HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED: NEXT TIME TOU SEE ME COMING…
EXTRACTS (Full text here)
In his seminal work of literary criticism Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), the great novelist D.H. Lawrence (focusing mainly on authors like Whitman, Melville and Hawthorne) argued that what differentiates American from European literature is what he called ‘the spirit of place’. The tradition of poetically naming particular locations, which Whitman in particular followed at great length, has meant that many towns, cities, beaches, lakes and even roads in the USA sound strangely familiar. A British person travelling through California, for example, may find themselves constantly distracted by the place names they may read on road signs. Names like ‘San Jose’, ‘San Francisco’, ‘LA’ ‘Pasadena’, ‘Ventura’, ‘Monterey’, ‘Compton’, ‘Mohave’ and ‘Joshua Tree’ all have strong associations with well known songs, books or movies.
The United States is such a large country, and has so many regional variations in terms of geography, industry and social organisation that American art forms of all kinds have always needed to focus on particular locations, as well as on the means of travel between them. A direct line could be drawn between Huckleberry Finnand On the Road, both of which romanticise the very act of travelling across the country, which becomes in itself as much an inner as a physical journey. By travelling through ‘States’ (of mind) the protagonists discover themselves. Lawrence’s observation remains just as valid today as it did a century ago.
In no other American art form is this truer than the blues, especially during its heyday in the early twentieth century. The blues originated in the American Deep South but the most prominent area associated with it was the so-called ‘Mississippi Delta’. Among the musicians who came from this area were Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Son House, Big Joe Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson and Charley Patton. In early blues songs, names of towns such as ‘Clarksdale’, ‘Vicksburg’ and ‘Tupelo’ crop up frequently. The singers rarely got the chance to record, and even if they did they were unlikely to be well rewarded. Thus in order to find audiences they tended to adopt a travelling lifestyle, even if they could often not afford train fares and had to travel in box cars or by hitch hiking.
Many blues songs, such as Sippie Wallace’s Mail Train Blues (1926), Big Bill Broonzy’s Too Too Train Blues and Leadbelly’s much covered Midnight Special (1934), use railway journeys as a focus. Other songs, such as Howlin’ Wolf’s Highway 49 Blues (1935) and Curtis Jones’ Highway 51 1938) feature the names of prominent American highways, especially those which connect to the Deep South. Dylan covers Highway 51 on his debut album. Most of these songs feature the singers threatening to ‘hit the highway’ if their woman leaves them, or bemoaning the fact that their lovers have already done so. Highways could represent escape from poverty or the consequences of crime or broken relationships. There are number of songs about Highway 61, most notably Highway 61 Blues, first recorded by Roosevelt Sykes in 1932 and 61 Highway Blues by Mississippi Fred McDowell (1959). By the time of McDowell’s recording the highway had featured in so many songs that it had begun to take on mythic connotations. It was at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 that Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the Devil.
Highway 61 Revisited song follows a rigid twelve bar blues structure, although the speed and intensity of the playing on the original recording creates what was then a very modern sound. Dylan engages the audience with a series of witty exchanges, with the words ‘Highway 61’ appearing at the end of each verse. In many live versions of the song by Dylan and others, each repetition of these words triggers off a chance for the guitarist to take up Bloomfield’s mantle and fire off explosive solos. The song has become one of Dylan’s ‘rock standards’ and has been recorded by Johnny Winter, Bonnie Raitt, Billy Joel, Dave Alvin, John Mellencamp, Terry Reid, Dr. Feelgood and many others. Bruce Springsteen has played Highway 61 live on a number of occasions and duetted with Dylan on the song in New York in 2003. Most of these artists treat the song as straight blues rock, although P.J. Harvey’s ‘primitive’ version (1993) channels it through a post-punk sensibility. Dylan himself has performed the song on thousands of occasions throughout his career, rarely altering its basic structure or lyrics.
Dylan trades on the mythic, historical, literary and musical significance of the road to produce a devastating satire on the rampant materialism and violent nature of American culture. Each of the five verses features two characters and many of the lines consist of dialogue spoken between them. Dylan introduces national, quasi-religious and mythical themes but the song is essentially playfully provocative. Whereas the riveting It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), another blues-based song, had covered this territory philosophically, in Highway 61 he delights in the sheer comic effect of the dialogues he sets up. Much of this is achieved by the use of modern colloquial language, perhaps most effectively utilised in the hilariously sacriligious opening verse which presents a hilariously sacrilegious conversation between God and Abraham in ‘hipster jive’.
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