Dear Nathaniel,
Hello my love, I'm sorry I wasn't able to play music for you yesterday, I just wasn't feeling up to it my angel. We did however get some stuff done yesterday and I will play you two albums today. Yesterday me and your great grandmother took the bears you got from Uncle Sean and great Uncle Les and dried them all up and put them in a see through bag so they won't blow away again. We also had to take away your flowers, but you still have your cross, and bears and your little sun in a jar.
The first song on this album always makes me smile because your mam always said it sounded like Dylan was singing "The ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind" and she drew a very cute little drawing of someone losing their ant friends in the wind. But then she also drew them all reunited so it was fine. Today we will be listening to two albums, not at the same time but to make up for yesterday. We'll be listening to two Bob Dylan albums this first one is his second album, while he is still completely acoustic, and then we'll be listening to his sixth album, and second one using electric instruments; Highway 61 Revisited.
We can talk more about the controversy regarding using electrical instruments when we end up listening to Highway 61. Bob Dylan was an instrumental force in then creation of contemporary American folk music. While the pop and rock music of the time in America was dealing with a lot lighter subject matter Dylan and other folk contemporaries where singing about more serious and political subject matters. One of the more unique aspects of Dylan however was his success in the US.
While he was always more successful in the UK during the 60's like most American artists offering challenging music such as Frank Zappa he was also quite commercially successful in the US Frequently getting top 20 albums and even challenging the top spot in the US charts in the late 60's. He was able to establish a significant fan base in the United States without resorting to a more commercial sound. There was an interesting dynamic in the 60's in the US where home grown artists were respected far less than British blues bands unless they were incredibly pop oriented.
For example the Beach Boys were successful in America but they had an incredibly commercial sound and to a much greater extent so did the Monkees. The US were yet to accept more challenging bands if they weren't British which seemed to make albums far more desirable at the time. A lot can be said about this subject especially given the fact that the British bands of the time looked up to the great American Blues musicians which had been shunned in their own country due to racial prejudices.
And of course when it came to pop bands like the Beatles again it was all about image and sex appeal rather than the music itself. Either way Dylan was able to retain his integrity and become popular on both sides of the Atlantic as an American artist and that's quite respectable in it's own right. What I've always liked about Dylan is his prolific use of the Harmonica which has always been an incredibly rare instrument especially with American artists outside of traditional blues. I can only think of Steven Tyler of Aerosmith as an American artist using it, of course it had a lot of usage in British rock in the 60's and 70's given how influenced they were by the old Blues
Bob Dylan has also been heavily covered given his penchant for writing brilliant lyrics however he has also been criticised due to his vocal style which has changed many times on different recordings. I've always liked listening to Dylan's voice, while he's not a great technical singer he has a very honest approach to his vocals which I've always liked. I'm not entirely sure how influential his music was in the civil-rights movement (it's really up for debate but you can't exactly put a number on it) but it certainly helped move things in the right direction.
I had always planned to play Bob Dylan for you when I felt you were ready to appreciate that some music can be great mostly because of the lyrics and the delivery of the vocals. Dylan's not as easy to sing along to either so it would probably have been quite awhile down the line. I probably would have introduce you to some other music in opposition movements such as Punk and RIO around the same time too.
I love you my angel Nathaniel, I hope you enjoyed the first part of the Dylan for today.
Love from Dad.
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