“They definitely started something”: the cover Bob Dylan feels indebted to
It’s hard to imagine Bob Dylan not writing his own original works. His voice is inextricably linked with the steady flow of culture, commenting on everything within the socio-political spectrum to help give us mere mortals a more acute understanding of our day-to-day lives.
After all, he was the first musician in history to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, clarifying the weight of his poetic influence. It’s a level of genius that comes around once in a generation, and despite the usually murky waters of predicting stardom, is so apparent to all around that it acts as somewhat of a lightning rod in culture.
Dylan emerged in an artistic community brimming with nuance and complex brilliance, yet his genius was so apparent that he managed to cut through that. From the moment he sang the opening line of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in Gerde’s Folk City, the Greenwich Village folk community were immediately confronted with his mastery and the general idea that folk music, and music at large, would never be the same again.
While most of that awe was steeped in the genuine brilliance of his song, some of it was harboured in the shock of seeing an outpouring of originality from an otherwise gawky cover musician who had been doing the rounds delivering renditions of Woody Guthrie songs.
So, despite his unwavering pursuit of authenticity, Dylan knows the power of a good cover, for that was what the foundations of his legacy were built on. And while Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’ is arguably one of the greatest of all time, it’s not always what comes to mind when he’s asked about an artist whose cover of his work sticks in memory.
When winning the 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year Award, Dylan mentioned an underappreciated group when referencing the power of artists covering his work. He said, “I also have to mention some of the early artists who recorded my songs very, very early, without having to be asked. Just something they felt about them that was right for them. I’ve got to say thank you to Peter, Paul and Mary, who I knew all separately before they ever became a group.”
He added, “I didn’t even think of myself as writing songs for others to sing, but it was starting to happen, and it couldn’t have happened to, or with, a better group. They took a song of mine that had been recorded before, that was buried on one of my records and turned it into a hit song. Not the way I would have done it—they straightened it out. But since then, hundreds of people have recorded it, and I don’t think that would have happened if it wasn’t for them. They definitely started something for me.”
What’s interesting is that the moment the quiet crowd of Gerde’s Folk City realised Bob Dylan was the generational genius music had been waiting for, the rest of the world wasn’t quite ready. When Dylan released ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in May 1963, it didn’t actually chart. However, when Peter, Paul and Mary covered it later that year in July, it was realised as an immediate chart success, helping catapult the track as the Civil Rights Anthem it became.
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