ABSTRACT
From the early days, Dylan’s singing (like his harmonica playing) polarised listeners: ‘I’d either drive people away or they’d come in closer to see what it was all about. There was no in-between’ (Dylan, Chronicles, Vol. 1, 18). For his admirers the voice in the recordings of the 1960s is a uniquely vital and inspiriting medium, the essential vehicle for putting his work across. Bono (a singer with the group U2) claims it as the marker of Dylan’s artistic authenticity, his way of busting ‘through the fourth wall’ of popular song to make singing about ‘telling the truth’. 1 It is undoubtedly a voice that has always put pundits on their mettle, from Robert Shelton’s early review:
Mr. Dylan’s voice is anything but pretty. He is consciously trying to recapture the rude beauty of a Southern field hand musing in melody on his back porch. All the ‘husk and bark’ are left on his notes, and a searing intensity pervades his songs. 2
