The songs that most influenced Bob Dylan

Also a genius like Bob Dylanlike everyone else, had artists who influenced him and inspired him. Once he was the playwright, musician and actor Sam Shepard He wrote: “Dylan invented himself. He created himself from scratch. That is, from the things he had around him and within himself. He is not the first to have invented himself, but he is the first to have invented Dylan”. While Dylan declared: “The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for someone if you don’t inspire it?”.

One of his first artistic influences was

Woody Guthrie. In his first album, “Bob Dylan” (1962), there are only two songs written by him, one of these is “Song to Woody” (the other is “Talkin ‘New York”), the one who says to have been the first song I’ve ever written. If this is not a tribute …

When
Bob Dylan
He arrived at the ‘Village’ in New York, everyone performed classics of folk, there was no great originality. Once Dylan explained it in this way: “I always wrote my songs, but I never played them. Nobody played their songs, the only person I knew that he really did was Woody Guthrie”.

But before Guthrie, when she was only eleven, Duluth’s boy had listened to
Hank Williams
as he recalls in his memories: “I realized that in the songs recorded by Hank there were the archetypal rules of poetic writing. The architectural forms are like marble pillars”. And when in 1953
Bob Dylan
He learned the news of Williams’ disappearance, even thirty years he commented: “It was as if a big tree had fallen”. Citing
“Pictures from Life’s Other Side”
like one of his favorite songs.

Another great inspiration was
Little Richard
. As Dylan said to the disappearance of the rocker in 2020: “It was my shining star and my light guides when I was just a boy. His was the original spirit that pushed me to do everything I would do”. In 1986 in a chat with Scott Cohen
Bob Dylan
he indicated the songs that had influenced him most, in the list they could not miss
Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams
And
Little Richard
.

‘Lady’s Man’ – Hank Snow

‘Lucille’ – Little Richard

High Lonesome Sound – Roscoe Holcomb

‘Tom Joad’ – Woody Guthrie

‘Mystery Train’ – Elvis Presley

‘Not Fade Away’ – Buddy Holly

‘Molly and Tenbrooks’ – Bill Monroe

‘Get Back’ – Big Bill Broonzy

‘Chauffeur Blues’ – Memphis Minnie

‘Riding on Train 45’ – Delmore Brothers

‘Ida Red’ – Smokey Mountain Boys

‘Pictures from Life’s Other Side’ – Hank Williams