Eight Hurricane-related Bob Dylan songs and albums that are better than "Hurricane"

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter died today.  A few years ago, I passed the time during Hurricane Irene by posting a list of hurricane-related songs and albums by Bob Dylan. "Hurricane," Dylan's celebrated cry against Carter's conviction and imprisonment for a triple killing in Paterson, N.J., was the worst of these.  

Since I first put up the post in 2011, I have discovered that "Hurricane" was even more scurrilous and careless with the facts than I first thought. According to Wikipedia, "Dylan was forced to re-record the song, with altered lyrics, after concerns were raised by Columbia's lawyers that references to Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley as having `robbed the bodies` could result in a lawsuit. Neither Bello nor Bradley were(sic) ever accused of such acts." Now, here's my list. It contains some damn fine Dylan and also "Hurricane."

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1) "All Along the Watchtower." One of Dylan's best and most chill-inducing songs.  "Two riders were approaching / And the wind began to howl."  If only all weathermen  could deliver their forecasts with such apocalyptic flair. But then ...

2) "Subterranean Homesick Blues." You don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.

3) "Shelter From the Storm." I divide Dylan's career in three, with the 1975 album Blood on the Tracks marking the climax of the more introspective middle period, just before he veered off into overblown story songs (See #9) or, as Lester Bangs said of one song from the period, "repellent romanticist bullshit."   "Shelter From the Storm" is the highlight of one of Dylan's best, most mature, most affecting records.

4) Before the Flood. Spectacular 1974 double live album with The Band backing Dylan. Its version of "Like a Rolling Stone" may be the most exuberant rock and roll song ever recorded, a worthy companion to the song's 1965 original version.

5) "Idiot Wind." More appropriate to the ritual pre- and post-storm television and newspaper overkill than to the storm itself.

6) "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." An obvious choice, but a fine song nonetheless.

7) "Blowin' in the Wind." See comment for #6. This ranks lower because the action in its title is not quite as violent as a hurricane ought to be. Of course, neither was Irene once it got to where I was.

8) "Buckets of Rain."

9) "Hurricane." Nicely arranged in its original appearance on the 1976 album Desire, but full of strained rhymes and ungainly allusions ("We want to put his ass in stir / We want to pin this triple MUR / der on him. He ain't no Gentleman Jim.") Gentleman Jim? Gentleman Jim Corbett fought his last bout in 1903. Would anyone have invoked him at the time of the killings that landed Carter in prison? Is he in the song for any reason other than the cheap, easy rhyme?

"Hurricane" also falsifies history. Carter was not the "number-one contender for the middleweight crown" at the time of the killings. He was on his way downhill as a boxer at the time. He lost three of four fights against contenders in 1965, the year before the murders.

Any further contenders for this list, even if they are not the number-one contender?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011, 2014

Who in crime fiction should have hurricanes named for them?

Hurricane Sandy is on the way, and I've been sealing my windows and stocking up on dried fruit and trite storm metaphors. Between that and those pesky side projects, I've neglected my crime reading, so here's another miscellaneous post to tide you over until after Sandy shall have cut its grim swath of destruction up the Eastern Seaboard and as far inland as Ohio.

1) Last year after Hurricane Irene, I put up a post about storm-related Bob Dylan songs and albums, pointing out the lyrical and historical weakness of "Hurricane." Since then, some blog or Web site has ranked the song near the top, maybe even number one, on its list of Dylan songs. I don't know about you, but I prefer that my rock and roll not falsify history or attempt rhymes like "We're going to put his ass in stir / We're going to pin this triple MUR / der on him." The record is beautifully produced, though, which may fool some people into thinking "Hurricane" is a great song.

2) An article in my newspaper today quoted a supermarket manager's surprise that many shoppers were buying perishable food, considering that the principal reason for stocking up ahead of a hurricane is as a hedge against power outages. It was a marvelously understated way of saying people are stupid*, which may explain why my newspaper did not blow up his comment in a large-type display box.

3) The week's non-crime reading is The Guide for the Perplexed. I may not believe what Maimonides seeks to prove is true, but his tools, at least in Part One — textual analysis, a knowledge of figures of speech, careful attention to the meanings of words — ought to endear him to all copy editors, since we are perpetual guides to those who are perplexed and worse.

4) Finally, who (or what) in crime fiction deserves to have a hurricane named for him, her, or it? I'll start you off with:

Hurricane Stieg, a massive blow that generates countless smaller storms but has no lasting effect.

Now it's your turn. Best suggestion wins my undying admiration.

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* An alternate interpretation would have it that he was expressing admiration for his customers' adherence to the cook now, eat later school of disaster preparation.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

A grace note: What song has the best crime-fiction line?

Here's one more ornament to last week's Crime songs post. Your task there was to suggest songs that would make good crime stories. Someone (well, two people, including me) cited Elvis Costello's "Watching the Detectives" for this chilling line: "She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake." That line is a story in itself or at least the germ of one. What other lines from songs pack that kind of condensed narrative punch?

UPDATE: Here's another crime song: Bob Dylan's "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," about simultaneous bank robbery and romantic exhaustion and betrayal:

"Two doors down the boys finally made it through the wall
And cleaned out the bank safe, it's said that they got off with quite a haul.
In the darkness by the riverbed they waited on the ground
For one more member who had business back in town.
But they couldn't go no further without the Jack of Hearts."

Wikipedia says the song has inspired two screenplays, so I'm not the only one who thinks the song makes a good story.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008