Bob Dylan: The Freewheelin¹ Bob Dylan :: Essays Papers

Bob Dylan The Freewheelin Bob DylanWhen I was growing up, Bob Dylan was more than of a name on authorship to me than a person. I knew Peter, Paul & Marys covers of his songs better than I knew his. My parents listen to a lot of folk music--Peter, Paul and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, the Weavers, Pete Seeger, Woody and Arlo Guthrie-- entirely somehow Bob Dylan neer entered the mix. Even after it somehow filtered into my consciousness that hed written these songs Id known solely my life, that he was a performer, he remained mysterious. Photographs always seem to show him smell down, away from the camera, an expression of brooding concentration fixed on his face. When I pick upd the original versions of the songs I knew, like Blowin In the Wind, I desire the covers better. I liked the melody and harmony. Dylans vocal style was a small-minded too slipshod. It wasnt quite talking but it wasnt quite singing, he wooden-headed his words and depoted lines before it felt like they we re done, and his timing was off. yet its that ambiguity--clear as split pea soup, as they say--that keeps drawing me back. Like the lines that end early, leaving you with the sense that the important part was left unsaid, more is implied by Dylan than said straight out. I keep going back, wanting to hear more, hoping that maybe this time hell finish that thought. Maybe this time Ill get it. plainly I never quite do. Hes never appealed to me as a singer, but his style and character are unmistakable, his charisma magnetic and powerful. The Freewheelin Bob Dylan was Dylans prototypical album of almost-all original songs, the album that denote his potential and talent to the world, announced the arrival of folk musics poet-prophet. (Friedlander 139) Its pre-electric Dylan, rootsy sounding, just the man, a guitar, and a harmonica. That a man could write new songs that sound so tralatitious--songs like Down the pass and Talkin World War III Blues arent a far prognosticate from Lea dbelly or John Lee Hooker--is part of the genius, the intrigue, of Bob Dylan. Hes simultaneously traditional and revolutionary. Some songs have achieved this mythic antiquity--sounding like they were written much more than forty years ago--over time. Oxford Town alternates (often mid-line) between Dylans characteristic hoarse, thin mutter and a lower, clearer, more resonant tone reminiscent of Pete Seeger.