The legendary songwriter, Bob Dylan, turns 80 today. As expected, Scott Johnson, the outstanding cultural observer writing at Powerline, treated his readers to a revision of his Dylan tributes. Johnson conveys the message so well I won't begin to add to the story. His first post, Not Dark Yet, discusses the man and his significance in the world of music and beyond. His second post, Not Dark Yet, Cont'd., is devoted to Dylan the songwriter and features several likely unfamiliar covers of the master's work.
Bob Dylan was only 21 on July 9, 1962 when he walked into the Columbia Recording Studios in New York to record a song to be included on his second album. The song, Blowin' in the Wind, brought him fame and recognition as one of the nation's leading folk poets in the twentieth century. Dylan has this to say about the song in the June 1962 issue of the folk journal, Sing Out:
Too many of these hip people are telling me where the answer is but oh I won’t believe that. I still say it’s in the wind and just like a restless piece of paper it’s got to come down some ...But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down so not too many people get to see and know . . . and then it flies away.
The music critic, Andy Gill, said this about the song in his book, Classic Bob Dylan, 1962-1969: My Back Pages:
Blowin' in the Wind marked a huge jump in Dylan's songwriting. Prior to this, efforts like The Ballad of Donald White and The Death of Emmett Till had been fairly simplistic bouts of reportage songwriting. Blowin' in the Wind was different: for the first time, Dylan discovered the effectiveness of moving from the particular to the general. Whereas The Ballad of Donald White would become completely redundant as soon as the eponymous criminal was executed, a song as vague as Blowin' in the Wind could be applied to just about any freedom issue. It remains the song with which Dylan's name is most inextricably linked, and safeguarded his reputation as a civil libertarian through any number of changes in style and attitude.
Undoubtedly the song remains a poem for our time, perhaps all time. And Dylan just keeps rolling as well,
Sources
Photos and Illustrations:
public domain photo, 1964 Yearbook, St. Lawrence University, New York
Text:
Bob Dylan entry, Wikipedia.org
history.com
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