Adapted from Curtis Jones's 1938 Highway 51 Blues, it is a fast, hard-strummed road blues on Dylan's first album.
The words
A man stands by a long southern highway, thinking of the woman who left along it and the road that may carry him too.
The highway of the title runs north and south through the country, and the singer stands beside it thinking of someone who has gone. It is a road song and a lost-love song at once, the highway both what took her and what might take him. Dylan drives it hard with a pounding guitar rhythm that owes something to rockabilly, a hint of the louder music to come.
Words by Curtis Jones
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗Listen and watch
The words
A man stands by a long southern highway, thinking of the woman who left along it and the road that may carry him too.
The highway of the title runs north and south through the country, and the singer stands beside it thinking of someone who has gone. It is a road song and a lost-love song at once, the highway both what took her and what might take him. Dylan drives it hard with a pounding guitar rhythm that owes something to rockabilly, a hint of the louder music to come.
Words by Curtis Jones
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗The same year · 1962
Read onMusicBrainz ↗