Bob Dylan's Story Songs Quiz | Bob Dylan Lyrics

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. "but yes, I think it can be very easily done"

Answer: Highway 61 Revisited

From the 1965 album of the same name, "Highway 61 Revisited" concerns U.S. Route 61 - aka "the blues highway" - running from northeast Minnesota to New Orleans, Louisiana. Each stanza of the song concerns an existential problem that is solved by being on Highway 61, including a promoter who was being talked into starting World War III, which is where this lyric snippet came from.

2. "By the old wooden stove our hats was hung"

Answer: Bob Dylan's Dream

The song is from "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" album in 1963. I played that part of the song a few times to determine if he really called it a "wooden" stove. He did. The album was released a month after this song was recorded so possibly they realized the lyric was wrong but were pressed for time and didn't want to take the time to record it again (the album had taken a year to make).

The lyrics, as is, can be found on Dylan's website. The song is about life's turns and lost friendships and apparently takes much from the old English ballad "Lord Franklin". I guess a wooden stove would be for a one-time use only.

3. "said 'Here's a ring, it cost a grand'; she said 'That ain't enough.'"

Answer: Black Diamond Bay

This story was an end-of-the-world scenario, at least for the people on the island where Black Diamond Bay was located. As a volcano erupted and an earthquake began people became desperate. A soldier tried to impress a woman with a ring; it didn't work.

The song is from Dylan's "Desire" album in 1976. Jacques Levy cowrote the song and Emmylou Harris sang backup. It was based on Joseph Conrad's novel "Victory".

4. "They're selling postcards of the hanging"

Answer: Desolation Row

They really did. They sold postcards of the lynching of three black circus workers in Duluth, Minnesota, near Dylan's home town, in 1920. The song is a melange of real and fictitious characters dealing with being in, not wanting to be in, or not wanting to leave a place called Desolation Row. It's another song from the "Highway 61 Revisited" album.

5. "I said 'You know, they refused Jesus, too'. He said 'You're not Him.'"

Answer: Bob Dylan's 115th Dream

Did I use the word "absurd" in the introduction to this quiz? Yes, and this song is one of the reasons why. In the song, from "Bringing It All Back Home" (1965) the narrator is aboard a boat commanded by Captain A-rab, which discovers an America (apparently New York City) already awash with restaurants, a police force, funeral homes, etc.

After managing to escape from the craziness and leaving the bay he meets Columbus and his ships sailing in. He just wishes him "good luck".

6. "Big Jim lay covered up, killed by a penknife in the back."

Answer: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts

Dylan's 1975 album "Blood on the Tracks" is considered by critics to be one of his best. This song is from that album and among the storylines is a love triangle (or is it quadrangle?) among the main characters, a slow-motion break-in of the bank vault and a play being performed at the town's cabaret.

A verse from the written lyrics which explained much of the relationship of two of the characters was left out of this version and was not heard until another version was included in "The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks", released in 2018 (it was, however, included in the original sheet music).

7. "quite lucky to be alive, though"

Answer: Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues

If you could picture Bob Dylan doing his take on Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" this might be what it would sound like. It was based on a real event in which fake tickets were sold for a Father's Day, 1961 cruise to a New York state park.

In reality, the boat didn't sink but a riot started when people figured out there were too many people to fit on the boat. Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul and Mary showed Dylan a newspaper story about it. Dylan wrote the song overnight and recorded it but it wasn't released on an album until "The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3: Rare & Unreleased" set of CDs in 1991.

8. "You unpatriotic, rotten doctor Commie rat."

Answer: Motorpsycho Nitemare

This song is a reimagining of Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Psycho" linked with traveling salesman jokes and Cold War fears. The narrator talks his way into staying overnight at a farmer's house, is tempted by the farmer's daughter and barely escapes with his life.

It is from 1964's "Another Side of Bob Dylan", a shifting of focus for some of Dylan's themes, as evidenced by the album's title, which was suggested by his producer, Tom Wilson.

9. "Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?"

Answer: Shelter from the Storm

A tale of love found and then lost, "Shelter from the Storm" is another from "Blood on the Tracks", an album with songs written and recorded while Dylan and his wife Sara were estranged. Dylan has consistently denied that the songs on the album were biographical.

10. "Don't go mistaking Paradise for that home across the road."

Answer: The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest

This song is from the "John Wesley Harding" album in 1967. The snippet is the last line of the song which seems to be a morality play about watching out for yourself and others and not going where one does not belong. Dylan delivers it as more of a spoken-word story than a song.

Source: Author CmdrK

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Bob Dylan's Story Songs Trivia Quiz

Some of Bob Dylan's songs are intricate (sometimes absurd) stories, sometimes leading nowhere. Can you match the lyric snippets to the song titles?

Questions		Choices
1. "but yes, I think it can be very easily done"		The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
2. "By the old wooden stove our hats was hung"		Black Diamond Bay
3. "said 'Here's a ring, it cost a grand'; she said 'That ain't enough.'"		Bob Dylan's 115th Dream
4. "They're selling postcards of the hanging"		Desolation Row
5. "I said 'You know, they refused Jesus, too'. He said 'You're not Him.'"		Motorpsycho Nitemare
6. "Big Jim lay covered up, killed by a penknife in the back."		Shelter from the Storm
7. "quite lucky to be alive, though"		Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
8. "You unpatriotic, rotten doctor Commie rat."		Highway 61 Revisited
9. "Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?"		Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues
10. "Don't go mistaking Paradise for that home across the road."		Bob Dylan's Dream