Dylan’s Star begins to rise
Inspired by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez (who became romantically involved with Dylan), he was writing songs that were considered protest songs and was showing up at a lot of the organized public civil rights events. Baez and Dylan would go on to the memorable August 28, 1963 at the march on Washington in front of the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King gave his iconic speech “I Have a Dream”.
Joan Baez would help Dylan become well known in the civil rights activism side of folk music by covering many of his tunes and performing alongside him at many events. In the early 60’s Bob would be nationally visible in the civil rights movement (culminating in his famous performance at the footsteps of the Lincoln Memorial), before his disillusionment or rather his flat out refusal to be used as figurehead by the various civil rights and anti-war movements.
His vocal style has been criticized as raw, untrained, coming from the streets, nasally and as “if sandpaper could sing”. Yet these aspects are what attract many to his music, including myself. At first I had problems listening to his voice, but after repeated listening to the poetry of his lyrics, topics and themes, his vocal intonation, I have come to prefer his style of singing one of his songs over the musically correct and “pleasing to the ear” covers of his songs by other artists. Nobody sings Dylan like Dylan especially that great sneer in his voice as he sings “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, “Highway 61”, “Motorspycho Nitemare”, “Rainey Day Women #12 & 35 or “Tombstone Blues” to the infectious laughing fit of “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”.
At this point in time (1962 to 1963) he was comfortable with the civil activism of the day but he would later distance himself following the JFK assassination. The songs were worlds beyond the 50’s love, blues and nonsensical scat (Doo Wop) feel good songs. Many songs tackled very controversial and sensitive subject matter that many artists would not touch for fear of ending their careers.
In May of 1963, Dylan took a stand against censorship when he refused to omit the song “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” on the Ed Sullivan show. He would continue to oppose censorship and support artists who took stands to preserve art and not to be dictated as to what was acceptable and what wasn’t (First Amendment). He would continue to inspire many rock groups and artists who had messages and activism in things that the “establishment” was nervous to downright oppressive towards.
Around this time Bob Dylan and Joan Baez became musically as well as “romantically” intertwined. Joan Baez would take many of Dylan’s songs to upper charts
He became a reluctant figurehead and political activist thanks in large part to the press. He has admitted many times that he never really wanted to be the spearhead of the voices of dissent and social unrest in the early 60’s. His songs became anthems for the civil rights, anti war, anti-greed, anti-establishment commentary of the monstrous military socio-industrial complex. He considered himself more an artist/poet/musician rather than the activist everyone wanted and pushed him to be.
Blowing In the Wind
This song is one of Dylan’s most famous songs and was the song that introduced him to the folk music scene as a superstar. The song has a gentle guitar riff sung is a soft manner with words that sound as if they were paraphrasing the Old (Ezekiel) and new Testaments. The topics are very serious and seem to have a spiritual connotation to them. The song quickly became an anthem to the civil rights movement. The song was praised by many black people who were amazed that a young white man could express the sentiments of an oppressed people so eloquently. One unexpected fan of Bob Dylan was Huey P. Newton, the leader of the Black Panther party.
The songs on “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan” reflect a new direction in modern music songwriting where an imaginative conjuring up of images in the mind that mix with the stream of consciousness tuneful recitation, especially in folk music and later folk rock, psychedelic rock and on into hard rock, and then crossing over to soul, funk and of course hip hop and beyond.
Several weeks after Dylan released the song “Blowin’ In The Wind”, Peter Paul and Mary would bring the hit song to #2 on the Billboard charts. This version of the song sold 300,000 copies in its first week ultimately selling more than one million copies. The song is ranked #14 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of all time.