Newport Folk Festival 1963

                  Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Freedom Singers, Pete Seeger,
               and Theodore Bikel 1963 Newport Folk Festival. Two years later, Dylan would rock the Festival and the genre by "going electric."  Photo by John Byrne Cooke

Bob Dylan, Newport Folk Festival 1963 by Rowland Scherman

I gotta sing "Hollis Brown"
I Can't Sing "John Johannah" cause it's his story an his people's story -
I gotta sing "With God On Our Side" cause it's my story an my people's story -
I can't sing "The Girl I Left Behind" cause I know what it's like to do it -
I gotta sing "Boots of Spanish Leather" cause I know what it's like to live it -
But don get me wrong now -
Don think I go way out a my way not t sing no folk songs -
That ain't it at all -
The folk songs showed me the way
They showed me that songs can say something human -
Without "Barbara Allen" there'd be no "Girl From the North Country" -
Without no "Lone Green Valley" there'd be no "Don't Think Twice"-
Without no Jesse James" there'd be no "Davy Moore" -
Without no "Twenty One Years" there'd be no "Walls a red wing" -
Hell no -
Them ol song're the only kinda picture left t show the new born how it used t be in them times -
Them ol songs tell us what they had t run thru or walk thru or dance thru
The ol songs tell how they loved an how they kissed -
They tell us what they rejected an objected to -
They laid it down an made the path -
They were simple an tol the story straight -
They said who they fought an what they fought for an with what they fought with -
An who they fought against -
Now's a complicated day -
An all I'm sayin is 'at I gotta make my own statements bout this day -
I gotta write my own feelins down the same way they did it before me in that used t be day -
An I got nothing but homage an holy thinkin for the ol songs and stories...


Bob Dylan, For Dave Glover, Newport Folk Festival program, 1963