The lyrics and the music: Workingmen’s Blues No 2

By Tony Attwood

The essence of the Workingmen’s blues comes with the chorus

Meet me at the bottom, don't lag behind
Bring me my boots and shoes
You can hang back or fight your best on the front line
Sing a little bit of these workingman's blues

It is a song of a man at the end who is saying that no matter what you do, there is nothing you can achieve. You are what you are; the world is simply what it is.

Sometimes nobody wants what you got
Sometimes you can’t give it away

(It is also, incidentally, a song for which the lyrics published on the official site are probably further away from the original recording than with any other song).

But more to the point here there is not much of a melody – try singing this unaccompanied and there is not too much there – so many notes of the melody are repeated.

One might also note that it is also nothing like a blues, musically. Certainly, the man’s life described in the lyrics is a life full of blues, going on going nowhere – as exemplified by the fade out of the song at the end. It just goes on and on.

And yet it is a very successful song despite this. So what has Bob done musically to create a song that portrays the repetitive and indeed hopeless nature of the lyrics, without on the one hand becoming tedious and boring and without on the other hand making us feel so desperate about the life described in the lyrics, that it becomes hard to listen to.

Certainly what he doesn’t do is give us an inventive and varied melody – as obviously that would destroy the essence of the down-trodden nature of the life described. True the music plods along through the repeated chord sequence and there is not much variation in the melody, but still we want to listen.

And perhaps we should also note in passing that it is also nothing like the original “Workings Man’s Blues” by Merle Haggard which is a bouncy 12 bar blues

For Dylan, I think the clue to the way the music has been composed is that there needs to be a sense of reflection, of looking back, of considering – at the same time as reflecting and thinking that this life is going nowhere unless the “you” to whom the song is sung will turn up and “lead me off in a cheerful dance”.

But if one considers the first four lines there is no way that one could put in anything other than a slow plodding set of chord changes while delivering the message (which the song does) which says this is how it is – that’s it, that’s all you get. (Lyrics are taken from Genius which to me appears to reflect how Bob sang the song on the album)

There's an evening' haze settlin' over the town
Starlight by the edge of the creek
The buyin' power of the proletariat's gone down
Money's gettin' shallow and weak

The fact is that even before the one element of hope with the brand new suit and brand new wife, everything still is pretty awful and there is seemingly no guarantee that the “you” who is expected will indeed lead the singer off in a cheerful dance.

Now I'm down on my luck and I'm black and blue
Gonna give you another chance
I'm all alone and I'm expecting you
To lead me off in a cheerful dance
Got a brand new suit and a brand new wife
I can live on rice and beans
Some people never worked a day in their life
Don't know what work even means

Thus we have it; a sad reflection on how life is, without a thought that we can make it better if this is the life we are trapped in, and the slow descending lines of the chord sequences, with only a minimal level of melody is exactly what we get.

In this regard, the music absolutely reflects this; the music is the message, slow, steady, and indeed graceful in its acceptance of what life is all about. It is in fact that the exact opposite of the original Working Man’s Blues both in terms of the lyrics and in terms of the music.

In short, the plodding, step by step nature of the bass line, and the minimal variations in the melody reflect the sad decline of the working man trapped in the conditions that the lyrics describe. The hopes described in the final verse are thus desperately sad; the music tells us they are likely to be achieved, but one can always go on hoping.

The music indeed is an absolute perfect fit for the lyrics.

Here’s a list of the other songs included in this series….

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