Songs Inspired By News Headlines - Bob Dylan – Hurricane

Tweet

A 1975 song about a man arrested for a murder he did not commit. The song played a significant part in overturning the conviction. Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter was a leading middleweight boxer, though many do not share Dylan’s conviction that he would have made World Champion if his life had not been seriously messed up in 1966. This was when Carter and his friend, John Artis (who gets little mention in the song) were accused of shooting dead two men and a woman in a New Jersey Restaurant. No fingerprints were ever taken by forensics, but a burglar arrested near to the crime scene claimed to have seen two black guys fleeing the scene. Carter & Artis were arrested but released initially when witnesses said they were the wrong men. Months later, the burglar, Alfred Bello claimed they were the killers and a trial full of inconsistent evidence convicted them. In prison, Carter wrote his memoirs and his questions about his conviction inspired the song, which sparked journalistic investigations which generated enough evidence for a retrial, which initially upheld the convictions but the results were fully overturned in a rapidly initiated further appeal. Carter had served twenty years. Dylan’s career had declined after his switch from acoustic to electric guitar, his religious conversion and his lyrical decline into incoherent mumbling. Hurricane recaptured his old spirit for powerful protest and actually saved a man’s reputation while exposing legal malpractice and institutional racism. Well done Mr. Zimmerman. Youtube – Bob Dylan’s Hurricane Arthur Chappell