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Happy Birthday Bob: America’s Greatest Poet Turns 79

The thing about rock’n’roll is that for me anyway it wasn’t enough… There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms… but the songs weren’t serious or didn’t reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.

“You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”

Here’s one poem from his gigantic oeuvre that is especially apt today:


Now the rainman gave me two cures
Then he said, “Jump right in”
The one was Texas medicine
The other was just railroad gin
An’ like a fool I mixed them
An’ it strangled up my mind
An’ now people just get uglier
An’ I have no sense of time
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

All twenty takes of “Stuck Inside of Mobile” were recorded in the early hours of February 17, 1966, in Columbia’s Music Row Studios in Nashville. Dylan continuously reworked the song in the studio, revising lyrics and changing the song’s structure as he recorded different takes. Eventually, after recording for three hours, a master take, the twentieth and final take, was chosen.  Take five would eventually be released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7.

In his essay on receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, Dylan writes about the impact that three important books made on him: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Homer’s Odyssey. He concludes: “Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, ‘Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story’.”

Oh, the ragman draws circles
Up and down the block
I’d ask him what the matter was
But I know that he don’t talk
And the ladies treat me kindly
And furnish me with tape
But deep inside my heart
I know I can’t escape
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Well, Shakespeare, he’s in the alley
With his pointed shoes and his bells
Speaking to some French girl
Who says she knows me well
And I would send a message
To find out if she’s talked
But the post office has been stolen
And the mailbox is locked
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Mona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine
An’ I said, “Oh, I didn’t know that
But then again, there’s only one I’ve met
An’ he just smoked my eyelids
An’ punched my cigarette”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Grandpa died last week
And now he’s buried in the rocks
But everybody still talks about
How badly they were shocked
But me, I expected it to happen
I knew he’d lost control
When he built a fire on Main Street
And shot it full of holes
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Now the senator came down here
Showing ev’ryone his gun
Handing out free tickets
To the wedding of his son
An’ me, I nearly got busted
An’ wouldn’t it be my luck
To get caught without a ticket
And be discovered beneath a truck
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Now the preacher looked so baffled
When I asked him why he dressed
With twenty pounds of headlines
Stapled to his chest
But he cursed me when I proved it to him
Then I whispered, “Not even you can hide
You see, you’re just like me
I hope you’re satisfied”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Now the rainman gave me two cures
Then he said, “Jump right in”
The one was Texas medicine
The other was just railroad gin
An’ like a fool I mixed them
An’ it strangled up my mind
An’ now people just get uglier
An’ I have no sense of time
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

When Ruthie says come see her
In her honky-tonk lagoon
Where I can watch her waltz for free
’Neath her Panamanian moon
An’ I say, “Aw come on now
You must know about my debutante”
An’ she says, “Your debutante just knows what you need
But I know what you want”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Now the bricks lay on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb
They all fall there so perfectly
It all seems so well timed
An’ here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • rabbit tobacco May 24, 2020, 10:32 PM
  • Jack May 25, 2020, 8:07 AM

    Always liked Dylan and nearly all of his songs but, unlike most of the other singer-songwriter performers who appeared during the 60s and 70’s, most of the time I had no idea of what he was talking about. Including “…..Memphis Blues.

    I’m not any kind of an intellectual and tunes with too much metaphor, literary trope, disguised meanings and the like, with no hint of intent or meaning, just bore the hell out of me, especially if, as we’d say when we were kids: “they’re not easy to dance t0”.

  • pbird May 25, 2020, 10:27 AM

    I just don’t know what we will do without him when the deal goes down.

  • jwm May 25, 2020, 3:44 PM

    Dylan just uncoils these strings of surreal images, and he makes it seem easy. Sure, I could do that! But every other songwriter who tries to riff on his style (I’m thinking Springsteen in particular) ends up sounding wooden, clunky and fake.

    JWM

  • Anonymous May 25, 2020, 4:47 PM

    My favorite Dylan song? It’s hands down:

    Humba Bumba hey heh

    Buh boo bah binga
    Bumbla jumbla
    Dun jinga joonga jay
    Hoo heebe jeebe
    Jinga jooba hembla hinga hey

    CHORUS
    Humba bumba binga bey
    Humba bumba
    Binga bunga
    Humba bumba hey heh

  • Anonymous May 25, 2020, 4:52 PM