Founding Father: Bob Dylan

From the earliest years of the recording industry, there was a divide between songwriters and singers. Singers were interpreters, not creators; creators could become stars on their own without singing a note in public (think of Irving Berlin, writer of God Bless America, White Christmas and other standards, or the team of Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen who wrote dozens of hits for Frank Sinatra).

This began to change long about the 1940s, in the country and western field first, as some singers began to perform original songs. In pop music, however, it remained the norm far longer. Early in the rock era, the status of songwriters was devalued---music publishers often gave songwriting credit to people who had nothing to do with a song's creation as a way of getting them a share of the publishing money.

Disc jockeys Dick Clark and Alan Freed received such credit; so did Elvis. Plus, the annals of rock are full of tales of artists who wrote a hit song and sold it outright for a one-time pittance, only to see the copyright owner get paid repeatedly, forever. And so it remained into the early 1960s. During their formative years, even the Beatles covered other people's songs more frequently than they wrote their own. Most solo artists were creatures of their producers and record-label executives, who made the decisions about what to record (and often, about the image those artists projected).

Beneath the surface, however, a tectonic shift was underway. The folk-music boom of the early 1960s produced many lone troubadours carrying guitars. Because folk fans tended to value interpretation above all, lots of performers were content to stick with the traditional songs that made up the folk-music canon. A few, however, burned to create their own. One of them was a kid from the Iron Range of northeastern Minnesota named Bob Zimmerman. He'd enrolled at the University of Minnesota after high school but was more interested in music than in his studies, so after a year, he dropped out to become a professional musician. He had already started calling himself Bob Dylan by then. He eventually found his way to New York City, where after a time he started getting noticed -- a guest shot on a radio show, a positive review in the Times, and finally a sideman's gig with folk singer Carolyn Hester.

Hester's producer, the influential John Hammond, signed Dylan to Columbia Records. Dylan's eponymous first album was released in 1962, but it was his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963, that made him a star. Unlike his debut album, Dylan's second album contained all but two original songs, among them Blowin' in the Wind, Masters of War, Girl from the North Country, A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, and Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, each of them inspired by traditional folk, but clearly going in a new direction. Dylan would continue to seek new directions as the years went by.

After Dylan came the deluge---everybody with a guitar wanted to sing his own songs. Along with the singer/songwriter movement came the idea of the self-contained band that could write and sing their own songs. Any brief historical summary is bound to oversimplify, but it's not completely outrageous to suggest that the vast number of personal artistic visions throughout rock's history, from the early 1960s to now, from metal to emo to you-name-it, began with Bob Dylan's original songs 45 years ago. It's also not completely outrageous to credit Dylan with inventing a particular kind of rock-star cool: enigmatic, elusive, unknowable.

He maintains his elusiveness despite being one of the more visible stars of his generation: He still plays up to 100 dates a year. He'll be onstage tonight in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Tomorrow, he flies to Iceland to begin a nearly two-month swing that will take him to Scandinavia, Russia, the Baltics, Eastern Europe, Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. He's doing it even though he's reached at an age when he could be retired and living in Italy, France, Spain, or Portugal.

Today, Bob Dylan turns 67.   

Comments

[Tom Grasty]

Glad I found this post. Cool article.

And since you are obviously a fan, I thought I'd introduce you to my new novel, BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, which I think you'd enjoy.

It's a murder-mystery. But not just any rock superstar is knocking on heaven's door. The murdered rock legend is none other than Bob Dorian, an enigmatic, obtuse, inscrutable, well, you get the picture...

Suspects? Tons of them. The only problem is they're all characters in Bob's songs.

You can get a copy on Amazon.com or go "behind the tracks" at www.bloodonthetracksnovel.com to learn more about the book.