Earlier today I was listening to Bob Dylans second album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” and my mind went back to when I first heard this album many years ago.It was the first album of Dylans that I ever heard.
Before that I had been listening to mainly Irish groups like the Dubliners and the Clancys (I was brought up on that stuff).
In the songs that these groups sung the girl was always offered castles and gold and suchlike in return for her hand.
Along comes Bob and his main concern is that she “has a coat so warm,to keep her from the howling wind.”
Coming from a less than affluent family,this struck a deep chord in me and began a life long(so far!) obsession with the work of Bob Dylan.
I was just wondering if anybody else out there has a similar tale to tell of hearing something that changed the musical direction of their life and brought them to the point of no return.
It’s funny you should bring up that particular quote. I always marveled at how Bob could remain rooted in the toils and real life of the common person even after his musical and financial success. The line “never liked mama’s homemade dress” from Tangled Up in Blue, struck a chord with me and a few of my dates families when I was growing up. I even remember one time where I was wearing a shirt made out of the same material as my Mom’s dress she was wearing when I introduced a girl I liked to her. I was embarassed to tears!
Nice post, dubhlinn, and interesting question. This reply is somewhat tangential, but your post touched on something I’ve wondered about for a while…well, first things first.
Dissatisfied with many things when I worked inside a family-owned and non-unionized publishing company (I’m self-employed now), I ended up at a training meeting for union organizers. I remember–and will never forget–exactly one thing from that experience: Florence Reece’s song “Which Side Are You On?”, written in “Bloody Harlan” in the 1930s. It was the first time I’d ever heard it. I was already drawn to folk and Appalachian music, but the combination of those simple words and that haunting melody went straight to my heart. The unionizing didn’t happen at that company, but in later years, much of my community organizing work was done in partnership with workers, and being part of the Justice for Janitors campaign was one of the most rewarding experiences of my public life. That song had so much to do with the draw I felt to that work.
But here’s the other question I’ve wondered: what’s the relationship between a movement and a song? We obviously couldn’t even imagine the civil rights movement without “We Shall Overcome.” I’ve wondered, as I’ve thought about the role of music in my life, about the role it plays in the broader world: that is, does the effort and courage it takes to bring about social change depend at least in part on the awakening and crystallizing of strong feeling that music can do so well? Or maybe it’s just what brings people into a movement who are not already at the center of it: the coal miners in Harlan didn’t need the song to have their feelings awakened and crystallized…but didn’t it do something even for them that nothing else could have done? If so, what?
Maybe this all too obvious…but I’d love to do or read a history of music and social change.
Anyway, I still love labor music and we have the good fortune here in Chicago to have Bucky Halker to spread the word.
Carol
You might want to look at the life and music of Woody Guthry. He spent a lot of his life writing music that would bring people to initiate reforms.
I’ve posted this story before but it is worth repeating. Several years ago, on a trip to Oregon and Washington State, I heard a haunting Native American flute melody while I was at the aquarium in Newport, OR. When I got to Pike’s Place Market in Seattle there was a vender selling flutes and other wind instruments. I thought to myself, I can learn to play that tune I heard. I picked up a ceramic flute, and of course, nothing. The vendor kindly suggested a child’s ocarina. I bought that and quickly reached its limits. Sometime later, I found a Clarke starter kit in a bookstore.
Since then, I’ve been playing whistle virtually every day, for the past many years. I only had the Clarke for most of that time. Now I have a few more whistles, and still play virtually every day. I have yet to really scratch the surface of what I am capable on the whistle. When I try to learn a tune, my mind wants to go another way, so I let it. This makes for many original melodies, most with lyrics. I perform solo at open mics and other small venues. My music has gotten me through many a difficult and dark day and has also touched the lives of countless others.
Not as profound an experience, but, seeing the movie, Bonnie & Clyde, when it came out, and hearing Earl Scrugg’s ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown,’ set my radar to banjo, to American Folk, and eventually to Irish trad. I did not grow up on any of that, but explored it on my own when I discovered it.
Tony
My moment of truth was in May of 1998 in the “small bridge pub” in Dingle (I can’t spell or pronounce its Gaelic name). I got there early, before it got crowded and staked out a place where I could see the musician when he played. I had always loved the sound of tinwhistles, but had no interest in learning to play anything on my own. A man with long gray hair came in and sat down next to some pipes and a long silver looking tube with holes in it. He sat there peacefully while the crowd grew. Maybe half an hour later he picked up the “long silver looking tube,” a low whistle, and began playing it. Magic descended on the place and I knew I had to find a way to make that magic myself. He was Eoin Duignan and the tune was a slow air he wrote himself called “Dance of the Gypsy Queen.” My life has been different from that moment.
Carol has raised some interesting points about Movements and Music.
In the early days of the Civil rights Movement in Northern Ireland,the songs sung on the marches were not Republican anthems but songs learnt from watching the American Civil Rights rallies a few years before,“We Shall Overcome” being the best known one.
The thinking at the time was that if the black folk in America could mount huge rallies then so could the minority in Northern Ireland.
When the marchers came under attack passive resistance went out the window and the I.R.A.,which at that point was almost obsolete-a few old men with rusty shotguns and stories,was reborn
When the British Army came in to keep the peace they tried to contain the Republican minority in their own areas and as the only just response to an armed occupation is an armed resistance the rest is history alas.
It was at this point that the songs became much more militant with titles like “The men behind the wire” and “The snipers lament” to mention but a few.
Concerning the great Woody Guthrie,one of my all time favourite songs is Christy Moores version of “The Ludlow Massacre”
Every time I listen to that song the tears well up in my eyes.
Woody was Dylans inspiration and I cannot recomend to highly Bobs recitation “Last thoughts on Woody Guthrie” from the bootleg series C.D.1
Dylan was where I came in so there we are,full circle.
A lovely question and thoughts Carol. There isn’t one piece of music, or a line, except maybe Lennon’s “let it be.”
But talking of music and labour (labor) and activism and unionism, here in Windsor, Ontaro (highly unionized city, with all the auto plants etc.) do have a home grown hero-musician.
He is Len Wallace, a social activist as long as I can remember, some thirty years and still singing and playing for social justice. Probably the best accordian-singer-performer player around. Len’s CD “Midnight Shift” and its title track should get anybody who has worked enless hours on an assembly line wanting to man the barracades!
You can read about him here: This isn’t a commerical post but a person/musician that I greatly admire.
Oh! If scroll down on the page the lyrics to Len’s song for September 11th are there. He has his audience crying and ranting at the same time when he sings it.
Mark, I’m so excited to hear Wallace’s music! Thanks so much for posting that!
And dubhlinn, I’ll have to check out those “Last thoughts on Woody Guthrie,” who’s a hero of mine (thanks Ron–he is indeed the source of so much music in this vein). I don’t know that version of Ludlow Massacre–I’ll check that out, too.
Last fall I went to hear John Williams and John Doyle at The Abbey here in Chicago. The show was great, as you can imagine…but it became even more than that, in my opinion, when they played A Miner’s Life, I think it’s called, the one with this refrain:
Keep your hands upon the dollar
And your eyes upon the scale.
Their including it amidst the humor, technical dazzle, and lyrical transcendence of the rest of their music had the same effect as a line I love so much from Foster’s Hard Times:
While we seek mirth and beauty, and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door…
Dylan’s version of Hard Times, btw, just slays me.
Funny thread, Dublhinn.
At any rate, the coincidence is to me.
No Return, Hmm?
Just a few weeks ago, at some point, I stopped arguing with the lady. Went to the cabinet and exhumated this very same record, one I hadn’t played for years. I went straight to the track #7, set it on “repeat”.
What has it to do with my music? Now I practice every day. “She jis kinda waystet mah pressius tam” ?
Btw, the least I could do to pay due tribute to Dylan, is learn this song…
Same thing happened to me the first time I heard Steeleye Span. It was Please to see the King, their second album. The minute I heard Maddy’s shrill voice singing The Blacksmith, I was hooked. I absolutely love almost every one of their albums as well as the Tim and Maddy albums. It’s going on 30 years now, and there’s still nothing that compares to them.
It also started me on my love for traditional music.
Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen were my early musical education but now that I’m a geezer I can’t listen to this without tears coming to my eyes:
Bob Dylan’s Dream
While ridin’ on a train goin’ west
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concernin’ myself an’ the first few friends i had.
With half damp eyes i stared to the room
Where my friends an’ i spent many an afternoon.
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin’ an’ singin’ till the early hours of the morn.
By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung
Our words was told, our songs was sung
Where we longed for nothin’ an’ were satisfied
Jokin’ an’ talkin’ about the world outside.
With hungry hearts thru the heat an’ cold
We never much thought we could get very old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
An’ our chances really was a million to one.
As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
An’ our choices they was few so the thoughts never hit
That the one road we travelled would ever shatter or split.
How many a year has passed an’ gone
Many a gamble has been lost an’ won
An’ many a road taken by many a first friend
An’ each one i’ve never seen again.
I wish, i wish, i wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.
A great,great song.
The tune is a variant of “Lord Franklin” which his Bobness learnt here in England from Martin Carthy. Dylan did give the bould Martin a mention in the original sleevenotes.
Around the same time another young American was playing around England,Paul Simon. He got Scarborough Fair from Martin Carthy and the rest is history.
Carthy was a bit pissed off with this blatant rip off and was not on speaking terms with Simon for nearly thirty years. A few years back they were reconciled and all now is well,allegedly.
Folk Wars,eh?
BTW speaking of Dylan, my wife and I were watching the movie “Vanilla Sky” a while back when I yelled "Hey, that scene’s the cover of “The Freewheelin Bob Dylan” so I had to stop it and get my record albums out of storage to convince her that it was indeed a reconstruction of the scene on that cover. I hadn’t looked at any of my record albums in about 10 years but some things you don’t forget.
