1936–2002 · American folk and blues singer, and his Greenwich Village band
Dave Van Ronk was the gravel-voiced fixture of the Greenwich Village folk scene who mentored half the people who became famous from it. By the mid-sixties he had assembled the Hudson Dusters, an electric band that pushed his blues repertoire toward folk-rock, and their sole Verve Forecast album is a genuine oddity in his catalogue. Mitchell was a friend, and she let him have the song before she had recorded it herself. He wanted to call it “Clouds”; by his own liner notes she insisted the real title be carried along, which is why the track is credited as “Clouds (From Both Sides Now).”
Who recorded it
Songs Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters recorded first