“Mr. Tambourine Man” & Other Bob Dylan Classics, Sung Beautifully by Kids

New Zealan­der David Antony Clark grew up with the music of Bob Dylan, and, like many his age, felt sad that the youngun’s had no idea who that was. Instead of moan­ing, he decid­ed to pro­duce Kids Sing Bob Dylan, an 11-track CD of cov­ers sung by the Star­bugs, Clark’s children’s group.

Before you flinch, check the YouTube clip above. These kids can actu­al­ly sing, right? The har­monies are there…I mean pos­si­bly cleaned up a bit with tech­nol­o­gy, I can’t say for sure.

Here’s “For­ev­er Young,” from Dylan’s 1974 Plan­et Waves. An appro­pri­ate song for this quin­tet: Jessie Hil­lel, Rebec­ca Jenk­ins, Sarah Whitak­er, Ben Ander­son, and Roisin Ander­son, all from Welling­ton, NZ, and rag­ing in age from 7 to 15.

Accord­ing to a Stuff.nz arti­cle on the release, Jessie Hil­lel said about the record­ing: “Hear­ing and lis­ten­ing to him was real­ly fun. But you can do what­ev­er you want to the songs, but at the same time I real­ly want­ed to have his stan­dard because he did such a good job. I feel proud of myself, it’s just so good.”

Ben Ander­son, age 12, was the only one with pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of Dylan: ““I’d heard about him a few times before, I was real­ly excit­ed. He’s a real­ly good singer, just the emo­tion that he puts into his songs, I was real­ly excit­ed to sing them. I was real­ly ner­vous that I would­n’t live up to it, and do it right, but it got eas­i­er as the song went on.”

Now, you might have noticed two things from a quick lis­ten. One of the younger kids, Jessie Hil­lel, might be small, but she packs a voice from some­one twice her age. (She han­dles the low­er range in the har­monies.) The oth­er thing: these videos are from 2011.

Where is Jessie now? Fun­ny you ask:

In 2012 she made her way onto the finals of New Zealand’s Got Tal­ent, and in 2016 she sang Puc­ci­ni in Mel­bourne. She’s cur­rent­ly study­ing music in Mel­bourne and is in a jazz-fusion band called Jakal.

Sarah Whitak­er also has her own music chan­nel on YouTube.

Fun­ny about kids–they grow up right in front of your eyes.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Tan­gled Up in Blue: Deci­pher­ing a Bob Dylan Mas­ter­piece

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.