Bob Dylan in America

Wilentz (The Rise of American Democracy) presents an expansive and thorough analysis of Bob Dylan's career and songwriting influences. Mixing nonchronological biography with deep research and personal interpretation, Wilentz bounces from era to era without losing his overall focus on Dylan's place in American musical history. Unlike many other Dylan analysts and chroniclers, he spends as much time on the postgospel years as on the more renowned and overanalyzed Sixties. Chapters on Dylan's lightly regarded 1990s acoustic folk covers albums are especially insightful and finally add something new to Dylan studies. The author's narration is adequate and unobtrusive. This audio, which includes welcomed snippets of blues and folk tunes Wilentz believed influenced Dylan as well as classic songs by Dylan himself, is strongly recommended for informed listeners looking for a fresh spin on the hackneyed theme of Dylan's musical and cultural influences. [The Doubleday hc also received a starred review, LJ Xpress Reviews, 8/5/10.-Ed.]-Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A noted historian tries to shed light on the less-traveled byways in Bob Dylan's epic journey.As he explains in his introduction, Wilentz (History/Princeton Univ.; The Age of Reagan: A History, 19742008, 2008, etc.) is "historian-in-residence" for Dylan's website. Here he attempts to situate the musician in a multitude of American musical, cultural and literary contexts. The author begins with a strained and unconvincing stab at tying Dylan to composer Aaron Coplanda better case might have been made for Marc Blitzstein, who is mentioned cursorilybut the second chapter, about the impact of the Beats (specifically, Allen Ginsberg), is more successful. Wilentz then plots a chronological course through several highlights and lowlights of his subject's career; several chapters expand on previously published essays. The author is at his best when examining such unquestioned diadems as Blonde On Blonde(1966) and the tardily released 1983 song "Blind Willie McTell," both of which benefit from Wilentz's access to original session tapes. He is less successful when addressing live performances, including a 1964 solo show at Philharmonic Hall in New York and a 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour stop in New Haven, both of which were attended by the author. Sometimes Wilentz's arguments become attenuated to near-pointlessness. His numbing readings of the misbegotten filmsRenaldo and Clara(1978) andMasked and Anonymous(2003) and his labored explication of the roots of Dylan's recording of "Lone Pilgrim" are especially taxing. The book gains heat with a rousing defense of Dylan's multitudinous borrowings in his latter-day work, called outright plagiarism by some (including, most recently, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell). Wilentz ends with an apology for the wacky 2009 seasonal album, Christmas in the Heart, though it makes the record no less mystifying. The author is capable of sometimes striking and unexpected insights linking Dylan to American precursors ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Bing Crosby, but his frequently misguided ideas and oft-leaden style weigh down the proceedings.One for the practicing Dylanologistgeneral readers should approach with caution.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1 MUSIC FOR THE COMMON MAN:The Popular Front and Aaron Copland's America Early in October 2001, Bob Dylan began a two-monthconcert tour of the northern United States. In his first performances since theterrorist attacks of September 11, Dylan debuted many of the songs on his newalbum, "Love and Theft," including the prescient song of disaster,"High Water (for Charley Patton)." Columbia Records, eerily, hadreleased "Love and Theft" on the same day that the terrorists struck.How, if at all, would Dylan now respond to the nation's trauma? Would he, foronce, speak to the audience? What would he play The new tour had no opening act, but as a concert preludethe audience heard (as had become commonplace at Dylan's shows) a prerecordedselection of orchestral music. And on this tour, Dylan began playing what mayhave seemed a curious choice: a recording of the "Hoe-Down" sectionof Aaron Copland's Rodeo. Then Dylan and his band took the stage and, withacoustic instruments, further acknowledged the awfulness of the moment, while also marking Dylan's changes and continuities over the years, by playing thecountry songwriter Fred Rose's "Wait for the Light to Shine. For the rest of the month, through fifteen shows, Dylanopened with "Wait for the Light to Shine," often after hitting the stage to "Hoe-Down." He would continue to play snatches of Rodeo athis concerts for several tours to come, and now and then he would throw in theopening blasts of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man or bits of AppalachianSpring. Copland's music from the 1940s served as Dylan's call to order, hisAmerican invocation. Sixty years on, whether he knew it or not, Dylan had closeda mysterious circle, one that arced back through the folk-music revival wherehe got his start to the left-wing New York musical milieu of the GreatDepression and World War II. Anyone familiar with Dylan's music knows about itsconnections to the 1930s and 1940s through the influences of Woody Guthrie and,to a lesser extent, Pete Seeger. But there are other connections as well, to abroader world of experimentation with American music and radical politicsduring the Depression years and after. These larger connections are at timesquite startling, especially during the mid-1930s, when shared leftist politicsbrought together in New York a wide range of composers and musicians notusually associated with one another. Thereafter, many of the connections areelliptical and very difficult to pin down. They sometimes involve not directinfluence but shared affinities and artistic similarities recognized only inretrospect. Yet they all speak to Dylan's career, and illuminate his artisticachievement, in ways that Guthrie's and Seeger's work alone do not. The mostimportant of these connections leads back to Aaron Copland and his circle ofpolitically radical composers in the mid-1930s On March 16, 1934, Copland participated in a concert ofhis own compositions, sponsored by the Composers' Collective of the CommunistParty-affiliated Workers Music League and held at the party's Pierre DegeyterClub on Nineteenth Street in New York. Copland was still known, at age thirty-three,a decade after first making his mark, as a young, iconoclastic, modernistcomposer. The collective, with which Copland was closely associated, had beenfounded in 1932 to nurture the development of proletarian music, and itconsisted of about thirty members. The Degeyter Club took its name from thecomposer of the melody of "The Internationale."  The review of the concert in the Communist newspaperDaily Worker praised Copland for his "progress from [the] ivorytower" and hailed his difficult Piano Variations, written in 1930, as amajor, "undeniably revolutionary" work, even though Copland "wasnot 'conscious' of this at the time." A few months later, Copland,increasingly drawn to the leftist composers and musicians, won a songwriting contest, cosponsored by the collective and the pro-Communist periodical Ne Excerpted from Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.