A jukebox de Bob Dylan

«The jukebox in the place showed mostly jazz records. Zoot Simms, Hampton Hawes, Stan Getz, and some rhythm-and-blues records - Bumble Bee Slim, Slim Galliard, Percy Mayfield. The Beats tolerated folk music, but they really didn't like it. They listened exclusively to modern jazz, bebop. A couple of times I dropped a coin right into the slot and played "The Man That Got Away" by Judy Garland. The song always did something to me, not in a stupefying, tremendous kind of way. It didn't summon up any strange thoughts. It just was nice to hear. Judy Garland was from Grand Rapids, Minnesota, a town about twenty miles away from where I came from. Listening to Judy was like listening to the girl next door. She was way before my time, and like the Elton John song says, "I would have liked to have known you, but I was just a kid." Harold Arlen had written "The Man That Got Away" and the classic "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," another song by Judy Garland. He had written a lot of other popular songs, too - the powerful "Blues in the Night," "Stormy Weather," "Come Rain or Come Shine," "Get Happy." In Harold's songs, I could hear rural blues and folk music. There was an emotional kinship there. I couldn't help but notice it. The songs of Woody Guthrie ruled my universe, but before that, Hank Williams had been my favorite songwriter, though I thought of him as a singer, first. Hank Snow was a close second. But I could never escape from the bittersweet, lonely intense world of Harold Arlen. Van Ronk could sing and play these songs. I could, too, but never would have dreamed of it. They weren't in my script. They weren't in my future. What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening - all bunk. No garantees of anything, not even the garantee that life isn't one big joke.»


Bob Dylan Chronicles.