Link in the Chain (roots and beginnings) 

American folk music.

Blind Lemon Jefferson, Doc Boggs, Buell Kazee, Mississippi John Hurt, Clarence Ashley, Cannon’s Jug Stompers, the Carter Family—these artists, among many others, didn’t invent folk music, but they are responsible for popularizing folk music during the 20s and 30s—for first recording and setting the table for the turn American popular music would take in the 50s and 60s.

                          

Bob Dylan is a vital link in this chain. His music both transcends and is a part of this great musical tradition that stretches back into the mists of American mythology. As we begin our series on the music of Bob Dylan, it is fitting to consider this aspect of Dylan’s musical development.  

Folk songs of the twenties and thirties reveal a rich tapestry of influences—European and African motifs, rhythms, and melodies had blended into a strange and wonderful amalgam that was distinctly American. It is inclusive and participatory. It is simple but also deep and muddy.

                       

 The sanctified rhythm, howling blues, whining mountain ballads.

                                  

 The hobo on the rails, the preacher testifying, Robert Johnson at the crossroads. 

                                           

                                                         ^{Dock Boggs}

                         

The reemergence of traditional folk music during the 1950s makes sense in retrospect. The 50s, having given rise to the modern, disposable consumer culture as well as threat of nuclear annihilation, was ripe for a turn back toward authenticity and mystery. For young people coming of age in the late 50s, folk music must have seemed like a window onto a seemingly more authentic and romantic era.

                                    

                                                     ^{Blind Willie McTell}

Robert Zimmerman, who had come down out of the iron ranges of northern Minnesota to college in the late 50s, was one of these young people. He had of course been indoctrinated in the currency of rock n roll and country & western as a high school kid—Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Hank Williams. But it would be the folk world where he would find a doorway to an original and potent artistic expression. Already artists like Joan Baez and the Kingston Trio had found commercial success—and earlier links in the chain like Pete Seeger served as mentors and links to the seemingly ancient folk world.

                                  

It was performers like Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry , Pete Seeger, and Odetta who provide the link between the artists of the 20s and counterculture of the 50s and 60s. Though both Woody and Seeger (and countless other folk artists) had been blacklisted at the start of the Cold War, they were able to get folk music heard in schoolrooms across America. Songs like This Land is Your Land and Michael Row the Boat Ashore have been sung by American school children since the 40s.  By the late fifties a generation was coming of age having been weaned on folk music.

One of the biggest influences on not only Dylan’s metamorphosis but of the entire folk music revival was Harry Smith’s vital and historic Anthology of American Folk Music.

                             

Released on Folkways Records in 1953, the Anthology of American Folk Music featured 84 songs recorded in the late 20s and early 30s . Murder ballads, country blues, work songs, social music, and traditional mountain music, Smith’s collection had one foot in a verdant and mythical America and one foot in the screaming, mechanical modern era. It steps out of the poetic past shrouded in exciting danger and ancient mystery.

                                     

(The Cohen Brothers “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” is brilliant in artistically highlighting the early folk recording era of music and American culture—the movie, borrowing elements from Homeric and Biblical traditions, is a kind of impressionistic view on American mythology moving headlong into the brave new world of the 20^th century.)

                               

The Anthology of American Folk Music is an honest-to-God treasure. It was folk and jazz music, after all, where desegregation first took place. It is absolutely essential for understanding the course American popular music took during the 20^th century. Both folk and jazz gave us a history and an attitude. It was ours.

                                     

                                                        ^{Buell Kazee}

It certainly was influential to young Robert Zimmerman as he immersed himself in the idioms and traditions of folk, blues, and country. Ultimately the transformation of Robert Zimmerman to Bob Dylan was one of Love and Theft—like any great artist he borrowed and incorporated themes and phrases from those who came before. In particular, Dylan focused on the rambling and shambling Woody Guthrie while crafting his persona.  Guthrie was, of course, the folk-singing truth teller during the Great Depression.

Dylan spent countless hours studying the vocal mannerisms of not just Guthrie, but also performers like Willie McTell, Hank Williams, Noah Lewis, and Huddie Ledbetter .

                         

                                                      ^{Woody Guthrie}

As Dylan made his escape from the frozen northland to New York, armed with the seemingly secret and powerful knowledge of folk music, he too must have felt like Guthrie once had:  Bound for Glory.

                                        

Clarance Ashley talks about recording in the 1920s, performs "The Coo Coo Bird"