"The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" is a protest song written by the American musician Bob Dylan. Recorded on October 23, 1963, the song was released on Dylan's 1964 album The Times They Are a-Changin and gives a generally factual account of the killing of a 51-year-old African-American barmaid, Hattie Carroll (née Curtis; March 3, 1911 – February 9, 1963), by then 24-year-old William Devereux "Billy" Zantzinger (February 7, 1939 – January 3, 2009), a young man from a wealthy white tobacco farming family in Charles County, Maryland, and of his subsequent sentence to six months in a county jail, after being convicted of assault.

The melody of the chorus is largely taken from a folk song called "Mary Hamilton". The lyrics are a commentary on racism. When Carroll was killed in 1963, Charles County was still strictly segregated by race in public facilities such as restaurants, churches, theaters, doctor's offices, buses and the county fair. The schools of Charles County were not integrated until 1967.

Killing

The main incident described in the song took place in the early hours of February 9, 1963, at the white tie Spinsters' Ball at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore. Using a toy cane, Zantzinger drunkenly assaulted at least three of the Emerson Hotel workers: a bellboy, a waitress, and — at about 1:30 in the morning of the 9th — Carroll, a 51-year-old barmaid. According to the song, Carroll "had borne 10 children", though other accounts range from 8 to 11. She was president of a black social club.

Already drunk before he got to the Emerson Hotel that night, the 6'2" Zantzinger The cane was a 25-cent toy. After striking Carroll, he attacked his own wife, knocking her to the ground September 6, 1963.

After the sentence was announced, the New York Herald Tribune conjectured he was given a short sentence meant to keep him out of the largely black state prison, reasoning his notoriety would make him a target for abuse there. Zantzinger served his time in the comparative safety of the Washington County county jail, some from the scene of the crime. In September, the Herald Tribune quoted Zantzinger on his sentence: "I'll just miss a lot of snow." His then-wife, Jane, was quoted saying, "Nobody treats his niggers as well as Billy does around here."

The song juxtaposes Zantzinger's wealth and connections with the brevity of that sentence. Despite the song's topical nature, Dylan has continued to perform it in concert as of May 2009. <!--do not change date unless you have citation for more recent performance--> His live-audience renditions of it appear on the albums The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue (2002; recorded November 21, 1975), The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall (2004; recorded October 31, 1964), and Live 1962-1966: Rare Performances From The Copyright Collections (2018; recorded October 26, 1963). In 2019, five live performances of the song from the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour were released on the box set The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings.

In Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan includes "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" in a list of his early songs which he feels were influenced by his introduction to the work of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. He describes writing out the words of "Pirate Jenny" (or "The Black Freighter") in order to understand how the Brecht–Weill song achieved its effect. Dylan writes: "Woody had never written a song like that. It wasn't a protest or a topical song and there was no love for people in it. I took the song apart and unzipped it—it was the free verse association, the structure and disregard for the known certainty of melodic pattern to make it seriously matter, give it its cutting edge. It also had the ideal chorus for the lyrics."

Literary critic Christopher Ricks considers the song to be "one of Dylan's greatest" and the recording on The Times They Are A-Changin to be "perfect". He devotes an entire chapter to it, analyzing both the meaning as well as the prosody in his book on Dylan's songs as poetry. "But here is a song that could not be written better."

Dylan's song ("The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll") contains at least two inaccuracies. Zantzinger was not booked for first degree murder, but for second degree murder. Dylan also misspells and mispronounces Zantzinger's surname as "Zanzinger". in Chaptico, Maryland, called Bachelor's Hope.

In addition to federal tax delinquencies, Zantzinger fell more than $18,000 behind on county taxes on properties he owned in two Charles County communities called Patuxent Woods and Indian Head, shanties he leased to impoverished Black people. In 1986, the same year the IRS ruled against him, Charles County confiscated those properties. Nonetheless, Zantzinger continued to collect rents, raise rents, and even successfully prosecute his putative tenants for back rent. He was sentenced to 19 months in prison and a $50,000 fine. Some of his prison sentence was served in a work release program.

In 2001, Zantzinger discussed the song with Howard Sounes for Down the Highway, the Life of Bob Dylan. He dismissed the song as a "total lie" and claimed "It's actually had no effect upon my life", but expressed scorn for Dylan, saying, "He's a no-account son of a bitch; he's just like a scum of a scum bag of the earth. I should have sued him and put him in jail."

William "Billy" Zantzinger died in Charlotte Hall, Maryland, on January 3, 2009, at the age of 69.

See also

  • List of Bob Dylan songs based on earlier tunes

Notes

References

Sources

  • Frazier, Ian, "Legacy of a Lonely Death". Mother Jones, November/December 2004, 42–47; partial version on line. Reprinted by The Guardian February 25, 2005, as "Life after a lonesome death" (full version with the full song lyrics).
  • "Farmer Convicted in Barmaid's Death", New York Times June 28, 1963. p.&nbsp;11
  • "Farmer Sentenced in Barmaid's Death", New York Times August 29, 1963. p.&nbsp;15

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  • Maryland Court Records
  • "Legacy of a Lonesome Death", Mother Jones (November/December 2004)
  • "Bob Dylan – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", SongMeanings.net; accessed August 24, 2015.
  • "The Art of Bob Dylan's 'Hattie Carroll'", web.cecs.pdx.edu (1964 critique by Phil Ochs in Broadside Magazine)
  • "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", bobdylan.com; accessed August 24, 2015.
  • "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", bbc.co.uk (BBC Radio 4 programme); accessed August 24, 2015.