Deportees

Dylan Baez
Dylan doesn't sing, he barks.

With this statement, I've drawn the ire of several Dylan fans. No one understood that I was expressing appreciation.
Why I like Dylan when he barks? I'll explain it to you with a Woody Guthrie song. The man who had written on his guitar "This machine kills fascists".
The song is called "Deportee (Plane Wreck down in Los Gatos canyon)". It was written in 1948 and talks about the years when the Americans filled some war surplus planes (typically the old twin-engine Dakotas) with Mexicans and took them to work in the US, only to bring them back. They didn't want them as immigrants, but only as low-cost workers. And then, every now and then, one of these planes would crash, and then the New York Times would only report the names of the pilot and the three Americans on board, because the other 28 dead, Mexican workers, were merely deportees.

This song, made famous by Pete Seeger, exists in many versions, all more or less in the country-western style. This one, for example, is by Arlo Guthrie (son of Woody), in the canonical style.
Then the song travels. It arrives in the hands of an exceptional country quartet: Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson who give it a poignant and swinging version, like horseback riding.
During the Easy Rider era, it passes through the Byrds' fingers and the bottleneck licks arrive and the guitars are freer. There's a California air, but the ensemble is still damned well-mannered; with well-marked 3/4 beat.
It's also sung by Nancy Griffith & Lucinda Williams, accompanied by various friends: voices ranging from Joan Baez to Peter, Paul & Mary. Country becomes folk, melancholic, but gentle.
Even Billy Bragg, despite being a working-class singer-songwriter (and English), isn't much angrier. There's no escaping tradition.
Things change a bit with the Boss. Springsteen has a legendary voice, and here he devours rhythm and verses, a bit like he does with another Guthrie song, "This Land Is Your Land." It's a testament to a memory with a style now distant from country and even folk, a way to talk about the present while remembering the past.
But sometime in 1976, Dylan performed it at a festival with Joan Baez. She often sang this song, with her beautiful, well-trained voice. A great opportunity for a duet.
But right from the start, he finds himself desperately chasing Dylan, who accompanies himself poorly on the guitar, going 50% faster than usual, and from the first verse onwards, he barks out the lyrics without a moment's respite, almost completely eliminating the pauses between verses as only he and Mick Jagger knew how. And it's a thrilling ride in which the words are no longer gentle, but hit you like stones, because anger is anger and it has to be felt.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts, We died in your valleys and died on your plains. We died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes, Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

I like Dylan when he barks...

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning, The oranges piled in their creosote dumps; They’re flying ’em back to the Mexican border To pay all their money to wade back again
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria; You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane, All they will call you will be “deportees”
My father’s own father, he waded that river, They took all the money he made in his life; My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees, And they rode the truck till they took down and died.
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted, Our work contract’s out and we have to move on; Six hundred miles to that Mexican border, They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon, A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills, Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves? The radio says, “They are just deportees”
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts, We died in your valleys and died on your plains. We died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes, Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit? To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil And be called by no name except “deportees”?

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