SWAMPMONKEY

Bob Dylan - Song to Woody Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song ’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born 

A 20 year old Bob Dylan had two original compositions on his debut album. Song to Woody is one of them. Written after Dylan visited Woody Guthrie in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris Plains NJ, where Guthrie aged 48 was dying from Huntington’s Disease. Doctors at the time had little information about how to treat Huntington’s disease, the degenerative illness he had, and there was no better place for him to go, according to his daughter, Nora. Dylan brought paper, pencils and cigarettes to Guthrie in the hospital, played music for him and even brought other musicians, including the acoustic bluesman John Hammond. At Woody’s request, Dylan and his friends played only Woody’s songs, his daughter said. She also praised Dylan for letting Woody preserve his “dignity” by not offering to light his cigarettes for him, even though Woody had to struggle to light them.

Celebrating Woody Guthrie’s birthday July 14, 1912 - October 3, 1967