Dick - Thanks, as always for the chuckle! You are such a droll fellow. In my opinion Bob's rewrites of trad songs are, with virtually no exceptions, markedly superior to the originals...but it's a matter of individual taste, isn't it?

I like the originals fine. I like Dylan's rewrites far more. They have more meaning, more subtlety, more relevance to our time, and more intensity.

You're basically right to say that he's a pop singer, but he's a very unusual one, since he writes in a more serious vein than is normally seen in pop music.

He's simply a singer, in fact, who cannot be categorized. He sings pop, rock, blues, folk, country, and some other stuff too. The folk people got mad at him way back when after Newport '65, because they thought they owned him and that he would never disappoint them, but keep being their crown prince forever, and keep writing more of the same old stuff forever. When he threw away the folk crown and moved on, it truly upset them. Well, too bad. They didn't own him.

- LH