Song to Bob, and Nat

Nat Hentoff has just celebrated 50 years of writing about civil rights for The Village Voice. We at S&V would like to point out that, in February 1958, Hentoff was also a contributing editor to this magazine's earliest progenitor, HiFi & Music Review. He was introduced in that premiere issue as "one of the leading younger authorities on jazz." But he also covered folk, and in the July 1962 issue of what had become HiFi/Stereo Review, he was among the very first to herald the arrival of Bob Dylan.

As we mark our own 50th anniversary this year - and as we notice the march of technology as embodied by the Dylan digital card on the facing page - we'd like to share Hentoff's complete 1962 review of the singer's eponymous debut on vinyl LP, touted as a Recording of Special Merit: "Prepare yourself for what should become a major folk talent. Mr. Dylan, only 20, comes from Minnesota but has traveled a country whose heterogeneity is vibrantly reflected in his singing. Dylan illustrates the very best of the newest generation of citybillies. He has not only studied ethnic models from Negro blues singers to white country stylists, but he is also building his own passionate, prickly style.

"Dylan's approach is still quite uneven, but it is remarkably personal for so young an assimilator. He changes vocal texture and phrasing according to the nature of each song, but pervading all is a rough intensity and a steely but not bitter wit. "His scope is impressively broad. In his affection for Woody Guthrie, for one example, he has not only written a 'Song to Woody' that is worthy of his friend, but he demonstrates elsewhere his skill in the 'talking blues' at which Guthrie excelled. On other numbers, Dylan comes very close to the marrow of Negro blues-guitar commentary. He has also absorbed the whooping harmonica style of such raw virtuosos as Sonny Terry and Walter Jacobs. There are excursions into mountain and Texas idioms, and he even takes on the vaudevillian 'You're No Good,' which has become identified with Jesse Fuller.

"The engineering is brilliant, bringing Dylan's jagged zest into clear focus."

Note that final line. Yes, friends, we've cared about sound quality from the start! Hentoff stayed with us until July 1968, when editor William Anderson said this goodbye: "All farewells are hard, but this one is harder: Nat Hentoff is relinquishing his reviewing post to devote himself to more pressing commitments. Mr. Hentoff has been an editor's dream contributor; authoritative, prompt, reliable, and unflappable, he has not only been a trusted guide for a whole generation of jazz enthusiasts, but a widely imitated model for other critics as well. He will be missed."

In that 1968 issue, by the way, Hentoff was still holding onto his folk-related credentials, too. And in a pan of Virgin Fugs, the previously unreleased first recordings of, yes, the Fugs, he concluded: "The times, they do change fast."

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