"Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1962. It was released as a single and included on his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963. The song poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom and has been described as a protest song.
Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival
In 1994, "Blowin' in the Wind" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, it was ranked number 14 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Early Performances and Inspiration
Dylan originally wrote and performed a two-verse version of the song. Its first public performance, at Gerde's Folk City on April 16, 1962, was recorded and circulated among Dylan collectors. Shortly after this performance, he added the middle verse to the song.
The theme may have been taken from a passage in Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory, in which Guthrie compared his political sensibility to newspapers blowing in the winds of New York City streets and alleys. Dylan said:
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There ain't too much I can say about this song except that the answer is blowing in the wind. It ain't in no book or movie or TV show or discussion group. Man, it's in the wind - and it's blowing in the wind. Too many of these hip people are telling me where the answer is but oh I won't believe that. I still say it's in the wind and just like a restless piece of paper it's got to come down some ... But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down so not too many people get to see and know ... and then it flies away. I still say that some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong and know it's wrong. I'm only 21 years old and I know that there's been too many wars ...
The Chad Mitchell Trio and Early Covers
The Chad Mitchell Trio first covered "Blowin' in the Wind," but their record company delayed the release of the album containing it because the song included the word "death."
The Chad Mitchell Trio, later known as The Mitchell Trio, were an American vocal group whose peak years were during the 1960s. The original group was formed in 1958 by William Chadbourne "Chad" Mitchell, Mike Kobluk, and Mike Pugh when they were students and glee club members at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, United States.
The key people who helped the trio were musical arranger Milton Okun and star performer/singer Harry Belafonte. After recording mostly conventional folk songs, the trio released a then-daring satire of the John Birch Society, which established their ability to perform more controversial material.
Mitchell left the trio in 1965 to embark on a solo singing career. Another audition process replaced him with the young (and unknown) singer/songwriter John Denver.
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While the Mitchell Trio became best known for such songs, they also produced a solid body of work which showed that folk music could be "polished" yet remain close to its roots. They recorded shanties numbers like "Whup Jamboree" and "The Golden Vanity", as well as folk dance numbers like "Hello Susan Brown".
They were the first folk group to record many of the songs of Tom Paxton, such as "The Marvelous Toy", "What Did You Learn In School Today?", and "We Didn't Know". They also sang the work of Woody Guthrie ("The Great Historical Bum (Bragging Song)"), Shel Silverstein ("The Hip Song (It Does Not Pay To Be Hip)", "Yowzah" "Three Legged Man"), and Bob Dylan ("Blowin' in the Wind" (they were in fact the first to release it, but Peter, Paul and Mary's subsequent rendition became the best-known cover version), "With God On Our Side", "Mr.
Thus, the trio lost out to Peter, Paul and Mary, who were represented by Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman. The single sold 300,000 copies in the first week of release and made the song world-famous. On August 17, 1963, it reached number two on the Billboard pop chart, with sales exceeding one million copies.
Peter, Paul and Mary at the March on Washington, 1963
In June 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary released a cover version of "Blowin' in the Wind" three weeks after The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was issued. It became the most commercially successful version of the song, reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and was at number one on the Middle-Road charts for five weeks. At the 6th Annual Grammy Awards, this version of the song won two Grammys: Best Folk Recording and Best Performance by a Vocal Group.
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Bob Dylan - Blowin' in the Wind (version "Peter, Paul, & Mary"), перевод субтитры
Impact and Legacy
"Blowin' in the Wind" marked a huge jump in Dylan's songwriting. Prior to this, efforts like "The Ballad of Donald White" and "The Death of Emmett Till" had been fairly simplistic bouts of reportage songwriting. "Blowin' in the Wind" was different: for the first time, Dylan discovered the effectiveness of moving from the particular to the general. Whereas "The Ballad of Donald White" would become completely redundant as soon as the eponymous criminal was executed, a song as vague as "Blowin' in the Wind" could be applied to just about any freedom issue.
"Blowin' in the Wind" has been described as an anthem of the civil rights movement. In Martin Scorsese's documentary on Dylan, No Direction Home, Mavis Staples expressed her astonishment on first hearing the song and said she could not understand how a young white man could write something that captured the frustration and aspirations of black people so powerfully.
In 1978, Dylan acknowledged the source when he told journalist Marc Rowland: "'Blowin' in the Wind' has always been a spiritual."
Covers and Cultural References
Bobby Darin recorded "Blowin' in the Wind" on July 30, 1963, for inclusion on his album, Golden Folk Hits, also released in 1963.
In 1975, the song was included as poetry in a high-school English textbook in Sri Lanka. The song has been embraced by many liberal churches, and in the 1960s and 1970s it was sung both in Catholic church "folk masses" and as a hymn in Protestant ones.
In 2009, Dylan licensed the song to be used in an advertisement for the British consumer-owned Co-operative Group.
In 2022, Dylan sold a newly recorded version of the song, produced by T Bone Burnett, on a new "one of one" analogue format known as an "Ionic Original" disc.
The song has been translated and covered in numerous languages, including Swedish, where Tore Lagergren wrote lyrics in Swedish, "Och vinden ger svar" ("and the wind gives answer").
Accolades and Recognition
The Peter, Paul & Mary version of "Blowin' in the Wind" won two Grammys in 1964 at the 6th Annual Grammy Awards: Best Folk Recording and Best Performance by a Vocal Group.
The song's enduring message and cultural impact have solidified its place as one of the most important songs in music history.
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