Richard’s Almanac: The times, they are a changin’

So Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature. A well known senior citizen, 75 years old with plenty of music left in him. If you ever hung around my house until the wee hours, you’d hear Frank and Dean, Elvis, Ricky Nelson, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Bruce.

I believe that they are all great artists. But the guys on the committee in Sweden believe that Bob Dylan is the real poet. And they recognized that last week.

There are many academics who are now picking apart why he should not have received the award.

Not me. I believe it’s well deserved.

From the first time I saw this guy in New York, I knew that I loved his music. It meant something to me. I liked the melodies and the lyrics made me think. From the confusing words of “Desolation Row” to the celebration of art and artists in “She Belongs to Me,” I could imagine the sounds and think about the words.

And it was the quality of the words and not his guitar skills that affected so many.

Back in the sixties when we said it was poetry, many said “You’re full of baloney.”

I can remember flying down I-95 south to Florida to the sounds of “Like a Rolling Stone”and “ Positively Fourth Street.” Great music.

But is he just a troubadour or a Nobel poet? Those guys in Sweden made the choice — the Nobel Prize for Literature. Right up there with Hemingway, Faulkner and Toni Morrison.

Compared with the others whose voices come out of my CD player, he’s a poet. Dean and Frank are all about the sound, the melody and what the words evoke. Great music but they did not write their stuff.

The same with the King. Elvis was not a poet, but perhaps the best rock and roller who ever lived. Ricky Nelson modeled himself after Elvis but never got the exposure.

Three other senior citizens who are poets as well as musicians, and should win awards are Canadian Leonard Cohen and Americans Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce’s autobiography just hit the library (and it’s in large print for his followers).

This is a guy who writes most of his own stuff and at 67 can perform for four hours straight.

He certainly, like William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg, is a New Jersey Poet.

And speaking of Allen Ginsberg, The Wall Street Journal ran a picture on Friday of Bob Dylan and Allen at Jack Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, Massachussets in 1975.

Like Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac had an influence on Bob Dylan. The road motif was in many of his songs.

From Hibbing, Minnesota to Nobel Laureate. Pretty good!

“She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist and she don’t look back.”