The artist Bob Dylan said “started it all” for songwriters
There’s no real way to quantify what Bob Dylan did for the modern songwriter.
He never sought out to be a pop star in any sense of the word, but by honing his craft and embracing genres like rock and roll, he made everyone rethink why they were even writing tunes to begin with. Whereas everyone else wanted to get people dancing, Dylan wanted his audience to think, but it’s not like he was breaking any new ground with that idea, either.
Every single person that came before Dylan in the folk scene had already been focused on writing songs that could change the world, and were it not for people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, Dylan wouldn’t have had nearly the amount of gusto in his voice on his early records. But if Guthrie taught him that music could mean something more than a three-chord song and Joan Baez helped him put more heart into his music, that was nothing compared to what the true originators of songwriting could do.
Now I’m not talking about the greats of classical music or anything. The countless classics made by Beethoven and Bach are untouchable, but it’s not like Dylan was intentionally listening to that music when putting together ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’. He wanted the audience to feel something whenever he performed, and that meant going back to the days when the greatest storytelling songs came out of country music.
Because, really, country is the one genre that lends itself the best to storytelling. A lot of the greatest wordsmiths of the genre only need an acoustic guitar to get their point across half the time, but in between the likes of Hank Williams pushing the envelope for what could be heard on the air, there was something that touched Dylan’s heart every single time that Jimmie Rodgers’s wrote a tune.
Rodgers might often be considered the father of country music, but if you listen to Dylan’s music, there are a lot of parallels to be made as well. Dylan’s nasal whine might be a lot different than what Rodgers was doing when putting together on ‘Blue Yodel’, but getting the most out of three chords and painting a picture of America is everything that Dylan stands for in the modern age.
There may have been Guthrie and Seeger to look to for inspiration, but Dylan knew that no one could take away what Rodgers did for songwriting, saying, “If we look back far enough, Jimmie may very well be the ‘man who started it all’ for we have no antecedent to compare him. His refined style, an amalgamation of sources unknown, is too cryptic to pin down. His is a thousand and one voices yet singularly his own.”
And Dylan wasn’t the only one enamoured with the yodeling tunesmith, either. The Beatles may have seemed like the furthest thing from country music when they first started performing, but in between the classics in the final days of their career, George Harrison was bringing in some of that yodeling for his demos like ‘Rocking Chair in Hawaii’ before shelving it for Brainwashed years down the road.
A lot of what Rodgers did for the modern song may not have been appreciated in its time, but taking him out of the equation means losing a core part of the modern popsong. Sure, there are people like Johnny Cash who wouldn’t have found their place, but if Rodgers hadn’t been able to give Dylan the confidence to move rock forward, perhaps the genre would have become a fad after the 1960s wrapped up.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.