Bob Dylan's "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"
Did songs like this really change our history?
Editor’s Note: For those NOT interested in the College World Series, here’s something about a Bob Dylan song that seems to endure.
This was my annual classroom guitar showcase. Three chords, C-Am-G.
Since the only Bob Dylan video of this song I had at the time was from a really old B/W Steve Allen Show, my guess was seeing an old guy singing a Bob Dylan song about an absolutely awful moment in American jurisprudence would go over better in a high school classroom. And my singing, you know, maybe wouldn’t be that worse than Bob. And you know, they’d probably laugh. But also, I hoped, would listen.
Bob Dylan’s 1963 classic, “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll” was recorded roughly a month before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. It wasn’t released until the following February as part of Dylan’s third album “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and all these years later, you wonder if Dylan’s call for social justice made a difference in American society?
Writer Ian Frazier wondered the same thing, writing this remarkable article (link is below) back in 2004, actually going out and finding Hattie Carroll’s relatives and the perpetrator of the crime, William Zantzinger himself. And after performing the song for my class, they were assigned his article and asked, a bit later, to write about it.
The other interesting item Frazier uncovered was Zantzinger happened to be sentenced the same day as Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech on the March On Washington. Only ONE journalist noted it was a remarkable address. Only one. Imagine that!
What I would always explain to my class was, first, Dylan was just a couple years older when he wrote this. Growing up in Minnesota, it’s probably a fair guess that he didn’t have a lot of contact with African-Americans, so to take up for Hattie Carroll, whom he obviously never met and in a larger sense, the cause of the American negro (as they were called then) took some courage on his part.
At the time, the majority of folk music artists were playing old songs. There weren’t a lot of people writing their own material and even fewer taking a socially challenging stance. The story goes Dylan simply read a newspaper story on the case, sat down and wrote the song. It didn’t receive the air play that “The Times They Are a-Changin’” did or “Blowin’ In The Wind.” But unlike those other two songs, seldom performed in concert, Dylan has gone back to “Lonesome Death” on subsequent tours, including a trip to Japan in 1994 (see the YouTube video below).
And it made me ask my classes why, with the seemingly endless episodes of racial injustice we hear about every day, I don’t get the sense that this particular topic seemed to inspire a great response from current artists in the African-American community. Not a rap fan (I know how to swear and rhyme) I challenged them to find some of their favorites stepping out the way Bob Dylan did. I found Rihanna’s “American Oxygen” which I thought was terrific and shared that video clip with the class. And then asked who else?
“I always wanted to play guitar very badly - and now I do” - U2’s Bono. Hey! Me, too!
I recounted the story of the first Saturday Night Live after we had elected our first African-American President, Barack Obama. It happened on November 22 of all days, in 2008 and Tim McGraw was the host. And I thought here’s Ludacris as musical guest, a prominent black artist on a national stage presented with a genuine forum to step up and do something inspirational, unifying even.
Instead, we got he and Tallahassean T-Pain to do two songs - “One More Drink” and “Chopped and Skrewed” songs that celebrated exactly the kinds of things that, well, in a moment like that didn’t need to be celebrated. To me, and maybe I’m a hopeless idealist, they peed in the pool.
Since then, I get the sense that musicians have picked up that banner from some of the songs I’ve heard from Megan Thee Stallion to Beyonce and on and on, though honestly, I don’t spend a lot of time listening to the latest hits. We all are so into our own kind of music - including me - that I wonder if there’s any way anything any of these artists sing could have the impact that it seems Dylan did.
Of course, we don’t actually know if these sorts of songs back then actually did change our world. But having lived through it, I can say it certainly seemed that way which I think was healthy, encouraging, inspiring, uplifting.
I don’t know that when Bob Dylan sat down to write “Hattie Carroll” he probably wasn’t trying to change anything in particular, his conscience demanded he write it so he did, regardless of whether or not the record company wanted to hear it. He wanted us to hear it and think about our country, our lives, our future. And then go out and do something about it. Like he did.
This is a beautiful rendition of “Lonesome Death” from 1994.
HERE’s the link to Ian Frazier’s article. Cut and paste into your browser. It’s worth reading, trust me.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/legacy-lonesome-death-bob-dylan-hattie-carroll/
That's a thoughtful point, Rich. I don't disagree but I think the context - that is, WHEN he wrote it with civil rights, the March on Washington, etc., is really significant. I don't know that there were a lot of "elites" for lack of a better word, the "protest types" you talk about, who saw her death as a point for social reform. On the contrary, as Frazier's article points out, she would have been forgotten had Bob Dylan NOT written the song. As a young white man from you-would-think mostly white Minnesota, I saw this as Bob stepping up and saying something that needed to be said about race and justice, which seems prophetic, looking at what's happened in American courtrooms over the time since. But again, I can certainly see your point and you know, Bob is not about to explain it to us. There's room for both interpretations, isn't there? Thanks for taking the time to write - and read my Substack.
so -- and bear with me -- I have a different take on this song. This song is not a protest against the justice system although it certainly takes a swipe at it. It's a song protesting against the protest types that refuse to mourn the death of an innocent woman. ("now aint the time for your tears") and use her death as a vehicle to try to make some greater social point. The time for our tears should have been at the time of her death. That is the tragedy. Sure it's also bad that the justice system failed her, but her death is the tragedy. And that fact is often lost to people who try to use events to make political points. And that is what the song is decrying. And what a perspective that is and likely why he stopped writing these types of songs.