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Dylan vowed to sing only Guthrie
Hearing Guthrie alone
In Minneapolis, Dylan had only heard Guthrie on records alongside two other musicians. An actress named Flo, odd looking but beautiful in a wacky way, with long red hair and all-black clothes, asked whether he had ever heard Guthrie by himself. He hadn't, so she took him to her brother's place, where the records played a whole lot of Guthrie's own compositions, sung solo.
The songs made his head spin until he could not tell if he was stoned or straight. A voice in his head told him this was the game. A friend named Dave lent him Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory, and Dylan tore through it cover to cover like a hurricane. It follows a hustling ex-sign painter from Oklahoma who grew up in the Depression and Dust Bowl days, migrated west, and had a tragic childhood and a lot of fire in his life, both figuratively and literally.
The decision
Dylan decided then and there to sing nothing but Guthrie's songs and to be his greatest disciple. He learned that Guthrie was in ill health somewhere in the east, and it felt as though Guthrie were telling him he was going away and leaving the job in Dylan's hands. With a few tattered rags, a suitcase, and a guitar, Dylan stood on the edge of town and hitchhiked east to find him.
How did the Dust Bowl shape Guthrie's songs?
Guthrie grew up in Oklahoma, and in the 1930s drought and dust storms drove many Plains families west toward California. He traveled the same road and wrote ballads about the displaced farmers he met. In 1940 he recorded a set of them for RCA Victor, released as Dust Bowl Ballads. The same year he wrote This Land Is Your Land, which later became one of the most widely sung songs in the United States.
Why was Guthrie in a hospital?
Guthrie had Huntington's disease, an inherited condition that gradually destroys nerve cells in the brain. It causes involuntary movements, loss of coordination, and changes in thinking. Doctors diagnosed it in 1952 after years in which his symptoms were mistaken for other problems. He spent his last years in hospitals in New Jersey and New York and died in 1967.
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