Good point, Little Hawk, about Dylan being young and trying to imitate the people he admired.   But I think he carried it to extremes. There was one comment I read (I think it was in Hajdu's book, but I can't swear to it) that after visiting Woody Guthrie at the hospital, Dylan was singing someplace and was staggering and twitching all over the stage as he sang. "Someone muttered, 'He's not just imitating Guthrie, he's imitating Guthrie's disease.'" (Huntington's chorea).

I think that in becoming Bob Dylan, Bobby Zimmerman kinda got lost somewhere. . . .

And just to be clear, I'm not advocating that people should try to "sing pretty." Truth to tell, some really fine singers don't have particularly pretty voices. Dave Van Ronk, for example:   the guy sounded like a rusty hinge. But boy! could he put a song across!

Trying to "sing pretty" can actually detract from a song. Just sing honest.

Re: protest songs. I don't often sing protest songs, and definitely not the more blatant ones. It has to have something to justify it as a song other than the protest, otherwise, it's just bitching. I will occasionally stick something like Johnnie, I Hardly Knew Ye (I don't sing the more strident verses; I sing just the four verses I learned from Walt Robertson, which more than adequately delineate the personal tragedy without beating the audience over the head with it) or Guthrie's Deportees into an evening's program, and then move on to something lighter.

In the concert Bob Nelson and I did together last year, in the second half, I sang Eric Bogle's The Green Fields of France and Bob followed with Tom Paxton's My Son John—two very heavy songs, especially one after the other. Left the audience a bit stunned. We'd made our point. Then, we moved on and lightened the mood a lot.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, I don't think I would equate taking a strong stand on a moral or ethical issue with "self-righteous posturing." Granted, there is a bit of that here on Mudcat, but I think most people here have some pretty definite opinions. And some folks even have the facts to back them up!

Man! Some people hate that!!