How Carolyn Hester Brought Us Bob Dylan

Perhaps the reason Bob Dylan named his publishing company Dwarf Music was his way of acknowledging that he was once far from being a giant in the music industry and looked up to certain musicians—especially Carolyn Hester.

Her talent and beauty caught the attention of Dylan’s future manager, Albert Grossman, who wanted her to be part of a folk group with two male singers, only for Hester to turn him down.  Mary Travers was enlisted and joined Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey.  The trio went on the road as “Peter, Paul, and Mary.”

Grossman wasn’t the only one impressed with Carolyn’s voice. As Dylan wrote in his Chronicles book: “Carolyn was a Texan guitar-playing singer who I knew and played with around town. She was going places, and it didn’t surprise me. Carolyn was eye-catching, down-home, and double-barrel beautiful. That she had known and worked with Buddy Holly left no small impression on me. Buddy was royalty, and I felt like she was my connection to it.”

Buddy Holly was in Coral Records’ studio in Clovis, NM, when Carolyn recorded “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” for her 1958 Scarlett Ribbons album.  The two Texans became friends, with Carolyn covering Holly’s “Lonesome Tears” on her 1964 That’s My Song LP.  During an earlier gig at Gerde’s Folk City, she announced, “Here’s a song I like that was taught to me by Buddy Holly.”

That led to Dylan introducing himself to her.  She recalled, “This guy with a cap on pulls his chair over to the stage and sits beside me. A wide-eyed Dylan goes, ‘Did you know Buddy Holly?’ I was struck by how pale and thin he was, looking as if he had just stepped out of the pages of a Charles Dickens novel. Extremely magnetic, he was different-looking from everyone else. I grew up around people named ‘Boogerweed’ and ‘Doak.’ Bob didn’t look like any of those. He had long fingernails on his right hand to pluck the guitar. He was very nearly transparent. He was soon to meet his first muse, Suze Rotolo, and thank God she would make sure he got meals.”

And if it wasn’t for Carolyn’s parents, Dylan may have never met the man who signed him to a recording contract.  Hester’s mother was listening to a group called The Roses on their local Austin radio station and called the station to see if they could help her teen daughter launch her singing career. The station provided her with Norman Petty’s address; Petty was Holly’s producer. Carolyn remembered: “So she wrote him a penny postcard, and he called her! She said, ‘Do you audition local talent?’ which was funny because Buddy was local talent. That’s how I met Buddy and Norman.”

After recording two albums on minor labels, Columbia Records came calling for Carolyn’s services. She then called Dylan and asked if he could play harmonica on her upcoming album.  Dylan joined a studio band that included bassist Bill Lee (father of Spike) and guitarist Bruce Langhorne. Initially, Langhorne wasn’t enamored with Bob’s musicianship, stating, “I thought he was a terrible singer and a complete fake.” He later saw the light after Dylan hired him to play on his Bringing It Back Home album.

Carolyn gathered her group to play for Columbia Records’ president and the album’s producer, John Hammond, at her apartment. “The apartment where Hammond came to hear my band and where I introduced him to Dylan was on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village. He couldn’t take his eyes off Dylan. He was struck by him right away.”

Hammond offered him a two-year contract only for Dylan, then a 20-year-old minor, to spin one of his many outlandish yarns and proclaim that he didn’t have any living relatives who could sign for him.  Dylan informed Hammond: “I don’t know where my folks are. I think I’ve got an uncle who’s a gambler in Nevada, but I wouldn’t know how to track him down.” Hammond gave in, gave up, and allowed Dylan to sign the contract for himself.

Carolyn’s soap operatic life wasn’t just confined to her career.  She married author (Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me) Richard Fariña in 1960 after knowing him for eighteen days. Dylan later noted of the ill-fated union: “I thought he was the luckiest guy in the world to be married to Carolyn.” Three years later, the 26-year-old Fariña dumped her and married Mimi Baez, the 17-year-old sister of Joan.

Hester triumphantly rebounded when she married David Blume, the co-writer of the Cyrkle’s #20 1966 hit “Turn-Down Day” and who may have spent his life living down the fact that he co-wrote the theme song to Don Knotts’ 1968 movie The Shakiest Gun In The West.

David and Carolyn were married for 37 years until David’s death in 2006.  Today, Carolyn is forgotten by the masses, but Dylan remembered her acts of kindness and invited her to sing his “Boots of Spanish Leather” with Nanci Griffith at an October 16, 1992, concert at Madison Square Garden that celebrated Bob’s thirty years in music.

In a 2023 interview, the 86-year-old singer wisely offered her words to live by:

“Everybody should keep up with their dreams, keep putting it out there because I had no idea all this would have happened. I just wanted to play those chords. I just wanted to hear those melodies and in the meantime, on the way, I got to be part of Bob Dylan’s story and Peter Paul and Mary’s story and all these fantastic things happened I could never have anticipated and just keep on with your dream and believe, believe, believe…and pray!”

-Mark Daponte

Photo: Carolyn Hester (fair use image)