Blowing In The Wind: Pretty Straightforward, Isn't It? Or Is It?

Proverbial wisdom: the accumulated ethical values of ordinary people in early modern England. 

Young Bob (Illus. by the author)

Bob Dylan wrote this timeless song in 1962, the year he turned 21. It appeared on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in 1963.

I frequently like to examine what young Dylan was doing and compare it to what was happening in the popular culture. Some of the "big hits" of 1962, when he wrote this, included The Twist (Chubby Checker), Mashed Potato Time (Dee Dee Sharp), I Can't Stop Loving You (Ray Charles), The Loco-Motion (Little Eva), and Stranger on the Shore at #1 by Acker Bilk. 

Dylan first performed a two verse version of this song at Gerde's Folk City (See Peter McKenzie's book (Bob Dylan: On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day) for more details about this time in the young singer/songwriter's life. The date of that performance was in April, so he was still twenty.

The past few days a group of Airstreamers has been in town on a journey from the North Country here down into the deep roots of the blues, taking in the Crossroads, Memphis and other historic places from music history. One of them mentioned to me how she didn't know, like many others, that "Blowin' in the Wind" was not written by Peter, Paul & Mary.

The song has been recorded extensively by other artists including a German version by none other than Marlene Dietrich. 

Much has been written about this song through the decades and it's message never seems to grow stale. By means of a few simple questions it forcefully cuts to the root of a number of issues. 27 years later Dylan would use this same technique of asking questions in a lyrical format, except the questions are turned inward. "What good am I if I'm like all the rest, if I just turn away when I see how you're dressed?" ("What Good Am I?", Oh Mercy) This rhetorical style is repeated two tracks later in the song "What Was It You Wanted?" There's nothing ambiguous about the first, and plenty of fog, shadow and mist in the second.

Blowin' in the Wind

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand? *
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
And how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

© 1962 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1990 by Special Rider Music

* * * 

A lot has been written about this song. You can learn more about nearly any song on Wikipedia. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1994. Ten years later it held the #14 position in Rolling Stones' 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

* "And the dove came in to him at eventide; and, lo, in her mouth an olive-leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth." --Genesis 8:11

Related Links

A Visit with Peter McKenzie, Author of Bob Dylan: On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day (Part One)

On Amazon: On a Counch & Fifty Cents a Day

Glen Campbell and Stevie Wonder Sing "Blowin' in the Wind"

Creative Commons

In the years leading up to his election, Ronald Reagan would do a daily radio talk, much like people today do daily blog posts or daily podcasts. Wherever he went he carried with him a cigar box which contained clippings of newspaper articles which served as starter material -- kindling -- when he had a daily talk to give but lacked an idea or theme.

There's a sense in which I do the same thing, except I don't store my ideas in a cigar box. Instead, I use a virtual holding tank here on Blogger. It's called Drafts. That is, I begin more blog posts than I have time to complete. I tell myself I will get back to it one day, like unfinished business. As of this morning I have 945 drafts. This one was intended to be a memorial for Glen Campbell, who passed away in August 2017.

As I searched for something special to accompany my memories of Glen Campbell, I found this video of Campbell performing Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind with Stevie Wonder. Which derailed my blog post because as I read a little about Wonder a new story emerged. Then I set this unfinished idea aside, till this morning.

Glen Campbell's career exemplifies being in the right place at the right time. Stevie Wonder's story is about defying the odds.

Campbell, 1967. Public domain.

The cherub-faced Campbell was much older than we thought when he moved from studio musician with the Wrecking Crew to becoming a performer in his own right in the late 60s. Those studio musicians did an amazing amount of uncredited work. According to the Times piece cited above Campbell played or sang on nearly 600 recorded songs in 1963 alone.

In 1969 he got his own show called The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour. Like Johnny Cash and the Smothers Brothers, it became a venue for showcasing up and coming musicians. One of these megastars was Stevie Wonder, with whom he performed "Blowin' in the Wind" which aired on February 19, 1969.

Did you know that Campbell was 33 years old at the time? The Rhinestone Cowboy singer star was born in 1936, a few years younger than my parents. The boy wonder, Stevie Wonder, was born in 1950, and just two years older than myself.

Wonder's story is striking. Born a premie, he was put on oxygen the first weeks of his life. Unfortunately, medical science has since learned that you can damage an infant with too much oxygen as easily as not enough. The result for this little one was detached retinas. In other words, he was not born blind but ended up that way in the first weeks of life.

1973. Public domain.

His hardships didn't end there. At age four his parents were divorced. His mother moved to Detroit, Motor City. Broken homes don't automatically lead to juvenile delinquency and it's apparent his mother's nurturing did him good.

I neglected to mention that his mother was a songwriter, which factors into this story. At an early age he sang in church (age 4) and learned to play piano, harmonica and drums. He formed a group with a friend and performed on street corners and at parties when he was 11. He sang one of his own compositions to one of the Miracles, and soon was connected to Motown.

His stage name, Stevie Wonder, is not his real name, of course. His actual last name is Morris. (Dylan did officially change his stage name to become his real name.) Stevie Wonder was just 19 when he performed Blowing in the Wind with Glen Campbell on the latter's show.

Bob Dylan first conceived this song when he was 19, performing a two verse version at Gerde's Folk City a month before his 20th birthday. The full version was recorded in July and became one of the iconic songs of his iconic second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which was released the following Spring.

* * * *

Here's Bob, not yet 22, performing this song on television, March 1963.


In the beginning... 
Meantime, life goes on. Make the most of it.
Mucho thanks to Bob, Stevie and Glen for all the Great Music
that has so enriched our lives over the years.

The Sound of Grief in Dylan's Nettie Moore

Life is complicated and people are complicated. No two snowflakes are alike, nor are our responses to grief. This past week I had an encounter with an old friend and though it's been 40 years the memories of long ago were immediately present to both of us. We remembered good times and lost times, good friends and lost friends.

Later that day I was listening to Dylan's album Modern Times and heard the grief he conveyed in the chorus of Nettie Moore in a way I'd never heard before. I've always enjoyed the song and have played it many times since Modern Times was released in August 2006. The album became Dylan's first #1 in the U.S. since Desire in the 1970s. In fact, in selling near 200,000 copies its first week it catapulted to #1 the week it was released.

As I listened to Dylan singing "Oh I miss you Nettie Moore, and my happiness is o'er" the words and the impact of its meaning were profound, and I was once again reminded of why and how Dylan became such a significant influence. He didn't just write songs, he breathed into them their essence.

Go back to the beginning. When Peter, Paul and Mary sang "Blowin' in the Wind" it was a great song, and it did have great words with a great message. But the beauty of their blended voices belied the song's essence. Contrast this to Dylan's own lament, asking powerful questions, line by line. Like a Biblical prophet crying out, "How long, Oh Lord?"

"Seven Curses" coms to mind. The song found a wider hearing when it came out on the Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3: Rare and Unreleased, but while out in the yard Saturday I heard a version on Pandora that I hadn't heard before. In both instances the manner in which it is sung is almost more heartbreaking than the story itself. In other words, Dylan becomes the spirit of the song, or perhaps channels the spirit of the song.

According to Wikipedia "Nettie Moore" takes its title, and some of its chorus, from an 1857 composition "Gentle Nettie Moore" by Marshall Pike and James Lord Pierpont. Like much of Dylan's work it is rooted in the music of Americana and the folk traditions that birthed American folk music.

* * * *

There's a lot more that could be said here about the song, including pointing out some rather amusing lines like "the judge is coming in, everybody rise." But that's a tangent at this point. The song has many verses, some of them circumnavigating a very wide landscape, but Dylan always returns to this chorus and delivers it with pained conviction.

Oh, I miss you Nettie Moore
And my happiness is o'er
Winter's gone, the river's on the rise
I loved you then and ever shall
But there's no one left here to tell,
The world has gone black before my eyes

I write about it here today hoping that if you have the song you might play it and listen with more focus than usual to the anguish he's able to convey.

* * * *
For another view on the manner in which Dylan is more than a writer of songs, here's a link to my review of Betsy Bowden's Performed Literature. No Dylan book is a perfect mirror. Like the 30,000 facets of a dragonfly's eye, each contributes a different angle that must be synthesized into a full picture. In the end, maybe all that matters is what it means -- or doesn't mean -- to you.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Don't be afraid to feel it.