Dylan’s Voice, Part One
The old man — boy complex
How could something originate in its antithesis? Truth in error, for example. Or will to truth in will to deception? Or the unselfish act in self-interest? Or the pure radiant gaze of the sage in covetousness?
— Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Or the voice of a grandfather in the body of a young man barely out of his teens? Right from the beginning, on the first album he recorded for Columbia, twenty-year-old Bob Dylan sang with the weathered and weary voice of an old man. Many of the things he sang about were an old man’s concerns, death being primary among them. Two of the songs on that album had death in the title, one referred to the singer’s grave, “Man of Constant Sorrow” mentioned death in the lyrics, and “Song to Woody” was dedicated to a man dying at the time in a New Jersey hospital. All through this debut album, Dylan’s voice had a husky, haunting, antique quality, and he sang with the authority of a tribal elder.
Many recording artists of the time — Harry Belafonte, Vic Damone, Tony Bennett — had smooth, trained voices that allowed them to hit all the notes and produce impressive vocal effects. Dylan only had one skill as a singer, but it somehow trumped all the rest: he knew how to sing a song. His first biographer, Anthony Scaduto, captured a moment that occurred not…
