Hard Rain: Bob Dylan, Oral Cultures, and the Meaning of History

Musicologist Portelli (They Say in Harlan County) claims that “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”—recorded in a single take on December 6, 1962, and released on 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan—was “the first Dylan song played on Italian radio. I know because I was the one who played it.” Since his discovery of Dylan’s music in 1963, Portelli has devotedly studied “Hard Rain,” deconstructing the lyrics, centering the song’s place in American history, and tracing its roots back to the folk ballad known as “Lord Randal” in the English-speaking world and “Il testamento dell’avvelenato” (“The poisoned man’s testament”) in Italy. At times Portelli’s book reads less like a work for general readers than a thesis, a memoir, and an example of ethnological study. Nevertheless, the substance is interesting, and Portelli shines an illuminating light on both this song in particular and the folk process in general. A bonus is the appendix, “History’s Lessons Unlearned,” in which Portelli offers an analysis of “I Contain Multitudes” and “Murder Most Foul,” from Dylan’s 2020 album My Rough and Rowdy Ways.