JANUARY 14, 1965 – During the second day of recording sessions for Bob Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home” album at Studio A at the Columbia Recording Studios in New York City, Dylan recorded “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” According to the book “Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan by David Dalton, Dylan recorded acoustic tracks on January 13th, none of which made it to the album, then began recording with an electric band the following day.
Released on March 8th as the lead track from the album, the song gave Dylan his first top 40 hit, peaking at #39 on the Billboard Hot 100. Many musicologists refer to the song as one of the earliest recorded examples of “rap” due to the fast-paced lyrical delivery, but Dylan has always admitted that the upbeat tune’s motor-mouth flow and loose, stream-of-consciousness subject matter was inspired by two very different sources. “It’s from Chuck Berry, a bit of ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ and some of the scat songs of the ’40s” Dylan explained to the press in 2004.
The tune is actually a three-way amalgam of Jack Kerouac, the Woody Guthrie/Pete Seeger song “Taking It Easy” (‘mom was in the kitchen preparing to eat/sis was in the pantry looking for some yeast’) and, as admitted, the riffed-up rock ‘n’ roll poetry of Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business.”
