Listen to the album
Why it matters
His first album of entirely original songs is his most starkly topical, with ballads of poverty, racist murder and unjust courts. Its title song became an anthem of the 1960s, and its closing farewell already hints that he was ready to move on.
Recorded in New York in the late summer and autumn of 1963 with Tom Wilson producing, his third album is the most austere record he ever made: one voice, one guitar, a harmonica, and nothing to soften the subject matter. These are songs of the civil rights era and of hard times in small towns, several drawn from real events, including the killing of Medgar Evers and the death of Hattie Carroll in Baltimore. Alongside them sit a few personal songs about distance and parting that hint at a different writer underneath. The title track was written to be an anthem and was taken up as one almost immediately. The record arrived in early 1964, just weeks after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and it cemented his place as the voice of protest. That was a role he was already growing restless in, and within months he would set it aside.
Track list · 10 songs
A warning to politicians, critics and parents that a new generation is coming and the old order is giving way.
protest · time
Its page ›A survey of American wars questions the habit of claiming divine approval for every killing.
war · faith · America
Its page ›A man stepping away from a lover at daybreak admits that neither of them is wrong, yet he cannot stay.
love · loss · the road
Its page ›A miner's widow traces how her town and family fall apart as the mines close and the work goes overseas.
America · loss · protest
Its page ›It argues that the man who killed a civil-rights leader was a tool of politicians who stoke racial hatred.
protest · death
Its page ›A lover offers gifts across the ocean and slowly realizes the one who left is not coming back.
love · loss
Its page ›A prophecy of a day of reckoning when the oppressed rise and their enemies are swept aside.
protest · freedom
Its page ›A cool, exact account of a wealthy man's killing of a hotel worker and the light sentence that followed.
protest · death
Its page ›The singer takes leave of old friends, quarrels and critics, determined to move on on his own terms.
the road · time
Its page ›
Where its songs lead
Read onWikipedia ↗MusicBrainz ↗