Dylan's Hattie Carroll: Truth & Lies

[Slade]

I’ve just been researching Bob Dylan’s The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll for a new essay on my PlanetSlade website, and it’s thrown up a few interesting questions I’d like to get Dopers’ views on.

The song tells how William Zantzinger, a prosperous Maryland farmer, got drunk at a Baltimore hotel dance in 1963, and struck a black barmaid there with his cane when she was too slow to serve him. She collapsed and was taken to hospital, where a range of pre-existing health conditions combined with the stress caused by Zantzinger’s assault to kill her a few hours later. Zantzinger was arrested and tried, but convicted only of manslaughter and given a sentence of just six months.

Dylan’s song is a magnificent work of art, but it does misrepresent the facts of the case in quite a few ways. Dylan says Zantzinger was charged with “first-degree murder”, claims he was held by the police for only “a matter of minutes” before being released on bail and demotes Carroll to “a maid of the kitchen”. Arguably, he also implies that Zantzinger’s conviction was for murder rather than manslaughter and that he beat Carroll to death, pure and simple. None of that’s true, and we know now that Zantzinger (or “Zanzinger” as Dylan has it) seriously considered suing over the song.

So, my question is this: what responsibility, if any, does a songwriter have to get his facts right when adapting a real-life incident into song? And do those responsibilities change at all if the singer repeatedly calls the song – as Dylan has done with Hattie Carroll – “a true story” when playing it live?

If you feel free to simply change whatever facts don’t suit your chosen argument, then doesn’t that just leave you with the weasel words “based on a true story”? We’ve all seen that line on a hundred crappy movies and learned for ourselves just how meaningless it is.

Discuss.

[twickster]

Could you link to the lyrics? I think that would help evaluate this.

Even without seeing the lyrics, though – I’m trying to imagine the circumstances under which I’d expect a work of art to be factually accurate in every particular. If it were, it wouldn’t be a work of art, it would be a biography/history. Once you’re transforming it into art, some changes become necessary, sometimes simply by the nature of the work of art. (I’m imagining a biography told in rhymed couplets – you could either have a completely accurate recounting, or a good poem, but not both.) In any novel or movie, you end up with things left out in the interest of time/space … characters omitted or combined … chronology changed. In a shorter piece, like a song, how much more is that necessary!

Now, whether Dylan should be saying “this is true” vs. “this is based on a true story” – hm. How much is he really misrepresenting the song’s relationship to the truth? Is anyone actually expecting it to be completely true? If not, does it really matter?

(Yikes, and I’m saying this as someone trained in academia, who reads footnotes, and who works currently mostly as a writer and editor of nonfiction works, where factual accuracy absolutely is the bottom line. You think you’re surprised that I’m saying this!)

[Slade]

@twickster

Could you link to the lyrics? I think that would help evaluate this.

Lyrics here:

http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/lonesome-death-hattie-carroll

[Voyager]

I’ve looked up the story too, and you are right - what happened was nowhere close to first degree murder. Zantzinger was also not nearly as rich or influential as Dylan made him out to be.

However, I wonder how much information Dylan had when he wrote the song. Was it from a news report, or rumor? He certainly did not research it, I suspect. He was also going through an angry period - “When the Ship Comes In” was written in response to being hassled at a hotel.
The only justification I can imagine (but don’t buy) was that the song was about the broader issue of oppression and that blacks in the South (Baltimore counts) could be injured by whites without major punishment.

If you want an even worse travesty, without any possible social good, take a look at “Joey” about the crazy mobster Joey Gallo.

I say this, btw, as a huge Dylan fan, not as a Dylan-hater.

[twickster]

[hijack]
From the bobdylan.com news page:

If you are so inclined, feel free to get updates from bobdylan.com’s Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/bobdylan

Early news on ticket pre-sales, nightly set lists, the best of Bob Dylan coverage on the Web, and a deep sense of belonging: all available to bobdylan.com’s Twitter followers.

This is right up there with the Victoria’s Secret ads for Dylan WTF moments. “A deep sense of belonging”? :eek:
[/hijack]

Thanks for the link – that was very lazy of me.

Having read the lyrics – my stance is the same as it was before. Yeah, not completely factually accurate – but I’m not seeing a huge problem with it.

Is he still performing the song regularly? What, exactly, does he say about it when he does? Just “this is a true story”?

[AskNott]

Old Bob always renews his Poetic License on time, and it’s valid in 49 states. None is required in Tennessee.

[Voyager]

@twickster

Having read the lyrics – my stance is the same as it was before. Yeah, not completely factually accurate – but I’m not seeing a huge problem with it.

Is he still performing the song regularly? What, exactly, does he say about it when he does? Just “this is a true story”?

The last few times I saw him, he didn’t say much of anything at all about any song.
You might not have a problem with it, but if your name is William Zantzinger and a large portion of the middle aged population of the country is convinced you got away with murder due to racism and your connections, you might think different. I always thought the guy was a piece of scum before I got around to looking up the true story.

[Simplicio]

@Voyager

I’ve looked up the story too, and you are right - what happened was nowhere close to first degree murder

I believe Dylan was at least technically right about the initial charge, he was held for first degree murder when he was first arrested. The charge was lessened when it was discovered Hattie hadn’t died directly from the blow with the cane. So Dylan is being misleading, but he’s at least technically correct.

I always thought the guy was a piece of scum before I got around to looking up the true story.

Honestly, having read up on the guy, he actually almost seems worse in RL then in Dylan’s depiction. From wikipedia:

Already drunk before he got to the Emerson Hotel that night, Zantzinger, 24 years old and 6’2",[1] had assaulted employees at Eager House, a prestigious Baltimore restaurant, with the same cane.[2] The cane was a 25-cent toy.[1] At the Spinsters’ Ball, he called a 30-year-old waitress a “nigger” and hit her with the cane; she fled the room in tears.[2] Moments later, after ordering a bourbon that Carroll didn’t bring immediately, Zantzinger cursed at her, called her a “nigger” also,[1] then “you black son of a bitch,” and struck her on the shoulder and across the head with the cane. After striking Carroll, he attacked his own wife, knocking her to the ground[2] and hitting her with his shoe.[1]

At that point, the Maryland Independent newspaper broke the scandal: in a hamlet about thirty miles from Washington, D.C., Zantzinger was charging black families rent to live in shacks he no longer owned.[1] Even when he had owned them, prior to their confiscation by the county, the poorly-maintained properties in Patuxent Woods and Indian Head were in violation of county habitability codes, lacking water and sewer connections. Lacking even outhouses, the human waste dumped on the ground contaminated the water in the shallow wells. He was charging as much as $200 a month for these buildings, which also lacked modern heat.[1] In one example, a four-room shanty contained at least six people.[11]

The Washington Post picked up the story and reported that Zantzinger had won court judgments as late as 1990 for back rent against delinquent tenants on those properties, five years after they went into forfeiture in 1985 and four years after the county formally took title in 1986.[1][12] He illegally collected amounts ranging from $600 to $10,364 per household after the county took title,[9] reaching a total of more than $64,000.[12]

But yea, in general I would assume that artists aren’t giving you the full story in their songs. Especially since Dylan says he wrote the song in one sitting in a cafe, and hence probably wasn’t doing any research. Still, at least in this case, he was speaking to a greater truth, Zatzinger was an asshole.

[panamajack]

My familiarity with the events in the song was (prior to this thread) based only on hearing it (and a discussion on the poetry of the song on Cambridge Forum that added only a few details). I actually had the impression from the song that it could almost have been an accident, or an act of someone acting violently without regard to those around him. Dylan says he ‘killed for no reason’. He also impersonalizes the killing by referring to the cane as the actor, and instead of saying it was meant for Ms. Carroll specifically he says it was determined to ‘destroy all the gentle’.

He never claims in a legal sense that the conviction was for murder, and in a popular sense (and perhaps in Dylan’s mind) it could have been called murder. The most egregious falsehood appears to be the length of time Zantzinger was held before bail.

Obviously I’m coming at it without the knowledge that most people at the time would have had. Still, I think it speaks to the fact that there’s not enough in the song itself for a lawsuit to have been effective.

[Slade]

Voyager asked: “I wonder how much information Dylan had when he wrote the song. Was it from a news report, or rumor?”

Dylan’s two main sources seem to have been an undated newspaper clipping reproduced in Broadside (a folk music magazine which often printed his lyrics) and The New York Times’ report of Zantzinger’s sentence. Unfortunately, the Broadside clipping was a little too politically-committed to be a reliable source of the facts, and all Dylan took from the Times story was the length of Zantzinger’s sentence. He introduced a few factual errors which were all his own as well.

Twickster asked: “Is he still performing the song regularly? What, exactly, does he say about it when he does? Just ‘this is a true story’?”

Dylan’s toured in 37 of the 47 years since writing Hattie Carroll, and played it live on stage in all but five of those touring years. Two years of that touring - 1979 and 1980 - were devoted to his Christian material alone, leaving just three years between 1963 and 2009 when he could have included Hattie Carroll in his live repertoire, but chose not to do so. He’s played it live every single year since 1986, and included it on at least two official live albums.

He has sometimes hedged his bets when introducing the song on stage. At Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1965, for example, he said: “This is a true story. This is taken out of the newspaper. Nothing but the words have been changed.” Make of that what you will.

Simplicio said: “I believe Dylan was at least technically right about the initial charge, he was held for first degree murder when he was first arrested.”

Actually, that’s not true. Zantzinger was charged with what Baltimore’s leading black newspaper called “murder generally”, a charge which certainly encompasses first-degree murder, but could equally include second-degree murder or manslaughter. Because of Carroll’s existing poor health and the fact that Zantzinger never set out to kill, a murder charge could not be sustained and the eventual verdict was manslaughter.

*Simplicio also said: “Still, at least in this case, he was speaking to a greater truth”. *

I agree. For me, the small lies that Hattie Carroll tells along the way are more than justified by the core truth it contains. But if Dylan had told the world I’d been charged with first-degree murder when that wasn’t the case, I might feel rather differently about it.

Panamajack said: “He never claims in a legal sense that the conviction was for murder […] I think it speaks to the fact that there’s not enough in the song itself for a lawsuit to have been effective.”

Well, the only charge Dylan mentions is the “first-degree murder” one in his first verse, so what else are listeners supposed to conclude the conviction was for? In fact, we don’t know whether a libel lawsuit from Zantzinger would have succeeded or not, because the matter was never tested in court. My own view is that, in the libel courts, where the test is one of simple factual accuracy, Zantzinger may well have won his case.

For more information on all these subjects, and every other aspect of the song, please do read my essay. My PlanetSlade essay. Have I mentioned that?

[koeeoaddi]

The worst sin of The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, IMO, is the atrocious last line, which has bugged me since I was about 12 years old.

…but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
bury the rag deep in your face
for now’s the time for your tears.

Interesting article, Slade, though despite the embellishments and misinformation, I can’t say I feel all that bad for Mr. Zantzinger. Incidentally, Dylan was even more egregiously inaccurate in his song Hurricane, which apparently he hasn’t performed since the mid 70s.

[Simplicio]

@koeeoaddi

Dylan was even more egregiously inaccurate in his song Hurricane, which apparently he hasn’t performed since the mid 70s.

Honestly the complaints of inaccuracies mentioned in that wikipedia article seem pretty nitpicky. I’d say the misrepresentations in Hattie Carrol are a lot more meaningful.