Storytime with Bob Dylan

"Rambling, Gambling Willie," © 1962, The Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3
"Rambling, Gambling Willie" is one of Dylan's earlier attempts at narrative songwriting. It's not the most complex or meaningful song, but it's a pleasure nonetheless. It chronicles the life of Willie O'Conley, a legendary gambler -- "the greatest gambler," in fact. He's gambled in the White House, on Mississippi riverboats and in the Rocky Mountains. "In a town called Cripple Creek," he played 900 miners and won "the whole damn town." Though he had 27 children, he never had a wife. The story is unfettered by the weighty politics that would soon dominate Dylan's songs.

"The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," © 1964, The Times They Are A-Changin'
Dylan would quickly mature, and "Hattie Carroll" is a great example of his early '60s topical material (or, as he referred to it, his "finger-pointing" songs). The story begins after the titular crime ends, with wealthy tobacco farmer William Zanzinger being hauled away for the murder of "poor Hattie Carroll." Carroll is portrayed as a mother of 10 who "never sat once at the head of the table" and "emptied the ashtrays at a whole other level," while Zanzinger is a snarling brute with a "cane that he twirled around his diamond-ring finger" who "reacts to his deed with a shrug of the shoulders." This is primary-color moral posturing, but it's beautifully executed, particularly the chorus ("You who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears/ Take the rag away from your face/ Now ain't the time for your tears"), which, ironically enough, criticizes empty moral posturing.

"Seven Curses," © 1963, The Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3
Though culled from the same sessions as "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," "Seven Curses" finds Dylan moving toward more mythical archetypes. The story tracks Old Reilly, a horse thief who was caught and sentenced to death for his crime. Upon hearing the news, Reilly's daughter, who is never named, rode through the night, with "gold and silver in her hand," to petition her father's judge. The judge gazed at the young woman, his "old eyes deepened in his head," and he told her, "Gold will never free your father/ The price is you instead." The father pleaded with the daughter not to acquiesce, but she chose to pay the price. The "gallows shadows shook the evening" and the "hound dog bayed," but when the daughter awoke, she saw "that hangin' branch a-bendin'" and realized that the judge had betrayed her. The tale is dark, elemental and almost gothic, and in Dylan's Old Testament drawl and the lyric's unrelentingly bleak portrayal of the human heart, you can hear the ghosts of Faulkner, Johnson and Melville.

"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream," © 1965, Bringing It All Back Home
If you weren't paying close attention, you'd be excused for thinking that Dylan lost his damn mind around the time he recorded this jewel. The song begins with a stumbling, aborted intro as a giggling Dylan declares that he was "riding on the Mayflower/ When I thought I spied some land." As the song retriggers, Dylan launches into a rambling story involving bailing Captain Ahab (which Dylan pronounces “Captain Arab”) out of jail and discovering a New World filled with overzealous cops, caped waiters, drunken conquistadors and French girls with jealous boyfriends. Dylan is in pure Dadaist word-blender mode here as he marries archetypal historical characters with sly pop-culture references and slapstick comedy. At times, it feels like political satire, at others it feels like nothing more than extended setup for Dylan's gleefully vulgar jokes. Regardless, it's a funny, manic, accusatory, circular and sinister song.

"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," © 1966, Blonde on Blonde
By the time Blonde on Blonde came out, Bob Dylan had almost completely transformed as an artist. He was still interested in the narrative form, but the emphasis had shifted from plot and character to place and tone. There is perhaps no better example of this than the epic "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again." The manic absurdity and freewheeling humor of "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" has transformed into a creeping paranoia. Shakespeare struggles in the alley as the post office shuts its doors. Senators brandish guns, and Grandpa loses control after he "built a fire on Main Street/ And shot it full of holes." The same sense of chaos and yearning that snaked through Coltrane's cacophonous runs smears Dylan's characters, disfiguring the familiar and rebuilding the world as grotesque pastiche.

"The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest," © 1968, John Wesley Harding
Though it had only been two years since Dylan wrote "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," it seemed like a lifetime. The brilliant delirium of the mid-'60s had faded, and Dylan had succumbed to a sudden and surprising domesticity. In a basement in upstate New York, he communed with the ghost of America's past, and when he next entered a studio, he recorded John Wesley Harding, an acoustic album filled with quiet and enigmatic meditations on mortality, spirituality and family. "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest," with its sad-eyed surrealism, is perhaps the album's pinnacle.

"Billy 4," © 1972, Pat Garrett & Bill the Kid
"Billy 4" was recorded for Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, which also featured Dylan as the enigmatic character alias. Like Peckinpah's film, the song is spare and beautiful, portraying the famed killer as a freewheeling figure attempting to break free from the constraints of a violently oppressive society. Think of him as kind of a gun-toting Emerson. It's a nice little song, and there's certainly precedence for Dylan romanticizing archetypal figures from America's distant past. As with most of the material he released in the early '70s, this feels somewhat slight -- like a conscious retreat from both the spotlight and his talents.

"Tangled Up in Blue," © 1974, Blood on the Tracks
This album was hailed as a return to form. But Dylan rarely returns to anything, and the album really represents a maturation of his talents. Gone are the topical yarns, the absurdist meditations and Southwest romance ballads. Instead, we are treated to a suite of songs that are restrained and disciplined. "Tangled Up in Blue" is a prime example. It tracks the autumn of a relationship and is filled with wonderful shifts in point of view and rich character development. Its beauty rests in its subtlety -- Dylan's ability to capture the twists and turns of the human heart.

"Hurricane," © 1975, Desire
One of Dylan's most popular songs from the '70s, "Hurricane" describes the true-story trials and tribulations of boxer Rubin Carter, a potential heavyweight champion who was arrested and convicted for a 1966 murder he didn't commit. It had been a long time since Dylan had written a topical song that dealt with issues of injustice and racial inequality, and this one is a little more streetwise than his early '60s work. The tone is more conversational, and Dylan drops the occasional obscenity; the imagery is richer, the character of Rubin Carter more fully developed. It's also greatly aided by Scarlet Rivera's blistering work on the violin.

"Two Soldiers," © 1993, World Gone Wrong
One of Dylan's greatest gifts has always been his voice. Listening to his early material, when the singer was barely out of his teens, a casual listener would be forgiven for imagining that Dylan was a much older man. And by the time he reached his 50s, that voice was a fractured, wounded instrument that sounded absolutely ancient. It's one of the reasons why his cover of the traditional ballad "Two Soldiers" is so special. The song is the tale of two Union soldiers in the Civil War, and it's full of wonderfully poetic language and woeful imagery. But it's Dylan's injured warble that really brings out the tenderness of the tale.