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August 30: Highway 61 Revisited
Bob Dylan’s sixth album, Highway 61 Revisited, was released on this date in 1965. The album was named for the interstate highway that runs from his birth state of Minnesota to such musical cities as St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans, and was an important road of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North. The song list included Dylan’s best-known song, “Like a Rolling Stone,” as well as the title song, which begins with a retelling of the Biblical “Akedah” (sacrifice of Isaac): “Well, God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son.’ Abe said, ‘Man, you must be putting me on...’ ” Rolling Stone magazine named the album the 4th greatest rock and roll release of all time (and “Like a Rolling Stone” as the greatest rock song of all).
“Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I began. I always felt like I’d started on it, always had been on it and could go anywhere, even down in to the deep Delta country.” —Bob Dylan
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