In reviewing Bob Dylan's 1965 classic album Bringing All Back Home (you know, the one where he went electric) I noted that it seemed hard to believe now that both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). I further pointed out that it is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. Here we are going back to the early days when there was no dispute that he had earned a place in the folk pantheon. The only real difference between the early stuff and the later electric stuff though is- the electricity. Dylan's extraordinary sense of words, language and word play has been a constant throughout his career. If much later (in the 1990's) he gets a bit repetitious and a little gimmicky in order to stay "relevant" that is only much later after he had done more than his share to add to the language of music.In this selection we have some outright folk classics that will endure for the ages like those of his early hero Woody Guthrie's have endured. The Times They are A-Changing still sounds good today although the generational tensions and the alienation from authorities highlighted there is markedly less now than than in those days-not a good thing, by the way. The Ballad of Hollis Brown is a powerful tale out of John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath about the plight of an up against the wall family farmer out on the then hard hit praries (and it has only gotten worst since and Dylan made one of his periodic 'comebacks' doing this song at a FarmAid concert in the 1980's). With God On Our Side like Masters of War is a powerful anti-war song although some of the tensions of the Cold War period in which it was written have gone (only to replaced today by the fears generated by the `war on terrorism'). Only A Pawn In Their Game was a powerful expression of rage after the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers. The Hattie Carroll song shows Dylan's range by dealing with injustice from a different perspective (and a different class) than Only A Pawn In Their Game. But with no let up in racial discrimination in either case. Finally, in reviewing these early Dylan albums (and some of the later ones, as well) I have noticed that they are not complete without at least one song about lost love, longing for love or betrayal of that emotion. Here, there is no exception to that rule with the haunting, pleading voice of Boots of Spanish Leather.
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