More Bits and Pieces: The Hank Snow Transcript & the TTRH Archives

A couple of more random notes, too ephemeral for a full blog post. Lot #234, the "Bobby Zimmerman" transcript of Hank Snow's "Little Buddy" that we blogged about last month goes on the auction block today at Christie's with some other Dylan material, including a 1958 Hibbing High School yearbook with a "Bob Zimmerman" inscription, a couple of Broadsides with Dylan's autograph, and a concert handbill for the Bob Dylan & Joan Baez 1965 US Tour with art by Eric Von Schmidt, which you'll be familiar with if you have a copy of David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street.

That handbill is estimated at only $1,000-1,500, a bargain in my mind, but what do I know? Conversely, I thought the $10-15,000 estimate for the "Little Buddy" manuscript was grossly over-priced even when Christie's was claiming it as a Bob Dylan early original. I'd rather look at a piece of art than words on a page if I were collecting something. But again, what do I know?

It'll be interesting to see what the "Little Buddy" transcript will sell for. It'd be nice if an anonymous buyer from Minnesota, New York City, or Malibu picked it up for the full auction value for the benefit of Herzl Camp in Wisconsin, and then pack it away with whatever other mementos he might have from the early days.

UPDATE:  The "Little Buddy" transcript auctioned off for $12,500, including buyer's premium, a nice contribution to the rehabbing of cabins at Herzl Camp.

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Dreamtime internet pal, Patrick Crosley, better-known to the hoi polloi as "Croz" has transmorgified his namesake site once again, taking the primary content offering "Recordings of Indeterminate Origin" off-line except to members-only access, while leaving the main site up, now labeled the Theme Time Radio Hour Archive. And that's what it is, the complete recordings of Seasons 1, 2, and 3 in zip archived mp3 format. If you're interested in finding a particular show or shows - and about a 1/3 of the people who come to Dreamtime through a search engine are looking for TTRH downloads - Croz.fm will probably satisfy your desire.

Regular readers know I'm a little leery, and more than a little inconsistent, about the whole "illegal downloads" thing. If there were an "official" alternative to getting permanent copies of TTRH shows, I'd point you there. But there isn't. I know Croz, as I know many of the people who were involved in distributing TTRH over the internet, and I know he's a generous, good-hearted soul whose dedication to offering access to TTRH to the widest possible audience was often much more trouble for him than it was worth. And he still did it. As I noted in my TTRH FAQ, sites like Croz's may be the only complete record that will ever be easily accessible to researchers, scholars, and fans, especially with TTRH in its re-run twilight.

Do both yourself and Croz a favor, and read his introduction before doing any downloads, okay? I've talked before about the Tragedy of the Commons, and it would be a tragedy if greedy people drove Croz's server hamsters into overload.

Hank Snow and Bob Dylan Revisited - "The Drunkard's Son"

To wind up yesterday's one-day wonder, Christie's issued a statement acknowledging that "Little Buddy" was written by country-western great, Hank Snow, not by the 16-year-old Bob Zimmerman, and have corrected the description on their site to read: "Handwritten lyrics to the Hank Snow song Little Buddy by the teenage Bob Dylan as a camper at Herzl Camp in Northwestern Wisconsin during the mid-1950s for publication in the camp newspaper The Herzl Herald."

It's good to see that the auction goes on, as the proceeds from the transcript's sale will go to Herzl Camp.  And as the Christie's statement to the press maintains- albeit disingenously - it is one of the earliest known transcriptions in Bob Dylan's hand, if not actually a "Bob Dylan lyric."

Whatever name you want to call this rose, it's more than just an interesting document for those of us fascinated by Dylan's roots, as "Little Buddy" appears to be the second known transcription he made of a Hank Snow song as a young man.  The first was "The Drunkard's Son," a lugubrious tune with a sentiment closer to Victorian times than 19 and 47, which is when Snow originally released it on the Bluebird  label.  As many of Snow's songs were, "The Drunkard's Son"  was re-released in April 1950 on the RCA Victor label, and is very probably another 78 that Bobby Zimmerman owned.

In an old dusty attic of a tenement house
I happened to wander one day
And there on the rafters 'neath shavings and chips
A drunkard's poor little boy lay..."The Drunkard's Son" ~ Hank Snow

Dylan's transcription of of "The Drunkard's Son" appeared in the August-September, 1992 edition of ISIS, which dated the manuscript circa 1952-'55, making the young Bob Zimmerman somewhere between 11 and 14.  Although I don't have a copy of that magazine at hand, commentary on the Web suggests that the transcription was first thought - just like "Little Buddy" - to be a very early example of a Dylan attempt at songwriting, or more accurately poetry, apparently used by the young Bobby Zimmerman to woo a girl he was sweet on.

In an old dusty attic
In a little house, I happened to wander one day
And there in the rafters, mid shavings and chips
A drunkard's poor little boy lay... "The Drunkard's Son" ~ Bobby Zimmerman

After the manuscript was published, someone eventually pointed out that the young Zimmerman's "Drunkard's Son," was actually Hank Snow's "Drunkard's Son," almost exactly paralleling  the "Little Buddy" story.

While I suspect that if we had looked through Bobby Zimmerman's record collection in the late `50s and early `60s, we would have found a wealth of Hank Snow, we know for certain he owned at least one other Hank Snow record.  Clinton Heylin, in Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades  (reissued in 2003 as Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited), quotes Dylan as remarking that he had owned the 1960 LP "Hank Snow Sings Jimmie Rodgers' Songs," as a boy, an album that impressed him so much that he was still calling it "different from the norm" in 1997.

The normally reliable Heylin also mentions the Bobby Zimmerman "The Drunkard's Son" manuscript in the next paragraph, but confuses it with a Jimmie Rodgers song, "The Drunkard's Child," claiming that Dylan's version is modeled after that piece, which it isn't, and shares similar opening lines, which it doesn't.

My father is a drunkard my mother she is dead
And I am just an orphan child no place to lay my head
All through this world I wander they drive me from their door
Someday I'll find a welcome on heaven's golden shore... "The Drunkard's Child," ~ Jimmie Rodgers 

Adding to the confusion, Heylin then goes on to paraphrase the closing lines "I'm hiding with Jesus, who I'll always be by / And my mother, who I love so well," which are indeed from Dylan's (and Snow's) "The Drunkard's Son," but don't appear in Rodgers' 1930 song, "The Drunkard's Child."

Apparently still unaware into 2003 that "The Drunkard's Son" was nearly a word-for-word transcription of Hank Snow's song, Heylin may have conflated it with Rodgers' "The Drunkard's Child" because of the similarities in the titles. In another weird coincidence, Snow actually did cover " The Drunkard's Child" in 19 and 59, putting it on his "theme" L.P. When Tragedy Struck, an album which also included "Little Buddy," just to bring us full circle, and probably yet another Hank Snow record that could be found in Bobby Zimmerman's collection.

All art begins with imitation, Aristotle states in his Poetics, and all artists model themselves on the artists who come before them as they learn their craft.  It's interesting that the two Dylan Hank Snow transcriptions that have come to light are both story songs... one on the death of a beloved dog at the hands of a drunk, the other of a miserable child left to die in an attic by a drunken father. Look back into the past, to Minnesota in the mid-`50s, and maybe you'd find a boy in his room laboriously copying out the lyrics to one of those Hank Snow songs as it played on his turntable.  Looking down at the words, trying to figure out why they moved him, why they would move other listeners...

Figuring out how he could do it himself.

Special thanks to "Johanna Moore" and "The Great Wandu" over at the Expecting Rain forums, and sometime Dreamtime commenters, whose posts put me onto "The Drunkard's Son"

"Little Buddy"... by Hank Snow

Saying more about the state of reportage than anything else, various media outlets are announcing that Christie's will be auctioning off a poem titled "Little Buddy" submitted to his camp newspaper in 19 and 57 by a 16-year-old Bob Zimmerman.

"Bob Dylan's social consciousness and artistry were evident in a poem he penned about a little dog who met a tragic end" gushes the lead for The Washington Post. "It's a very early example of his brilliance," the article  quotes a Christie's "pop culture specialist," who goes on to say, "It comes from the mind of a teenager (with) some very interesting thoughts kind of percolating in his brain."

Actually, it came from the mind of a teenager whose brain was percolatin' with the music of Hank Snow, the Yodellng Ranger, who released "Little Buddy" as a single in the late  `50s  '40s (See the "Addendums" below on the recording history of "Little Buddy").


Broken hearted and so sad
Big blue eyes all covered with tears
Was a picture of sorrow to see
Kneeling close to the side
Of his pal and only pride
A little lad, these words he told me..." ~ "Little Buddy" by Bob Zimmerman

Broken hearted and so sad, golden curls all wet with tears,
'twas a picture of sorrow to see.
Kneeling close to the side of his pal and only pride,
A little lad these words he told me... ~ "Little Buddy" by Hank Snow

The editor of the camp newspaper apparently kept the handwritten transcription of "Little Buddy" for some 52 years. "Do what you want with it," Dylan reportedly told camp officials, possibly with tongue firmly in cheek, when contacted about it.

Hank Snow made some 840 commercial recordings between 1936 and 1985, according to his bio  on the County Music Hall of Fame web site. Eighty-five of his singles hit the Billboard charts from 1949 to 1980, although apparently not "Little Buddy."

Known variously as the "Singing" and "Yodeling" Ranger, Snow seldom used his last name in his early career. During the mid-'40s Snow incorporated a trick riding display into his traveling road show, featuring "Shawnee the Wonder Horse." In a typical show, Snow would ride in on Shawnee, play a couple of tunes on horseback, and then perform some rodeo stunts, including the crowd-pleasing "death drag," and a comedy routine where Shawnee would steal a blanket from a sleeping Snow.

By 1948, Snow was in Dallas, Texas, working in a club owned by Jack Ruby, later infamous for becoming the assassin of John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

In early 1950, Snow made it to the stage of the Grand Ole Opry and was introduced onstage by Hank Williams, Sr., who joked that they should refer to each other as "short and tall" Hank to avoid confusion. Snow's first hit was on RCA, the monster "I’m Moving On" a piece that Snow’s producer had not even wanted him to cut.  The song stayed the charts for forty-four weeks through 1950 and 1951.

Hank Snow averaged two or three Top Ten hits a year during the `50s and `60s, including "A Fool Such as I” (1952), and “I’ve Been Everywhere” (1962).  He was also one of the originators of the country "theme" (you knew we were going to get that in somewhere) concept LP, and one of the earliest champions of Elvis Presley.  Snow's 19 and 85 duet album with Willie Nelson was his last recording.

It'd be interesting to know how Dylan came across "Little Buddy."  Did he have the single (Possibly. See the "addendums" below)?  Did he hear Snow perform it on WSM from the stage of the Grand Ole Opry?  However he first heard it, it impressed him enough to memorize "Little Buddy." Although not an original Dylan, "Little Buddy" is in his handwriting, and probably still worth something even if not as an example of the young Bob Zimmerman being "way before his time" as one of the articles has it.

Maybe what it does show is what Bob Zimmerman was up to that summer in 19 and 57, banging on the piano in the rec. room of Herzl Camp in Webster, Wisconsin, head filled with Hank Snow, on his way to becoming Bob Dylan.

A late addendum... The single pictured above was apparently only for radio use. As far as I can determine, "Little Buddy" was only commercially released on one of Hank Snow's first "theme" LPs, "When Tragedy Struck."  The album was issued on the RCA label in January of 19 and 59, according to the LP Discography site.  and the song was recorded for the album on Apr 17, 1958 at RCA Victor Studio, Nashville in the great state of Tennessee.  It's copyrighted "1958" according to the album liner notes. (I'm wrong.  See the "Yet Another Addendum" below).

This brings up the obvious question about how did Bob Zimmerman provide "Little Buddy" to his camp newspaper in the summer of 19 and 57.  Possibly after all these years, memories fade and the players got the date wrong about when Dylan attended the camp.  Maybe the LP's liner notes have both the recording and copyright dates wrong, although that's unlikely.

But it's more likely that the young Bob Dylan, sponge that he was, heard Snow perform it on the radio, scribbled down the lyrics, and during the summer of 19 and 57 was figuring out how the song was put together.  What worked.  What didn't.  Why one song would tug at your heart and another make you shudder at the saccharine.

On his way, as I said, to becoming Bob Dylan.

Yet Another Addendum:  Thanks to the efforts of "The Chief," (see Comments section) we now know how the young Bob Zimmerman could have transcribed "Little Buddy" in 19 and 57 . Even though Hank Snow apparently copyrighted the song in 1958, he first recorded it at least a decade earlier, once on the Canadian "Bluebird" label in 1948, and later that year as a U.S. re-issue on RCA.  As "The Chief" notes, was Hank Snow's "Little Buddy"/"You Played Love" part of the teenage Bob Zimmerman's record collection in the early `50s?
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