"Ballad of Hollis Brown" – Bob Dylan

From the early days of Dylan’s career, when protest songs were his main output, this tells of a man with a wife and five children to feed, who walks “many a ragged mile” in search of work, but is unsuccessful. Returning to his home, he hears his baby’s cries of hunger grow louder, and what with the grass turning black and the rats in the flour, it's clear that things aren't going too well for Hollis.

Then we are told he's got a shotgun in his hand, and seven shots ring out in a South Dakota farm while a coyote calls in the wilderness. Meanwhile, “Somewhere in the distance there’s seven new people born.” So Dylan is suggesting that this tragedy is destined to repeat itself.

The final twist suggesting an endless cycle of human desperation, and the general theme of the song was replicated in “In the Ghetto”, a hit for Elvis Presley in 1969.

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