A grim ballad of rural poverty, it tells of a South Dakota farmer driven to despair.
The words
A starving farmer with no way out reaches a desperate and terrible end.
The singer tells, mostly in direct address to Hollis Brown himself, the story of a South Dakota farmer with a wife and five children and nothing to feed them. The verses pile up his troubles: a barren farm, sick animals, no work and no help coming, until, pushed past hope, he spends his last money on shotgun shells and kills his family and himself. The bleak story ends by noting that somewhere else new lives begin. It moves over a relentless, droning guitar figure.
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗Listen and watch
The words
A starving farmer with no way out reaches a desperate and terrible end.
The singer tells, mostly in direct address to Hollis Brown himself, the story of a South Dakota farmer with a wife and five children and nothing to feed them. The verses pile up his troubles: a barren farm, sick animals, no work and no help coming, until, pushed past hope, he spends his last money on shotgun shells and kills his family and himself. The bleak story ends by noting that somewhere else new lives begin. It moves over a relentless, droning guitar figure.
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗Connections
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In threads
The same year · 1964
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