ven if you can’t stand his versions of his own songs—and you’re not alone—it’s hard to deny Bob Dylan his place among the greatest pop songwriters of all time. Take “Blowin’ In the Wind,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Like A Rolling Stone,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’” to choose the most obvious, and you have to face it: we’re talking about the guy who wrote at least fifty songs that can be considered standards and in styles that run the gamut, from mumbly railroad folk to boom-chick-chick reggae.


Ok, but gospel? By Robert Zimmerman?


The first reaction I had to Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan was, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” It’s not that I was unaware that he’d written religious music – indeed, a cursory reading of his bio will reveal that he enraged just about every fan he had with his Slow Train Coming and Saved records, which—all too accurately for some—chronicled his brief conversion to Christianity in the late 1970’s. Rather, my incredulity was based more on never having really considered the music he made then to be “gospel.”


But it didn’t take too long listening to Gotta Serve Somebody, eleven tracks recorded by “today’s top gospel artists” (I’ll take Legacy’s word for it) for me to reconsider. Indeed, these songs, rendered in traditional gospel arrangements, fit quite easily in with a genre most of white America will be familiar with from those Sunday cable shows.


The thing is: the songs are fucking great; and however they sounded in their original guises, “Saving Grace,” “I Believe In You,” and “Solid Rock” are revealed here to be among the best songs he’s written in twenty-five years. And if the others aren’t as instantly classic, it’s only because the genre isn’t as familiar. That’s right: Bob Dylan is a great gospel songwriter.


It’s almost irrelevant to consider whether Dylan matches up to the all-time great gospel songwriters or not, because he certainly seems like one here. Part of the credit clearly is due to the understated work of producer Joel Moss, who lets the songs and musicians pretty much speak for themselves. Backed largely by Dylan’s touring band of the era and a few guests like Billy (“Get Back”) Preston and organist Spooner Oldham, Gotta Serve Somebody contains the slinky blues of “When You Gonna Wake Up,” as rendered by Lee Williams & the Spiritual QC’s, and the downright inspirational lift of “Saving Grace,” featuring an honest-to-God (heh) spine-tingling vocal from Aaron “The-Touch-The-Feel-Of-Dylan” Neville. Elsewhere, The Fairfield Four perform a smooth-but-not-slick a capella version of “Are You Ready,” and reputed “queen of gospel” Shirley Caesar serves up a firey version of Dylan’s best known religious song, “Gotta Serve Somebody.”


If anything, these renditions seem to show that Dylan’s original versions of these songs didn’t really do his conceits justice, as if the band, his producers and, yes, his voice let him down when he first recorded them. Ah, but then you come to Gotta Serve Somebody’s truly brain-melting finale, a new recording of Slow Train Coming’s “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking,” which features a scripted—that’s right, scripted—dialogue between Bob Dylan and Mavis Staples about reading “Snoozeweek” and eating fried chicken. Sure, Dylan’s voice sounds as blown out as ever, but between the stomping fuzz-tone blues riff, the inspired duet he has with Staples and the palpable sense of fun everyone seems to be having, the song’s a gas.


Which, ultimately, brings us to the image of the man himself, sitting down and writing most of these songs in late 1978 – coming out of what had to be one of the most difficult periods of his life, when he toured endlessly, got divorced and watched as his epic film, Renaldo And Clara, got shredded by critics. At that point in his life, Bob Dylan was a drained, broken man who needed a little help. As Gotta Serve Somebody proves, it seems like he found it.