Friday , September 29 , 1961
Bob Dylan : A Distinctive Stylist
By Robert Shelton
A
bright new face in folk music is appearing at Gerde's Folk City .
Although only 20 years old , Bob Dylan is one of the most distinctive
stylists to play in the Manhattan cabaret in months. Resembling
a cross between a choir boy and a beatnik , Mr. Dylan has a cherubic
look and a mop of tousled hair he partly covers with a Huck finn black
corduroy cap. His clothes may need a bit of
tailoring , but when he works his guitar, harmonica or piano and composes new
songs faster than he can remember them , there is no doubt that he
is bursting at the seams with talent .
Mr. dylan's
voice is anything but pretty . He is consciously trying to recapture
the rude beauty of a Southern field hand musing in melody on his porch.
All the " husk and bark " are left on his notes and a searing
intensity pervades the songs .
Mr. Dylan is both comedian and tragedian . Like
a vaudeville actor on the rural circuit , he offers a variety of droll
musical monologues : " Talking Bear Mountain " lampoons
the overcrowding of an exursion boat . " Talking New York
" satirizes his troubles at gaining recognition and "
Talking Havah Nagilah " burlesques the folk music craze and the
singer himself.
In his serious vein , Mr. Dylan seems to be performing
in a slow motion mood . Elasticized phrases are drawn out until you
think they may snap . He rocks his head and body , closes his eyes
in reverie seems to be groping for a word or a mood.
He may mumble the text of " House of the Rising
Sun " in a scarcely understandable growl or sob , or clearly
enunciate the poetic poignancy of a Blind Lemon Jefferson blues :
" One kind favor I ask of you - see that my grave is kept clean
. "
Mr. Dylan highly personalized approach toward folk song
is still evolving . He has sopped up influences like a sponge
. At times , the drama he aims at is off target melodrama and his
stylization threatens to topple over as a mannered excess .
But if not for every taste , his music-making has the
mark of originality and inspiration , all the more noteworthy for
his youth . Mr. Dylan is vague about his antecedents and birthplace
but it matters less where he has been than where he is going
, and that would seem to be straight up .
