This has been a tragic week for many people.  In addition to the usual, continuing brutality in places like Syria and Iraq, we have experienced a deranged gunman killing and wounding more than 100 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fl.  Also in Orlando, barely 24 hours earlier, YouTube star Christina Grimmie was killed by a crazed fan.  Later in the week, a 2-year old child was killed by an alligator at Disney World, also in Orlando.  Two days after that, British MP Jo Cox was murdered as she left a meeting with constituents.  Of course there were other tragedies that did not receive as much news coverage, but these are sufficiently shocking.

How has the world responded?  Some have called for stricter gun control and others for stricter control of immigration.  We have heard trumpery accusing the FBI of negligence and even accusing President Obama of complicity with terrorists.  Many regular law-abiding citizens have expressed extreme anger, and others extreme fear.

One thing we observe at times like this is that is that what comes out of a person in response to adversity can be nothing more or less than what is inside that person.  Even under these most somber circumstances, the most common responses have been love, compassion and sympathy for those affected.  We thank God that those qualities are within so many.

Turning now to the Song of the Week, “One Too Many Mornings,” it is fair to ask how a ballad about Bob Dylan breaking up with his girlfriend could relate to the grim events mentioned above. My answer is that Dylan often played with words and wrote songs with double (or more) meanings.  I believe that in this song he is also talking about the tragic circumstances that cause us and our society to suffer “one too any mournings.”

Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo

Bob Dylan was not involved in the civil rights movement until he moved to New York City in 1961, at the age of 19.  He came East to visit his idol, Woody Guthrie in the hospital, but he also quickly found himself a girlfriend.  She was a 17-year old named Suze Rotolo, whose communist parents had raised her in an environment of social activism, and who was working as a secretary at the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) office.   Dylan quickly became interested in those issues and began performing what would be called protest songs he had written himself, rather than the traditional folk songs found on his first album.

At that time, the civil rights movement was trying to accomplish its goals through non-violent means, but was often confronted with violence; and Bob Dylan responded to that violence in his songs.  The last question asked in “Blowin’ in the Wind,” the song that brought him national attention, is “how many deaths will it take ’til he knows that too many people have died?”  The song he wrote hoping to be asked to perform at a CORE benefit, “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” was the story of a 14-year old black youth who had been killed for whistling at a white woman.

“One Too Many Mornings” is on Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ album that was recorded in late 1963 and released in January 1964.  Just before its recording civil rights leader Medgar Evers had been murdered and three young “freedom riders” had been killed by Ku Klux Klan members for participating in a voter registration drive.  Dylan accompanied other musicians such as Pete Seeger and Joan Baez to perform in Mississippi and assist in registering Black voters.  He had also performed at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. This activism augmented his stature as a vibrant voice of a new generation of Americans.

Other songs on The Times They Are A-Changin’ include “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” telling of a farmer killing his whole family because he couldn’t bear to watch them starve; the anti-war anthem, “With God on Our Side”; “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” which told of the Medgar Evers murder; and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” the story of a black hotel barmaid who died after being struck by a wealthy white man.

A few weeks before the album was released, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

It was a time for mourning in America (to paraphrase Ronald Reagan).

Also in 1963, Dylan broke up with Suze Rotolo.  Two of the songs on The Times They Are A-Changin”, “One Too Many Mornings” and “Boots of Spanish Leather,” refer to that break-up.  I acknowledge that, but sometimes words or sounds have more than one meaning.  The album examines so many tragedies that it certainly tells the listener there have been too many mournings.

The version of the song used here is by Joan Baez.  That seems appropriate because she was a very dynamic voice in the protest movement, she accompanied Bob to the voter registration drive in Mississippi, and part of the reason for Dylan parting with Rotolo is that Suze was not happy with the relationship between Bob and Joan.

I would have liked to have used Bob Dylan’s version of the song, but he is very protective of his intellectual property rights and does not permit recordings for which he holds the copyright to be posted on the internet.  I respect that position, though I find it ironic.

The majority of the “original” songs “written” by Dylan during this early period of his career were really adaptations of tunes and lyrics from earlier songs.  “Blowin’ in the Wind,” for instance, was written to the tune of “No More Auction Block.”  On The Times They Are A-Changin’ album, “Restless Farewell” uses the tune and some of the lyrics of the traditional Irish song, “The Parting Glass”; “With God on Our Side” is strongly influenced by “The Patriot Game,” a song with the melody of an Irish-English folk song and lyrics by Dominic Behan; “Boots of Spanish Leather” is based on “Scarborough Fair”; and an Australian folk song called “The Banks of the Condamine” seems to have worked its way into “One Too Many Mornings.”

How was a kid like Bob Dylan able to learn so many of the old songs?  Well, back in 1960, while living in Denver, he did steal a number of records from local musicians Walt Conley and Dave Hamil, which were retrieved when the police were called to Dylan’s motel room.

Bob Dylan has given us more than half a century of music and has had a tremendous influence on American culture.  He is entitled to protect his works.  He is certainly aware that there are people who would steal it and use it for commercial gain.  As mentioned above, the responses that come out of a person can only be what that person held inside – we hope that is love and compassion, for the most part.

We hope, too, that the mourning may soon end.

One Too Many Mornings
By Bob Dylan

Down the street the dogs are barkin’
And the day is a-gettin’ dark
As the night comes in a-fallin’
The dogs’ll lose their bark
An’ the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
For I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind

From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes they start to fade
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An’ I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

Copyright

© 1964, 1966 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992, 1994 by Special Rider Music