Just Dave Van Ronk Just Dave Van Ronk Just Dave Van Ronk is a 1964 album by folk/blues singer Dave Van Ronk. It has not been released on CD. It is probably this arrangement of "House Of The Risin' Sun" that was developed by Dave Van Ronk that Bob Dylan — who was a close friend of Van Ronk's at the time — used on his 1962 debut album "Bob Dylan". Van Ronk discusses this in Martin Scorsese's documentary "No Direction Home". In the interview, Van Ronk said that he was intending to record it at that time, and that Dylan copied his version
Bob Dylan only intending to record a single track, "Life Is Hard," "the record sort of took its own direction". Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as co-written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter. The album received largely favorable reviews, although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan's canon of work. Andy Gill wrote in "The Independent" that the record "features Dylan in fairly relaxed, spontaneous mood, content to grab such grooves and sentiments as flit momentarily across his radar. So while it may not contain too many landmark tracks, it's one of the most