Sunday, July 25, 1965: Dylan goes electric

At the Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan surprises the audience with his hard-rocking set. Accounts vary as to whether the crowd was unhappy over his new style of music or over the  quality of the sound system.

     -- Photo from Michael Ochs Archives

* Summary (www.history.com): @
* Summary (www.smithsonianmag.com): @

* Video of "Maggie's Farm" performance: @
* Video of Pete Seeger's account: @

* Set list (www.bobdylan.com): @

* Excerpt from "No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan" (Robert Shelton, 1986): @

* "No Direction Home": @ 
* "Newport: It's All Right, Ma, I'm Only Playing R & R" (The Village Voice, August 5, 1965): @
* "The Legend of Dylan at Newport" (Sam Allis, The Boston Globe, 2002): @
* "Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties" (Elijah Wald, 2015): @

* "Dylan at Newport, 1965: Music, Myth and Un-Meaning" (Edward Renehan, 2015): @ 

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June 1965: 'Yesterday' and 'Like a Rolling Stone'

Monday, June 14 and Thursday, June 17: The Beatles (specifically, Paul McCartney and a string quartet) record "Yesterday."

* From The Beatles Bible: @

* From "The Beatles Anthology" (2000): @
* From "All The Songs: The Story Behind Every Beatles Release" (Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon, 2013): @

Wednesday, June 16: Bob Dylan records "Like a Rolling Stone." 

* From Rolling Stone magazine (2015): @

* "Greil Marcus on Recording 'Like a Rolling Stone' " (NPR, 2005): @

* "Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads" (Marcus, 2005): @ 

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Saturday, July 6, 1963: Greenwood, Mississippi

In a cotton field just south of Greenwood, Mississippi, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Theodore Bikel and the Freedom Singers take part in a folk music festival-rally organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had been working to get blacks registered to vote. Dylan sang "Only a Pawn in Their Game," which he had written after the June 12 shooting death of Medgar Evers. (In its account of the event, The New York Times referred to Dylan as "Bobby Dillon.") 
     Photos by Danny Lyon
* Excerpt from "No Direction Home" (Robert Shelton, 1986): @
* Entry from www.pophistorydig.com: @

* Freedom Singers biography (from The New Georgia Encyclopedia): @
* "Northern Folk Singers Help Out at Negro Festival in Mississippi" (New York Times, July 7; from www.bobdylanroots.com): @

* Earlier post on death of Medgar Evers (June 1963): @
* Earlier post on forming of SNCC (April 1960): @

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Monday, May 27, 1963: "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"

Dylan's second album is released on Columbia Records. Among the songs are "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Girl from the North Country" and "Masters of War." 

* Short review from allmusic.com: @

* Liner notes from Nat Hentoff, music journalist and critic: @

* "Blowin' in the Wind" Still Asks The Hard Questions" (NPR, 2000): @

* Appraisal of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" (from pophistorydig.com): @ 

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Monday, July 9, 1962: 'Blowin' in the Wind'

Bob Dylan records "Blowin' in the Wind" for Columbia Records in New York. The song would appear on his album "The Freewheeling Bob Dylan," released in May 1963. It borrows part of its melody from "No More Auction Block" (also known as "Many Thousand Gone"), a Negro spiritual dating back 100 years.

* Song entry from www.bobdylan.com: @

* Excerpt from "Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973" (Clinton Heylin, 2009): @

* Song as published in Broadside magazine #6, late May 1962 (PDF): @

* Dylan live performance (Montreal, July 2, 1962): @

* Listen to Paul Robeson sing "No More Auction Block": @

* Entry from BBC Radio's "Sold on Song": @

* More about the song's origins (from www.folkarchive.de): @

Earlier posts

* First album (March 19, 1962): @

* At Gerde's Folk City (September 26, 1961): @

* Arriving in New York (January 24, 1961): @

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