Bob Dylan: The Freewheelin¹ Bob Dylan :: Essays Papers

Bob Dylan The Freewheelin Bob DylanWhen I was growing up, Bob Dylan was more of a name on paper to me than a person. I knew Peter, Paul & Marys covers of his songs break-dance 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--but somehow Bob Dylan never entered the mix. Even after it somehow filtered into my consciousness that hed scripted these songs Id known all my life, that he was a performer, he remained mysterious. Photographs always seem to show him looking down, away from the camera, an expression of brooding concentration fixed on his face. When I heard the original versions of the songs I knew, resembling Blowin In the Wind, I liked the covers better. I liked the melody and harmony. Dylans vocal style was a slight too slipshod. It wasnt kind of talking but it wasnt quite singing, he slurred his words and ended lines before it felt like they were done, and his timing wa s off. But 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 swell out. I keep going back, wanting to hear more, hoping that maybe this time hell finish that thought. Maybe this time Ill get it. But 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 first album of almost-all original songs, the album that denote 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 man, a guitar, and a harmonica. That a man could write new songs that sound so traditional--songs like Down the Highway and Talkin World War III Blues arent a far cry from Leadbelly or John Lee Hooker--is part of the genius, the intrigue, of Bob Dylan. Hes at the same time 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 grumble and a lower, clearer, more resonant tone reminiscent of Pete Seeger.