Bob CollinsIt’s Bob Dylan’s birthday and to mark the occasion, Slate has created a map documenting every place Dylan has ever sung about.
Is it true that Minnesota has only been mentioned five times in songs?
“So I watched that sun come rising / From that little Minnesota town” (Went to See the Gypsy – 1970)
“Thought I’d shaken the wonder and the phantoms of my youth / Rainy days on the Great Lakes, walkin’ the hills of old Duluth” (“Something There is About You” – 1974)
“Oh some of us’ll end up / In St. Cloud Prison” (“Walls of Red Wing” 1963)
“Thrown in like bandits / And cast off like criminals / Inside the walls / The walls of Red Wing” (“Walls of Red Wing” 1963)
“Pretty maids all in a row lined up / Outside my cabin door / I’ve never wanted any of ’em wanting me / Except the girl from the Red River Shore” (“Red River Shore” – 2006)
It’s not clear who gets credit for Highway 61.
By the way Pete Seeger was not particularly charitable to the present-day Dylan in an interview this week in Baltimore:
Of course, now he just shouts. I can’t understand what he’s singing. Too bad. But he’s actually out there just to say “I am what I am. This is me. If you like it you can like it. If you don’t like it, it doesn’t make a damn to me.” He wrote his best songs when he was young. As did I.
