Interview
June 2007
9/10) Larry Kegan, Howard Rutman, Robert Zimmerman: “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “Boppin’ the Blues,” Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ “I Want You to Be My Girl,” “Ready Teddy,” and “Confidential,” and Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1956-1966 (Weisman Museum of Art, University of Minnesota). On Christmas Eve, 1956, three boys, two fourteen and one fifteen, pooled their quarters for the record machine at Terline Music in St. Paul, Minnesota. You put in a coin, you got about thirty seconds, so with the fifteen-year-old pounding a piano they rushed to harmonize on whatever they could until the machine cut off and then started up again with another tune. It sounds like a slumber party, kids giddy from staying up past their bedtime, and what’s surprising is not that one of these kids turned into Bob Dylan, but that little more than a year later he was—as pictured in a recently discovered photo featured in the Weisman exhibit—singing the same songs in the Golden Chords, commanding a stage with fervor and confidence, looking pretty much as he looks now: flash coat, dark pants, dark shirt, white tie, hair in a pompadour, eyes like slits.
The Golden Chords (from left, Monte Edwardson, Leroy Hoikkala, Robert Zimmerman) at the Little Theater, Hibbing, Minnesota, Winter Frolic Talent Contest, 14 February 1958.
Interview
May 2007
10) Howard Fishman: “I’m Not There (1956),” from Howard Fishman Performs Bob Dylan & the Band’s “Basement Tapes” Live at Joe’s Pub (Monkey Farm). An interpretation but, for as a long as it plays, an irrefutable translation of a legendary song that seems beyond human ken, and not only because half of its words are missing and you can’t quite be sure if the other half are there or not. Soon to be a major motion picture.