Bob Dylan and US History IV

 

 

by Larry Fyffe

  • Bob Dylan and US History Part 1
  • Bob Dylan and American History Part II
  • Bob Dylan and American HistoryPart III

Below, a humorous spoof on Roy Rogers (birth name Leonard Slye), a.k.a “King Of The Cowboys”; he marries Dale Evans (birth name Frances Smith), a.k.a “Queen Of The West”. Roy – Dale’s third husband; Dale – Roy’s third wife.

In real life, the married couple act in films together and sing songs together.  Together, they have their own TV show. Roy and Dale are very religious.

According to singer, songwriter, musician, and fibber Bob Dylan, a newspaper of the day tells a different story.

Actress and singer Debbie Reynolds appears in the movie “How the West Was Won,” which features James Stewart as Linus Rawlings. Debbie plays Lilith Prescott, who eventually marries gambler Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck).

Debbie sings a Romantic Transcendentalist song to lift the spirits of those travelling west by wagon train:

Away, away, come away with me
Where the grass grows wild
Where the winds blow free
Away, away, come away with me
And I'll build you a home in the meadow

(Debbie Reynolds: Home In The Meadow ~ traditional; Cahn et al)

Manifest Destiny is blowing in the wind!

As the story goes, Leonard Slye keeps his mouth shut most of the time.   (A gossip columnist accuses Debbie and Dale of having a hot sexual affair with one another.)

Note, the actual name of Dale’s horse is “Buttermilk”. And Roy’s is named “Trigger”:

Lem the Clam tho, he really gives a damn if Dale really does get nailed slamming down the scotch …. and good old Dale, she comes along and both her and Debbie, they start shacking up in the newspaper

& jesus who can blame'em

(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

Gossipers and tellers of lies get their comeuppance in the song below:

Someone's got it in for me
They're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out quick
But when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray
And took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky
(Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind)

 

The narrator of the above song is angry, but his rage is muted somewhat by the self-knowledge that he has often been the “howling beast” himself; the wind in the  song certainly isn’t presented as a fundamental element of a caring Universe as portrayed by Romantic Transcendentalist writers.

To them, the sun’s up there in the sky to serve the inhabitants of the Earth – keeps them alive.   As expressed  in the following song:

Can’t you hear that rooster crowin’?
Rabbit runnin’ down across the road
Underneath the bridge where the water flowed through
So happy just to see you smile
Underneath the sky of blue
On this new morning, new morning
On this new morning with you

Williamn Boyd stars as Hopalong Cassidy in movies as a milk-drinking, hard-riding, lawman.

Spoofed he is below:

(O)ut of his past appears Insanely Hoppy
screaming and dancing

(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)

in another spoof, it might be asserted that Bob Dylan presents Miles Standish as the captain of the “Mayflower”, rather than Christopher Jones, when it lands at Plymouth Rock. Bob names the captain “Arab” – as in “Arabic”.

“Arabic”, a word from the epic poem quoted below.

Miles is on the ship, but he’s actually the Pilgrims’ military commander. So says the romanticized poem “The Courtship Of Miles Standish” – there’s litte doubt that it’s been read at some time by Bob Dylan:

Ever and anon to behold his glittering weapons of war
Hanging in shining array along the walls of the chamber
Cutlass and corselet of steel, and his trusty sword of Damascus
Curved at the point, and inscribed with its mystical Arabic sentence

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The Courtship Of Miles Standish).

That is, the sentence on the blade is a mysterious one, according to Longfellow’s unsubstantiated rendering thereof.

In the following  song, Dylan’s persona is a sailor on board the “Mayflower”:

I was riding on the Mayflower
When I thought I spied some land ....
"I think I'll call it America", I said as we hit land ....
Captain Arab started writing out some deeds
(Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan's 115th Dream)

Not “Ahab” as reported by some sources.

Then there’s:

(T)hese people consider themselves gourmets for not
attending charlie starkweather's funeral
(Bob  Dylan: Tarantula)

The film “Natural Born Killers” is somewhat based on Starkweather’s killing spree across Nebraska and Wyoming; he’s accompanied by his girlfriend.

The movie mocks the sensationalism that’s often published in newspapers.

From one of the many songs in the movie:

See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch the sun rise from a tropic isle

 

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *