[Dixielandjazz] Bob Dylan-- Nobel Prize for Literature

[Charles Suhor]

I wasn't as turned off by Bob Dylan as Norm was. The quality of Dylan’s poetry-as-lyrics aside (though he was one of the better musical poets), he was of course a huge part of the folk/pop/rock aspect of the social revolution of the late 60s and early 70s. I do hope that his getting the literature Nobel Prize doesn’t open the floodgates. (Fill in the blank: “What’s next? ________________?)  Coincidentally, I’m dealing now with rock-lyrics-as-poetry in a manuscript about education in those  years of social unrest. I was in the thick it as English Supervisor for New Orleans Public Schools, working with department heads and other teachers in favor of sane progressive change. As the snippet below shows, I was angered by the less-than-sane, uncritical acceptance and the coarse commodification of the trend. Note that Nat Hentoff got into the action, unbecomingly, in my view.

Charlie
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Pop/Rock Lyrics in the Classroom 
                                          
      The use of rock and popular song lyrics in poetry units must be added to the discussion of literature in the progressive years. The potential for getting students to read, write and talk enthusiastically about poetry via the imaginative (and not so imaginative) pop/rock lyrics was obvious to grade 7-12 teachers, teacher educators, and even publishers, who quickly put small anthologies together. The pop/rock lyrics trend was the most direct import into schools from the hippie and antiwar movements that were shaking society at large.

       I was pleased to see creativity among teachers and students but disappointed by the quality of classroom materials that emerged. 1n 1975 I wrote an article for Ken Donelson’s popular Arizona English Bulletin critiquing four of the most widely known pop/rock lyrics anthologies and describing New Orleans English Department leaders’ views on to use of pop/rock lyrics. 

        The New Orleans teachers were aware that many pop/rock lyrics were as trite as greeting card verse and that selection of good materials was essential. However, the commercially published anthologies were riddled with hype and hyperbole. Many of  the better lyrics were included (“Eleanor Rigby,” “Theme from Mash,” “Vincent,” “Susanne”) but the appearance of others was indefensible (“Duke of Earl,” “Long Tall Sally,” “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” “Baby Love”). I encouraged teachers to select lyrics that they found usable and rely on the ditto machine and their own record collections as a spur to study.
 
        The four anthologies that I discussed in the Arizona English Bulletin were Richard Goldstein’s  "The Poetry of Rock," Jerry Walker’s "Pop/Rock Lyrics,”  Homer Hogan’s "The Poetry of Relevance”  and Stephanie Spinner’s "Rock is Beautiful.” The anthologists typically equivocated when writing about the literary quality of pop and rock lyrics in general and ludicrously overstated the merits of particular lyrics. 

        Goldstein’s 1969 anthology The Poetry of Rock, by far the best-known book, set the standard for doublespeak on the matter of rock lyrics as literature. He claimed upfront that the words can’t really be separated from the total context of the song, then proceeded to do exactly that, aggravating the duplicity with outrageously overwritten introductory comments for each lyric. For example, Gene Vincent’s inane “Be-Bop-A-Lula” was prefaced with vacuous fancy language: “The imagery is geared toward action rather than reflection. Read this lyric in rhythmic gasps, pausing only to enunciate key phrases like ‘red blue jeans.’ ”   Parody was irresistible. I wrote “The Poetry of Schlock”-- original terrible lyrics attributed to invented artists  “Heather Angelflower” and “Grass Roots Savage” for Media & Methods magazine.

        Jerry Walker, an esteemed teacher educator and personal friend from the University of Illinois, wrote patronizingly and waffled unashamedly in a 1969 Scholastic Pop/Rock Lyrics anthology. He never quite asserts that rock lyrics are poetry but gingerly states that poets and lyricists are in the same business of “saying things that need to be said…. Read and study these lyrics; compare them with poems you know. Very much alike, aren’t they?... Let us be glad that they convey their feelings and thoughts-- whether trivial or  important---in pleasing rhyme.”
 
        In a two-volume 1970 series titled The Poetry of Relevance, Homer Hogan paired rock  lyrics with well-known poems on the same topic. Unlike Goldstein, he declined to lavish praise on the lyrics but opted to pass the problem of doggerel on to the teacher. In the second volume he writes, “I also include song lyrics and poems that vary considerably in quality and effectiveness so that instructors can challenge students to discover why one song or poem works better than another, thereby unearthing secrets of the writer’s craft.”
 
        In the introduction to Stephanie Skinner’s Rock is Beautiful, it is the famed liberal social critic and jazz writer Nat Hentoff who does the familiar dance of the mugwumps. He begins with the inevitable disclaimer that rock lyrics “can be banal or piercingly evocative” then states, cryptically, that “there is no reason to limit rock lyrics to English courses.”  He concludes in inflated prose: “In its natural habitat-- at home, in jukeboxes, at dances, in the global village that is the transistor radio-- rock asks, and sometimes tries to answer, all manner of questions.” 

        In sum, the quality of the pop/rock lyrics of the protest years was certainly uneven. But if there were such a thing as an aesthetic average, they would be several percentiles higher than the musical fare that dominated hit parade music from the post-World War II years to the mid-sixties. The urbane, literate lyrics of the Broadway musicals of the 20s through the 40s and the instrumental excitement of the swing era had largely given way to sentimental crooners and croonettes and the shallow bubble gum rock and wailing falsetto of the early doo-wop groups.  The Woodstock generation brought a new sense of adventure, experimentation and social purpose to popular music, and their song lyrics turned many students towards an appreciation of poetry.

         I use “largely” advisedly here. Some popular music in the postwar years had sinew, vigor and musical interest. Rhythm and blues was in development in New Orleans and elsewhere in the late forties but soon its pale imitators and spinoffs were topping the charts. Modern jazz was an underground art, coming to limited popularity in the early fifties. Elvis Presley’s early rockabilly recordings in the late fifties were the major breakthrough for musically and sexually energetic pop before the Beatles and the international explosion of rock in the hippie years. For a confirmation of these developments, see “Top Hits of 1930-1998.” http://ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/html/top40/index.html 



> On Oct 14, 2016, at 12:51 PM, M J _Mike_ Logsdon <mjl at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> 
> Norm Vickers wonders why Bob Dylan.  The Nobel folk credit him as ‘having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’.
> 
> I don't know enough about his work to know if they're right.  So, I guess you and I are in the same boat.
> 
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