BOB DYLAN – Talking Blues Songs
Speaking rather than singing vocals did not originate with rap music, nor did the term “rap” either for that matter.
Several of Bob Dylan’s early songs were in the “talking blues” form that was pioneered in the 1920’s and popularized by Dylan’s idol Woody Guthrie in the 1940’s. Typically these songs have “Talking” or “Talkin’” somewhere in the title, such as “Talkin’ New York” on his debut album, Bob Dylan; many though were not released on his Columbia albums and often have bizarre titles, such as “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”, “Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues”, and “Talkin’ Hava Negeilah Blues”. These talking blues numbers are among Dylan’s funniest songs, albeit often with black humor.
The best known of these talking blues songs can be found on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, “Talkin’ World War III Blues” (1963). The singer is telling his psychiatrist about the dreams he has been having about the aftermath of a nuclear war; Wikipedia quotes one of the verses: “Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell / And I leaned my head and I gave a yell / ‘Give me a string bean, I’m a hungry man!’ / A shotgun fired and away I ran / I don’t blame him too much, though . . . he didn’t know me”.
Toward the end of the song, the psychiatrist interrupts him to say: “Hey I’ve been havin’ the same old dreams / But mine was a little different you see / I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me / I didn’t see you around.” The song ends with: “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.”
(September 2016)
