Customer Reviews

The Formative Dylan: Transmission and Stylistic Influences, 1961-1963 (American Folk Music and Musicians, No. 7.)

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This is a fascinating book. Harvey examines 70 early Dylan songs for their musical and lyrical influences. He doesn't stop when he finds an earlier song with a similar melody. He finds a song that influenced the melody of *that* song, and then he finds yet an earlier song that had a similar tune, and so on.

Dylan has sometimes been criticized for ripping off the songs of this or that performer. Dominic Behan, for a famous example, claimed Dylan copied his 1957 "Patriot Game" in "With God On Our Side." Harvey's research shows what Behan conveniently did not mention: The "Patriot Game" melody had been used by Burl Ives in his versions of "The Nightingale," released on two different records in 1952 and 1956, before Behan wrote his song. Then Harvey traces the melody back to a recording made by Jo Stafford in 1948, released on a 78 rpm album. Harvey also reports that Liam Clancy said a very similar melody ("The Merry Month of May") came from the Appalachian Mountains.

Dylan *had* heard "The Patriot Game" and was influenced by it, as the lyrics indicate. The point is that, when folk songs and their melodies are the issue, no one person can usually be determined to be the author. Someone may copyright various songs, as A. P. Carter did with many Carter Family recordings, but that doesn't mean he wrote them. It is more a matter of receiving royalties that would otherwise be lost to Anonymous.

Harvey's book is fascinating reading, well written, and original. In this time when so many Dylan books are rehashes of the same old stories, it is a pleasant surprise to read a volume that is written from independent research.

The Formative Dylan is also a rare Dylan book in that its subject is Dylan's music, not his private life. Highest recommendation.

Todd Harvey's book is not only thoughful and well written, but it also contributes greatly to scholarship on Dylan by approaching his work musicologically. This is not to say that the work is inaccessible to those who aren't musicologists (I am not a musicologist myself, and found the book most user friendly). Harvey's book is most useful in that it presents a factual case describing Dylan's myriad influences, and doesn't fall foul of the "Is he or isn't he 'folk'?"/"Did he or didn't he sell out?" debates that have been to the detriment of some cultural histories of Dylan. Nor does Harvey attempt to situate Dylan's work in the context of 20th century American poetry as some scholars have tried to do (a fruitless task, to be sure). Most of all, Harvey helps to situate Dylan in the wider context of American traditional music, daring to look back even to the medieval ballads of Europe, rather than myopically locating Dylan and his work in the 1960s. This book is a must.

It's an excellent idea, but what grindingly dull work Todd Harvey makes of it all. Each of the 70 analyses follow the same pattern, so each contains a paragraph which says something like "I have heard 11 versions of Don't Think Twice, It's All Right : the [10/?/62a] 2nd Gaslight performance, the [11/14/62] Freewheelin' session VI recording, subsequently released on that lp, the [3/?/63a] Witmark session V recording..." etc etc through all 11 performances. (All the sessions are listed in an appendix at the back of the book, so why he couldn't asterisk those he'd heard and save 70 tedious paragraphs, I don't know.) Then later, we get a musical analysis of each song, like this : "Lay Down Your Waery Tune has a verse-chorus form with five verses (verse four has no chorus). In duple time it has an ABCA/ABCA phrase structure. Like Paths of Victory and Walkin' Down the Line the melody is the same in both the verse and chorus sections". Well, not much enlightenment there. I give credit for the author's doggedness in trying to chase down the sources for all these songs - there's lots of stuff I didn't know in here - but ignoring the appendices this book is only 127 pages long... (I believe that might be because it's aiming for educational establishments and not fans - maybe. Anyway, it tries hard to be "scholarly".) There are also odd lapses. Harvey credits John Bauldie's notes to the "Bootleg Series" box set then does not mention that Dylan's "Cough Song" is probably based on Jimmie Tarlton's (1930) "Mexican Rag" as Bauldie says. He omits the connection between "When the Ship Comes In" and the Carter family's "Gospel Ship"; and he doesn't explore the rather obvious thematic similarity between Dylan's "John Brown" and the Irish trad song "Johnny I Hardly Knew You". I might have forgiven the author for those omissions, but I can't forgive him for writing such a very dull and boring book about such an interesting subject. All in all, this is a real missed opportunity.