a bunch more records

continuing education

When Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota, up on the Iron Range) started out -- he left Hibbing the day after high school graduation and headed to Minneapolis; after working on learning to play the guitar and sing, there, he left for NYC in 1960 or 61 (approx.) -- he was enrolled at Univ. / Minn., but was too busy playing music to attend classes. 

He was on a pilgrimage of discovery -- a journey to find what he needed to do and to learn  how to do it.
(He says he was a "musical expeditionary.")

Citing the inspiration he found in Woody Guthrie's music, in the Scorsese documentary, "No Direction Home," Dylan says (interviewed approx. 2005) that somebody gave him the book Woody Guthrie wrote, titled Bound For Glory.
He says, "I identified with the Bound For Glory book."

Talking about Woody Guthrie's music, Dylan says, "Woody Guthrie records were almost impossible to find."  He goes on to tell how he knew a guy named Paul Nelson, in Minneapolis, who was a folk music scholar -- he didn't sing the music, but he had an incredible collection, so Dylan was listening to his records.

"I knew," says Bob in the 2005 interview, "they would be away for the weekend, so I went over there and helped myself to a bunch more records."

Paul Nelson (they found this guy!):  "Yeah, 25 records had disappeared -- mostly stuff Dylan was listening to."

Dylan:  "These records were very hard to find -- like hen's teeth.  So if you were a musical expeditionary, like I was, and you came across some Woody Guthrie records, you would have to immerse yourself in them."

Paul Nelson and someone named John, who was 6-foot-four started "trying to track Dylan down.  We tried the fraternity; we tried an apartment where he was supposedly living, but he didn't live there anymore.  We tried two more places -- one of the residents said, 'Wow this Bob fella must be popular, you're about the tenth guy lookin' for him.'

Finally we got an address and we knew where he was.  John, who was about 6-foot-four, got a bowling pin, and a big cigar, and he was going to do a John Wayne production number.
We found Bob -- and John, never intending to hit Dylan, but he was really gonna do the bit -- he started waving the bowling pin over his head and yelling, 'I'm  gonna beat the hell out of you!  Where are my records?!'

And Dylan was really scared, at first, but he managed to keep cool.  And it somehow settled into an absurdist drama:  Dylan would talk, and say something interesting.  And John would get interesting.  And they'd start to talk, and start to like each other a little bit.

Then John would remember why he was there, and start brandishing the pin again, and play the whole scene out again...."

---------------------------------------
tin pan alley

They have interviews on Disc 1 of "No Direction" with some of the men who were music publishers, etc., in the music business in the early 1960s, as Bob Dylan was getting started: one of them, Izzy Young, refers to notes....He said Bob Dylan's songs, in those early days, "sounded current and old at the same time." 

He says, "I sent Dylan up to Folkways Records" -- they treated him like shit, threw him out in the street."  (? -- some of these stories may gain energy and momentum with the years and decades...)

Then Young sent Dylan to Vanguard Records, where Maynard Solomon listened & later when Young asked for his impression, said, "We don't record freaks."

Listening to Dylan perform in a coffeehouse, Solomon was asked what he thought, and he replied, "Too visceral."

Another music guy from those days, Artie Mogull, talks about someone calling him -- we're going to send you this folk singer, Bob Dylan -- he has a contraption around his neck that holds the harmonica up to his mouth....
"And let me tell you," Mogull says, looking straight at the interviewer, who's probably right by the camera, so it's as if he's staring straight at the viewer, "Nobody had seen anything like this on Broadway, in the music business before.  And I must say -- I'm one of the few people in the business who listens to the words, and back then --  maybe the only one, and when I heard

how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry,

I flipped.

I said, 'Okay that's it I wancha.'"

-30-