THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,711) Bob Dylan — “No More Auction Block”
Well, everyone in the world has heard this song — at least the song that was either inspired by or adapted from this song. For the anti-slavery Black spiritual “No More Auction Block” begat “Blowing in the Wind”. Here is the version that Dylan sang at the Gaslight Café in New York City in October 1962 — “[t]he best version . . . I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe how young he was when he performed it because it’s so plaintive and nuanced at once.” (johntustin3122, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5_KHDWpnDjg) “Besides the unfettered raw virtues of the performance, I can’t unhear the making of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in its nascent form.” (jaggers4808, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_KHDWpnDjg)
Jochen Markhorst gives us some history:
The practice of slave auctions has been immortalized in the song “No More Auction Block”, a song that surfaced somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century. Its origin is unknown, but we know that it was sung as a marching song by the so-called Black Regiments during the . . . Civil War . . . . A decade later the legendary Fisk Jubilee Singers travelled around with that song on the repertoire and a century later it is still on the setlist of black artists – Odetta, in particular, keeps it alive. Dylan sang it one time, in 1962, and then knocks up the melody for “Blowin ‘In The Wind” . . . .
And he gives us some more:
Dylan has not planned th[e] success [of “Blowing in the Wind”] and can not foresee that the song will grow into the hymn of the civil rights movement, of the Sixties as such, even. But a calculating cold-blooded strategist could not have figured it out craftier. The melody comes from an old slave song from the nineteenth century, “No More Auction. . . . In a radio broadcast of National Public Radio, October 2000, comrades from day one, Happy Traum and Bob Cohen (from The New World Singers) recall more details: One night at Gerde’s Folk City, Dylan heard The New World Singers perform a Civil War era freedom song, one that Bob Cohen still remembers. “It was very dramatic and a very beautiful song, very expressive. And Dylan heard that and heard other songs we were singing. And some days later, he asked us, he said, ‘Hey, come downstairs.’ We used to go down to Gerde’s basement, which was—is it all right to say?—full of rats, I don’t know, and other things. And he had his guitar, and it was kind of a thing where when he added a new song, he’d call us downstairs and we’d listen to it. And he had started—and he wrote, (singing) ‘How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?’ And the germ of that melody of ‘No More Auction Blocks’ certainly was in that.”
But Eyolf Østrem plays down the connection:
[T]he influence has never been denied, it has always been described as a point of departure, an inspiration, but hardly more than that, and the similarities really aren’t that substantial. . . . obvious but limited. The beginning is identical, when it comes to the melody, the harmonization (the album version differs slightly, but most live versions use the same harmonization as on No More Auction Block), and the phrasing . . . . Nobody would dispute this, and nobody has. . . . Dylan himself said so: “‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called ‘No More Auction Block’ – that’s a spiritual and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ follows the same feeling.” Should further evidence be needed in Dylan’s defense, one might point out that the loan is limited to the first and last phrase and to the overall mood of a spiritual – “the same feeling”; and that the rest of the song structure is very different: Auction Block is a stylized call-and-response type of song, where one phrase is sung and then repeated in a slightly varied form . . . . [O]n a scale from complete independence (0), through influence (1), similarity (2), striking similarity (3), identity (4) to theft/plagiarism (5), and with a second axis going from open to covert and a third from innocent to crooked, this one obviously scores a clear 2 on the first axis and zeroes on the other axes: Blowing in the Wind is influenced by and therefore shows some similarity with Auction Block, but it is an open loan and morally white as a dove.
As does Tony Atwood:
“Blowin’ in the Wind” is, according to Bob Dylan, and as is repeated endlessly by commentators, based on “No More Auction Block”. Indeed, if you concentrate, you can hear the melody of “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind” in the instrumental introduction to “No More”, and again within the song most particularly in the last line of each verse. . . . But I think this whole thing about “Blowin in the Wind” actually being based on “No more auction block” is rather a simplification. Of course we accept it because Dylan is quoted as saying “‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called ‘No More Auction Block’—that’s a spiritual and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ follows the same feeling.” But that is a key point – I am not at all sure how many people would trace “Blowing in the Wind” back to “No More Auction Block” without being told. In short, Bob may have started with “No More Auction Block” but that is not the same as the two songs being inexorably linked. . . . I wonder just how true that link that we are regularly told about actually is. For really just as there is little more than one musical line in Dylan’s version of the song that relates “No more auction block” to “Blowin in the wind” and there is not much in the lyrics at all to suggest [they are] related . . . . Is there really any link between the MUSIC of “No More Auction Block”, and the MUSIC of “Blowing in the Wind”? Now I know . . . that if you go onto Google’s AI Overview it will tell you that “The melody of Bob Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” comes from the 19-th century African-American spiritual “No More Auction Block For Me” and so I am disagreeing with AI, because quite simply I am saying “No it doesn’t”. Of course you can hear half a phrase of music in the title line to “Auction Block” as equivalent to “How many roads must a man walk down,” but then that latter line only contains four notes, and yes it if you play it in the right key they are the same four notes as “How many roads,” although at a different speed, and with a different rhythmic lilt. But this is true for hundreds of thousands of songs. . . . [I]n every song there are almost certainly elements of other songs. The musical opening to “No More Auction Block” is made up of just four notes. The musical opening of “Blowing in the Wind” is made up of the same four notes in the same order BUT the rhythm, speed and indeed feel of those notes is completely different. . . . [T]here is some link . . . but it is the same sort of link that can be found between characters in two different novels saying “I love you.” The words are the same but most likely the situation, the feeling, the emotions, the reaction, the volume, the speed – in short everything – is different. . . . I think the amount of impact that song had on “Blow in’” is minute.
Here is “Blowing in the Wind”:
Here is Odetta:
Here is Paul Robeson:
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