September 11, 1967: Tom Lehrer In Copenhagen

September 11, 1967: Tom Lehrer performs at the Students' Club in Copenhagen, Denmark. While considered "lost" for nearly half a century, the recording of this performance, black and white and for Danish television, remains the best display of the work of the greatest American satirist of the 20th Century.

Born on April 9, 1928 on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Thomas Andrew Lehrer grew up there, and learned to play both classical music and show tunes on piano. During the show in question, he lamented that the piano did not lend itself well to folk music, so he asked the audience to imagine he was playing an 88-string guitar.

He was a brilliant math student, enough to enter Harvard University at age 15, graduate magna cum laude at 18, and get a Master of Arts degree at 19. He began teaching math to Harvard students, some older than he, and was already writing satirical songs, including "Fight Fiercely, Harvard," "New Math," and, to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Major-General's Song," "The Elements."

In 1953, paying $15 for the studio time, he recorded his first album, Songs by Tom Lehrer. The songs themselves had considerably more imagination than the album's title. 

They included "Fight Fiercely, Harvard"; "I Hold Your Hand In Mine," which the narrator explains as having kept it after killing his girlfriend; "The Hunting Song," in which a hunter claims he shot no deer, but "There's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now: Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow"; and "The Irish Ballad," with its "nonsense phrase," "Rickety-tickety-tin" and its tale of a girl who murdered her whole family, and confessed, because she knew lying was a sin.

Lehrer was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1955, worked at the National Security Agency, and later claimed to have invented the Jello shot as a way of getting around his base's ban on alcoholic beverages.

His experiences serving in official peacetime, but also at a rather chilly point in the Cold War, led to the songs "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier," "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)," and "We Will All Go Together When We Go."

In 1959, he recorded More of Tom Lehrer, with "The Elements," "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier," "The Masochism Tango," and "We Will All Go Together When We Go."

Radio stations with a conventional format wouldn't play his songs, because of the subject matter. In an interview in 2008, he said, "Lacking exposure in the media, my songs spread slowly. Like herpes, rather than ebola."

Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who saw him in concert in Boston in 1954, said his songs couldn't have been played outside of a nightclub, such was the uptightness of the 1950s. It would take nightclub tours, the growth of FM radio, and the knowledge that Princess Margaret, sister of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, was a fan, to make Lehrer a star.

In 1960, the satirical TV show That Was The Week That Was, a.k.a. TW3, hired him as its musical director. This led to such songs as "The Vatican Rag," whose success probably made comedian Lenny Bruce jealous; "Who's Next," as in, to get nuclear weapons; and "Wehrner von Braun," whose rockets bombed London in World War II, and would soon, as Lehrer put it in the Copenhagen concert, "allow America to put some idiot on the Moon."

In 1969, according to pitcher Jim Bouton's book Ball Four, the Houston Astros had turned "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier" into "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be an Astro." And in 1986, at the annual Senior Variety Show at my Alma Mater, East Brunswick High School, Glenn Slater, later to be a successful Broadway songwriter, played "The Masochism Tango." And didn't get in trouble for it. Oddly, Lehrer played neither of these songs in the acclaimed Copenhagen concert, part of a European tour.

Despite being popular all over the world, he quit touring in the early 1970s, tired of the travel and of doing the same songs all the time. He also said the market for what he was doing had declined: "Satire died when they gave Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize." He went back to teaching.

He and songwriter Joe Raposo tried to collaborate on a musical about the fictional murderer Sweeney Todd. It never happened, and, a fee years later, Stephen Sondheim succeeded with one.

But the Lehrer-Raposo collaboration bore fruit when Raposo was hired as the musical director for the Children's Television Workshop, including for the TV show The Electric Company. For animated sequences, he got Lehrer to write and sing songs about the L-Y and S-N sounds, and "Silent E." Millions of kids who might have gone their entire lives without hearing Lehrer's name, much less "The Masochism Tango," were exposed to his work.

He continued to teach at various colleges, including the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he was living at the time, and retired from this in 2001. As of September 11, 2022, he is still alive.

At some point, the videotape of the Copenhagen concert was found, and introduced Lehrer to a new generation. It is occasionally shown on PBS -- during pledge drives. Lehrer might have something to say about that.

UPDATE: Tom Lehrer died on July 26, 2025 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 97 years old.

*

September 11, 1967 was a Monday. Singer-actor Harry Connick Jr. was born. And The Carol Burnett Show premiered on CBS on this day. I have a separate entry for that event.

These baseball games were played:

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Washington Senators, 13-5 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.) Harmon Killebrew went 3-for-5 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Rookie Rod Carew went 2-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Pete Rose singled Dick Simpson home with the winning run in the bottom of the 9th inning. Lehrer appears never to have written about baseball, but I'd like to see what he could have written about Rose.

Rookie Johnny Bench went 0-for-3. For the Pirates, Roberto Clemente went 0-for-4, but Willie Stargell went 2-for-4 with a home run and all of the Pirates' RBIs.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Frank Robinson went 2-for-4 with a home run and 3 RBIs. Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4 with an RBI.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. 

* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 11-10 in a rare shootout at the normally pitcher-friendly Astrodome in Houston. The Astros got home runs from the 5-foot-8 Joe Morgan and the 5-foot-7 Jimmy Wynn, known as the Toy Cannon. The Cubs hit no homers. Ernie Banks went 1-for-4 with a walk and 2 RBIs.

* The San Francisco Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Ron Herbel pitched an 8-hit shutout to beat Don Drysdale. Willie Mays went 3-for-4 with an RBI.

* And the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, the California Angels, the Cleveland Indians, the Detroit Tigers, the Kansas City Athletics, the New York Mets, the Atlanta Braves were not scheduled to play.

September 1, 1945: Woody Guthrie Publishes "This Land Is Your Land"

September 1, 1945: Woody Guthrie publishes "This Land Is Your Land." It becomes one of America's most familiar songs.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma. By the 1930s, he was already known as a folksinger, and his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads was immediately hailed as a landmark of the genre. An ardent anti-Nazi, he put a sticker on his guitar, reading, "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS."

Angered by the fluffy patriotism of Kate Smith's recording of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," Guthrie wrote "This Land Is Your Land" on February 23, 1940, in his room at the Hanover House Hotel at 101 West 43rd Street, just off New York's Times Square. According to journalist Joe Klein, "He completely forgot about the song, and didn't do anything with it for another 5 years."

More like 4 years. In March 1944, he recorded it for the 1st time. But he didn't publish it until September 1, 1945 -- 18 days after V-J Day ended World War II.

Pretty much everyone knows the Chorus:

This land is your land, and this land is my land.

From California to the New York island.
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Fewer people know the verses:

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
And I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and rambled, and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
All around me, a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me.

This verse proved to be controversial, and was often dropped when the song appeared in publications, for fear of being accused of Communism:

There was a big, high wall there that tried to stop me.
A sign was painted, said "Private Property."
But on the backside, it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

When the sun come shining, then I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling
The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

After years of suffering from a neurological condition called Huntington's disease, which rendered him unable to perform live from the 1950s onward, Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967. That same year, Jack Newfield was covering Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York for the New York Post. RFK was wondering if he should run for President. Newfield wanted 2 things if he won: "End the war in Vietnam, and make 'This Land Is Your Land' the National Anthem." Bobby said, "Done." Of course, he never got the chance.

*

September 1, 1945 was a Monday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Washington Senators, 3-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Alex Carrasquel pitched a 5-hit shutout, outpitching Red Ruffing.

* The New York Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, 5-4 at the Polo Grounds. Player-manager Mel Ott and Billy Jurges hit home runs for the Jints, and Ed Stevens hit one for Dem Bums.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Boston Braves, 8-3 at Braves Field in Boston.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 7-1 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-4 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Hank Greenberg had returned from The War, and went 1-for-4 with a walk for the Tigers. Bob Feller had also returned from The War, and started for the Indians, but was not involved in the decision. Rudy York singled home Red Borom to win the game in the bottom of the 9th inning. The Tigers would edge the Senators for the American League Pennant by 1 game.

* A doubleheader was split at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The Chicago White Sox won the opener, 5-3. The St. Louis Browns won the nightcap, 3-0. Nelson Potter pitched a 6-hit shutout.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Nevertheless, the Cubs would win the National League Pennant. This was the only season between 1942 and 1946 when the Cards didn't. It was also the only season in that stretch when Stan Musial was unavailable due to military service. That is not a coincidence. The Cubs lost the World Series to the Tigers, and didn't win another Pennant for 71 years.

* And the Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates were not scheduled.

August 19, 1940: Alan Lomax's "Back Where I Came From" Premieres

August 19, 1940: Back Where I Came From premieres on CBS radio, hosted by Alan Lomax. Despite its success and high visibility, it never picked up a commercial sponsor. The show ran for only 21 weeks before it was suddenly canceled in February 1941.

On hearing the news, folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote Lomax from California, "Too honest again, I suppose? Maybe not purty enough. O well, this country's a getting to where it can't hear its own voice. Someday the deal will change."

Lomax himself wrote that in all his work he had tried to capture "the seemingly incoherent diversity of American folk song as an expression of its democratic, inter-racial, international character, as a function of its inchoate and turbulent many-sided development."

Lomax was born on January 31, 1915 in Austin, Texas. He went around America in the 1930s, and collected hundreds of folk songs, including white people's country music and black people's blues music, recording them for posterity, and perhaps saving them from being lost. He broadcast many of those recordings on his show, and donated them to the Library of Congress, where they have been protected.

This matches a point recently made by Cracked.com, only the humor website was being dead serious about it: 99 percent of all the musical pieces ever written have been lost.

We don't know what cavemen sang when they invented song. We don't know what music the psalms of King David were set to. We don't know what songs were sung by the laborers of ancient Egypt or the philosophers of Greece and Rome. We don't know the marching songs of the soldiers of King Arthur or Charlemagne or Genghis Khan. We know much of the poetry of Shakespeare's time (including his own), but we don't know the equivalent of the "hit parade" or the "Top 40" of Elizabethan England or the Russia of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, of Revolutionary America or Napoleonic France.

But thanks to Alan Lomax and his sometimes partner, John Henry Faulk, we know some of the oldest songs sung in America, by white people and black people alike. The recordings they made, long in the custody of the Library of Congress, are priceless.

*

August 19, 1940 was a Monday. Singers Johnny Nash and Roger Cook, and actress Jill St. John, were born.

These 3 baseball games were played:

* The New York Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds, 9-2 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Mel Ott hit a home run, and Carl Hubbell outpitched Paul Derringer. The Reds went on to win the World Series, anyway.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 16-7 at Fenway Park in Boston. Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams and Jim Tabor hit home runs.

* And the Boston Bees beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-0 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Dick Errickson allowed 9 hits, but kept the shutout. This was the last of 5 seasons under the Bees name for the Boston franchise of the National League. The next year, they went back to being called the Boston Braves.

August 6, 1962: Allan Sherman Records "My Son, the Folk Singer"

August 6, 1962: Comedian Allan Sherman records an album in front of a live audience in his adopted hometown of Los Angeles. He titles it Allan Sherman's Mother Presents My Son, the Folk Singer.

Allan Gerald Copelon was born on November 30, 1924 in Chicago. Unlike so many other Jewish entertainers, he actually adopted a more Jewish-sounding surname, which was his mother's maiden name. He first became famous by co-creating the TV game show I've Got a Secret. Eventually, he moved to the Brentwood section of West Los Angeles, next-door to Harpo Marx of the Marx Brothers, who enjoyed Allan's penchant for writing song parodies. This led to the recording session in question.

Sherman belonged to a generation of Jewish Americans whose parents were immigrants, and not really assimilated into American culture, but were raised to have one foot in each culture: To be as American as possible, but still have respect for "the old country" and the old ways.

Thus, his comedy, like that of his contemporaries Mel Brooks and Alan King, reflected that he was a city kid who was firmly ensconced in the suburbs upon becoming successful, but still with lots of references to the old ways and frequent use of Yiddish words. Just a few years younger than those, Woody Allen was not so much a Jewish American, but an American who was Jewish. There was a difference, and it showed in their comedy styles.

This showed in the songs Sherman chose, leaning into the current folk music boom. One was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which became "The Ballad of Harry Lewis," who worked for a clothing manufacturer, Irving Roth:

Oh, Harry Lewis perished

in the service of his lord.

He was trampling through the warehouse

where the drapes of Roth are stored.

He had the finest funeral

the union could afford

and his cloth goes shining on! 

He turned Harry Belafonte's calypso numbers "Matilda" into "My Zelda" and "Waterboy" into "Seltzer Boy," the cowboy song "The Streets of Laredo" into "The Streets of Miami," the French song "Frere Jacques" into "Sarah Jackman," and "Shortnin' Bread" into "Matzo Ball."

The album hit Number 1 on Billboard magazine's album chart, and inspired a sequel, released in early 1963: Allan Sherman's Mother Presents My Son, the Celebrity. This time, along with folk songs (the French song "Alouette" became "Al 'n' Yetta," and the classic Jewish song "Hava Nagila" became "Harvey and Sheila"), he added Broadway songs and other "show tunes." He did a medley of George M. Cohan's songs, concluding by turning "Give My Regards to Broadway" into "Get On the Garden Freeway." He redid "When I Was a Lad" from Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. And he closed by turning "Down By the Riverside" into "Don't Buy the Liverwurst."

This album also hit Number 1, and inspired a 3rd album, released in the Summer of 1963: Allan Sherman's Mother Presents My Son, the Nut. This produced his only hit single, to the tune of Amilcare Ponchielli's 1876 "Dance of the Hours," which had previously been used in Walt Disney's film Fantasia: "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp)."

It seemed Sherman could do no wrong. Then, in 1964, he did something wrong. Not scandalous, but dumb: On his album For Swingin' Livers Only (the title a parody of Frank Sinatra's For Swingin' Lovers Only), to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel," he wrote and recorded a song titled "Pop Hates the Beatles." It was easily the biggest anti-Beatle song, but was drowned out by the Beatles themselves and novelty songs supporting them. Although grownups still liked him, and he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show a few times, he had lost the kids.

He tried to stay relevant. In 1967, on Ed Sullivan, he presaged the environmental movement by turning "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" into "Smog Gets In Your Eyes." In 1969, with Albert Hague, he wrote a musical, The Fig Leaves Are Falling, but it closed on Broadway after 4 performances.

He should have waited a bit longer: One of the cast was David Cassidy, son of Broadway legend Jack Cassidy, and, a year later, with his stepmother Shirley Jones, one of the stars of the TV show The Partridge Family. In 1971, Sherman voiced the title character in a cartoon based on Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat. But he was already a relic of an earlier time.

To make matters worse, he ate like a horse, drank like a fish, and smoked like a chimney. He knew he was harming his health: To the tune of "Polly Wolly Doodle All Day," he once sang:

Oh, I diet all day

and I diet all night.

It's enough to drive me bats.

No gravy or potatoes

'cause the whole refrigerator's

full of polyunsaturated fats!

Fare the well

Metrecal

and the others of that ilk!

Let the diet start tomorrow

'cause today I'll drown my sorrow

in a double malted milk!

(Metrecal was an early diet-supplement shake, a precursor to Slim-Fast. Introduced in 1959, the fad ended by 1965, and it was discontinued in 1978.)

On November 20, 1973, 10 days before he would have turned 49, all of Allan Sherman's excesses caught up with him: In yet another night of entertaining his friends at his home in Los Angeles, he died of respiratory failure. This was 4 years after the "Paul Is Dead" controversy, and someone pointed out that the man who wrote "Pop Hates the Beatles" got a shorter obituary than Paul McCartney, who wasn't even really dead.

And with the coming of "Weird Al" Yankovic in the 1980s, people have forgotten that Sherman was ever there. Like John F. Kennedy impersonator Vaughn Meader, whose album The First Family competed with Sherman's albums for attention, the fad is now a historical curiosity, and little else.

*

August 6, 1962 was a Monday. Actress Michelle Yeoh was born. And these baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Minnesota Twins, 5-4 at Yankee Stadium. Roger Maris and Bill "Moose" Skowron hit home runs. Mickey Mantle went 1-for-3 with a walk. So did Harmon Killebrew, who added an RBI. Yogi Berra appeared as a pinch-hitter, but did not reach base.

* The New York Mets lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2-1 at the new Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Johnny Podres, hero of the Dodgers' 1955 Brooklyn triumph, outpitched Jay Hook. Duke Snider appeared as a pinch-hitter, but did not reach base. The next year, he played for the Mets.

* The Los Angeles Angels beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Washington Senators, 1-0 at the new District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (D.C. Stadium was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.) Ed Rakow pitched a 6-hit shutout, outpitching Claude Osteen. The only run of game came in the top of the 4th, when former Yankee Norm Siebern doubled future Met Ed Charles home.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Detroit Tigers, 6-5 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Steve Boros hit 3 home runs, but they were all solo homers, and the Tigers only got 2 other hits. Al Kaline went 0-for-4 with a walk. Ty Cline hit a sacrifice fly to score Bubba Phillips with the winning run in the bottom of the 9th inning.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5-4 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-5.But it was unrelated Floyd Robinson who won the game for the South Siders in the bottom of the 11th inning, singling home Jim Landis.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Chicago Cubs, 4-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4. Ernie Banks did not play.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Houston Colt .45s, 1-0 at Colt Stadium in Houston. Bob Purkey of Cincinnati pitched shutout ball for 10 innings, while Turk Farrell of Houston did it for 12. Reds reliever Johnny Klippstein won the game himself with a home run off Don McMahon in the top of the 13th inning. Frank Robinson went 1-for-5. The Colts became the Houston Astros in 1965.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Just another day at the office for Willie Mays: 5-for-5 with 2 home runs, 5 RBIs, and 4 catches without an error in center field. One of the homers came off Dallas Green, who would manage the Phillies to win the 1980 World Series.

* And the Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals were not scheduled.

July 25, 1965: Bob Dylan Goes Electric

July 25, 1965: Bob Dylan crosses a rock and roll Rubicon. He performs with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. They use electric instruments, something the festival had never allowed before, as folk music has traditionally been all-acoustic. 

Dylan had been born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, but found life there dissatisfying on multiple levels. Early early rock and roll stars of the mid-1950s appealed to him, and so anyone who had studied his entire life from 1941 to 1965 should have seen this coming. But most people didn't know about that when they became fans of his in the early 1960s. 

In 1961, having dropped out of the University of Minnesota, he came to New York, renamed himself for Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, and started singing folk music in the clubs of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, where Thomas had lived and performed for the last few years of his life, dying there in 1953. (I have an entry for his death.)

Bob had adopted a persona like that of earlier folk singer Woody Guthrie, with scraggly clothes and a nasal twang. He combined traditional folk songs with his own new compositions, and it didn't seem to matter that he couldn't sing in the traditional sense, or that he wasn't an especially good-looking guy. People were mesmerized by his performances. Soon, men wanted to be him, and women just wanted him.

On April 16, 1962, at Gerde's Folk City at 11 West 4th Street, he first performed "Blowin' in the Wind," and it was a sensation, with its 3 short verses citing the civil rights and antiwar movements. This was less than a year after the Freedom Rides, but a year before American TV viewers saw the firehoses and police dogs of Birmingham, and most hadn't yet heard of Vietnam, let alone realized that we already had troops fighting, killing and dying there. To them, "war" still meant World War II, a "just war," or maybe the Korean War, which didn't seem worth it.

Bob's self-titled debut album had been released on Columbia Records the preceding March 19. Shortly after the Gerde's premiere, he began recording The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Released on May 27, 1963, it included "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" -- the latter the first in a long line of great breakup songs he would write. 

Any 1 of those 4 songs would have been a great triumph for any writer. Dylan had all 4 on 1 album. He was 3 days past his 22nd birthday, and he was already a musical legend.

That July, he appeared at Newport for the first time, along with the biggest active legend of folksinging, Pete Seeger. Guthrie, to whom Seeger had introduced Dylan, was still alive, but sidelined by the condition that would kill him 4 years later.

Also there were Peter, Paul and Mary (Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers), the folksinging trio who recorded what remain the biggest hit versions of "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Don't Think Twice." So was Joan Baez, the leading female soloist of "the folk revolution," who helped make Bob famous, then became his girlfriend. Together, these and others closed the show by joining hands and singing a song Seeger, though he didn't write it, made the anthem of civil rights: "We Shall Overcome."

Dylan then began recording his next album, finishing it before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but not released until afterward, on January 13, 1964: The Times They Are A-Changin'. It included the title track, "Ballad of Hollis Brown," "With God On Our Side," "Only a Pawn In Their Game," "When the Ship Comes In," and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." His previous burst of creativity was thus proven to be no fluke.

Just 25 days after that album's release, The Beatles arrived in America. They and Dylan each influenced the other tremendously, and it may have been The Beatles who influenced Dylan to switch to electric instruments.

Before he did though, he recorded Another Side of Bob Dylan. Released on August 8, 1964, he told Nat Hentoff, the music critic of The Village Voice, New York's underground weekly newspaper, "There ain't no finger-pointing songs." There was "All I Really Want to Do," "Chimes of Freedom," "It Ain't Me, Babe," and "My Back Pages," on which the 23-year old Dylan closed each of 6 verses by singing, "Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now." 

The Byrds, who would record several of Bob's songs, recorded "My Back Pages," but, to cut it to single length, dropped the 3rd and 4th verses. Both they and Cher would have a hit with "All I Really Want to Do"; while "It Ain't Me, Babe" would be a hit on the pop chart for The Turtles (their first hit), and on the country chart for Johnny Cash.

Fame and the expectation of his peers were getting to Dylan. Until now, except for a couple of songs on the latest album where he had played piano, it had been just him, his guitar, and the harmonica he wore in a neck harness; with no other musicians. (The harmonica in the neck harness would be copied by many performers, most notably Neil Young and Billy Joel.) For his next album, he went electric, and it was titled Bringing It All Back Home.

Released on March 22, 1965, this was a revelation. It was a reminder of his rock and roll roots, about which his "folkie" fans seemed to know nothing. It began with "Subterranean Homesick Blues," with its angry declaration that, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." (This would inspire a radical offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society to call themselves the Weathermen, and later the Weather Underground.)

It included "Maggie's Farm," whose lyrics certainly suggested folk roots, but the electricity behind it give it a bigger punch. It included "Mr. Tambourine Man," which he recorded in 3/4 time, but The Byrds would later switch it to 4/4 time, and give him his 1st Number 1 hit as a writer. (The song has 4 verses, but Byrds lead singer Roger McGuinn sang only the 2nd between the choruses.)

It included "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," with its declaration, "He not busy being born is busy dying." If that wasn't a message to the people who wanted him to remain the 22-year-old golden boy of the Greenwich Village clubs forever -- just as there were others who got upset when The Beatles moved beyond being "The Lovable Mop Tops" -- then the last song on the album certainly was: "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." 

And on July 20, he released a standalone single, a 6-minute reminder of how their delusions of him, not himself, had let them down: "Like a Rolling Stone." (Rolling Stone magazine was named for this song, not the new British band of the same name.)

So when Dylan, backed by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, took the stage at Newport on July 25, nobody knew what to expect. Here's what he gave them: "Maggie's Farm," "Like a Rolling Stone," and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," each electric.

There was booing, but there's dispute over why. Some have said it wasn't because the electric instruments were blasphemy to the folkies, it was because the sound system was bad, and Bob and the band couldn't be heard properly. The surviving film suggests that this is true, because the songs don't sound much like they did on the records. 

Another legend, that Pete Seeger yelled at show producer George Wein to turn the amps off, and that, having been refused, the "purist" Seeger tried to chop the cord with an ax, were denied by Seeger himself. He admitted that the problem was the sound system, not Dylan's audacity. If any folkies felt betrayed that night, Seeger was not one of them.

Dylan played 2 more songs, just him, his guitar, and his harmonica: "Mr. Tambourine Man" and, providing a definitive last word for them, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." He soon wrote one of the nastiest songs ever written in the English language: "Positively 4th Street," opening with, "You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend," and going on to really let them have it.

By this point, he had further enraged the folk music community by breaking up with Joan Baez, and marrying someone else, Sara Lowndes, for whom he wrote some of his more interesting songs thereafter.

Dylan would go through many more changes to his career, and did not appear at the Newport Folk Festival again until 2002. As of July 25, 2022, he is 81 years old, and still performing. Few people now doubt that going electric was good for him, and good for music.

Also, not counting individuals implied as being part of a group, like the Beatles and the performers at Woodstock, Bob Dylan is 1 of 5 people mentioned in Billy Joel's 1989 song "We Didn't Start the Fire" who are still alive. The others are Queen Elizabeth II, Brigitte Bardot, Chubby Checker, and 1984 New York "subway vigilante" Bernhard Goetz. (UPDATE: With the death of Queen Elizabeth on September 8, 2022, Dylan is now 1 of 4 still alive.)

*

July 25, 1965 was a Sunday. Baseball player Torey Lovullo and actress Illeana Douglas was born.

It was the off-season for the NFL, the NBA and the NHL. But, being a Sunday, there was a full slate of Major League Baseball games, including doubleheaders:

* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 3-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Mel Stottlemyre pitched a 4-hit shutout, and was backed by home runs from Tom Tresh and Joe Pepitone. Mickey Mantle went 1-for-4.

It was the 1st game of a doubleheader. Despite the opener giving Yankee Fans hope, the nightcap proved that, for the old Dynasty, it was all over now, baby blue. The Indians won it, 7-4. Al Downing got clobbered, allowing 6 runs in the 1st inning. Mantle hit a home run in the losing cause.

* The New York Mets split a doubleheader at Shea Stadium. They beat the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1st game, 8-1, but lost the 2nd game, 3-1. That 2nd game would be Casey Stengel's last official appearance in an major league uniform, having first appeared in one in 1912. An injury forced him to retire as Mets manager.

This was Old-Timers Day for the Mets, with former New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers standing in for the old-timers that the 4th-year Mets didn't yet have. At a party at Toots Shor's restaurant after the game, Met manager Casey Stengel, turning 75 a few days later, fell and broke his hip. He never managed again, retiring after 54 consecutive seasons in a major league uniform.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Baltimore Orioles, 8-5 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The Twins achieved this despite Harmon Killebrew going 0-for-5. The O's lost despite a home run from Brooks Robinson. It was 5-1 O's going into the 8th inning, but the Twins scored 4 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th to win it.

* A doubleheader was split at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. The Washington Senators won the 1st game, 4-3. The Kansas City Athletics won the 2nd game, 5-3. (In 1969, the stadium was renamed for Robert F. Kennedy.)

* The Boston Red Sox beat the California Angels, 5-4 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-3 with a walk, and Tony Conigliaro hit a home run.

* A doubleheader was split at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The Chicago White Sox won the 1st game, 10-6. Don Demeter hit 2 home runs. The Detroit Tigers won the 2nd game, 13-2. Norm Cash hit 2 homers. Al Kaline went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI in the 1st game, then got the 2nd game off.

* A doubleheader was split at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1st game, 3-2. Del Crandall won it with a home run in the top of the 13th inning. Bill Mazeroski also homered. The Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 5-0. Bill Faul pitched a 3-hit shutout, beating former Cub pitcher Don Cardwell. Billy Williams and Ron Santo both homered. Over the 2 games, Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell both went 2-for-9, and Ernie Banks went 4-for-10.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Houston Astros, 3-1 at the Astrodome in Houston. Frank Robinson went 1-for-4, and Pete Rose went 2-for-4. Joe Morgan, later to star for the Reds, went 0-for-4 for the Astros.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St Louis Cardinals, 5-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Bob Uecker, who had homered off Sandy Koufax the day before, got a hit (1-for-3). Eventual 3,000 Hit Club member Lou Brock did not (0-for-4).

* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Milwaukee Braves, 2-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays only appeared as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base. Hank Aaron went 1-for-5. So did Joe Torre, who added an RBI.

June 16, 1965: Bob Dylan Records "Like a Rolling Stone"

Bob with his original sheet of handwritten lyrics for the song

June 16, 1965: A planned anti-war protest at The Pentagon becomes a "teach-in," with demonstrators distributing 50,000 leaflets in and around the building.

On the same day, Bob Dylan records the familiar version of "Like a Rolling Stone," at Studio A at Columbia Records, at 799 7th Avenue at 52nd Street in New York. He does not one take, like the legend says, but 15 takes, in addition to one done the day before. The 4th take is the one we all know. He even tried one in 3/4 time, which would appear on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3 in 1991.

He had already written and recorded these songs: "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "The Times They Are a-Changin'," "With God On Our Side," "When the Ship Comes In," "My Back Pages," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Maggie's Farm," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." All of those were done before his 24th birthday, on May 24, 1965. Now, he had written and recorded "Like a Rolling Stone."

Like some of Bob's other songs from around the same time -- especially "Maggie's Farm" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and the subsequent "Ballad of a Thin Man" -- it was a message to the people who were upset with him for "going electric," seemingly "betraying folk music" and its "movement." They never understood that he was a rocker at heart, loving Elvis Presley and Little Richard as much as he did Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

In spite of being a full 6 minutes long, the song reached Number 2 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart. Keeping it out of the Number 1 slot: "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher. Cher made it up to Bob by making his song "All I Really Want to Do" her 1st solo hit single.

In 1967, the magazine Rolling Stone was founded, named for this song. The band The Rolling Stones was named after the Muddy Waters song "Rollin' Stone," which Dylan may have named his song after. Previously, of course, there was the proverb: "A rolling stone gathers no moss."

In 2004, surprising no one, Rolling Stone put "Like a Rolling Stone" at Number 1 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. They occasionally revive the list. In 2010, they kept it at Number 1. In 2021, they put it at Number 4, behind Aretha Franklin's version of Otis Redding's "Respect," Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come."

Bass guitarist Joe Macho (who also recorded under the name Joe Mack) died in 1977, producer Tom Wilson in 1978, guitarist Mike Bloomfield in 1981, pianist Paul Griffin in 2000, drummer Bobby Gregg in 2014, and guitarist and tambourine player Bruce Langhorne in 2017.

The other musicians on this recording are still alive: Organist Al Kooper, guitarist Al Gorgoni, and pianist Frank Owens. And, of course, guitarist, harmonica player and singer Bob Dylan. There were no backup singers.

UPDATE: Frank Owens died in 2023. 

*

June 16, 1965 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Baltimore Orioles, 5-1 at Yankee Stadium. Dave McNally outpitched Al Downing. The only Yankee run came on a home run by Clete Boyer. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris each went 1-for-4. For the Orioles, so did Brooks Robinson.

* The New York Mets lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 8-4 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Jim O'Toole outpitched Al Jackson. Leo Cárdenas hit 2 home runs. Frank Robinson went 0-for-4. Pete Rose went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 5-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Luis Tiant allowed just 1 hit, a leadoff single in the 7th inning by Woodie Held. He also walked 3 batters and hit 1. That was the closest he ever got to a no-hitter.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-4 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Willie Horton went 3-for-4 with a home run and 5 RBIs. Al Kaline went 1-for-4 with a walk. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-5 with a home run and 3 RBIs.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Minnesota Twins, 3-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Harmon Killebrew went 0-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Milwaukee Braves, 6-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Hank Aaron went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Pat Corrales, later to manage the Phillies, and also the Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians, hit his 1st major league home run. He would finish his playing career with 4.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-9 at the 1st Busch Stadium, formerly the last Sportsman's Park, in St. Louis. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-2, before leaving the game due to an injury. Willie Stargell went 3-for-5 with a home run and 4 RBIs.

* The California Angels swept a doubleheader from the Kansas City Athletics, 7-1 and 5-4 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-2 at the Astrodome in Houston. Bob Aspromonte singled Joe Morgan home with the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning. Ernie Banks went 0-for-6.

* And the Los Angeles Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, 2-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Sandy Koufax outpitched Bob Shaw. Willie Mays went 2-for-4.

June 1, 1958: The Kingston Trio Launch the Folk Music Boom

Left to right: Bob Shane, Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds

June 1, 1958: The Kingston Trio release their self-titled debut album, sparking a revival in folk music. This was embraced by millions of adults who were looking for an alternative to rock and roll, but also by many teenagers, who found the music as authentic as the teen-oriented songs they were listening to.

Folk music had suffered from the blacklisting of left-leaning performers like The Weavers, including their lead singer, Pete Seeger. In late 1956, Harry Belafonte had a hit with "Jamaica Farewell," which led to the rise of the Caribbean form of folk music, known as "calypso," but he was the only singer who got much mileage out of it. "Grownup" singers like Frank Sinatra and Patti Page were not going to take it up.

Nicholas Wells Reynolds was born on July 27, 1933 in San Diego, and grew up in nearby Coronado, California. He went to Menlo College, outside San Francisco. Robert Castle Schoen was born on February 1, 1934 in Hilo, Hawaii, and grew up in Honolulu, where he anglicized his name to Bob Shane. Donald David "Davey" Guard was born on October 19, 1934 in San Francisco. He grew up in Honolulu, where he met Shane. Shane also went to Menlo, where he met Reynolds. Guard went to nearby Stanford University, and Shane introduced him to Reynolds.

They all loved calypso music, and in honor of Jamaica's capital, they named themselves The Kingston Trio. In June 1957, they were hired at San Francisco's Purple Onion club, and became local stars. Bob Hope saw them, and this led to them to being signed by Capitol Records.

They recorded their self-titled debut album at Capitol Studio in Los Angeles, and it was released on June 1, 1958. It included mostly established songs, including "(The Wreck of The) 'John B,'" which would be turned into a hit by The Beach Boys, as "Sloop John B." Guard wrote 2 songs for the album, "Scotch and Soda" and "Little Maggie." But most were traditional songs.

One was "Tom Dooley," which was based on the murder of Laura Foster on May 25, 1866 in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Tom Dula, her boyfriend, was hanged for his murder on February 1, 1868. Most likely, he didn't kill her: It is now believed to have been a rival for Tom's affections, Anne Melton. There was a Colonel James Grayson, who employed Dula across the State Line in Tennessee. But the song that developed totally got that part wrong, making it sound like Grayson was the rival for the woman's affections, and that he ratted Tom out, and that Tom never made it to Tennessee.

Nevertheless, the song got passed down through oral tradition, and was recorded by the Colonel's nephew, G.B. Grayson, in 1929. Frank Profitt recorded it in 1940. Frank Warner knew the Profitt version, and recorded the song in 1952. The Kingston Trio's version was, essentially, a copy of that version, and hit Number 1 in America on November 17, 1958.

It sparked a revival of folk music in 1958 that would last until the arrival of The Beatles in America in 1964. It enabled the rise of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel, and "folk-rock" acts like The Byrds and The Lovin' Spoonful.

The Trio packed auditoriums all over the country over the next few years. It's not clear if they had enough support to fill sports arenas like The Beatles did starting in 1964, but their style was more intimate, anyway, so those 3,000-seat theaters were more up their alley.

They recorded the 1948 Boston political song "M.T.A." in 1959, and between the 4th and 5th verses, Shane can be heard saying, "Pick it, Davey!" Davey Guard then played his banjo so fast that he could be heard saying, "Kinda hurts my fingers!" In 1961, Guard left the group, and John Stewart was hired as his replacement. Stewart is better known as the writer of "Daydream Believer," a Number 1 hit for The Monkees in 1967.

Guard died of cancer in 1991, only 56 years old. Stewart and Reynolds continued to perform with Shane as The Kingston Trio. Stewart and Reynolds lived until 2008, ages 68 and 75, respectively. Shane was the last survivor, dying on January 26, 2020, just short of his 86th birthday.

*

June 1, 1958 was a Sunday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 10-4 at Fenway Park in Boston. Bob Turley went the distance for the win, striking out 10. He went on to become the 1st Yankee to win the Cy Young Award, preceding Whitey Ford by 3 years.

3rd baseman Andy Carey had a career day, going 5-for-5 with 2 home runs and 4 RBIs. Elston Howard went 3-for-5 with 2 RBIs. Bill "Moose" Skowron went 1-for-5 with 3 RBIs, including 1 on a groundout. Mickey Mantle went 2-for-4 with a walk. Yogi Berra went 1-for-5.

For the Red Sox, Ted Williams went 0-for-2 with 2 walks and an RBI on a groundout; while Jackie Jensen, a former Yankee, went 1-for-4 with 3 RBIs, on his way to being named the American League's Most Valuable Player, an award that should have gone to Mantle for the 3rd straight season, or perhaps to Turley.

* The Cincinnati Redlegs, in their last of 6 seasons under that stupid McCarthyism-inspired name before going back to "Reds," beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1 at Connie Mack Stadium. Frank Robinson went 0-for-5. It was the opener of a doubleheader.

The nightcap got underway, but, because a vestige of Pennsylvania's old Sunday "blue law" was still in effect, the game was suspended in the top of the 9th, with the score tied, 11-11. It was completed on August 11, and the Reds won it, 12-11, when an error by Phils pitcher Turk Farrell, mishandling a Johnny Temple bunt, allowed Robinson to score.

Robinson had entered the game as a pinch-runner, played left field and center field, and went 1-for-2. Temple went 5-for-11 with a home run and 6 RBIs on the day, while Steve Bilko went 3-for-5 in the nightcap.

* The Washington Senators beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5-2 at Memorial Stadium in Washington. Brooks Robinson went 0-for-4. Harmon Killebrew, with the Senators at the time, did not play.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Milwaukee Braves, 5-1 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4 with an RBI. Hank Aaron went 1-for-3. Eddie Mathews went 0-for-1 with 2 walks.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 1-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Stan Williams pitched a 2-hit shutout, outpitching Dick Drott. The only run came in the 4th, when Don Zimmer singled Carl Furillo home. Ernie Banks went 0-for-3.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Cleveland Indians, 6-2 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Roger Maris had an RBI on a sacrifice fly as a pinch-hitter for the Indians, and reached base when the KC right fielder, Bill Tuttle, dropped the ball. Two weeks later, the A's acquired Maris in a trade, settling their right field problem -- for a year and a half, until the Yankees made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-2 at the 1st Busch Stadium, formerly the last Sportsman's Park, in St. Louis. Willie Mays went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Stan Musial did not play.

* And the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers were rained out at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on August 10. The White Sox won the 1st game, 5-2. Jim Rivera went 2-for-3 with a home run and 4 RBIs. The Tigers won the 2nd game, 4-3, when Reno Bertoia bunt-singled Frank Bolling home in the bottom of the 12th inning. Rivera got the game off. Over the 2 games, Al Kaline went a miserable 0-for-9.

May 27, 1963: "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" Is Released

May 27, 1963: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is released. It is the 2nd album by Bob Dylan. It did not remain his best, but it was his most important.

Dylan had been born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, but found life there dissatisfying on multiple levels. Early early rock and roll stars of the mid-1950s appealed to him, and so anyone who had studied his entire life from 1941 to 1965 should have seen this coming. But most people didn't know about that when they became fans of his in the early 1960s. 

In 1961, having dropped out of the University of Minnesota, he came to New York, renamed himself for Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, and started singing folk music in the clubs of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, where Thomas had lived and performed for the last few years of his life, dying there in 1953. (I have an entry for his death.)

Bob had adopted a persona like that of earlier folk singer Woody Guthrie, with scraggly clothes and a nasal twang. He combined traditional folk songs with his own new compositions, and it didn't seem to matter that he couldn't sing in the traditional sense, or that he wasn't an especially good-looking guy. People were mesmerized by his performances. Soon, men wanted to be him, and women just wanted him.

On April 16, 1962, at Gerde's Folk City at 11 West 4th Street, he first performed "Blowin' in the Wind," and it was a sensation, with its 3 short verses citing the civil rights and antiwar movements. This was less than a year after the Freedom Rides, but a year before American TV viewers saw the firehoses and police dogs of Birmingham, and most hadn't yet heard of Vietnam, let alone realized that we already had troops fighting, killing and dying there. To them, "war" still meant World War II, a "just war," or maybe the Korean War, which didn't seem worth it.

Bob's self-titled debut album had been released on Columbia Records the preceding March 19. Shortly after the Gerde's premiere, he began recording The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Released on May 27, 1963, it included "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" -- the latter the first in a long line of great breakup songs he would write. 

Any 1 of those 4 songs would have been a great triumph for any writer. Dylan had all 4 on 1 album. He was 3 days past his 22nd birthday, and he was already a musical legend.

The cover was shot in front of 5 Jones Street, site of the Record Runner record store, with Dylan and Suze Rotolo then 19, an artist, and his girlfriend. She once told an interviewer:

Bob was charismatic. He was a beacon, a lighthouse. He was also a black hole. He required committed backup and protection I was unable to provide consistently, probably because I needed them myself...

I could no longer cope with all the pressure, gossip, truth and lies that living with Bob entailed. I was unable to find solid ground. I was on quicksand, and very vulnerable.

In other words, the young Bob Dylan was what we would now call "high-maintenance."

That July, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival for the first time, along with the biggest active legend of folksinging, Pete Seeger. Guthrie, to whom Seeger had introduced Dylan, was still alive, but sidelined by Huntington's disease, the nervous-system condition that would kill him 4 years later.

Also there were Peter, Paul and Mary (Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers), the folksinging trio who recorded what remain the biggest hit versions of "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Don't Think Twice." So was Joan Baez, the leading female soloist of "the folk revolution," who helped make Bob famous, then became his girlfriend. Together, these and others closed the show by joining hands and singing a song Seeger, though he didn't write it, made the anthem of civil rights: "We Shall Overcome."

Dylan then began recording his next album, finishing it before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but not released until afterward, on January 13, 1964: The Times They Are A-Changin'. It included the title track, "Ballad of Hollis Brown," "With God On Our Side," "Only a Pawn In Their Game," "When the Ship Comes In," and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." His previous burst of creativity was thus proven to be no fluke.

Just 25 days after that album's release, The Beatles arrived in America. They and Dylan each influenced the other tremendously, and it may have been The Beatles who influenced Dylan to switch to electric instruments.

Suze Rotolo later married and had a son, and kept up her art until her death in 2011.

*

May 27, 1963 was a Monday. According to Baseball-Reference.com, no games were played that day. Memorial Day was traditionally a day for baseball doubleheaders, but, until 1970, it was always May 30. It was only the next year that it became the last Monday in May.

April 30, 1900: The Legend of Casey Jones

April 30, 1900: Casey Jones saves the people on his train, at the cost of his own life, and becomes an American legend. That's the legend, and that's also the truth. There is more to the truth, however. He was... complicated.

John Luther Jones was born on March 14, 1863 in Cayce, Kentucky. The town's pronunciation, KAY-see, led to his nickname, "Casey." (Just as Charles Dillon Stengel was from Kansas City, and that got shortened to "K.C.," ultimately becoming "Casey.") He had a wife and 3 children, and was believed to have never touched a drop of alcohol.

He worked for the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, and became a brakeman on their route from Columbus, Kentucky to Jackson, Tennessee, outside Memphis. Jackson became his home for the rest of his life. He was promoted to fireman (shoveling coal to put in the fire to power the locomotive) on their route from Jackson to Mobile, Alabama. In 1887, a yellow fever epidemic hit the Illinois Central Railroad hard, opening opportunities, and in 1888, Casey was hired as a fireman on their freight line from Jackson to Water Valley, Mississippi, finally being promoted to engineer in 1891. He was 28, and becoming an engineer so young was unusual.

He was noted for his exceptionally punctual schedules, often saying he would "get her there on the advertised," meaning on schedule. People were known to set their watches by his arrival. But this sometimes had a degree of risk, including those of derailing, crashing into another train, or hitting a person on the track before they could get out of the way of the oncoming train. But from 1891 to 1899, there were no incidents on Casey's trains.

Well, one, a heroic incident. In 1895, he was approaching Michigan City, Mississippi. He had left the cab in charge of fellow engineer Bob Stevenson, who had reduced speed sufficiently for Casey to walk safely out on the running board to oil the relief valves. He advanced from the running board to the steam chest and then to the pilot beam to adjust the spark screen.

He had finished well before they arrived at the station, as planned, and was returning to the cab when he noticed a group of small children dart in front of the train some 60 yards ahead. All cleared the rails easily except for a little girl who suddenly froze in fear at the sight of the oncoming locomotive. Jones shouted to Stevenson to reverse the train and yelled to the girl to get off the tracks in almost the same breath. Realizing that she was still immobile, he raced to the tip of the pilot or cowcatcher and braced himself on it, reaching out as far as he could to pull the frightened but unharmed girl from the rails.

In February 1900, Casey was transferred from Jackson to Memphis, for the passenger run between there and Canton, Mississippi, the 3rd link in the 4-train Illinois Central run from Chicago to New Orleans, in the days before the City of New Orleans (leaving Chicago by morning and arriving in New Orleans at morning, and vice versa, running from 1947 to 1971) and the Panama Limited (a night train at each end, 1911 to 1971) could run the whole way (and before each could be celebrated in song: "The City of New Orleans" in 1971 and "Night Train" in 1951).

On April 29, 1900, already scheduled to make the Memphis to Canton run, he was asked to take over another service through the day, which may have deprived him of sleep. He left Memphis aboard Engine No. 382, known (like many other fast trains of the era) as "The Cannonball," at 12:50 AM on April 30, an hour and 15 minutes late.

But he drove that train hard. By the time he got to Durant, Mississippi, he was only 5 minutes behind, telling his fireman, a black man named Simeon Webb, "Sim, the old girl's got her dancing slippers on tonight!" He thought he could get to Canton "on the advertised" at 4:05 AM.

But at Vaughan -- 172 miles south of Memphis, 225 miles north of New Orleans, and just 16 miles north of his destination of Canton -- there were 3 trains in the station, and 2 were, due to their length, crossing between the passing track and the main line. An air hose broke on one, leaving 4 cars of 1 of the trains on the main line. And Jones and Webb were coming in, only 2 minutes behind schedule, on a left-hand curve that blocked Jones' view from the right side.

Webb saw the red lights ahead, meaning "Stop." He told Casey. Casey told him to jump off, which was pretty dangerous, but better than staying on. He jumped, and was knocked unconscious, but not before he heard Jones blow a long, piercing train whistle to warn anyone still on the freight train ahead.

Casey reversed the throttle and slammed the airbrakes. This could only cut his speed from 70 to 40 miles per hour, before he crashed into the freight cars ahead of him, wrecking some. There were 6 people injured, including Webb. But, between his train, the others, and the people in the station, only 1 person died, and that was Casey Jones. The impact stopped his watch at 3:52 AM -- 13 minutes before he was scheduled to arrive in Canton. Had the tracks been clear, he would have made it. He was 37 years old.

Adam Hauser, a passenger on Casey's train, told The Times-Democrat, a New Orleans newspaper, "The passengers did not suffer, and there was no panic. I was jarred a little in my bunk, but when fairly aware the train was stopped and everything was still. Engineer Jones did a wonderful as well as a heroic piece of work, at the cost of his life."

Sim Webb -- who, probably due to his race, never got the credit he deserved for seeing the stuck train and giving Casey the chance to save everyone's lives -- lived on until 1957, age 83. Casey's widow, Janie Brady Jones, died the next year, at 92, having never remarried, and having worn black nearly every day since Casey's death. She was buried next to him in Jackson (the one in Tennessee, not the State capital of Mississippi).

By 1909, there was already a song titled "The Ballad of Casey Jones." It made its way up the Illinois Central to Chicago, where it became popular in vaudeville. Poet Carl Sandburg, based in Chicago, called it "the greatest ballad ever written." Labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill challenged the traditional version and, without evidence of Casey actually having been one, wrote "Casey Jones, Union Scab." (In fact, Casey belonged to 2 unions, 1 for locomotive firemen and 1 for engineers.)

In 1969, The Grateful Dead began performing a song titled "Casey Jones," recording it for their 1970 album Workingman's Dead. It bears little resemblance to the true story, with lyricist Robert Hunter writing:

Driving that train

high on cocaine.

Casey Jones you'd better

watch your speed.

Trouble ahead

trouble behind

and you know that notion

just crossed my mind.

Hunter later said he tried rhyming "Driving that train" with something else: "I write, 'Driving that train, whipping that chain.' No. 'Lugging propane.' No. I tried any way to get away from it, and there just wasn't one. It had to go. There was no other line for that song."

*

April 30, 1900 was a Monday. The National League was down to 8 teams, after eliminating the teams then using the names of the Baltimore Orioles, the Cleveland Spiders, the Louisville Colonels and the Washington Senators. And the American League was working its way up to major league status. These NL games were played that day:

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the New York Giants, 14-13 at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Philadelphia, later renamed Baker Bowl.

* The Brooklyn Superbas beat the Boston Beaneaters, 5-2 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn team was managed by Ned Hanlon, and that reminded someone of a popular circus troupe of the time, Hanlon's Superbas. By 1911, they were the Dodgers. By 1912, after going through several nicknames, the Boston team of the NL became the Braves, which they have remained through their Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta tenures.

* The Chicago Orphans beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-6 at the West Side Grounds in Chicago. "Orphans" because, as he got older, Adrian "Cap" Anson was re-nicknamed "Pop," and, since he retired in 1897, the team "missed their Pop." They became the Cubs in 1903.

* And, seeing a weather forecast showing rain for April 30, the Pittsburgh Pirates moved their home game with the Cincinnati Reds at Exposition Park up to April 26. It did the Pirates no good, as the Reds won, 12-11.