Theme Time Radio Hour Bookends

Muddy Waters' Blow Wind, Blow the first song played on Episode 1, "The Weather" first broadcast on Wednesday May 6, 2006.



Woody Guthrie's So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust) the last song played on Episode 100 "Goodbye" first broadcast on Wednesday April 15, 2009.



Although it may be making too much out of it, I'll note that Dusty Old Dust was Woody's showcase song on the premiere episode of Back Where I Come From.

That episode's theme? "The Weather." And you can read about it and hear it right here: Episode 45 - Back Where I Come From: The Roots of Theme Time Radio Hour.

Episode 58 - Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone

1. [Jody Cadence - U.S. Army]

Episode 58 - Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone

Direct link to mp3.

Subscribe to the Dreamtime podcast

Listen now with the Dreamtime Player

John Henry, Johnny Appleseed, Hiawatha, Bre'r Rabbit. Davy Crockett. Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Stagger Lee. King Washington. Pecos Bill and Widder-maker. Even Uncle Sam. Most of their stories have faded away, the stuff of Disney movies now if remembered at all.

But there's one American legend that's still alive and well in 2000 and 8, his story still told in bars and barracks, pool-halls and whore-houses. His song sung every day by both white boys and black.



Jody. Even if you don't know who he is, you know he's trouble. While you somehow got your sorry ass into the Army, Jody was smart enough to stay home. And now he's sniffin' around your girl.

You can't call her, because Jody's always seems to be on your damn telephone. Your telephone, racking up phone bills to God knows where-all. You get a picture from home in the mail, and that's nice, but wait a second. Who the hell is that leaning up against your Cadillac, your Cadillac, the one that's supposed to be in your garage until you get back?

That would be Jody, and you read, "oh, honey, Jody says it isn't good for a car to be sittin' that long. He says he's keeping it nice and greased up for you."

Yeah, and what the hell else is he keeping nice and greased up?

Jody. Smart-lookin', fast-talkin'. Jody's got your girl.

Jody has had many names, and I suspect that if you traced him back far enough, some of those names would be Trickster, Coyote, and Anansi. But in black oral folklore and music we first hear of him as "Joe the Grinder," grinding being a euphemism for, ah, the sexual act. As time passed, "Joe the" turned into "Joe de" or "Joe D." until the two words eventually merged into "Jody." The "Grinder" part and Jody's last name were more or less dropped from the legend, although in at least one song he's known as "Jody Ryder."

The first known recording of a "Jody song" - more appropriately labeled as a "levee holler" by Alan Lomax - was sung in 19 and 39 by one Irvin "Gar Mouth" Lowry, a prisoner at the State Farm in Arkansas. Until he moved to preying on soldier's wives and girlfriends, Joe the Grinder seemed to have spent a good portion of his time chasing after the women of jailed men. It makes sense. Both soldiers and prisoners have a lot in common - a lack of women, your life dictated by powers outside of your control, and no way to get home... at least legally.

Jodie Man

Here's a Theme Time and Dreamtime favorite, Louis Armstrong, doing a song about "Jodie Man." Jodie Man sounds like it's going to be a straight instrumental, but hang in there, and I promise you'll hear some interesting lyrics about our friend Jody.

From 19 and 45, Louis Armstrong and Jodie Man.

During World War II, Jody's legend migrated off the work farm and into the Army, where he became the title character in cadence marching songs, such as the one we heard at the beginning of the show. Jody was almost certainly first introduced into the Army by African-American soldiers, and then had his story picked up by the general service population when the military desegregated.

Woody Guthrie in "Born to Win", says, "The best of marching I saw in my eight months in the army was to the folk words of a folky chant tune that went: "Ain't no use in writin' home/Some joker got your gal an' gone." Woody - probably not the best of soldiers - may have misheard "joker" for "Jody," or the lyrics may have evolved into this variant, but it's definitely another "Jody" call.

In fact, the Jody story became so ingrained in Army lore that by the time I was drafted in the early `70s, all Army cadences were known as "Jodies," as they still are to this very day. And just like Woody, one of the few good memories I have of my time in the Service is marching to a drill Sergeant's rhythmic imperative that I might as well settle down and enjoy Army life, because there was nothing left for me at home - girl, job, and car all taken by Jody.

"Ain't no use in feelin' blue. Jody's got your sister too."

"You're Right!" "You're Right!" we all sang back to the drill instructor.

Uncle Sam Blues




You remember King Records and its eccentric owner, Syd Nathan. Mr. D. likes to play Syd Nathan's recorded rants to his salespeople in-between cuts on Theme Time Radio Hour.

Well, after Syd Nathan, the main man at King was Alphonse Thompson, better known to one and all as Sonny. If you dealt with King as a musician, you were dealing with Sonny Thompson. He was the guy who set up your recording session, booked the musicians, arranged the tunes, even occasionally wrote one, and now and then sat in on a session himself at the piano.

Sonny's recordings aren't easy to find, but well worth the search. Recorded in 19 and 51 on the King label, here's a story about a worried soldier heading for Korea asking Uncle Sam to find something for Jody to do - like dodging bullets - to keep him away from his girl. Sonny Thompson is on the piano, Jesse Edwards is doing the vocals.

Uncle Sam Blues.

3. [Uncle Sam Blues - Sonny Thompson, 1951]




Joe the Grinder

While Jody was torturing serviceman his counterpart, Joe the Grinder, was still alive and well back in the civilian world.

In 19 and 52, Dave Bartholomew was a talent scout for Imperial Records, a New Orleans label. Bartholomew was the person who had brought Fats Domino to Imperial, and he was looking for another discovery. He found Allen Matthews, who sounded like a clone of ClydeMcPhatter, and paired him up with a gospel group looking to move into R&B, The Humming Four.

After running through a variety of names for the new group, including "Fat Man" Matthews and the 4 Kittens, they settled on the much more manly name of The Hawks, which probably better suited the raunchy song they released on the Imperial label in 19 and 54, Joe the Grinder.

4. [Joe the Grinder - The Hawks, 1954]

The Hawks even have a TTRH connection. You may remember Mr. D. talking about "Morgus the Magnificent" way back in the 2006 Halloween episode. Morgus was a New Orleans TV personality who aired old horror movies, kind of a male version of Elvira. Morgus decided to do a cover of a popular novelty single called Flying Saucer and hired The Hawks to provide backing vocals. The group, which had never made much of a stir outside of New Orleans, signed on and that was their last single, as The Outer Spacemen, gamely providing back-up to a guy dressed in a monster costume.

Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks

The Old Man From the Mountain

Like their music, black and country legends are closely intertwined, and you'd be as likely to hear mention of Joe the Grinder in an Bakersfield bar as you would on a New Orleans street corner. The Old Man From the Mountain was another one of Merle Haggard's 38 #1 hits, charting in 19 and 74. In The Old Man From the Mountain Merle's warning that Joe the Grinder better be out of his bed by the time he gets back home.

5. [The Old Man From the Mountain - Merle Haggard, 1974]

Merle Haggard's story is so incredible nobody would believe it as a work of fiction. After three stints in jail, Haggard met Lefty Frizzell and decided to try his hand as a musician, eventually building a solid reputation as a local talent in Bakersfield, CA. But Haggard's devil was still riding on his shoulder, and he was arrested for robbing a Bakersfield tavern in 19 and 57 and eventually sentenced to San Quentin for 10 years.

It was in the Big Q that Merle Haggard first saw Johnny Cash and again vowed to turn his life around if he got out alive. In 19 and 60, Merle Haggard was paroled, and though he later said that there were days when he wished he was back in prison, he walked the line and had his first national hit in 19 and 64.

If you're around my age, you probably best remember Merle for the semi-tongue-in-cheek, semi-yahoo Okie from Muskogee, recorded in 1969, when all of us were choosing sides over Vietnam. Whatever your opinion of Merle's politics, it's worth noting that his music has been recorded by artists way on the other side of the political spectrum, including The Grateful Dead and Joan Baez. Good music always transcends politics.

The Jody Golden Age

We're going to be playing a lot of music from the `70s in this episode, and that's because there was something of a Jody Golden Age during that decade, including Johnnie Taylor's monster hit for Stax in 19 and 71, which takes the line from the military cadence as its title. We're going to play two songs back to back: Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone and then an answer song to the Taylor hit, the very funky Jody, Come Back and Get Your Shoes by Bobby Newsome.

6. [Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone Johnnie Taylor, 1971]

7. [Jody, Come Back and Get Your Shoes, Bobby Newsome, 1971]

Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone may hold the all-time record for spawning answer songs. Just to name a few: Jean Knight's Don't Talk About Jody, I Finally Caught Up With Jody by Big Joe Hamilton, Bobby Patterson's Right On, Jody, and Sam and Dave's Jody Ryder Got Killed, which is one of the few songs to name Jody's last name.

This next song is from 19 and 70, so it's too early to be a response to Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone, but You've Been Gone Too Long is still something of an answer song to the eternal question about how Jody got your girl.




8. [You've Been Gone Too Long, Ann Sexton, 1970]

Ann Sexton is a lady you probably haven't heard of unless you were caught up in the great Northern Soul Craze. Not to be confused with the poet, who spelled her first name with an "e," our Ann Sexton recorded a string of soul records for the Nashville-based Seventy-7 label during the `70s.

Like a lot of artists, Ann Sexton never really struck it big, and she retired from music in the late `70s. But after being encouraged by a co-worker, Ann took to the stage again in Europe after a 30-year absence, and now says she intends to keep performing as "long as she's alive." Right on, Ann.

Trackin' Down Jody

Now here's a group and a song and even a label I can't tell you much about. I couldn't even track down its release date. Obviously recorded sometime in the `70s - dig that crazy Theme from Shaft wah-wah guitar - for the tiny Austin, Texas A.C.R. soul label, Trackin' Down Jody sounds like it was meant for a blaxploitation movie that never got made.

9. [Trackin' Down Jody - Darker Shades Ltd., 197?]



As far as I can tell, it's the only cut that Darker Shades Ltd. ever recorded, and may be the only record that the A.C.R. label ever released.

You may have thought that the music cut off a little bit abruptly, and you'd be right to think so. Trackin' Down Jody was too long to fit on one side of a 45, and was released as Parts 1 and 2 on the A and B sides. Unfortunately, Part 2, which I'll betcha was one long funk groove, seems to be lost in the mists of history. But we still have Part 1 of Trackin' Down Jody, and you just heard it.

Texas Soul Recordings

Run, Jody, Run

10. [Run, Jody, Run - Jimmy Coe, 1953]

We went all the way back to 19 and 53 for Run, Jody Run, cut by Jimmy Coe and His Gay Cats of Rhythm for the States label. Jimmy wasn't quite sure who Jody was, telling an interviewer, "Jody's like an Army guy who's hanging out at the girl's house and he has to run," but he still played a mean saxophone.



Jimmy Coe liked to tell the story that the first time he ever soloed on the alto sax, Charlie Parker was in the audience. After the set, Jimmy introduced himself to Parker and asked him what he thought about his number. "Sorry," Parker said. "I fell asleep and missed it."

The Jimmy Coe Discography

Joe Grind and Jody Man

While Jody was busy dodging the draft in the good ol' U.S. of A., Joe the Grinder's itchy feet had him taken him down Jamaica way, where he shortened his name to "Joe Grind" and became a well-known figure in the shanty towns and dance halls. Here's a band called The Aggrolites, who have been a backing band for both reggae superstar Derrick Morgan, and for Prince Buster, and who released their debut album in 2003. From that album, Dirty Reggae, here's Joe Grind.

11. [Joe Grind - The Aggrolites]

Jody Man and Finis

If you can remember that far back, we started our Jody episode with Louis Armstrong's Jodie Man, and we're closing out tonight's show with another Jody Man that Slim Harpo recorded for the Excello label.



Slim's not all that well-remembered these days, but if you're a fan of The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Pink Floyd, The Doors, or Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, the chances are you've heard of Slim Harpo. Slim passed in 1970, a few days after his 46th birthday. Jody Man was released by Excello a year after his death in 19 and 71.

12. [Jody Man - Slim Harpo]


Given the state of the world today, the chances are good - or bad, I guess, that Jody songs will still be sung far into our future.

As far as I can tell, it hasn't happened yet, but given the increasing role of women in the military, it's probably only matter of time until we'll hear the lament on some foot-track, or on some off-base juke-box...

Jodie's Got Your Guy and Gone

It kinda makes you wonder whether Jody picked that name on purpose.

Sources: Outside of the links noted above, I commend your attention to WFMU's Beware of the Blog, where you can find much of the music I played in this episode. Soul Trivia and the Soul Detroit Forum also provided valuable information.

Thanks for listening to the Dreamtime podcast. Show notes, sources, and tonight's script can be found on the Dreamtime blog, dreamtimepodcast.com.

Some house-keeping to take care of before we wind up. We wanted to pass on our congratulations to Kevin R., the Dreamtime winner of the tickets to the New American Music Festival. Kevin wrote up a great trip report for us, and you can find that on the Dreamtime blog, too.

If you haven't heard the news, Dreamtime is now airing on Wednesdays on Tangled Up in Bob, at dylanradio.com. It's a great way to catch up on our old shows. Go check out the site at dylanradio.com, all Bob Dylan, all the time. I think you'll like what you hear.

Thanks to everyone for your emails and comments on the past few shows. Much appreciated. Jailbait, Curly, Bear and I all want to pass on our thanks to everyone who's used Dreamtime as their starting point for their Amazon purchases. It's much appreciated by all of us. If you're heading back to school, or know someone who is, and are planning on buying your school books or supplies through Amazon, please start your shopping through Dreamtime.

And finally, the Dreamtime team is on its semi-annual late Summer vacay for the next couple of weeks, and I suspect when we get back Mr. D. will have announced the return of Theme Time Radio Hour too. Hope you're looking forward to Season 3 as much as we are, and we'll be back with another Dreamtime real soon.

***

You've been listening to the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. Dreamtime is researched and written by Fred Bals and is a Not Associated With production. As the name says, we're not associated with XM Radio, Bob Dylan, or much of anything else.

Some of the music on Dreamtime is provided via the Podsafe Music Network. Check it out at music.podshow.com.

Remember that the Dreamtime team loves to get email. You can write us at dreamtimepodcast@gmail.com

The Dreamtime top cats are Curly Lasagna and Shaggy Bear. Our announcers are the notorious honky-tonkin' sisters, Jailbait and Joyride.

Until next time, dream well.

Episode 45 - Back Where I Come From: The Roots of Theme Time Radio Hour

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. - Ecclesiastes

Direct link to mp3.

Subscribe to the Dreamtime podcast

Listen now with the Dreamtime Player



All things have a past, a history. All trees have roots. All rivers have a source.

There is nothing new under the sun.

It's night time in the Big City. In a loft apartment, a young man rummages through a shelf of old audio tapes. He stops, re-reads a label. He doesn't know the title on the box, but he definitely recognizes at least one performer's name.

"Can I listen to this?" Bob Dylan asks.

Sixty-six years before the first episode of Theme Time Radio Hour, when radio was just radio and the word satellite was only used by astronomers, there was another series that was organized around themes. A fifteen minute radio program that aired three days a week - Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays - at 10:30 p.m., and ran from September 1940 through January 1941. The show, titled Back Where I Come From, was written by Alan Lomax, directed by Nicholas Ray, who would later go on to direct Rebel Without a Cause, and featured Woody Guthrie.

[Back Where I Come From excerpt]

In the summer of 1940 Alan Lomax began work on one of his long-time pet dreams, a folk music series for prime time network radio. Lomax would act as the writer and long-distance producer for Back Where I Come From from his Washington, D.C. home base, while his pal Nick Ray would be the on-scene New York City director.

To give the series the creative foundation it needed to be more than just another hillbilly radio show, Lomax came up with the idea to have each of the programs dedicated around a theme - trains, marriage, animals - and would include skits and dramatic readings as well as songs on that night's subject. The theme idea probably came from the all-night singing contests that Guthrie, Lomax and other invited folksingers delighted in, where the group would challenge each other to name as many songs as they could on a given subject. During one six-hour evening, Lomax recalled, he and Guthrie came up with over 200 songs about animals and stopped singing only after neighbors threatened to call the police.

The pilot of Back Where I Come From aired on August 19, 1940 on the Forecast series; a try-out incubator for new CBS radio shows. The first episode was hosted by Clifton "Kip" Fadiman, a New York literati - writer, editor, and critic - who was already well-known to radio audiences as the host of the popular Information Please quiz show, which he would moderate for 17 years. Joining Fadiman were Willie Johnson and the Golden Gate Quartet, Josh White, Burl Ives, actor Len Doyle, and Woody Guthrie.

Just like the first episode of Theme Time Radio Hour sixty-six years later, the theme of the first episode of Back Where I Come From would be... the weather.

That first 30-minute show was, charitably speaking, a bit uneven. Whatever his skills as a music historian, Lomax was a ham-fisted writer, at least as it came to radio dialog. With the exception of Guthrie's relaxed, entertaining segment on the Dust Bowl and the Golden Gate Quartet's closing gospel sermon-in-miniature about Noah and the Flood, which sounded as if it were being delivered direct from a Baptist Church, most of the show was leaden and artificial. It was all very "merry" and "jolly" Lomax would later write sarcastically, and had little of the authentic voice of America he wanted.

Typical of the pseudo-folksiness in the first episode was a lengthy segment starring Len Doyle, sometimes described as a "cornpone comedian" in accounts about the pilot. In reality the cornpone was being supplied by Lomax, and Doyle was actually a journeyman character actor who would later move on to the popular Mr. District Attorney crime drama that same year, and stay with that show for a 12-year run. Doyle was probably relieved to find a better gig than "The Natural-born Expert" role he had been saddled with on Back Where I Come From. "The Natural-born Expert" was a particularly irritating "done-everything and knows-it-all" character, delivering his pronouncements in a W.C. Fields-like voice, and was apparently conceived by Lomax as a foil for Guthrie, who dryly interrupts Doyle's "Now, you take me-" blustering with, "Brother, I wouldn't take you to a Sunday dance."

Happily, there are genuine nuggets in the show too, especially its major production number, intermingling Woody's So Long, It's Been Good to Know You with dramatic vignettes illustrating people's response to the Great Dust Storm of 1935.

[So Long, It's Been Good to Know You - Woody Guthrie and cast]

The pilot of Back Where I Come From was generally regarded as a success by CBS execs., who took the unusual step of moving ahead with the series even though the show had been unable to secure a sponsor. We might take a moment to reflect on this: Here's an experimental show on folk music, hosted by a New York intellectual, with a cast of relatively unknown black and white artists, some of whose politics is a bit Red, and all sharing the stage on a equal footing. The show can't find a sponsor... and the network decides to put it on the air anyway. Somehow you can't imagine that happening today.

In any case, Woody, who had been paid $83 for doing the pilot, found himself an overnight radio sensation thanks to Back Where I Come From. In close order Guthrie was invited to sing on a CBS talent show and offered three hundred dollars to write and perform a ballad about Wild Bill Hickok for a new NBC radio series. But both offers were topped by the Model Tobacco Company, who wanted Guthrie as host for its weekly show on CBS, Pipe Smoking Time. Pipe Smoking Time offered $200 a week, and with an agreement that Woody could keep his role on Back Where I Come From, which paid $150 a week, Guthrie's income had gone from problematic to healthy in a matter of days.

But not without problems. Back Where I Come From began as a regular program in late September 1940, and by the end of the month Woody Sez - Guthrie's popular column for the U.S. Communist Party's newspaper The Daily Worker - was discontinued without explanation. A spokesperson for the Party said it had been done by mutual agreement. Guthrie later claimed he had been fired for being "too wild." The truth might have been that the Daily Worker wasn't happy about having a people's columnist who was also going to flog tobacco for a capitalist boss.

Or maybe Woody was feeling overstretched and guilty. Certainly he started acting as the gadfly on Back Where I Come From, where he had much more influence than the tightly controlled Pipe Smoking Time. Less than a month after the series start, Guthrie was threatening to quit over what he felt was Nicholas Ray's obstructionist attitude towards Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. Ray wasn't enthusiastic about Leadbelly's appearances on the show, feeling that his thick accent was incomprehensible to a white audience. Worse, Leadbelly was functionally illiterate, meaning that he couldn't read the lines scripted for him. Woody didn't care; he wanted his friend to have a regular role on the show. And if he didn't, then neither would Woody. Lomax arranged a long-distance compromise, and show regular Josh White ended up reciting Leadbelly's spoken lines, while Leadbelly himself continued to sing his songs.

But still in conflict with Ray about almost every facet of the show, Guthrie quit in late October, eventually missing a few episodes before Lomax again stepped in as mediator between the two. Guthrie would return and eventually take on a larger role in Back Where I Come From, narrating several shows, including what would become Nicholas Ray's favorite, a December 6th episode on the 13th Amendment.

In the interim, Pipe Smoking Time with Your Host Woody Guthrie had begun its run in November of 1940, and Woody found that the Model Tobacco Company was a much harsher boss than Lomax and Ray. Guthrie was almost immediately sickened by the compromises he was forced to make - including singing a rewritten version of So Long as the show theme - and by the end of the year he had had enough of radio. In early January 1941 Woody sent off an "I Quit!" letter to Nick Ray. He may have done the same with Pipe Smoking Time's producers. The record is unclear about whether he was fired, quit, or simply walked away from the program after only seven episodes. In any case, he was gone, "lit out again," as he would write to Lomax.

"Money sometimes takes on the appearance of a something that's used to put monkeys in your head." - Woody Guthrie

Typically, Woody Guthrie would bounce between a desire for commercial success and then do his best to sabotage his own chances whenever success seemed within his grasp. By February 1941, he was writing an apologetic letter to Nicholas Ray from California, asking for his old job on Back Where I Come From. But the show - still without a sponsor - had been canceled by CBS, and that was that.

Fast-forward some 20-odd years later, and Bob Dylan is visiting Alan Lomax's loft on West 3rd Street in New York City, where as Dylan would relate, "I spent many nights... listening to and meeting all kinds of folk music people which I never would have come in contact with." One of those "folk music people" Dylan would meet would be Carla Rotolo, Lomax's personal assistant, who would go on to introduce him to her younger sister Suze. Both Rotolo and Lomax's daughter, Anna, remember Dylan as a regular visitor to the apartment, spending much of his time digging his way through Lomax's extensive music collection, which almost certainly contained recordings of the Back Where I Come From program. You can imagine the 20-year-old pausing as he studied a label for a radio show that aired the year before he was born and starred his hero, live, and at the height of his powers.

"Can I listen to this?" Bob Dylan asks.

Fast-forward another 40-odd years, and now we're in the realm of pure fantasy, but imagine: We're still in New York City, in a large room in Greenwich Village, four or five people talking. Jeff Rosen is almost certainly there. Maybe Eddie Gorodetsky. Maybe one or two others of the small trusted cadre.

"Well, we know what sort of music we want to play," someone says. "But we need something to tie it all together, I dunno, some sort of-"

Bob Dylan, who doesn't do meetings well, is bored, staring out the window, thinking of the old days in this city, thinking of the apartment he used to visit on a cold, snowy New York day like this.

"- a theme," someone interrupts. "Exactly."

And the Man Who Never Forgets Anything Connected to Music swings his cowboy boots off the table, clears his throat and says, "Ya got it. We're gonna do a theme radio show. Things like 'Marriage,' 'Trains,' 'Animals.' All songs connected to that theme."

Thinking 40-odd years back, Bob Dylan laughs. "And the first show has got to be about the weather," he says.


Sources and Further Reading/Listening: Dreamtime wants to thank the reader/listener who sent us an email that set us on the trail of Back Where I Come From and who prefers, as the saying goes, to remain anonymous. But you know who you are, and this episode is dedicated to you with my thanks.

Woody Guthrie's involvement with the Back Where I Come From and Pipe Smoking Time radio shows during 1940-41 is noted in both Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie: A Life, and Ed Cray's Ramblin' Man. Although neither biography has a particularly detailed description of that four-month period, with the two together I was able to piece together what I think is an accurate time-line.

Bob Dylan's meeting Carla Rotolo and his frequent visits to Alan Lomax's apartment are well-chronicled in several places including, if you'll forgive the pun, Dylan's own Chronicles: Volume One. Anna Lomax's recollection of Dylan's visits to the apartment are from Howard Sounes' Down the Highway.

I was pleased to find that the pilot "Weather" show of Back Where I Come From is in wide circulation among collectors, and is available as a torrent on the Web in a number of locations, including hungercity.org. Readers may also be interested in this transcription of Guthrie's So Long segment from that show.

Although only one man can tell us whether the idea for TTRH was born from Back Where I Come From, consider whether all this can be chalked up to coincidence. Both shows' pilots were on "The Weather," and both shows have had episodes on marriage, trains, and animals. Bob Dylan was a frequent visitor to Alan Lomax's apartment as well as being a major fan of Woody Guthrie, and was known to immerse himself in Lomax's music collection whenever he had the opportunity. All that makes the possibility shift from "likely" to "near-certainty," in my opinion. I'm a poker player, and I would happily shove my entire stack into the pot on that much circumstantial evidence.

***
Back Where I Come From timeline

August (19) 1940 - Pilot from "Forecast" series for BWICF.

August 1940 - Guthrie signs BWICF series contract for $150 per week. Model Tobacco offers him hosting job on NBC's Pipe Smoking Time starting in November 1940 at around $200 per week. Offers includes agreement that Woody can continue gig with BWICF.

(Late) September, 1940 - BWICF begins airing for 15 minutes at 10:30 p.m. on MWF evenings on CBS. Show is unsponsored.

September 1940 - Woody's Daily Worker Woody Sez column ends without explanation. CWP spokesperson says "mutual agreement." Woody would later claim he was fired because he was "too wild" for the Party.

September/October? 1940 - Woody in conflict with Ray over Leadbelly and threatens to walk off show. Lomax provides compromise.

Late October 1940 - Guthrie quits BWICF because of continuing conflicts with Ray.

Nov (1) 1940 - Lomax letter writes to Woody to get "his side of story" on conflicts with Ray, and offers to again act as mediator between them. Guthrie returns to BWICF after missing at least one show and becomes narrator for many of the following shows.

Nov( 25) 1940 Pipe Smoking Time program with Woody as host begins.

Dec (6) 1940 - Woody narrates BWICF episode on the anniversary of 13th Amendment's ratification. Ray later recalls it as BWICF "at its very best."

Jan (1) 1941 - Most of cast from BWICF plays fund raiser at Will Geer's house.

Early Jan 1941 - Woody sends notice to Ray at BWICF and quits/is fired from PST radio show. He and the family return to California.

February 1941 - Woody writes to Ray asking for his BWICF job back; Ray replies that show has been canceled.

***

You've been listening to the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. Dreamtime is researched and written by Fred Bals and is a Not Associated With production. As the name says, we're not associated with XM Radio, Bob Dylan, or much of anything else.

Some of the music on Dreamtime is provided via the Podsafe Music Network. Check it out at music.podshow.com.

Remember that the Dreamtime team loves to get email. You can write us at dreamtimepodcast@gmail.com

The Dreamtime top cats are Curly Lasagna and Shaggy Bear. Our announcers are the notorious honky-tonkin' sisters, Jailbait and Joyride.

Until next time, dream well.

Visit the Dreamtime Store