Bob Dylan on Cynthia Gooding’s Radio Show, 3.11.1962

A few years back, I was able to attend a screening of Larry Charles’ polarizing Bob Dylan paean Masked and Anonymous, and I was amused during the ensuing question and answer session at the director’s cavalier, almost to the point of laughing, attitude toward the majority of the audience that were completely baffled at the bizarre film. I can’t say I wasn’t baffled as well, but, I thought, it’s (very) loosely chronicling the career of the man who wrote “Desolation Row.” You’re supposed to revel in your confusion, or should I say, his brilliance. I left the screening with the knowledge that there was no way possible to document the bizarre, at times purposefully contradictory life and work of Bob Dylan without a violent brandishing of poetic license.

Then, well, Martin Scorsese did it. No Direction Home is a straightforward, delicate, and most importantly, patient retelling of the formative years of Dylan’s life and career, never devolving into hazy nostalgia or starry-eyed adoration (thankfully relegating the over-analyzed meeting with Woody Guthrie to a brief mention), and letting the man tell his own story, which he does in a surprisingly candid manner (truth be told, I’ve only watched the first half, but three times). Scorsese gives the film’s elements plenty of room to breathe, devoting a large portion of its running time to extended performance clips of the musicians Dylan molded his style after, most stunningly the folk singer Odetta, whose performance segment I rewound and watched over and over, stunned. Scorsese stops the story’s progression cold several times, primarily to present footage from Dylan’s 1966 Albert Hall performance, the divisive reaction to which would indelibly alter Dylan’s work, and popular music criticism forever after. The momentum is stopped again when Dylan arrives in Greenwich Village, carrying his guitar, harmonica, and a mind full of tall tales of his origins. Scorsese wisely allows other participants (Dave Van Ronk is especially great) to give the viewer a proper sense of the atmosphere of the time, and Dylan’s position within it.

Once during the documentary’s first episode, Scorsese draws upon Dylan’s 1962 appearance on New York radio host Cynthia Gooding’s program–the opening conversation from which I’m offering here. During the interview and performance, Gooding makes no bones of her wide-eyed admiration for the 20 year old troubadour, and the studio banter is as enjoyable as the music played. It’s fun to hear Gooding naively refer to Dylan’s harmonica brace as a “necklace” (it’s hard to think that, at the time, it wasn’t the fashion accoutrement it’s since become), the Dust Bowl affect to Dylan’s voice, and his polite, preternatural refusal to be pigeonholed as a “folk” singer–that would turn into frustrated vitriol by the time of DA Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, a few years later.

Bob Dylan and Cynthia Gooding, 3.11.1962, Conversation 1 (mp3)

A transcript of the session is hosted here, which, after Dylan plays “Emmitt Till,” features some unbridled idolatry on Gooding’s behalf:

BD: You like that one? CG: It’s one of the greatest contemporary ballads I’ve ever heard. It’s tremendous.

BD: You think so?

CG: Oh, yes!

Filed under: Bob Dylan  Cynthia Gooding  Don't Look Back  Larry Charles  Martin Scorsese  Masked and Anonymous  radio