But suppose Peter, Paul and Mary hadn’t had the same manager as Bob Dylan, or that they hadn’t liked “Blowin’ in the Wind”? Or suppose it hadn’t been a hit? Bob Dylan is an unquestioned songwriting genius, but his singing style is an acquired taste – if Dylan had to depend on his own recordings, the world might have already moved on by the time “Like a Rolling Stone” came out more than two years later.
You think I’m kidding? You think Bob Dylan is such a huge talent that he would have been a success no matter what? Consider the case of Mimi and Richard Fariña.
Mimi Fariña is Joan Baez’s younger sister, and Richard Fariña was originally known as a writer and eventually published an acclaimed novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (1966). As quoted in Wikipedia, novelist Thomas Pynchon, who served as best man at the wedding of the Fariñas, described the novel as “coming on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch . . . hilarious, chilling, sexy, profound, maniacal, beautiful, and outrageous all at the same time.”
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Richard Fariña was among the early folk singers in the Greenwich Village scene at the beginning of the 1960’s. He met and married folksinger Carolyn Hester after they had known each other just 18 days. Her third album and first for Columbia Records, Carolyn Hester (1961) featured then little-known Bob Dylan on harmonica on several tracks (credited as Blind Boy Grunt).
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Richard Fariña and Bob Dylan became good friends after they met at those recording sessions, as documented in an excellent overview of the New York folk scene of the early 1960’s by David Hajdu called Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña. This book created quite a stir when it was released in 2001 as it made the case for Richard Fariña being an equal talent with Bob Dylan.
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After their marriage, Mimi and Richard Fariña began performing as a folk-rock duo that were much closer to the folk end of things than, say, the Byrds. Their first album was Celebrations for a Grey Day (1965). Their best known songs are “Pack up Your Sorrows”, “Reno, Nevada”, and “Birmingham Sunday”. “Reno, Nevada” was one of the early songs performed by Fairport Convention (dating back to the time when Judy Dyble was the band’s lead singer). As recorded by Joan Baez, “Birmingham Sunday” became the theme song for the Spike Lee documentary film 4 Little Girls (1997) about the infamous 1963 church bombing that killed four young children.
Richard Fariña had an awful motorcycle accident on his 29th birthday, March 8, 1966. A few months later, Bob Dylan had a bad motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966. Dylan survived his injuries; Fariña did not. Today, Dylan is known throughout the world, while Fariña is virtually forgotten. Writer Ed Ward has said: “If Richard had survived that motorcycle accident, he would have easily given Dylan a run for his money.”
(March 2015)
