TALKIN’ NEW YORK
Talkin’ New York is the second song on Bob Dylan’s eponymous first album. A talking blues, it describes his feelings on arriving in New York City, his time playing coffee houses in Greenwich Village, and his life up to getting a record deal. The lyrics express the difficulty he had finding gigs as a result of his unique sound: “You sound like a hillbilly; we want folk singers here”. The song is the first of the two Dylan-penned songs to be heard on the album, the other being “Song To Woody”. (More from Wikipedia)
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.
(September 2016)
