Lyrics: Jacques Levy and Bob Dylan / Music: Bob Dylan / 8:33
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Ronee Blakley: harmony vocals
Scarlet Rivera: violin
Steven Soles: guitar, harmony vocals
Rob Stoner: bass
Howard Wyeth: drums
Leon Luther: congas
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio E, New York: October 24, 1975
Technical Team
Producer: Don DeVito
Sound Engineer: Don Meehan
Recalling the protest songs of the early days of his career, Bob Dylan wrote “Hurricane” in response to what he believed was a judicial error. This song is about Rubin Carter, known as “Hurricane,” a black American middleweight boxing champion, one of the best in his category in the early 1960s. On October 14, 1966, Carter and his friend John Artis were arrested for a triple murder committed four months earlier in Paterson, New Jersey.
On the night of June 17, 1966, two males entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson and started shooting. The owner and a customer were killed on the scene, a waitress died a month later from her injuries, and a second customer was severely injured. Several witnesses told the police they saw two black males fleeing in a white Dodge Polara. Investigators traced the car to Rubin Carter, who owned this model. Upon searching the car, police found a 32-caliber pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun corresponding to the murder weapons used in the shooting. Eyewitnesses identified Carter and Artis as the two perpetrators. Based on this testimony (conflicting with others), and despite the absence of clear evidence, Carter and Artis were arrested, indicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment by an all-white jury.
Carter, who maintained his innocence, wrote his autobiography in prison, The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472, released in 1974, which led to increasing public support for a retrial. Dylan was contacted by Richard Solomon, Carter’s lawyer. The songwriter read Carter’s biography before visiting him in prison. Soon after, he was convinced of his innocence. “The first time I saw [Carter], I left knowing one thing… I realized that the man’s philosophy and my philosophy were running down the same road, and you don’t meet too many people like that.”112 He started writing an extended song supporting the boxer, a victim of a two-tier justice system. The very first line, “Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night,” sets the scene.
Carried away by his humanist impulse, Dylan took liberties with the truth throughout the song. The songwriter affirms that Carter “could-a been / The champion of the world” even though the boxer’s career was in decline, and Dylan accuses Arthur Bradley of having robbed the bodies, even though he was not on the murder scene. After listening to the song, CBS’s lawyers feared a lawsuit and advised against releasing it. Don DeVito, the producer, was told by Walter Yetnikoff, president of CBS Records, that Dylan needed to change the lyrics. Don Meehan, the sound engineer, remembers, “I got this call from Don [DeVito] telling me, ‘You’ve got to get those tapes out and erase them!’… I said, ‘I can’t do that, man!’ He said, ‘You’ve got to—everything with Emmylou on ‘Hurricane.’”116 Reluctantly, Meehan carried out the request, but did not erase the vocals on all sixteen recording tracks. He said, “Those are probably still in the vault somewhere.”116
The songwriter agreed to some changes in the text. But this did not prevent Patty Valentine, the witness mentioned in the first verse who saw “the bartender in a pool of blood,” from suing, as she did not see anything at all! The suit was “on the grounds of defamation of character and for mentioning her name without permission.”
After a second trial, the jury confirmed Carter and Artis as guilty of the murders. Finally, a Supreme Court judge dismissed the charge against Hurricane Carter entirely in 1988. Carter died in April 2014. In 1999, Norman Jewison devoted a film to the case, The Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington in the role of the boxer.
At the end of the session on July 28, 1975, Dylan recorded three cuts of “Hurricane” backed by twenty musicians. Emmylou Harris sang alongside the songwriter. Another take was cut on July 30, including Harris, but this time with a smaller band. Then, for the aforementioned legal reasons, Dylan partially rewrote his text. Don Meehan recalls, “But then, instead of just doing a new vocal, Dylan wanted to record the song again from scratch, so that’s what we did.”116 After a slow start, as soon as Dylan begins singing, the song attains cruising speed. Dylan’s performance is excellent; his vocals reflect how important the song was to him. Scarlet Rivera improvises a beautiful gypsy violin tone throughout the eleven verses. The rhythmic bass and drums reach a high level of quality. Rob Stoner and Howard Wyeth ensure an efficient backing for both acoustic guitars played by Bob Dylan and Steven Soles, not to mention the excellent conga part provided by Leon Luther, another attribute of the song. Emmylou Harris said it was hard to follow Dylan’s singing. Ronee Blakley experienced difficulty recording with Dylan but did pretty well despite sometimes being uncertain (listen to the song at the six-minute mark, including guitars). Dylan concluded the song with a harmonica solo (in C) that was not really necessary. “Hurricane” is the first track on Desire but it was the last song to be recorded. It took ten takes on October 24 to cut the song, but the master appears to come from a combination of the second and sixth takes.
“Hurricane” was released as a single in November 1975. The song reached number 33 in the United States in January 1976 and a month later number 43 in the United Kingdom, but number 13 in France in January! Dylan played the song live for the first time onstage at the War Memorial Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on October 30, 1975.