Music Friday: Supergroup Member Taylor Goldsmith Channels Dylan in 'Diamond Ring' Bonus Track

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you awesome songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, Taylor Goldsmith of the folk-rock supergroup The New Basement Tapes channels Bob Dylan in "Diamond Ring," a nearly forgotten song about second chances.

In the tune, the song's protagonist is heading back to St. Louis, where he's hoping to reconnect with his old flame, Alice. And this time he's willing to make a life-long commitment.

He sings, "That old organ grinder's gonna wind his box / And the knife sharpener's gonna sing / When I get back to St. Louis again / I'm gonna buy that diamond ring / Diamond ring / Diamond ring / Shine like gold / Behold that diamond ring."

"Diamond Ring" is one of more than 100 songs Dylan wrote in 1967 while recovering from a near-fatal motorcycle accident in his Big Pink home near Woodstock, N.Y. While 16 of those works went on to be included in Dylan's highly regarded 1975 album, The Basement Tapes, many of the other songs, including "Diamond Ring," remained forgotten — until recently.

With a nod from Dylan himself, producer T Bone Burnett assembled a supergroup of "musical archaeologists" — including Goldsmith, Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, Jim James and Rhiannon Giddens — to re-imagine many of Dylan's "lost" works.

The all-stars recorded more than 40 Dylan songs during a two-week session, according to music.avclub.com. The creative process saw members of the group swapping instrumental and vocal roles on the different album tracks.

The group eventually released two versions of Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes in November of 2014. "Diamond Ring" appears as a bonus track in the deluxe 20-song version.

Goldsmith, who is best-known as a member of the Los Angeles-based folk rock band Dawes, has collaborated with Dylan before. His band toured with the legendary singer-songwriter in 2013.

Please check out the audio track of Goldsmith and The New Basement Tapes all-stars performing "Diamond Ring." The lyrics are below if you'd like to sing along...

"Diamond Ring"
Written by Bob Dylan and Taylor Goldsmith. Performed by The New Basement Tapes.

If I ever get back to St. Louis again
There's gonna be some changes made
I'm gonna find old Alice and right away where I left off
It's gonna be just as if I'd stayed

That old organ grinder's gonna wind his box
And the knife sharpener's gonna sing
When I get back to St. Louis again
I'm gonna buy that diamond ring

Diamond ring
Diamond ring
Shine like gold
Behold that diamond ring

If I ever get back to St. Louis again
Everybody's gonna smile
One of the Mack girls dragged me up to Washington
I got stuck there for a while

She gave me more misery than a man can hold
And I took her bad advice
Now I don't aim to bother anyone
I have paid that awful price

Diamond ring
Diamond ring
Shine like gold
Behold that diamond ring

If ever I get back to St. Louis again
That diamond ring is gonna shine
That old burlesque dancer is gonna bum around
And everything's gonna be fine

I'm gonna settle up my accounts with lead
And leave the rest up to the law
Then I'm gonna marry the one I love
And head out for Wichita

Diamond ring
Diamond ring
Shine like gold
Behold that diamond ring

Credit: Screen capture via universal-music.de.

All-Star Cast of 10 Super-Size Diamonds From Prolific Karowe Mine Yields $32.5 Million

An all-star cast of 10 diamonds weighing a total of 1,453.06 carats yielded $32.5 million at Lucara Diamond Corp.'s "12th Exceptional Stone Tender" last week. The diamonds, which ranged from 40.4 carats to 472.37 carats, were all sourced in 2018 at the famous Karowe Mine in Botswana.

The top performer was a 327.48-carat white diamond, which sold for $10.1 million, or $30,900 per carat.

The largest gem in the group was a 472.37-carat “top light brown” rough diamond that rates as the third-largest ever discovered at the mine.

While Lucara did not reveal the purchase price of the light brown gem, it did note that each stone in the tender was sold for more than $1 million and that four rough diamonds garnered more than $3 million apiece.

Karowe continues to produce the world’s largest fine diamonds. The 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona and the 813-carat Constellation were both mined there in November 2015. Interestingly, Lesedi La Rona was the larger portion of a broken diamond. The other part weighed 373 carats.

Lesedi La Rona was eventually sold for $53 million; Constellation earned $63 million; and the chunk that broke off Lesedi La Rona delivered $17.5 million.

The recent proliferation of massive stones at Karowe can be attributed to Lucara’s investment in X-ray transmission (XRT) imaging technology. The new machines are calibrated to extract 100-carat-plus diamonds by monitoring X-ray luminescence, atomic density and transparency. Previously, large diamonds might have been mistaken as worthless ore and pulverized by a crushing device.

“The early sampling work [at] Karowe was done with equipment that really was not optimal and they ended up breaking a lot of diamonds,” Lucara President and Chief Executive Officer Eira Thomas told Bloomberg.com earlier this year. “When we went into commercial production we expected to do better, but we had no idea that the diamonds that were being broken were so much larger. ”

In all, 29 diamantaires attended the "12th Exceptional Stone Tender," but only eight of them came away with at least one of the highly coveted lots.

Credits: Images via Facebook.com/LucaraDiamond.

Long Island Police Officers Reunite Pennsylvania Bride-to-Be With Her $20,000 Lost Treasure

An eagle-eyed Long Island police officer with a metal detector and his quick-thinking colleague are being hailed as heroes after reuniting a Pennsylvania woman with the $20,000 engagement ring she lost last weekend on a Fire Island beach.

What started out as a celebratory bachelorette weekend turned into a harrowing episode for a Pennsylvania woman last weekend. According to news sources, the woman and her friends were staying on Fire Island for her bachelorette party. On Saturday, after spending time on Atlantique Beach, she reported her diamond engagement ring missing. With her upcoming nuptials only a week away, the frantic bride-to-be was especially desperate to get the $20,000 ring back.

Atlantique is a boater’s paradise located on the narrowest part of New York's bucolic Fire Island National Seashore. Boasting pristine beaches, quaint villages and an historic lighthouse, Fire Island is a popular tourist destination for families, daytrippers and sun worshippers. Covering 9.6 square miles, it is the large center island of the outer barrier islands parallel to the south shore of Long Island, N.Y., and about two hours east of New York City. The permanent population of just under 300 swells to thousands of residents and tourists during the summer.

Marine Bureau Police Officer Robert Warrington responded to the call and set up a search of the home where the woman was staying. When nothing turned up, he called his colleague, fellow Bureau Officer Edmund McDowell, and suggested he bring his metal detector to Atlantique Beach the next day. Officer McDowell, who was assisted by the woman's friend, set up a grid pattern around where the woman was sitting at the beach. After about 10 minutes of carefully combing the sand, the large, round-cut diamond was found — along with a dime, a quarter and a rusty screw.

When McDowell snapped up the ring and placed it on his own pinkie finger for safekeeping, the beachgoers cheered.

“We called her up and she was crying and crying,” McDowell told Newsday. McDowell gave the ring along with the other items he found on the beach to the bride’s friend, who had stayed behind to lend a hand in the search.

Each year, thousands of pieces of jewelry are lost at beaches from coast to coast.

"If you have people who are swimming, you're going to have gold in the water," explained Dan Berg, an avid metal detectorist and author. Beachgoers cover themselves with suntan lotion and then sit in the sun, so their hands swell. Later, in the cool water, their fingers shrink and rings can slide off.

According to Suffolk County police, this is the second time Warrington and McDowell teamed up to find lost treasure. About eight years ago, McDowell got a similar call from Warrington asking if he could use his personal metal detector to help find a $30,000 platinum and diamond wedding band that was lost in the sand by a man playing volleyball.

“He’s such a nice guy and always goes above and beyond — and I like to help too — so between the two of us, I think we make a pretty good team,” McDowell told Newsday.

Credits: Ring photo courtesy of Suffolk County Police Department. Fire Island Lighthouse by Mark Rosengarten [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons. Fire Island map by U.S. Department of the Interior / National Park Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.