I was 12 when I first heard this song. I was just a boy with my head up my arse living in the rural UK with barely a political thought in my head. The reason I have stumbled into here is that I am at the moment transferring all my old vynyl into digital MP3's and one of those albums is 'The Times They Are-A-Changing'. Now in my late 50's, listening to those songs I hadn't heard in years once again conjured up my own awakening to the injustices that take place in all societies, beit the Civil Rights Movement, Atomic Bombs, Communism, even unrequited love. Having read a fair bit about Dylan I know he can be a bit of a shit, likable, but still a shit nevertheless, stealing songs and passing them off as his own, fabricating a past life that never existed, if not fabricating then at least embellishing it.
You could say that it was this early Dylan that had a great influence on me and my later life: as a rebel against the established order, a righter of wrongs, a lifetime of socialism with a capital S, and a lifetime in the Trades Union movement. 'One Too Many Mornings' helped me pass several English exams as did the sleeve notes which my best friend and I unashamedly ripped off as 'all our own work'! I remember for the first time actually listening to the lyrics of Dylan's songs, something I rarely do these days, listen to the mindless pap of some spotty youth, or so called 'girl bands' LOL prancing about half naked pretending to be R&B singers. R&B my arse! The sense of injustice and futility that someone like Hattie Carrol could killed by such scum as Zantzinger with such a paltry sentence and that he today still lives!
Dylan lead me into stuff like Steve Biko/Nelson Mandella in Sth Africa, Cry Freedom, Mississippi Burning territory. Being a kid in the UK it was extremely difficult to find out about this stuff, certainly in schools, where at least one headmaster had me pegged as a 'left-wing subversive with anti-social tendencies', at 12!!!!
Now of course its so much easier to discover the truth behind these 'stories'. And of course more latterly some of the perpatrators of these horrific racial crimes are at last obtaining justice albeit 40 odd years too late. Jailing old men doesn't seem right, after all they lived their lives unlike those that they cut short, but I'll take justice anyway I can.
For me, Dylan hasn't done a thing since 'The Hurricane', and I have never forgiven him for going 'electric', but songs like 'The Lonsome Death Of Hattie Carrol', 'Master's Of War', 'One Too Many Mornings', 'Chimes Of Freedom' et al will for me now live on, digitally!
'Crazytrucker