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What would Joan Baez say? A clip from Bob Dylan’s film, Masked and Anonymous, shows Dylan and his band singing a reverent but spirited version of “Dixie” on a website that extols the virtues of the Confederate Army battle flag.

Say what you will about Dylan’s voice but his rendition of “Dixie” enhances one’s appreciation of the song’s qualities when not played and sung in a torrid and haughty manner.  Dylan’s choice of the song for the film was not that surprising.  In recent years he has  conveyed various aspects of America’s history on his albums, his radio shows and in his memoir.  From his earliest recordings, Dylan was a witness to history.  With his vast unparalleled career as a songwriter and performer, Dylan has become part of American history himself.  So as it turns out, the history making artist is the professor with the electric guitar.

Professor Dylan, like the best teachers, presents his subject, helping many of us students relate in various ways.  Some will remember when the playing of “Dixie” first became a controversial matter in the southern states.  The furor commenced in the early seventies as Atlanta area schools were integrating.  For the most part, in my Clayton County high school, integration went smoothly enough.  There were some altercations, but things usually cooled off quickly.  After all, a lot of the white kids liked the black kids and vice versa. Making these new friends was fun and, in the grand social experiment we were participants in, most interesting.

But old traditions become matters of contention in the grand social experiment when people are bogged down by so much unpleasant history.  Hence the playing of “Dixie,” to many just a rollicking tune to rouse passions for the football team at games and pep rallies.  But to others it was a symbol of when one race absolutely dominated the other race.  That reminiscence was painful to one race as it gave the dominant race a chance to whoop it up.  Before the term was popularized, playing the tune was getting  In Your Face. The more the kids whooped it up during the playing of “Dixie,” the more tense and irritated some of the others felt.  This, remember, was a time when Lester Maddox was Lieutenant Governor of our state and George Wallace the governor of the state on our western border.  And we know neither of those politicians rose to power due to any other issue besides race.  So if the school administration allows the band to keep playing “Dixie,” they’re placating the Pickrickers and the Wallacites.  Thus the administration does what they seem to do best.  They make a new rule.

The edict went forth.  The cautious school administration would no longer allow the playing of “Dixie” at school events.  So while the band could actually kick out the jams to a fast and brassy version of “Son of a Preacher Man,” they would not be able to play the old and beloved southern anthem.

The reporters at the school newspaper, interpreting some of the lessons about the Constitution taught in American History classes, determined this was a violation of first amendment rights. They had the temerity to publish their opinions in the school newspaper.  The school principal showed what he thought of the first amendment by shutting the school newspaper down.

The matter was resolved somehow by some compromise, perhaps no more helpful than the one in 1850.

During the 1850′s an attorney from Illinois, one who had served his state in the United States House of Representatives, slowly became more prominent in American politics. Elected President of the United States in 1860, he took the lead, at a cautionary pace, to begin the end of legal domination of one race over the other.  A brutally destructive war would be engaged between people of the same country.  Brother against brother. Those who favored true freedom prevailed but it would be a long time before true victory could be declared.

Successful against many odds, Abraham Lincoln won a second term as President of the United States in 1864.  He was politically successful.  and he succeeded in the great fight for his nation.  He also had a song in mind at a time of celebration.  Lincoln had learned of Robert E. Lee’s surrender of his Confederate Army to Union forces and knew it was time to enjoy a hard fought victory. He asked a band at the gathering that night to play “Dixie,” which he described as “one of the best tunes I’ve ever heard.” It had been the Confederate anthem, but in a light hearted mood, Lincoln, backed by the attorney general, surmised the song was a “lawful prize” of The United States.

Perhaps all could have been happy more than one hundred years later if bands had played “Dixie” while wearing stove-piped hats.  That’s irony that both Lincoln and Dylan could appreciate.

On and on it has gone and it has continued to play out.  “Dixie” seems to never run out of verses.

Bob Dylan sings: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW4IEShhkSo

Note to Readers: Southern Song of the Day will be an occasional series.

About Jeff Cochran

Jeff Cochran worked in advertising at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for 27 years before accepting a buy-out in the Summer of 2008. In the seventies/early eighties, he handled advertising for Peaches Records and Tapes' Southeastern and Midwestern stores. He also wrote record reviews for The Great Speckled Bird, a ground-breaking underground newspaper based in Atlanta.

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