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IIn the spring of 1963, a 21-year-old bob dylan was on the train reading a copy of side of the boatLeft-wing mimeographed publication known for nurturing many important folk musicians. The magazine often included photocopied articles from other newspapers, so along with coverage of Dylan’s early song, “Train-a-Travelin'”, it also included a report. baltimore afro-american By Roy H Wood, with the headline: “Rich Brute Sleaze N**** Mother of 10.”
On a Friday night in February, William ZantzingerThe 24-year-old owner of a 630-acre tobacco farm arrived intoxicated at a charity ball hosted by members of high society in Baltimore, Maryland. Hattie Carroll, a 53-year-old single mother of nine children, was among the black staff members serving guests. According to reports, Zantzinger – who had hit two other black employees that night – yelled at Carroll using racist slurs, accused her of not serving him quickly, and hit her on the head and shoulders with a toy cane. Although the blow left no scars, Carroll died the next day at Mercy Hospital in Baltimore from trauma caused by the stress of the attack.
There was anger in the black community. As reported in the Smithsonian Lokjeevan magazineCarroll was a deacon of Gillis Memorial Church in West Baltimore, as well as a member of the choir and its flower committee. She was known as a peaceful woman who loved and cared for her children.
But it was not the news of his death that inspired any of them dylan’s greatest protest songs“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” – What happened next was an injustice. After initially being arrested and charged with first-degree murder, Zantzinger was fined $625 and sentenced to six months for murder and assault—the next day. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech Marching on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. His sentence was delayed for a further two months so that he could continue to oversee the operations of his tobacco farms. He candidly told a reporter: “I will miss a lot of snowfall, and I will be back in time for the spring harvest.” Amidst its coverage of March, the new York Times A much shorter headline ran on page 15: “Farmer sentenced in barmaid’s death.”
Dylan, who had just performed at the March on Washington, then traveled to Carmel, California, to tour with them john bazehis sister, singer-songwriter and activist Mimi Baez, and his sister’s new husband, composer and musician Richard Farina. “His romantic life is complicated at this time,” explains award-winning American historian and Dylan expert Sean Wilentz. Independent, Alluding to the singer-songwriter’s complex, intense relationship with Joan Baez. “But he’s in this beautiful place, walking around, and [Baez] Feeding him salad and red wine.” Baez later observed that the songs were coming from Dylan “like ticker tape”. Among them was “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”, which would appear on her third album, Time is changing’,
Two versions of this masterpiece appear Through the Open Window: Bootleg Series Volume 18Which reflects Dylan’s work between the years 1956 and 1963. A previously uncirculated recording was made by singer, musician and activist Barbara Dane at a Los Angeles apartment party, which may have occurred just weeks after Dylan wrote the song. “It was someone’s house so it’s very informal,” explains Wilentz. “That’s the other thing about this [bootleg series] The point is that a lot of the recordings are very informal, so the quality varies, but we tried our best to make them as good as we could. He believes that these recordings have historical value, but more importantly, emotional value. “You can hear him inventing the song for the first time, [and sense] its relation to past events [‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’] especially.”
Wilentz wrote the liner notes for the new bootleg series, but also co-produced the project with signing former A&R executive Steve Berkowitz. Jeff Buckley for Columbia Records, and who has supervised numerous historic reissues by artists such as Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, and Paul Simon. He says, “I’ve always been interested in knowing where Dylan fits into the big scheme of ultra-American life.” “I mean, I’m a historian, right? So that’s what I do most of the time.” Also, Wilentz has argued “a fair amount” against the charges of plagiarism made against Dylan over the years. “What is this [musicologist and father of folk singer Pete Seeger] Charles Seeger called the folk process… You take something and make it your own. You do something different with it.”
In the matter, the lyrics of “Hattie Carroll”, which biographers have pointed out, contain several inaccuracies about the case, some of which came from the original news reports. Dylan sings that Carroll has 10 children instead of nine, and he waves his wand around a “diamond ring finger”. He also describes Carroll as “a kitchen maid” and that Zantzinger (whom he calls “Zanzinger” in the song) was bailed out “within minutes” of being arrested (in reality, it was a matter of hours). Zantzinger, who died in 2009 after being convicted again in 1991, this time in a scam involving charging black workers rent for properties he did not own, told Dylan biographer Howard Sounes that the musician’s story in the song was “completely false”: “I should have sued him and put him in jail.” However, for Wilentz, the song is not only a response to the injustice of that one incident, but “that entire summer’s worth of trauma”.
It’s very subtle, and in some ways it’s an anti-protest song
Historian Shawn Wilentz
“It’s very subtle, and in some ways it’s an anti-protest protest song, because it’s not just saying, ‘This is a terrible thing,’ it’s telling a story,” he says. “That’s why it’s so awesome.” Even more so, as Wilentz points out in his liner notes, how Dylan draws attention to “some of the most salient facts” by not mentioning them: the fact that Carroll was black and Zantzinger was white. He writes, “By forcing the listener to make up for what is missing, the song doubles down on the shame and disgust of what happened.'” At the same time, when Dylan wanted to intensify the song’s anger, he took advantage of what might be colloquially called redundancies, using more words than formally required (such as when he mentions Zantzinger’s ‘wealthy rich parents’ who provide for and protect him’).”
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In both the album version and the two recordings appearing on the bootleg series – the second is from his historic Carnegie Hall concert in New York in October 1963 – Dylan’s delivery is strongest at the end of the third verse. His voice is raspy and full of contempt as he sings: “And she never did anything to William Zanzinger.” Then, in the concluding poem, he points the finger not only at Zantzinger and the courts, but also at “evangelicals and intellectuals who, by offering lofty social explanations for evil, obfuscate evil itself,” says Wilentz. “Those themes are still with us,” he says. “In some ways, it’s always relevant.”
‘Through the Open Window: The Bootleg Series Volume 18’ is released digitally and in 8xCD, 2xCD and 4xLP editions on October 31. The physical editions will come with a 125-page liner notes essay by Shawn Wilentz.