Dylan the lyrics, the music and some false comparisons: Blowing in the Wind

By Tony Attwood

Wherever you look when there is an article about Bob Dylan, it is for the most part about Dylan himself, his private life, his performances, and his lyrics.   Rarely is there much said about the music.   And so today I wondered what would happen if I took a fairly simple (in terms of musical construction and lyrical content) Dylan song, and really focussed on the music.  As the source for my experiment, I took “Blowin’ in the Wind”.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” is, according to Bob Dylan, and as is repeated endlessly by commentators, based on “No More Auction Block”.  Indeed, if you concentrate, you can hear the melody of “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind” in the instrumental introduction to No More, and again within the song most particularly in the last line of each verse.

Thus once you have that connection in mind to the effect that, “Blowing in the Wind” relates to “No more Auction Block,” it is possible to hear the musical influence of the latter on the former, and this comes across in Odetta’s version.

But I think this whole thing about “Blowin in the Wind” actually being based on “No more auction block” is rather a simplification.  Of course we accept it because Dylan is quoted as saying “‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called ‘No More Auction Block’—that’s a spiritual and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ follows the same feeling.”   But that is a key point – I am not at all sure how many people would trace Blowing in the Wind back to No Moire Auction Block without being told.

In short, Bob may have started with “No More Auction Block” but that is not the same as the two songs being inexorably linked.

The lyrics are of course completely different…

No more auction block for me
No more, no more
No more auction block for me
Many thousands gone

No more driver's lash for me
No more, no more
No more driver's lash for me
Many thousands gone

No more whip lash for me
No more, no more
No more pint of salt for me
Many thousands gone

No more auction block for me
No more, no more
No more auction block for me
Many thousands gone

… but then so is the music, and I wonder just how true that link that we are regularly told about actually is.  For really just as there is little more than one musical line in Dylan’s version of the song that relates “No more auction block” to “Blowin in the wind” and there is not much in the lyrics at all to suggest that “Blowin’ in the wind” is related to “No more auction block.”

Now I have to admit that over the years of writing articles for Untold Dylan, I have come to be a little suspicious about things Bob says.  Indeed, Jochen wrote on this site in January 2021 about Dylan’s speech in 2015 in which Dylan said,

“When you go down to Deep Ellum keep your money in your socks / Women on Deep Ellum put you on the rocks.” Sing that song for a while and you just might come up with, “When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Easter time too / And your gravity’s down and negativity don’t pull you through.”

Now that I am sure is right – but equally I don’t think that is a prime influence.   That is the way the brain works, churning and turning words and indeed if you are musically inclined, musical phrases, over and over, and coming up with something new.  Besides if Bob really knew where his ideas come from, he wouldn’t have had the long spells when he composed nothing.  He would surely just have turned the creative spark on again, knowing as he did, how it worked.

Indeed as Jochen goes on to point out, Dylan went on to say, “These songs didn’t come out of thin air,” before listing seven examples of classics that have given him the format. “If you’d sung “John Henry” as many times as I have, you’d get to “Blowin’ In The Wind” too, Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key To The Highway” automatically leads to “Highway 61 Revisited”, “Sail Away Ladies” to “Boots Of Spanish Leather”.”

And then Jochen adds the explosive comment, “Charming and modest. And, as is often the case with Dylan, not entirely enlightening.”   Well, yes, up to a point, but maybe for once I will slightly disagree.  Not entirely enlightening, true, but a bit enlightening nonetheless.

Indeed as Jochen did point out when Dylan talks about the writing of his songs, he doesn’t cite events, movements, beliefs etc (with the exception of his short period of writing only overtly Christian songs) he cites the musical antecedents.

So now we need to ask, just how accurate a measure is this?  Is there really any link between the MUSIC of “No More Auction Block”, and the MUSIC of “Blowing in the Wind”?

Now I know (because I have just checked) that if you go onto Google’s AI Overview it will tell you that “The melody of Bob Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” comes from the 19-th century African-American spiritual “No More Auction Block For Me” and so I am disagreeing with AI, because quite simply I am saying “No it doesn’t”.

Of course you can hear half a phrase of music in the title line to “Auction Block” as equivalent to “How many roads must a man walk down,”, but then that latter line only contains four notes, and yes it if you play it in the right key they are the same four notes as “How many roads,” although at a different speed, and with a different rhythmic lilt.  But this is true for hundreds of thousands of songs.

This is not to say that Bob or anyone else is lying when making the comment the first line of “Blowing” is taken from the first line of “No More”.   It is not even like saying that this sentence I am writing here, which begins “It is rather like saying” is based on a certain other sentence.  And yes in fact on Google (I have just checked) there are 145 web pages which have the phrase “It is rather like saying” on them.

But the key point is that we only have 12 notes available to us in music, while in the alphabet we have 26 letters.  It might not sound too big a difference, but I can’t find a website that tells me how many combinations of letters there can be if we allow repetition – which of course musically we are allowed to do.

In short in every song there are almost certainly elements of other songs.   The musical opening to “No More Auction Block” is made up of just four notes.  The musical opening of “Blowing in the Wind” is made up of the same four notes in the same order BUT the rhythm, speed and indeed feel of those notes is completely different.  To say one comes from the other is rather like saying that everyone who ever said “I don’t love you” said it with the same meaning.  Those words can be said in anger or in sorrow or in deesperation or with a throwaway carelessness or even to emphasise something even more powerful than love.

In short, there is some link between “Auction Block” and “Blowing in the Wind,” but it is the same sort of link that can be found between characters in two different novels saying “I love you.”  The words are the same but most likely the situation, the feeling, the emotions, the reaction, the volume, the speed – in short everything – is different.

We might also in passing note that “Blowin’ in the Wind” didn’t actually become famous because of Dylan’s version but because of the version of Peter Paul and Mary and I would argue that their version which emphasises tenderness and love, makes this a different song from Dylan’s own album version which to me at least, emphasises despair.

So where does “Blowing in the Wind” come from?  No, for me, not from “No More Auction Block” but somewhere completely different entirely.  I think Bob laid us a false trail.  He might have been listening to “Auction Block” but I think the amount of impact that song had on “Blowin'” is minute.