Bob Dylan: The Freewheelin¹ Bob Dylan :: Essays Papers

Bob Dylan The Freewheelin Bob DylanWhen I was growing up, Bob Dylan was more(prenominal) of a name on reputation 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-- scarcely somehow Bob Dylan never entered the mix. Even after it somehow filtered into my consciousness that hed written these songs Id known tout ensemble my life, that he was a performer, he remained mysterious. Photographs always seem to show him feeling down, away from the camera, an expression of brooding concentration fixed on his face. When I envisiond the original versions of the songs I knew, like Blowin In the Wind, I wish the covers better. I liked the melody and harmony. Dylans vocal style was a micro too slipshod. It wasnt quite talking but it wasnt quite singing, he boneheaded his words and lasted lines before it felt like they were done, and his timing was off. still 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. except 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 root album of almost-all original songs, the album that inform 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 bit, a guitar, and a harmonica. That a man could write new songs that sound so tralatitious--songs like Down the course and Talkin World War III Blues arent a far bid from Leadbelly or Jo hn 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.