Dylan, Guthrie, and Roosevelt – the story of a song
Adrian Smith, Rob Joy AND Mike Hammond (The Dodge Brothers)
12 x 20 minutes episodes tell the story of Bob Dylan and The Band’s performances at the two Woody Guthrie tribute concerts staged in Carnegie Hall on 20 January 1968, AND of a controversial song as unknown today as then: Guthrie’s last complete composition, ‘Dear Mrs Roosevelt’. Dylan has never reprised the song, and for the first time since 1948 Mike Hammond performs the full, uncensored version. Why Woody Guthrie wrote ‘Dear Mrs Roosevelt’, and how Bob Dylan rescued it from obscurity twenty years later, reflects the close relationship between ‘people’s music’ and progressive politics in America from the 1930s to the 1960s. No president has been celebrated in song as much as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and no First Lady has loved folk music like Eleanor Roosevelt – this is as much their story as that of Guthrie, Dylan, and his sidemen.
To listen, click on one of the following links:
PodBean: https://dylanguthrieandroosevelt.podbean.com
Apple/iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dylan-guthrie-and-roosevelt-the-story-of-a-song/id1473733233
Android/Google Play Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/Iangwibvf7jtkqj4hsbs4l5d654
Adrian Smith, Slouching Towards Big Pink Essays on Bob Dylan and The Band, Woody Guthrie, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Takahe, 2020)
The story of ‘Dear Mrs Roosevelt can also be found in Slouching Towards Big Pink, a stylish blend of memoir, travelogue, and scholarship. From the West Midlands to West Saugerties, the Isle of Wight to the New York island, these essays see Adrian Smith fly the flag for folk in ’sixties Coventry, criss-cross America in the footsteps of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, ride a fifty-year rollercoaster of Dylan performances, trace the sad story of Bob Dylan and Rick Nelson, and look to The Band for a soundscape of his son’s final illness.
Slouching Towards Big Pink can be ordered via Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1908837144?pf_rd_r=9GZVWAH0NJE8FVQ8A7AG&pf_rd_p=e632fea2-678f-4848-9a97-bcecda59cb4e