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Never Quite Sung in this Fashion Before: Bob Dylan's "Man of Constant Sorrow"

In the liner notes to Bob Dylan’s first, self-titled record, Robert Shelton (1962) writes: “‘Man of Constant Sorrow’ is a traditional Southern mountain folk song of considerable popularity and age but probably never sung quite in this fashion before.” This statement suggests two main points for researching the song that I will examine in the course of this paper. I will first describe how “Man of Constant Sorrow” evolved up to the time of Dylan’s recording, followed by a discussion of the process through which Dylan learned his version and internalized the song, making it his own. Parallel to this discussion of musical influences, I will talk about intellectual property and copyright, issues of central importance to folk music in the twentieth century. Shelton’s statement holds great value both as an aesthetic and as a legal evaluation. My scholarship about Dylan dates to the early 1990s, at the end of my graduate work in music composition, when I became interested in the 1960s folk music revival. Dylan represented an obvious choice for study because his output has been documented practically from the beginning of his career. As I began to collect Dylan recordings it became obvious that the vast majority of his early repertoire was drawn directly and mimetically from traditional American roots music. Through these recordings I had the opportunity to listen, in a sense, as Dylan learned his repertoire, at first imitating sources and then composing original songs. In 1999, I became a post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The Center operates Folkways, the legendary folk record label, and houses an extensive folk music archive. The tangible result of my fellowship was the 2001 book The Formative Dylan: Transmission and Stylistic Influences, 1961-1963. In the book, I attempt to demonstrate the root material for 70 early Dylan songs: the first three Columbia LPs, songs subsequently issued by Columbia from