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The Ballad of Hollis Brown

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“Ex-Farm Family, now on WPA.” Photo credit: Dorothea Lange.
Farm Security Administration, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library Archives.
In regard to “Fair Ellender” – the subject of this blog’s first post – I suggested that the Brown Girl’s murderous act might be motivated not by jealousy but by a sense of incredible helplessness and frustration arising from the fact that she is about to lose everything that belongs to her (either to a cad of a fiancé or to the laws of the time that prevented a woman from owning her own property). This theme – loss of property, material opportunity, and independence – has popped up a few times in the blog as a possible motive for murder, albeit one usually obscured by romantic triangles. 


This week we look at a song in which any romance is long dead and this motive is explicit — Bob Dylan’s “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” the second track on The Times They Are a’Changin’.(It’s about time we dedicated some space to Dylan, don’t you think? And now is perfect as today marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Dylan’s first album, when he was just 20.)

I’ll start by saying directly about “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” what the song itself does not: Hollis Brown is a man who takes a shotgun and brutally shoots his five young children, his wife, and finally himself. Take a look and a listen (turn the volume way up, as the sound on this amazing original video isn’t great):

 
“The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” Bob Dylan, 1964
What do I mean when I say the song doesn’t tell us exactly what happened on this South Dakota farm? After all, it seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? What I’m referring to is the shift in voice from the first stanza, which describes Hollis Brown in the third person — 
 
Hollis Brown
He lived on the outside of town
With his wife and five children
And his cabin fallin’ down
— to the eight stanzas that make up the body of the song, which address Hollis Brown as “you,” and thus address all of us too, making Hollis Brown a sort of Everyman —
 
You looked for work and money
And you walked a rugged mile
You looked for work and money
And you walked a rugged mile
Your children are so hungry
That they don’t know how to smile
— and finally to the last two stanzas of the song, in which Hollis Brown the man has all but disappeared, his agency is erased, and nature takes over (which is, come to think of it, kind of like what happens to him on his farm):
There’s seven breezes a-blowin’
All around the cabin door
There’s seven breezes a-blowin’
All around the cabin door
Seven shots ring out
Like the ocean’s pounding roar
There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There’s seven new people born
We’ve looked at songs in which the murderer speaks in the first person, and even songs in which the murder victim speaks in the first person (as she is murdered, no less). But I think this is the first time we’ve looked at a song in which the singer is addressing the murderer directly as “you” — or, more to the point, as us. 
“Ms. Handley and Some of Her Children.” Photo credit:
Farm Security Administration, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library Archives. 

And doing so with incredible sympathy, given that “we’ve” done the unthinkable and just blown ourselves and our entire family away. (This is also our first familicide on the blog, I think…even the meddling parents we’ve looked at didn’t use so direct and brutal a hand.)

This affinity between Dylan, Hollis Brown, and the audience is part of what helps make the song a protest song, and what gives it lasting power. Through this shift in person, the song addresses not one man’s guilt — at least not only that — but also the widespread personal and social despair created by the erosion of the farming industry as a whole in the United States.
We’ll get to that big topic a bit later this week. For now, in the words of Nina Simone — the first of many to create a stunning cover of “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” — the song is a sad story not about what one man did to his family but, rather, about what happened to him:


“The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” Nina Simone, 1965
 
The most recent cover of the song — by the contemporary American punk band Rise Against for Amnesty International’s tribute album Chimes of Freedom — also makes this clear. Indeed, this version hits you over the head with the message, perhaps appropriately so given the genre:


“The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” Rise Against, 2012
> listen to the song on Spotify
> listen to the Chimes of Freedom album on Spotify



If only the Brown Girl had had such advocates for her desperate situation…

Next up: many more amazing covers of this song, which demonstrate how its message translated not just throughout the folk community, but also through the R&B, soul, rock, metal, and punk communities (yes, there’s more) — and what this genre-travel reminds us about Dylan’s own persona, messages, frustrations, and legacy. 

Also: a picture of Hollis Brown alongside other desperate farmers in the ballad genre, and an unforgettable version of the song that doesn’t shy away from tying the desperate farmer more directly to his deeds.

Related posts:

  1. I started making plans to kill my own kind…
  2. The limits of empathy
  3. Nobody Sings Dylan like Dylan
  4. Pat’s Essential Eleven Non-Traditional Murder Ballads

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