James Akenson
Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat. Well, not really since we won’t even order one from a mail order catalog like Mackenzie. It may be September, but out here on the Ponderosa time flies. It will soon be time to think about the outside Christmas lighting and then a tree in the living room plus all the other decoration.
It will be time to crank up Charles Dickens and a variety of warm and fuzzy Christmas programs. Unless, of course, you overdosed on the Hallmark Channel during July. That, of course, means you really enjoy seeing the straight couple finally kiss in the very last scene.
So why all the fuss about Christmas? EZ PZotomy. For Christmas 2022, Life Partner Mickie included all 258 pages of the MOJO UK publication Bob Dylan: 1941-2022 Revisited as one of my Stocking Stuffers. I’ve known a bit about Dylan before this. I also knew that there are Dylan conferences and all sorts of scholarly and popular media articles about him.
And…I even wrote a Country Underground Australia piece about my years at the University of Minnesota that included Dylan. Bob, Garrison, and Me: Ever Together…Kind-Of included Dylan and Garrison Keillor of “Prairie Home Companion” fame. Dylan came from the northern Iron Range town of Hibbing in the early 1960s and spent time around the University of Minnesota.
What about Bob Cats you say. Bob Cats are an important predator in the eco system. Like with Goldilocks and the warmth of the bear family porridge, they’re not too small and not too big. They’re just right.
But, this isn’t about that kind of Bob Cat. It’s not even about a close relative, the Lynx and their ecosystem role with the Snowshoe Hare. Wasn’t there a close dynamic for the Lynx and the Snowshoe Hare population?
We’re here to discuss Bobcats…a new term I learned for die-hard fans of Bob Dylan.. and Country Music content related to Bob Dylan. Neither does that MOJO reference in the title deal with a Sirius/XM Satellite radio personality Mojo Nixon. Dylan does get played, though, on Mojo Nixon’s “Outlaw Country” radio program.
What’s that you say? Don’t mumble. Speak up. Bob Dylan isn’t Country? Defining Country Music is one slippery slope. Let’s not get bogged down in definitions.
Folks can get quite nasty about definitions. I remember some exchanges years ago on the BGRASS-L discussion group when they tried to define Bluegrass. Can it be Bluegrass without a Scruggs style Banjo picking? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
If Dylan isn’t connected to Country Music how come International Country Music (ICMC) Co-Chair Don Cusic gave a great talk about Bob Dylan and Country Music at ICMC 2023 in Nashville at Belmont University overlooking Music Row and downtown Nashville? And… Don Cusic is publishing a book on Dylan and Country Music.
If Dylan isn’t connected to Country Music how come Jim Clark of Barton College in North Carolina presented and ICMC session on “Mining the Old Weird America: Bob Dylan and Traditional Country Music”? Like the Ginzu Knife commercial…but wait..there’s more!
That is there have been more ICMC sessions over the years in which Dylan is mentioned. If Dylan isn’t connected to Country Music why have I enjoyed informal singing along with pickers at the International Country Music Conference on “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere?”
If Dylan isn’t connected to Country Music how is it that ICMC presenter, and Keynoter, and author of folk revival books Ron Cohen wrote of his memories for www.internationalcountrymusic.net?
Cohen made fascinating comments of his time in Minneapolis as a PhD Student at the University of Minnesota. Cohen became an expert on the Folk Revival centred in New York City during 1950s and 60s. There’s a complex link of the Folk Revival to Country Music. Cohen became a graduate student and earned his PhD at the University of Minnesota.
I first lived in a rooming house, then in a series of apartments, with my small collection of folk records (Folkways, Vanguard, Elektra, etc) and books. Minneapolis had a rather thriving folk music scene, including the Ten O’Clock Scholar club in Dinkytown, the off campus community where I would live, and where Dylan had performed. I missed performances by Spider John Koerner who was in one of my English classes, Dave “Snaker” Ray, and Tony “Little Sun” Glover, a wonderful white blues band.
In 1965 I was a teaching assistant in a U.S. history survey course. One day a student came up at the end of class and mentioned his brother was a folk singer, which certainly intrigued me. David Zimmerman mentioned that his brother was Bob Dylan!
By that time I was married and David soon began to drop by our apartment, bringing gifts of Columbia Records (he worked for the company). Once he invited me to a Dylan concert in Minneapolis, but I declined. Dumb me. Still, I kept up with folk music trends, now including Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Limeliters, and others, sparking the amazing folk music revival of mid-decade
Let’s just say that a Bob Dylan and a Country Music linkage exists and can be connected in this discussion. The UK MOJO special issue and Don Cusic’s ICMC 2023 plus some other examples should make the point. The Dylan issue of MOJO is big physically and big in terms of its content. It took me a good bit of time to read through it all despite having lots of pictures.
MOJO’s Dylan is fascinating, but not exactly a straight-line biography from 1941 to 2022. Despite moving chronologically, each author has a different style of presentation and emphasis.
Yes there are a google of Bob Dylan articles, books, online posts, conferences as well as events and museum holdings in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Bob Dylan Center. Let’s not muddy the waters. Not going down the Dylanology all things Dylan road at all.
Dylan, just like the Beatles, did have Country Music influences according to MOJO.
According to his mother, he spent hours in his room scribbling poetry and drawing. From there, scratching out his own tunes on a cheap guitar was a logical next step; the prematurely deceased King of Country Music, Hank Williams, was an early inspiration. (p. 17)
Throughout MOJO’s Dylan there are a variety of Country Music links. The 1960s Folk Revival, Dylan’s recording in Nashville, and a connection to the Country Rock movement. He visited Woody Guthrie almost immediately in 1961 when he arrived in New York City. That doesn’t touch on the degree to which his Jesus saves phase fits into Country Music, if at all.
Even close to the end…try pages 252 and 257 of MOJO’s Dylan…there are connections to Country Music.
The Birmingham show….particularly the guitarists…picking on country instrumentals…enabling Dylan to engage his rockabilly-country mode…An added bonus is the mountain harmony..which lends an authentic Stanley Brothers feel to traditional numbers like “Searching For A Soldier’s grave…(p. 252)
On page 257…the last page of text..there’s a reference to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.
Let’s look at a bit more closely at what Don Cusic said about Dylan and Country Music. First of all Don Cusic will have a book published in the near future. Cusic’s 2023 International Country Music Conference talk focused on connecting Dylan to the influential, now viewed as iconic, Johnny Cash television program from 1969 to 1971.
Take a look at the pics and the video. Johnny Cash first heard Bob Dylan in 1963 on The Free Wheelin’ Bob Dylan album. Cash found inspiration for Understand Your Man as a result of hearing Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right. It was Number 1 on country charts for six weeks.
But it was a two way street. Back in 1956 Bobby Zimmerman…his actual last name… heard Cash’s I Walk The Line. Dylan also covered Cash’s The Ballad of Ira Hayes that dealt with a Native American World War 2 Marine who helped raise the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi during the battle of Iwo Jima.
Can’t wait to read the entire book by Don Cusic dealing Bob Dylan and Country Music. Just recently, by-the-way, Outlaw Country with Paula Nelson first played Dylan’s Rainy Day Women followed immediately by Johnny Cash’s Get Rhythm.
All in all, I’m glad LP Mickie got me MOJO’s Dylan for a Christmas stocking stuffer. It’s not the most leisurely read ever, it might not actually be completely comprehensive as the title suggests.
But it further deepen by understanding of Dylan…if anyone fully understands Dylan.. further made me realize how little I know about the massive Dylan career.
It also made me think of additional connections of Dylan to Country Music and the complicated network of people, places, events, genre’s and influence that touch on Country Music history and its current status.
It’s not as simple as Three Chords and the Truth or a common joke “What do you get when you play a Country Music record backward?” would have you believe.
I guess I’ll Keep on Tuckin,’ keep on Country Rocking, and see if I can grow in all the Folking complexities that help me Keep It Country.
