Every now and then I can’t help but getting lost in Bob Dylan’s world. Yes, it can be quite a lonely world. A lot of people either hate or barely tolerate Dylan: “That voice, that wretched harmonica…” Well, i’m a sucker for 2 things: music and history. If there’s anything that brings those 2 things together for me, it’s listening to Dylan. Here’s a career that stretches back to the sixties, with a repertoire that draws on folk and blues from far before that, and an influence on popular music that lasts far beyond. His world is interwoven with 20th century history. These are some escapades into that world.

Part 1 – Folksinger’s Choice

The audio fragments i’m sharing with you below, are part of a radio recording from 1962. Dylan hadn’t released anything professionally yet. He had just signed a contract at Columbia Records and was working on his debut album which would be released 8 days later. He’d been in New York for little over a year and had been performing at various bars in Greenwich Village. The kind where the hat was passed to pay the musicians. New York had a lively folk musician scene at the time.

This was the start of the sixties, when a hip Beat Generation had gone into the cool beatnik, which was in turn going into hippie. Popular music moved from jazz to rock & roll. The Civil Rights Movement was gaining more and more support. Kennedy had just been elected. The youth was getting more involved. Some turned to traditional folk music as a means of dealing with the troubles of the time. Inspired by a long tradition of folk and blues musicians like Robert Johnson, Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, a lot of kids in sixties New York found in folk songs, a wisdom and sentiment that was timeless.

Dylan had immersed himself in this folk tradition, and in the scene that was happening in the Village. He had been spending time with what had become his role model, Woody Guthrie, who he found “wasting away in an institution.” In the meantime he was making a name for himself playing around town, and had just started writing his own songs, drenched in the folk idiom he was drawing from.

He was invited on the folk radio show Folksinger’s Choice with Cynthia Gooding on March 11^th. He was only 21 years old. But he was already mystifying his past. Talking about having worked on a travelling carnival, and about having learned to read cards. But of course, mystery was and still is, an essential ingredient in the folk tradition. Like Robert Johnson, who was said to have gone to “the crossroads” and there, to have sold his soul to the devil to play better.

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On the first fragment of the show, Dylan plays one of his earliest self-written songs: “The Death of Emmet Till”. As he himself explains, he stole the chord changes and the melody from folk musician Len Chandler. The lyrics, which are so gripping, are Dylan’s, and show a talent that would make him world famous. They tell the story of Emmet Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, who was beaten and killed for whistling at a white woman in 1955, during a family visit in Money, Mississippi. The murder of Emmet Till, and the ensueing trial, were key moments in the Civil Rights Movement.

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On the second fragment of the show, Dylan tunes his guitar to an open E to play two songs. Finger picking away in a driving traditional blues style, he plays “Standing on the Highway”, a song he seems to have written himself. The song is drenched in folk/blues mythologies of crossroads, the road and card reading. In the following conversation, Cynthia Gooding asks him about the reference to the eight of diamonds and the ace of spades, and he mentiones his past with the carnival. The second song is a slow and “lonesome” one, with some beautiful fingerpicking accompaniment. Listed as Long John, it’s likelier that it’s an adapted version of an Appalachian traditional called “Roll on John”.

Eight days after Dylan’s appearance on the show, his self-titled debut album was released. The album consisted mainly of old folk standards, and contained only two of Dylan’s own compositions: “Song for Woody” and “Talking New York”. He would later say that he was cautious of giving away anything dear, the material that was working for him. The record didn’t make a lot of money, but also didn’t cost much to record, so wasn’t seen as failure. It also didn’t get much acclaim, not until years later. Even so, it would forever launch this man into the pages of history.

Also read History through Dylan pt 2