61 Highway Blues

[shewhomust]

Just been watching a tv programme we recorded last night, a repeat of an old documentary (celebrating thirty years of the Arena arts programme with a series of repeats, no expense spared) tracing Bob Dylan's early influences up and down Highway 61.

Plenty of maps showing this amazing road running north-south through the centre of the US, from the Canadian border, through Dylan's home town of Hibbing, south all the way. The core of the programme was a conversation with John Bucklen, the school friend with whom Dylan had spent a couple of teenage years discovering music, about their early taste for R & B. This was woven into a tour of the musical associations of the highway - Elvis lived here, Bessie Smith died there, down to New Orleans where Little Richard made his records.
(I note, purely for the record, that the programme was first broadcast in 1993, and that Daniel Fox's short story, Where it roots, how it fruits, a nightmare transformation of the same material, was published in 1994.)
It's interesting material, if not quite enough to sustain the length it's spun out to. But the main effect, watching it now, is to amplify the tune that had already been running in my mind, Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan filling the road through New Orleans with some of his most apocalyptic visions:

Now the rovin' gambler he was very bored
He was tryin' to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.

Comments

[handsomed-pete.livejournal.com]

hey,

I found this post via google... am looking for a digital copy of old dylan/bucklen tapes while at school. I am related to bucklen and would appreciate if you know of anywhere I can find this program online. thanks.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

E-mail me: jean [at] shadowgallery.co.uk