Hurricane by Bob Dylan (1967)

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A view of the sleeve cover photograph of Bob Dylan's Hurricane, showing boxer Rubin Hurricane Carter in a fighting stance.

Hurricane is a protest song released in 1967 by Bob Dylan as a track from his album Desire. The song was co-written with Jacques Levy and talked about the imprisonment of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, which compiles racism and profiling against Carter, described as leading to a false trial and conviction by Dylan.

In 1966, the boxer Carter and John Aris had been charged with a triple murder at the Lafayette Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. They both found guilty in the following year, which was widely reported as a racial motive. [1]

Bob Dylan

Key Lyrics

Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night

Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall

She sees the bartender in a pool of blood

Cries out, “My God, they killed them all!”

Here comes the story of the Hurricane

The man the authorities came to blame

For something that he never done

Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been

The champion of the world

Three bodies lyin' there

Does Patty see

And another man named Bello

Moving around mysteriously

“I didn’t do it,” he says

And he throws up his hands

“I was only robbin' the register

I hope you understand

I saw them leaving,” he says, and he stops

“One of us had better call up the cops”

And so Patty calls the cops

And they arrive on the scene

With their red lights flashin'

In the hot New Jersey night [2]

Black Empowerment

Hurricane is one of Dylan’s most notable historical songs which highlighted the conviction of boxer Rubin Carter, or also known as The Hurricane, a former middleweight boxer, and his friend. Both Carter and Artis were prisoned for triple murder charges, while they finally found guilty after twenty years imprisoned.

The case became highlights for the inadequacies of the justice system and the racism in America, even after the Civil Rights Era, on August 1963 March on Washington, came to a close, while the real killers remain unknown and have never been brought to justice. This song also represents today’s struggle for justice and equality in the U.S. and abroad. [3]

Dylan was inspired to write Carter’s autobiography after visiting him in prison. After their meeting, Dylan decided to write a song about Hurricane, but struggled to put his emotions on paper when the time arrived.

“Bob wasn’t sure that he could write a song [about Carter]… He was just filled with all these feelings about Hurricane,” it was detailed about Dylan’s approach to the song. “He couldn’t make the first step. I think the first step was putting the song in a total storytelling mode. I don’t remember whose idea it was to do that."

“But really, the beginning of the song is like stage directions, like what you would read in a script: ‘Pistol shots ring out in a barroom night… Here comes the story of the Hurricane.’ Boom! Titles.” [4]

References

  1. Hurricane (Bob Dylan song). wikipedia.org. Retrieved January 27, 2021
  2. Hurricane Bob Dylan. genius.com. Retrieved January 27, 2021
  3. Hurricane Bob Dylan. genius.com. Retrieved January 27, 2021
  4. Watch Bob Dylan perform protest song ‘Hurricane’ live for the very first time, 1975. July 3, 2020. faroutmagazine.co.uk. Retrieved January 27, 2021