Dida Pelled has made an ongoing practice of ignoring the familiar. Through her Lost Women Of Song project, the Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter and virtuoso guitarist has resurrected the work of overlooked artists like Connie Converse, Molly Drake, Tia Blake and Norma Tanega. But with her take on “Shooting Star,” she turns her attention to a considerably less obscure songwriter.
“It’s a song only Bob Dylan could write,” says Pelled of the original, which first appeared on 1989’s Oh Mercy. “It’s his Gemini thing, where he needs to be on the road and feeling extremes—living out of his car and thinking about the woman he loves but also left.”
Pelled’s version appears on I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again, due October 23 via La Reserve. The album is the next juncture in a career built around following songs wherever they lead. Pelled delved seriously into jazz for a handful of LP, explored the organ-trio format on 2016’s A Missing Shade Of Blue, pushed into more expansive territory with 2022’s Love Of The Tiger and tangled with the blues on I Wish You Would earlier this year. Through it all, she’s remained a fixture of New York’s jazz and indie-music communities.
Pelled moved from Israel at age 20 to attend the New School in NYC, where she was discovered at a West Village gig by trumpeter/producer Fabio Morgera. Her auspicious 2011 debut, Dida Plays And Sings, featured “Young Lions” jazz fixtures Roy Hargrove and Gregory Hutchinson. With “Shooting Star,” Pelled is focused on something decidedly less technical.
“It’s remarkable how hard it is to get that nice feeling by the right amount of space just playing,” she says.
We’re proud to premiere Dida Pelled’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Shooting Star.”
—Hobart Rowland
See Dida Pelled live.
