Origin: Blowin' in the Wind (Bob Dylan)

Subject: Who wrote "Blowin' in the Wind"?
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 10:40 AM

I was just listening to Dylan's version of "Blowin' in the Wind'" and was thinking that it really doesn't sound like a Dylan song--I love the song, of course, and I love Dylan, but the structure to this song is a simple formula, of a type that Dylan didn't really use, in fact, it is one that he might have been inclined to parody--

Also, he was not big on answers of any kind--"The answer, my Friend, is blowin' in the wind" seems much too passive a reflection for the Dylan at that time--He tended more toward edginess, angry questions, and pronouncements like, "For the losers now will be later to win, for the times, they are a changin'"

Anyway, heard somewhere, once, that someone else wrote this song, in front of witnesses, at a famous folk club somewhere or other, and I am wondering if anyone knows the story--please pass it along if you do,even if the story turns out not to be true--

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 10:49 AM

Hard to imagine someone else wrote it and there has been no law suit. I'm sure the royalties have been substantial.

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 11:07 AM

It is far from unheard of for music publishers to buy songs outright, and then attach a writers credit, strictly for the purposes of royalty attribution, later. Al Jolson, for instance, got to the point where he wouldn't record a song, unless he got some songwriting credit, his arguement to the songwriters being that, just the fact that he recorded it meant that it would sell millions, and that he out to have a cut--

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,Ritchie
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 11:11 AM

I always thought that this song was a bit 'wishy washy ' probably because it was sung by Peter, Paul & Mary, wayback when I was to young to understand that the words of a pop song could actually mean something and then...a couple of years ago I had the good fortune to see and hear Neil Young do a great version with the sound of bombing in the background and I suddenly realised what it all meant and sadly the answer is still blowing in the wind all you have to do is listen.

As for who wrote it ...well it was that masked man, the one they call 'The ......'

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: Mike Regenstreif
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 11:27 AM

"Blowin' In the WInd" was indeed written by Bob Dylan.

Years ago, there was a story going around that it was actually written by songwriter Lorre Wyatt when he was in high school.

As I recall the story, Wyatt had heard the song, learned it and brought it to his high school folk music club where he didn't contradict the assumption that he himself had written it.

Soon there were rumors all around that Dylan had stolen the song from a high school kid.

Years later, Wyatt 'fessed up to the whole thing in an article he wrote for Sing Out! Magazine.

Mike Regenstreif

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: jofield
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 11:32 AM

Dave Van Ronk tells a story about Dylan coming over to show him a new song (Greenwich Village, early '60s). Dave saw it consisted of nothing but unanswered questions: 'How many roads must a man walk down..?', etc. He thought it was the stupidest song he had ever heard. He confesses to having no judgement as to a song's commercial potential.

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 11:43 AM

Somewhere there is a Dylan rendition of the song that is done in an angry, rebellious, disgusted kid of tone. I remember this from a long time ago and it changed my own way immediately of doing the song. The words are angry if you read them so and I find that a preferential treatment. But where did I hear it? Early film footage? I'm sure it was Dylan........but for the life of me, I can't remember on what.........Anybody else?

Spaw

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 12:08 PM

Thanks for the Lorre Wyatt story Mike. That dogged him for many years. By the way the tune is "No More Auction Block For Me."

Rick

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 12:42 PM

I have heard that Lorre Wyatt story, as well, but it is not the one I am talking about--

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 03:50 PM

To this day I have to agree with Dave Von Ronk but then my dissatisfaction with Dylan is legendary. He did write some good ones tho' and a very few great ones but he does mumble so that I have trouble with the lyrics.

Leopard skin pill box hat? Come on Bob. "Tapioca Tundra", now there is a song.

Don

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: JVZ
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 05:41 PM

As for Dylan mumbling,I get the feeling that he's laughing at us. He used to be understandable.

John

Subject: Dylan and PP&M
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 05:52 PM

I guess I don't like Peter, Paul and Mary as much as I did when I was in high school, but I think they deserve credit for promoting the music of songwriters like Dylan, Lightfoot, Deutschendorf/Denver, and Paxton. If PP&M hadn't paved the way for them by recording their songs, would any of these singer-songwriters have been able to sell their own recordings?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,KJFAIR
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 07:46 PM

Wasn't that auction block song a Leadbelly tune?

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 08:05 PM

PPM were very commercial, but the thing was that they were a commericial effort that used the folk genre songwriters music--I would be really great if there was somebody out there doing that sort of thing today--

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 08:35 PM

"I would be really great" - I trust that is the Mudcat Shaky Finger Syndrome?

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 09:38 PM

No, "I would be really great" because I am good enough, I am smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me!!!

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 09:39 PM

KJFair. Don't know of any Leadbelly recording of "No More Auction Block". Ten to one Dylan heard it from Odetta.

Rick

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: BK
Date: 22 Jan 00 - 11:39 PM

Dylan certainly was known to borrow tunes (as have many others); Check out "The Leavin' Of Liverpool" & see if it doesn't sound familiar...

Cheers, BK

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: Mike Regenstreif
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 10:16 AM

"No More Auction Block" is an abolitionists' song that dates back to the slavery era in the U.S.

As for the borrowing of traditional melodies, it certainly didn't start or stop with Bob Dylan. It is part of the folk process. Long before Dylan it was done by the likes of A.P. Carter, Jimmie Rodgers, Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger and countless others. And since Dylan came on the scene, the practice has continued by the likes of Tom Paxton, John Prine, Steve Goodman, Utah Phillips, Kate McGarrigle and countless others.

Mike Regenstreif

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,flattop
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 11:32 AM

In his book My Back Pages, Andy Gill wrote two interesting pages on Blowin in the Wind. He quotes Dave Van Ronk as saying to Dylan, "What an incredibly dumb song! What the hell is blowing in the wind?" Gill says that, a few weeks later, Ronk heard someone parodying the song in Washington Square Park and realized that Dylan had come up with an enduring cliche.

Gill pointed out that by focusing on questions, and not answers, Dylan had 'struck a chord with the youthful protest movement validating their concern while absolving them from the obligation to come up with absolute answers to the problems about which they protested.' Gill felt that this was the reason for the popularity of the song. It still works today. We can feel good just by sympathizing while folks freeze in the streets.

But that wasn't the only brilliant, cheeky, writing ploy. The verses go from the specific to the general, from the roads with a man walking down, to the missing answers to unspecified questions blowing in the wind. WoeWoman will probably tell you that this a backwards way to write a story. Newspaper articles and essays tend to be written from the general to the specific. Yet Dylan's backward writing feels concrete, partly because "blowin' in the wind" creates solid images around fluffy abstract ideas. Clever!

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: Peter T.
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 01:06 PM

Do any of the biographies say whether Dylan got his prolific writing and borrowing practices from Woody Guthrie? The most interesting thing to me about Dylan in this period is that he was just churning out hundreds of songs, all the time -- and I mean hundreds. Did he get the idea to just write and write and write and write from Guthrie, or had he been doing that before? Nobody else in that period seems to have adopted that style of creation: just pour them out, good, bad, indifferent. Most people work (worked) on a few songs at a time -- he just seems to have adopted a churn-em-out methodology, which had some relationship with his mid-1960s later Surrealist stuff, the free association tone. Just curious.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 02:02 PM

I had always thought (not that my opinion matters, but..) that it was always clear that he was consciously emulating Woody, who was at the same time continuing in the tradition of Joe Hill--at the same time though(and, more or less, in the same space as Dylan), Kerouac and Ginsburg were championing the cause of spontaneous writing--

While we are on the point, I don't like the use of the word "borrowing", since it is presumes that the melody really belongs somewhere else--our broadside collectors will vouch for the fact that it had been common practice to write topical songs to existing melodies practically since the introduction of cheap printing--, Ira Gershwin included Martin Luther in his list of great lyricists, because he had written all those great hymns to existing melodies--

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,flattop
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 02:22 PM

Peter, The three books on Dylan that I recall reading never mentioned that Dylan got his prolific writing and borrowing practices from Woody. However, your reasoning makes perfect sense. Dylan borrowed a lot of things and I'm not sure he ever returned them.

Andy Gill has selected interesting quotes for his book. (And it's the only one that I bought. The others were from the library.) Gill quotes Woody telling friends after Dylan played for him, "That boy's got a good voice. Maybe he won't make it in his writing, but he can really sing it."

Gill also quotes Tom Paxton recalling strolls late at night through Greenwich Village with Dylan as he scribbled away on scraps of paper. "His mind was on fire. Between the club and wherever he was heading, he'd start as many as five songs – and finish them!"

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,flattop
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 02:49 PM

Many, many years ago, when I was quite young and visiting a distant cousin in New Jersey, her strange husband introduced me to his Bob Dylan records. I thought the singing was awful and that Hank was even stranger than my family made him out to be.

A few years later, I was in grade eleven in Cape Breton when I got sick with the mumps and pneumonia. While I was lying in bed delirious, Columbia Record Club sent a copy of Highway 61 to my sister as the selection of the month. I was amazed at the album. I played it over and over.

To those amongst us who would disparage Dylan, I would simply say, get the mumps, get pneumonia, get delirious.

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,Chris W
Date: 23 Jan 00 - 06:14 PM

Bob Dylan pinched/reworked a lot of his early tunes from traditional sources,including Boots of Spanish Leather, North Coutry Girl, and Ballad in Plain D,

BUT he made them his own, and usually supplied much more interesting lyrics.

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: Grab
Date: 24 Jan 00 - 07:05 AM

Dylan's a great songwriter, and a fine guitarist. He can also be a good singer if he wants - just a shame he seems to prefer to yell down the mic instead most of the time...

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,Ritchie
Date: 24 Jan 00 - 08:17 AM

I heard a compilation set of what I suppose could be called 'outtakes' if there is such a word and being a Dylan fan enjoyed listening to most of them. However, the thing I enjoyed most was the sleeve notes,which had been written by JOHN BAULDIE London 1991. Personally they were the best I could ever remember reading and this was in the middle of last year 1999 !! some 8 years after they were credited to him. I enjoyed them so much that I wanted to contact Mr Bauldie to tell him so.I tried always to get in touch and then sadly I found out that John had died in a helicopter crash with the Chairman of Chelsea FC returning from a match.I remembered the report whereby Matthew Harding ,along with 'others' had sadly lost their lives. I did not know who the 'others' were and I suppose I could easily quote a line or two from Dylan to make it fit...instead.. if you ever get a chance read the sleeve notes...thank you John, you live on.

Ritchie Forster

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From:
Date: 24 Jan 00 - 10:23 AM

On the "borrowing of traditional melodies" i wanted you all to present the clear case of Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side" using the 'traditional' tune "The Patriot Game"

There is some info on it at : http://www.yi.com/home/HelfertManfred/patriot.htm

and ... Bob is great ! Bye,

Rik

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: annamill
Date: 24 Jan 00 - 10:25 AM

Ted, there was a rumor back in the late 60s when this song came out that Woody Guthrie may have given this song to Dylan before he died. I believe Dylan saw him just before he died and Woody and Bob were close friends. I never felt this was a Dylan type song either. Hmmmm...could be. Or perhaps, at that time Dylan was just emulating his hero. It's all speculation now. It helped Dylan a lot didn't it.

Love, annap

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 Jan 00 - 11:24 AM

Ritchie, were these the notes on the Columbia 3 disc set (the one that includes 'Blind Will McTell")? It is a recent favourite of mine, and the notes are fine. I better check this one out when I get home....
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: Barbara
Date: 24 Jan 00 - 01:51 PM

Okay, Dylan fans and disparagers, I've been trying now to find among my huge collection of unsorted tapes the obscure and nondescript English trad album from the fifties -- done by a couple, names like "David and Sue" something, that has all those Dylan songs on it, in order (from the Freewheelin').
Has Nottamun Town, Leaving of Liverpool, Patriot's Game, a version of Westron Wind that sounds a lot like "If Today Was Not an Endless Highway", I can't remember what all else. However, if you have the album, you know where the Dylan songs came from. So, trivia buff, tell me the couple's name (and the album, if different).
I can't find it now and it's been driving me nuts.
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: tradsteve
Date: 24 Jan 00 - 03:40 PM

Annap, Woody could not have given dylan this song right before he died, as Guthrie died in '67 and "Blowin' In the Wind" came out in '62.

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 24 Jan 00 - 08:31 PM

Tradsteve,

That would have still been before he died--

As to your recollections Barbara--I think I prefer it that you cannot remember the names--it puts a little fun back in the chase!!!!

Did anyone ever do a "Roots of Bob Dylan" compilation?

Aloha,

Ted

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,flattop
Date: 25 Jan 00 - 07:43 AM

Searching the titles from Blessing Barbara's message, I didn't find the album but I found this interesting bit:

Woody Guthrie (Note 2) is reported to have said to Dylan (who visited the older singer often in hospital): "The words are the important thing. Don't worry about tunes. Take a tune - sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you've got a new tune."

http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/div/influences.html

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: annamill
Date: 25 Jan 00 - 07:55 AM

I wasn't sure, tradsteve. It was a rumor. Perhaps he gave it to him earlier. It is different than his other songs, isn't it?

Love, annap

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,Ritchie
Date: 25 Jan 00 - 08:37 AM

Yes Peter T you're right, it was a 3 cd set from Columbia with 'Blind Willie McTell' on. Great tracks ,Great notes.

Ritchie.

Subject: RE: Who wrote this famous Dylan song?
From: GUEST,leprechaun
Date: 26 Jan 00 - 02:21 AM

The University of Oregon used to offer an English class called Johnson, Guthrie, Dylan. It was a three part study of Robert Johnson, Woodie Guthrie, and Bob Dylan. Dylan's career spans decades, and the songs he writes are derivative of a broad and changing experience. He allows himself to be influenced by various genres, perhaps even in an identifiable pattern. So he "borrows" from everybody, and still creates his own art. That gives everybody a chance to hate him and love him at different times. He must have had an early Irish phase where he wrote songs that mimicked The Bells of St Mary's and The Parting Glass. Maybe Blowin'in the Wind, was written in his pre-"edgy" stage. He later berated Donovan (They Call Me Mellow Yellow) presumably for not being edgy enough.

(despite the Guest label, I am the true leprechaun, I've just been gone so long my cookie crumbled)