Bukka White / 2:23
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Recording Studios Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: November 20, 1961
Technical Team
Producers: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
“Fixin’ to Die” is a blues song by Bukka White, reflecting the sinister and deadly atmosphere of the Mississippi State Penitentiary known as Parchman Farm, where the bluesman was held in the late 1930s. Bob Dylan was obviously impressed by White’s recording, dating from 1940, as well as by the feelings it inspired. In the African-American idiom, death (obviously premature) follows a difficult life of work on the plantations, violence, and racism. In “Fixin’ to Die,” death is quite another thing. The narrator says he is ready to die; however, he does not accept the fact that his children are left to their fate. The folk-rock singer Country Joe McDonald took up the title three years later for his anti–Vietnam War song “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die.”
Bukka White—his real name was Booker T. Washington White—learned to play guitar and piano after having abandoned a boxing career. Discovered by talent scouts from the Victor recording label playing in juke joints down South, he recorded his first sides in 1930, “The New Frisco Train” and “The Panama Limited.” Incarcerated in 1937 after a fight, he spent two years at Parchman Farm. John Lomax decided to record him in this penitentiary, thus opening a second career. Rediscovered in 1962, after the release of “Fixin’ to Die” by Bob Dylan, Bukka White was one of the leading figures of the folk revival. He died on February 26, 1977, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the cousin of famous bluesman B. B. King’s mother.
Dylan’s version is rather far from Bukka White’s guitar and washboard. It was closer to his friend Dave Van Ronk, a folksinger who inspired Dylan to make his voice sound hoarse, highly “bluesy,” an effect he abandoned after the first album. It was recorded second that day, after “You’re No Good,” presumably to inject energy into the interpretation. The lyrics are freely adapted and it is quite surprising to hear Dylan, just twenty years old, singing a text as dark as this with so much conviction. Dylan interprets the blues in open D tuning, without bottleneck or capo (see “In My Time of Dyin’”). Three takes were needed, the last one being the best.