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"TALKING JOHN BIRCH PARANOID BLUES": BOB DYLAN (ALMOST) ON THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW
Dylan agreed to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show if he could perform a new talking blues tune called “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” Well, when the Ed Sullivan Show people heard it, they told him he could perform another song, but not that one. Apparently, the Ed Sullivan Show people didn’t want to offend the John Birch Society, an organization of ultra right-wing extremists (which still exists today). So Dylan told them to stuff it. He never did appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.
By today’s standards, this would be the equivalent of refusing the opportunity to appear on the Super Bowl half-time show. This no doubt baffles a lot of acts of dubious integrity, who would do anything to play for an audience of that size. Even sing the company song of Enron or Haliburton. Dylan’s record company pulled “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan before they released the album. Fans who did not hear a bootleg tape of the song had to wait until 1991, when an early live recording was finally “officially” released on the album The Bootleg Series. You can hear the song and read the lyrics at www.BobDylan.com.
The talking blues genre lives on in folk music circles, although it’s not terribly popular. Nevertheless, although it’s not known officially as “rap,” talking blues fits the definition precisely: “a style of popular music characterized by rhythmic recitation of rhymed lyrics to music with a pronounced beat or rhythm.”
Although “white rap” antedates modern “black rap” by some 50 years, no evidence exists that talking blues had any influence whatsoever on the African-American rap pioneers of the 1970s. Which means that white rappers and black rappers each came up with the rap genre independently. Which happens with great ideas from time to time. Newton and Leibnitz developed the mathematical branch called the calculus independently of each other. Darwin and Wallace independently discovered evolution by natural selection.