There’s a wonderful piece in the Travel section of today’s New York Times. Called Highway 61, Visited, it’s the chronicle of a road trip along Highway 61, “the fabled Blues Highway that runs from the Mississippi Delta through Duluth, where [Bob] Dylan was born, and that Mr. Dylan mythologized in his 1965 masterpiece ‘Highway 61 Revisited.'” If you’re a Dylan fan, this story will be interesting:
One hundred miles to the northwest, in Fargo, N.D., a little-known but portentous moment in rock ‘n’ roll history occurred when, on the night after Buddy Holly died in a plane crash on the way to a gig there in February 1959, an 18-year-old piano player named Robert Zimmerman (later known to the world as Bob Dylan) sat in with a fellow Minnesotan, Bobby Vee, whose band was conscripted at the last minute to fill Holly’s place on the bill.
If you’re not a Dylan fan, but you love tales of real America, you still might like this fine little piece of journalism.
Ed Bott 