Happy 75th, Bob Dylan

quote:

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"You took the musics of immigrant America, the ballads, the blues, the rambles of Woody Guthrie and The Clancy Brothers and Dominic Behan, the cadences of gospel, the imagery of William Blake and Bessie Smith, the amphetamine-fuelled poetry of bebop Greenwich Village and the windblown mournfulness of the lonesome prairie, and fired them in the kiln of the most extraordinary single imagination ever to work in popular music,"

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LINK

I've been struggling recently with an issue that's come up re Bob Dylan. I've always secretly regarded him as a melodic genius, despite the fact that he is usually lauded for his lyrics. My all-time favorite is Don't Think Twice It's Alright. I can never get it out of my head. (I really love the Waylon version too).

Anyway, the melody from that song is taken from an old folk song called Who's Gonna Buy Your Chickens When I'm Gone?

In fact, here's a List of Dylan songs based on earlier tunes.

My question is: when the liner notes say "Words and Music by Bob Dylan", what the heck does that even mean in reality? The hard part of writing Blowin' in the Wind is creating the melody. Yet, that melody was over 100 years old when the Dylan song was released (it was a slave spiritual.)

I think it's a bit fraudulent to claim to be writing the "music" when you are simply repeating an extant melody.