The Earth Band's direction was very different from that of Mann's previous group, known simply as Manfred Mann. Mann made a conscious decision to move away from the pop-oriented three-minute format of his...
, included a dramatically different live version of the song on their 1978 album
Watch- Track listing :#"Circles" – 4:50#"Drowning on Dry Land/Fish Soup" – 6:01#"Chicago Institute" – 5:47#"California" – 5:32...
.
A demo of 14 of the Basement Tape recordings, including the first of two takes of "Quinn the Eskimo", was produced in 1968, but was not intended for release. Recordings taken from the demos began appearing on
bootlegsA bootleg recording is an audio and/or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist, or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
, starting with
Great White WonderGreat White Wonder or GWW was a double album bootleg recording of Bob Dylan, released in July 1969 and famous for being the first bootleg of the rock music era...
, a double-album bootleg that came out in July 1969. The first official release of the song was in 1970 on Dylan's
Self Portrait album, a live recording from 1969's
Isle of Wight FestivalThe Isle of Wight Festival is a music festival which takes place annually on the Isle of Wight in the UK. It was originally held from 1968 to 1970, the venues being Ford Farm , Wootton and Afton Down respectively...
. The live version was also selected in 1971 for the second compilation of Dylan's career,
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. IIBob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II , also known as More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits, was the second compilation album released by Bob Dylan. With Dylan not expected to release any new material for an extended period of time, CBS Records president Clive Davis proposed issuing a double LP compilation of...
.
When
ColumbiaColumbia Records is an American record label founded in 1888.Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers,...
finally released
The Basement Tapes in 1975, "Quinn the Eskimo" was not among the double-album's 24 songs. However, ten years later, in 1985, the second of the original takes appeared on the three-disc
BiographBiograph is a 53-track compilation spanning the career of Bob Dylan, from his 1962 debut album to the 1981 LP Shot of Love. It was released in 1985 by Columbia Records, one of the earliest and most successful examples of the CD Box Set. It reached #33 in the US and went platinum.The recordings...
set. This version from the Basement Tapes was used again on
The Essential Bob DylanThe Essential Bob Dylan is a compilation by Bob Dylan, released as a double-CD set in 2000, part of Columbia Records' "The Essential" series....
, a compilation released in 2000.
Subsequent covers
Over the years, the song has been recorded by numerous artists. The popular
CanadianCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
folk-rock duo
Ian and SylviaIan and Sylvia Tyson, CM, were a Canadian folk music duo who performed and recorded from the early 1960s through the early 1970s.-Early lives:...
released it as the first track on their album
Nashville in 1968, and it was also recorded that year by
Gary Puckett & The Union GapGary Puckett & The Union Gap was an American pop rock group operating in the late 1960s...
. In 1969, the Brothers & Sisters recorded a gospel version, which was included on the album
Gospel Dylan.
The HolliesThe Hollies are an English rock group from Manchester formed in the early 1960s. Known for their distinctive vocal harmony style they became one of the leading British groups of the era, and they enjoyed considerable popularity in many other countries although they did not achieve major US chart...
released a version on their 1969 album
The Hollies Sing Dylan (known outside of the UK as
Words and Music by Bob Dylan). The song title on the Hollies album is listed as "Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)". The torch singer
Julie LondonGayle Peck , known as Julie London, was an American singer and actress. Best known for her smoky, sensual voice, she was at her singing career's peak in the 1950s...
recorded it in 1968. In the late 1960s, Mexico's Los Chijuas recorded a Spanish language version as "El Esquimal".
In 1996, a much heavier version of the song was recorded by Swiss rockers
GotthardGotthard is a Swiss hard rock band founded in Lugano by Steve Lee and Leo Leoni. They take their name from the Gotthard Pass. Their last eleven albums have all charted at number one, making them one of the most successful Swiss album chart acts ever....
. This version, which appeared on the album
G., was entitled "The Mighty Quinn."
PhishPhish is an American rock band noted for its musical improvisation, extended jams, exploration of music across genres, and devoted fan base. Formed at the University of Vermont in 1983, the band's four members performed together for over 20 years until an official breakup in...
released a live version of the song in 1999 on
Hampton Comes AliveHampton Comes Alive is a six-disc live album by the jam band Phish, released November 23, 1999. It consists of two full live concerts recorded on November 20-21 1998 at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia. The album title is a play on Peter Frampton's classic Frampton Comes Alive!...
, which was recorded on November 20-21, 1998, in
Hampton, VirginiaLocated in Hampton, Virginia, the Hampton Coliseum, commonly referred to as "the mothership" or "cosmic cupcake" due to its unique architecture, is a multi-use facility owned by the City of Hampton. It is used to host concerts, and is a regular stop on the World Wrestling Entertainment tour...
. The next year, the
Grateful DeadThe Grateful Dead were an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, jazz, psychedelia, and space rock—and for live performances of long musical...
also released a live version on
Dick's Picks, Volume 17, from a 1991 performance in Boston. Also it was played on December 27 1986 at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center by The Grateful Dead.
Les FradkinLes Fradkin is a guitarist, composer and record producer. He is best known for being a member of the original cast of the hit Broadway show Beatlemania...
included a version of the song on his 2006 album
If Your Memory Serves You Well. In 2007, the
SpanishSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
pop group
Nena DaconteNena Daconte are a Spanish pop group. The members include the singer from Madrid, Mai Meneses, and the musician from Barcelona, Kim Fanlo. The band takes its name from a character in the short story "The Trail Of Your Blood On The Snow", by Gabriel García Márquez.Mai Meneses first found fame in...
recorded a version for a
Codorníu WineryCodorniu Winery, the world's largest producer of bottle-fermented sparkling wine made by the traditional champagne method , was founded in Spain in 1551. It produces 60 million bottles annually. Spanish sparkling wine from the region Catalonia is known as "cava."-History:The Codorníu family’s wine...
marketing campaign and also planned to include it on the re-release of their debut album
He Perdido Los Zapatos-Track listing:# Pierdo El Tiempo # Si Supieras # Marta # Idiota # No Eres Mi Perro # Loco Por Mí # En Qué Estrella Estará # Engáñame A Mí También # No Sé Cómo Decirte # No Paraba De Llover...
.
A Pittsburgh artist Kardaz changed the words in 2008 to The Mighty 'Guins to a fight song for NHL team the Pittsburgh Penguins.
In 2009 the British band
CornershopCornershop are a British indie band formed in Leicester in 1991 by Wolverhampton-born Tjinder Singh , his brother Avtar Singh , David Chambers and Ben Ayres , the first three having previously been members of Preston-based band General Havoc, who released one single in...
covered the song on their album
Judy Sucks a Lemon for BreakfastJudy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast is a 2009 studio album by the British band Cornershop. It was their first album in seven years following 2002's Handcream for a Generation. The band released the album independently through their website and in local shops.The album has received generally positive...
.
Cultural influence
- Leon Russell, "The Master of Space and Time," also recorded "The Mighty Quinn," LIVE, in 1970.
- In 1989, Denzel Washington
Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter, director and film producer. He has garnered much critical acclaim for his work in film since the 1990s, including for his portrayals of real-life figures, such as Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Rubin Carter, Melvin B...
starred in a movieFilm encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects....
called The Mighty Quinn, about a character named Xavier Quinn who must exonerate his friend Moubee from murder charges. The Self Portrait version appears extensively throughout the film.
- In the comic book series G.I. Joe
G.I. Joe is a line of military-themed articulated "action figures" produced by the toy company Hasbro. The initial product offering represented four of the branches of the U.S. Armed Forces with the Action Soldier , Action Sailor , Action Pilot and Action Marine . The term G.I. stands for...
, A Real American Hero, published by Marvel ComicsMarvel Publishing, Inc., a company doing business as Marvel Comics, produces American comic books and related media. It forms a subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, Inc....
, a mercenary named Kwinn the Eskimo first appears in #2 and returns periodically before dying in #19.
- Quinn the Eskimo is the name of a minor character in the Wild Cards
Wild Cards is a science fiction and superhero anthology series set in a shared universe. The series was created by a group of New Mexico science fiction authors, and mostly edited by George R. R. Martin...
novel series.
- In Episode #804 of Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000, often abbreviated MST3K, is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc...
, featuring The Deadly MantisThe Deadly Mantis is a 1957 science fiction film produced by William Alland for Universal-International Pictures. It was directed by Nathan Juran from a screenplay by Martin Berkeley, and starred Craig Stevens, William Hopper, Alix Talton, and Pat Conway...
, a village of InuitInuit is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland, and Alaska...
is depicted observing the arrival of the titular giant praying mantis, and Crow T. RobotCrow T. Robot is a fictional character from the American science fiction comedy television series Mystery Science Theater 3000...
declares on their behalf, "It's the Mighty Quinn!"
- Bob Dylan having released the live recording of the song in 1970, never played it live again until 2002
- In 2007, New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Māori named New Zealand Aotearoa, commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud...
playwright Joseph Harper Joseph Harper or Joe Harper may refer to:*Joe Harper, a character in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, see List of characters in the Tom Sawyer series*Joe Harper , former Scotland and Aberdeen footballer...
wrote a play called The Mighty Quinn about a homeless man who joins a cult which worships an eskimo named Quinn.
- The song is used as the anthem for Rugby Union
Rugby union is a full contact team sport, a form of football which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. It is played with an oval-shaped ball, outdoors on a level field, usually with a grass surface, 100 m...
side Harlequins F.C., using the lyrics 'The Mighty Quins'.
- "Quinn the Eskimo" is mentioned in the song "Fall of the American Empire" by State Radio.
External links