MURDER MOST FOUL… PART 3: THE CONCLUSION

Bob Dylan – Determined To Stand

The long fourth section of the song includes fewer references to the murder, as the ‘playlist’ takes over. The section begins with an ironic question. The first line …What’s new pussycat, what’d I say… contrasts the rather frothy and silly title song of the 1965 comedy movie (sung by Tom Jones in full ‘Las Vegas’ mode) with the ‘deep soul’ of the Ray Charles classic, presenting both frivolous and serious questions about what conclusions could be drawn about the effect of the murder. The unequivocal response …I said the soul of a nation has been torn away… reinforces the previous reference to Kennedy’s ‘missing soul’. This is followed by …It’s beginning to go into a slow decay/ And it’s thirty six hours past judgement day… But this apparent declaration of fatalism should not be taken as mere apathy. Having got these fears out of his system, the narrator is now getting ready to summon up ‘spiritual’ help. This help comes in the form of Wolfman Jack – to whom we have already, of course, been introduced. Dylan tells us that the D. J. is ‘speaking in tongues’: ….He’s going on and on at the top of his lungs… a pretty fair description of Wolfman’s technique which is generally applied to a supplicant in the grip of religious ecstasy. Then the invocation begins: …Play me a song, Mr. Wolfman Jack/ Play it for me in my long Cadillac… Dylan pronounces the lines slowly, with genuine affection.

RAY CHARLES                                                 TOM JONES

As Dylan reels off the titles of the songs, we may assume that he is merely asking the Wolfman to play his favourite tunes. But, although there seems to be a little free association in places, the titles are carefully chosen and juxtaposed. The songs often question traditional religious morality and American justice. He begins with …Play that Only the Good Die Young / Take me to the place Tom Dooley was hung… Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young seems to be an obvious reference to Kennedy’s death. Tom Dooley is a nineteenth century folk song (which was a hit for folk-pop combo The Kingston Trio in 1958) about a former Confederate soldier who was hung for the murder of his girlfriend in 1868. The execution was controversial as many people considered Dooley to be innocent. St. James Infirmary, which is referred to in the next line, is another meditation on death. Its narrator – a notorious gambler – laments the demise of his girlfriend and predicts that his own funeral will soon follow. Dylan then throws in a little word-association. Suddenly we are in ‘the court of King James’; presumably James I. When he came to the throne James I co-opted Shakespeare’s theatre company – previously known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men – so that they became ‘the King’s men’ and were thus required to perform their works at court. One of the plays that they performed was Macbeth, whose subject is the brutal murder of a king.

JOHN F. KENNEDY                            BILLY JOEL                                      KINGSTON TRIO

The word-association game then takes us to another soul classic, Etta James’ I’d Rather Go Blind, which is rhymed rather curiously with …Play it for the man with the telepathic mind… Dylan is being especially playful here. In the X-Men series of comics Kennedy appears as a character who possesses superhuman qualities, including that of telepathy. In real life Kennedy did suffer from a ‘genetic mutation’, Addison’s disease, an adrenal gland deficiency. He frequently experienced severe back pain, for which he had several major operations. Thus the next line …Play John Lee Hooker, Play “Scratch My Back”… is not a random choice. Baby Scratch My Back is a well known blues song by Slim Harpo. It is rhymed with …Play it for that strip club owner named Jack… a reference to Oswald’s killer Jack Ruby. The next request is for Guitar Slim’s Goin’ Down Slow, which is an address to a lover by a dying man. If some of these references may seem a little obscure for the casual listener, the next line …Play it for me and for Marilyn Monroe… is devastatingly obvious. The iconic film star was strongly rumoured to have had affairs with both Kennedy brothers. Her tragic death in 1962 at the age of only 36 – supposedly from suicide – later became the subject of more conspiracy theories.

ETTA JAMES                                 JOHN LEE HOOKER                                      SLIM HARPO                                      MARILYN MONROE

MURDER ……

The invocation continues: …Play Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood is a reference to yet another soul gem which was a hit for both Nina Simone (1964) and The Animals (1965). This song is, as its title suggests, a plea to a lover to try to reassure him that she is …just a soul whose intentions are good… Our ghostly narrator requests Wolfman to …play it for the First Lady, she ain’t feeling any good… After the mention of Monroe, this may be a plea from ‘Jack’ to ‘Jackie’ to forgive him for his infidelities. Then, perhaps surprisingly, we are in the world of mainstream Californian ‘70s rock. First we get …Play Don Henley, play Glen Frey (pronounced ‘Fry’)/ Take it to the limit and let it go by… and then …Play it for Carl Wilson, too. Looking far, far away down Gower Avenue… Take it to The Limit (1975) was one of the Eagles’ biggest hits, written by Henley and Frey with bass player Randy Meisner, who sings vocals on the original recording. This song is a lament for a potential lover who the narrator missed out on, but the title here has obvious connotations. The second reference is more obscure, referring to the fact that the Beach Boys’ singer performed backing vocals on Warren Zevon’s song Desperados under the Eaves, another bitter-sweet Californian lament in which the narrator feels that he can never escape from the previous mistakes in his life. Wilson’s contribution is particularly evocative when he joins Zevon in the harmonies on the final lines …Look away down Gower Avenue… where the image of ‘gazing into the distance’ becomes equivalent to ‘gazing into the past’. Dylan seems to be inviting us to share in the emotion of those final lines. It seems that the ‘spirit’ of Kennedy – who was denied a final shriving by a priest – may now be trying to use these songs of regret as confessions of his sins from beyond the grave.

THE EAGLES                                                      WARREN ZEVON

As the requests mount up, the presence of the president’s ghost seems to fade away. Dylan’s omniscient narrator invites more and more voices into the song. He takes us back and forth through time, capturing musical moments that will inspire us and lift us out of despair. The references pile up in quick succession …Play ‘Tragedy’ and play ‘Twilight Time’… refers to two ‘doo wop’ ballads of the late 50s (by Thomas Wayne and the Delons and The Platters respectively) both of which express romantic regret in tearful tones. This is rhymed with …Take Me Back To Tulsa to the scene of the crime… Take Me Back to Tulsa is a rather jolly song by Bob Wills whose narrator repeatedly confesses that he is ‘too young to marry’. ‘The scene of the crime’ appears to refer to the fact that Tulsa in Oklahoma was the location of a notorious massacre of over 300 black residents by whites in 1921, renowned as the worst such incident in American history. This and the succeeding requests hint at the violence that remains endemic in American society. Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust – a song that rides on a much-sampled central riff – laments the prevalence of murders on American streets. Ride the Pink Horse is a 1947 Film Noir movie in which the protagonist travels to Mexico to seek violent revenge. That Long Lonesome Road is a country song by C. W. McCall detailing the hard life of a trucker. These references are contrasted with mentions of two hymns, The Old Rugged Cross and In God We Trust. In The Old Rugged Cross (written by the evangelist George Bennard in 1912) the narrator clings to an old crucifix he has been given to remind him of Jesus’ suffering. In God We Trust is also the official motto of the United States which, to the chagrin of secularists, has appeared on bank notes since 1957.

As more and more cultural icons are mentioned, the singer appears to gain moral authority by invoking them. The songs, films and plays being referenced now seem to represent the idea that such great artistic achievements can transcend the history of corruption and violence which has dominated the succeeding decades. By now we might expect the song – if it was to follow the patterns of previous sections – to end, but it will continue until the last mention of the title line, as if Dylan is making one great final effort to summon more and more help in his search for the lost ‘soul of the nation’ …Play “Mystery Train” for Mr. Mystery… links Junior Parker’s darkly suggestive rhythm and blues classic – most memorably covered by Elvis Presley in 1956 – with another reference to a popular comic character, quite possibly a favourite of Dylan in his childhood. This is counterposed with a striking image of Kennedy’s death: …The man who fell down dead like a rootless tree… A Rootless Tree is the title of a book of poems by Zhang Sanfeng, a thirteenth century Taoist monk who is said to have invented several martial arts. The Wolfman is now asked to play Mystery Train for some mysterious figures: ‘the reverend’ (presumably Martin Luther King), ‘the pastor’ (which may well refer to Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a heroic German opponent of the Nazis in World War Two) and then ‘the dog who has no master’. This may be a reference to the ‘Mu Koan’, in which the Zen master Joshu answers a question from a student as to whether a dog can have Buddha nature with a curt ‘no’.

ELVIS

Dylan follows this with a list of life-affirming music and musicians, now delighting in his own word play as he does so: …Play Oscar Peterson and play Stan Getz… he cries …Play ‘Blue Sky’, play Dickie Betts… beginning his list of great jazz musicians while pausing to refer to a stirringly attractive and hopeful song by The Allman Brothers Band. And then he rather mischievously rhymes …Play Art Pepper, play Thelonius Monk… with …Play Charlie Parker and all that junk… a riff on Parker’s heroin addiction which is extended to …All that junk and all that jazz… referring perhaps to the problems with ‘junk’ that affected so many stars of the bebop era. All That Jazz is a popular ‘show tune’ from the 1975 musical Chicago which was a hit for Liza Minnelli in 1981. It is also the title of Bob Fosse’s film of the same name (1979). This is rather delightfully (and surprisingly) rhymed with …Play it for the Birdman of Alcatraz… The ‘Birdman’ was a convicted murderer called Robert Stroud who, despite his incarceration, became a leading ornithologist. He was portrayed by Burt Lancaster in a somewhat romanticised movie in 1962. Stroud died on November 22^nd 1963, the day before Kennedy’s assassination. The reference here seems to present him as a symbol of forlorn hope. Unlike his birds, and like Kennedy, he will never escape. We are then thrown back in time to the 1920s: …Play Buster Keaton, play Harold Lloyd/ Play Bugsy Siegel, play Pretty Boy Floyd… The reference to the silent film stars appears to be a purely celebratory one. Bugsy Siegel was a famous mobster, while Pretty Boy Floyd was a notorious outlaw who was mythologised as a ‘folk hero’ in Woody Guthrie’s song of the same name, which Dylan recorded a stunning version of for a tribute album in 1988.

BUSTER KEATON                           HAROLD LLOYD

The litany continues to become more and more wide ranging, imaginative and fanciful as Dylan delivers some more carefully measured couplets. Gambling metaphors: …Play all the numbers, play all the odds… and    …Play number six, play number nine… are set against the rather grandiose …Play ‘Cry Me a River’ for the King of The Gods… juxtaposing the Julie London tearjerker (a particular favourite of Dylan’s which he included in Theme Time Radio Hour) with the truly ‘epic’ power of Zeus. The second line is rhymed with a rather more prosaic tribute to Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac: …Play it for Lindsay and Stevie Nicks… We then get more tributes: …Play Nat King Cole, play Nature Boy/ Play Down in the Boondocks For Terry Malloy… referencing one of the crooners who Dylan particularly admires and the 1954 movie On the Waterfront, in which Terry Malloy is the defeated dockworker played by Marlon Brando who emits the famous cry “I could-a been a contender!” Down in the Boondocks is a 1965 song by country singer Billy Joe Royal in which the narrator laments being too poor to call on a rich girl he loves. It Happened One Night, the 1934 Frank Capra comedy starring Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, is requested, along with One Night of Sin – a song with a similarly risqué theme recorded by Elvis Presley in 1957. A lustful Elvis, mixing sex and religion as only he can, ‘prays’ to be allowed to spend the night with the object of his desire. Then there is an impassioned appeal to the Wolfman: …There’s twelve million souls listening in… as if the D. J. is some kind of evangelist or preacher.

The ‘dark side’ of the song then reasserts itself, as we are jolted out of the mode of joyous celebration into a violent Shakespearean context: …Play The Merchant of Venice, play Merchants of Death/ Play Stella By Starlight for Lady Macbeth….The Merchant of Venice explores the limits of materialism through Shylock’s demands for his ‘pound of flesh’. The Merchants of Death by H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen (1934) is not a song but one of several books published in the 1930s which sought to expose the way in which US arms manufacturers had made huge profits out of the carnage of World War I, the Spanish Civil War and other bloody conflicts. Conspiracy theorists have asserted that Kennedy was eliminated by elements who saw him as a threat to the continuing profits of the huge industrial enterprise which Dwight D. Eisenhower – in his final speech as President before giving way to Kennedy – identified as the ‘military-industrial complex’, citing the US arms manufacturers’ continuing involvement in many wars that have raged across the world. Stella by Starlight is a rather grandiose romantic jazz standard written by Victor Young in 1944 in which the ‘stellar’ object of the song is compared to ‘a great symphonic theme’. Many of the bebop jazz players developed instrumental versions and it became a favourite of Miles Davis. Dylan’s juxtaposition of romance and deadly materialism in these lines is particularly cutting and effective.

LADY MACBETH

MURDER….

We are now presented with another imagined dialogue which takes us back to the moments after the shooting: …Don’t worry, Mr. President… a soothing, disembodied voice reassures him …help’s on the way. Your brothers are coming, there’ll be hell to play… Then we hear the sneering tones of the murderers: …Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell?/ Tell ‘em we’re waiting – keep coming – we’ll get them as well… Kennedy’s brothers Robert and Edward both became Presidential contenders. Robert was assassinated and Edward’s career was ruined by a scandal involving the death of one of his interns. Conspiracy theorists have long argued that these events were the result of deliberate acts by their enemies. The next two couplets return to the historical details: …Love Field was where his plane touched down/ But it never did get back up off the ground… ‘Love Field’, with its obvious ironic resonance, was the name of the airport in Dallas where Kennedy landed. This is followed by …Was a hard act to follow, second to none/ They killed him on the altar of the Rising Sun… a reference to The House of The Rising Sun, an evocative New Orleans whore’s lament which was covered by Dylan on his first album and later ‘electrified’ in the classic version by The Animals. The reference to the ‘altar’ seems to link these lines to a traditional Catholic practice known as ‘ad orientam’ in which the priest offers mass on the same side of the altar as the congregation. Some churches were built to facilitate this practice, so that both priest and followers were required to face the east, where the sun rises. This again suggests that Kennedy was a ‘human sacrifice’.

THE ANIMALS

More song titles and film references follow: …Play Misty for Me and That Ol’ Devil Moon/ Play Anything Goes and Memphis in June/ Play Lonely at the Top and Lonely are the Brave… The first four songs are well known jazz standards. Misty is a 1954 song composed by Errol Garner and Johnny Burke. Play Misty for Me also refers to the 1973 film in which Clint Eastwood plays a D. J. who is stalked by an obsessive female fan. That Ol’ Devil Moon was one of Sinatra’s ‘showstoppers’. Anything Goes is a somewhat risqué take on modern morals written by Cole Porter in 1934. Memphis in June was composed by Hoagy Carmichael in 1945 for the film Johnny Angel. The other two titles have obvious connotations with Kennedy. Lonely at the Top is a rather plaintive Randy Newman song about the limitations of fame, while Lonely are the Brave is an acclaimed 1962 ‘social conscience’ themed Western starring Kirk Douglas. In one of the song’s most inspired pairings, this is rhymed with …Play it for Harry Houdini, spinning around in his grave… The image of the great escapologist perpetually ‘spinning around’ in a location that even he cannot escape from powerfully evokes the situation that the ‘soul of America’ is trapped in.

The song ends with eight lines in which twelve more requests are made. The jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton is name checked, as are Little Richard’s screaming proto rock’n’roll song Lucille, Deep In a Dream (a song which features on Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours album) and Driving Wheel, a blues standard first recorded by Roosevelt Sykes in 1936. Another remarkable couplet: …Play Moonlight Sonata in F Sharp/ Play Key to the Highway by the King of The Harp… links Beethoven’s melody with Little Walter’s definitive 1958 version of one of Dylan’s favourite blues songs, which in his 2015 Musicares speech he claimed was the inspiration for Highway 61 Revisited. Two American Civil War songs are mentioned: Marching through Georgia and Dumbarton’s Drums. The first of these, written by William Henry Clay in 1865, commemorated General Sherman’s bloody and triumphant ‘march to the sea’ at the end of the war, and the second is a traditional Scottish tune which was popular with Civil War marching bands. ‘Dumbarton’s drums’ is rhymed with …Play Darkness and death will come when it comes…  

     The final couplet…Play Love Me or Leave Me by the great Bud Powell… references another jazz instrumental version of a popular standard. This is rhymed with …Play The Blood Stained Banner, play Murder Most Foul… The Blood Stained Banner, as well as being a popular hymn, was the name given to the flag of the Confederate States, which is still flown with apparent pride by some right wing groups. Here, as on so many occasions in his late work, Dylan implies that a ‘civil war’ is still being fought in the USA, a society in which racism still exists and violence – especially in the form of gun shootings – remains tragically prevalent. Finally the narrator asks the D. J. to play Murder Most Foul (the song) itself. This is a neat, self-referential twist but it also implies that the violence and corruption that the song describes will continue unabated. By focusing on a major event in modern history which occurs at the beginning of his own long career as a ‘public poet’, Dylan reflects with righteous anger, sadness and melancholy on the continuing corruption, prejudice and violence which marrs life in his country.