| "Ballad of Hollis Brown" | |
|---|---|
| Song byBob Dylan | |
| from the albumThe Times They Are A-Changin' | |
| Released | January 13, 1964 (1964-01-13) |
| Recorded | August 7, 1963 |
| Genre | Folk |
| Length | 5:06 |
| Label | Columbia |
| Songwriter | Bob Dylan |
| Producer | Tom Wilson |
"Ballad of Hollis Brown" is afolk song written byBob Dylan, released in 1964 on his third albumThe Times They Are A-Changin'. The song tells the story of aSouth Dakota farmer who, overwhelmed by the desperation of poverty, kills his wife, children, and then himself.
The Times They Are A-Changin' version was recorded on August 7, 1963. The song had been recorded during sessions for Dylan's previous album,The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in November 1962, but remained an outtake. In this earlier version, Dylan played theharmonica and just strummed the chords rather than picking the strings. (The live versions between 1962 and 1964 were also played that way, but without the harmonica.) According toMichael Gray, the guitar work and melodic structuring in "Hollis Brown" are taken from theAppalachians, "wheresuch forms and modes had evolved, in comparative isolation, over a period of almost two hundred years".[1] More specifically, the chords, tune and verse-structure of "Ballad of Hollis Brown" are based on the ballad "Pretty Polly", a song Dylan performed at theGaslight Club in New York City prior to recording "Ballad of Hollis Brown".[2][3][4]
The album version of the song is performed as a solo piece by Dylan, with his vocals accompanied by anacoustic guitar in theflatpicking style. The guitar is in 'double-dropped Dtuning': Both the first and sixth strings, which normally play twoEs separated by twooctaves, are tuned down awhole step, down toD. Also, Dylan uses acapo on the first fret. Therefore, while his fingers are positioned as if he were playing in the key ofD minor, the song is actually in the key ofE♭ minor.[5]
Lyrically, this song consists of 11 verses that bring the listener to a bleak and destituteSouth Dakota farm, where a poor farmer, his wife, and five children living in abject poverty are subjected to even more hardships. In despair, the man kills his wife, children, and himself with a shotgun. CriticDavid Horowitz commented:[6]
Technically speaking, "Hollis Brown" is atour de force. For a ballad is normally a form which puts one at a distance from its tale. This ballad, however, is told in the second person, present tense, so that not only is a bond forged immediately between the listener and the figure of the tale, but there is the ironic fact that the only ones who know of Hollis Brown's plight, the only ones who care, are the hearers who are helpless to help, cut off from him, even as we in a mass society are cut off from each other.... Indeed, the blues perspective itself, uncompromising, isolated and sardonic, is superbly suited to express the squalid reality of contemporary America. And what a powerful expression it can be, once it has been liberated (as it has in Dylan's hands) from its egocentric bondage! A striking example of the tough, ironic insight one associates with the blues (and also of the power of understatement which Dylan has learnt fromGuthrie) is to be found in the final lines of Hollis Brown:
There's seven people dead on a South Dakota farm,
There's seven people dead on a South Dakota farm,
Somewhere in the distance there's seven new people born.
Dylan played "Hollis Brown" live from 1962 to 1964, including on aWestinghouse television special in 1963[7] and atBrandeis University in May 1963 (released in 2011 onBob Dylan in Concert – Brandeis University 1963). He also performed it in 1965, during the "comeback"Bob Dylan and the Band 1974 Tour, and atLive Aid in 1985. The song was regularly featured during theNever Ending Tour through 2012. Dylan has played it more than 200 times in total.[8]
Some of the prominent musicians and groups that have covered "Ballad of Hollis Brown" include:
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