Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan

In today's Delanceyplace excerpt - in 1962, twenty-one year folk singer old Bob Dylan, relatively unknown and almost penniless, wrote "Blowin' in the Wind" in Manhattan. The song launched lyric writing for folk, rock and blues toward a new level of substance, reflection and poetry. It skyrocketed Dylan to fame and fortune, and ushered in a new era in music in which composers performed their own songs-the beginning of the end for Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building. But there were complications along the way: "Bob composed 'Blowin' in the Wind' in a matter of minutes sitting in a cafe across the street from the Gaslight Club. Although he thought 'Blowin' in the Wind' special, he did not understand the full significance of what he had done. 'It was just another song I wrote.' The melody was uncannily similar to the African-American spiritual 'No More Auction Block.' However, borrowing melodies, and even lyrics, was part of the folk tradition and thus perfectly acceptable. A more pertinent criticism of 'Blowin' in the Wind' concerned the rhetorical lyrics. Many of the most distinguished folk artists in New York were underwhelmed when they first heard the song. There seemed no link between the relentless questions; and, at the end of three verses, none of the questions had been resolved, except to say the answer was blowing in the wind, an image so vague that, arguably, it meant nothing.   "Pete Seeger did not regard it highly. ' "Blowin' in the Wind" is not my favorite,' he says. 'It's a little easy.' Tom Paxton found it almost impossible to learn. 'I hate the song myself. It's what I call a grocery-list song where one line has absolutely no relevance to the next line.' Dave Van Ronk thought it dumb. Still, within a couple of months of Bob performing 'Blowin' in the Wind' at Gerde's Folk City, Van Ronk noticed to his surprise that musicians hanging around Washington Square Park had invented irreverent parodies such as, 'The answer, my friend, is blowin' out your end.' As Van Ronk says, 'If the song is strong enough, without even having been recorded, to start garnering parodies, the song is stronger than I realized.'[His manager], meanwhile, knew Bob had created something extra­ordinary. ' "Blowin' in the Wind" was the key to it all,' he says. 'That song made it all happen.' ... "On July 30, 1962, 'Blowin' in the Wind,' the song that was the foundation stone of Bob's career and a catalyst of the singer-songwriter revolution, was copyrighted to M. Witmark & Sons. The same day, [Dylan's new manager Albert] Grossman signed what Bob later called 'a secret deal' with M. Witmark & Sons giving Grossman fifty percent of Witmark's share of the publishing income generated by any songwriter he brought to the company. Now Grossman stood to earn a substantial slice of Bob's publishing fees, over and above the [20 percent] cut he took for managing him. This backhanded deal was one of Bob's primary com­plaints when he and Grossman were in legal dispute in the 1980s, although in fairness Grossman was getting an enhanced part of Witmark's share, and not necessarily money Bob himself would have received. Bob claimed indignantly that he had known nothing of Grossman's fifty percent deal with M. Witmark & Sons (Grossman insisted he had told him). Bob also claimed to have had no idea Grossman was given as much as $100,000 to advance to him for signing with M. Witmark & Sons, of which he received one percent. Bob's attorneys asserted that Grossman had 'willfully and maliciously' concealed vital information. The secretiveness was what angered Bob who was, of course, a very secretive person himself. "However, this was not the end of Grossman's machinations. The last part of his plan was, in fact, the cleverest. If Peter, Paul and Mary [a group Grossman had created] had a hit with a Bob Dylan-Witmark song, Grossman would earn fourfold. He had his management fee from the two acts, plus his twenty-five per­cent of Peter, Paul and Mary's recording income from Warner Bros., plus fifty percent of the income Witmark earned from publishing a Dylan song. When Peter, Paul and Mary had a massive hit with 'Blowin' in the Wind,' and top-forty success with two further songs written by Dylan, Grossman became as rich as Croesus. "Suddenly, money had become very important."      Author: Howard Sounes   Title: Down the Highway Publisher: Grove Press Date: Copyright 2001, 2011 by Howard Sounes Pages: 119-124

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