This Week in Texas Music History: Bob Dylan and The Hawks
Photo Courtesy of expectingrain.comThis Week in Texas Music History we’ll remember the night a famous folk singer electrified Austin.
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On September 24, 1965, Bob Dylan performed at Austin’s Municipal Auditorium backed by a rock and roll band called Levon and the Hawks. This was Dylan’s first public appearance with the Hawks, who later would come to be known as the Band and would serve as Dylan’s main backup group. Two months before his Austin appearance, Bob Dylan had upset many of his fans when he performed on electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival. Audiences booed him at Newport and elsewhere for supposedly abandoning folk music and switching to rock and roll. However, when Dylan and the Hawks played in Austin, the crowd responded positively.
The following night Bob Dylan and the Hawks played in Dallas, where they were also warmly received. Dylan later commented that these early Texas audiences were the first to truly understand what he was trying to achieve artistically by blending folk music with rock and roll.
Next time on This Week in Texas Music History, we’ll meet a rockabilly cat who sang his own version of a nursery rhyme.
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