Bob Dylan - Hurricane
#Hurricane , with Levy written, was the first single and ranks 39 of the list of 100 best Dylan songs according to Rolling Stone. It is a protest song that deals with the unjustified imprisonment for black boxer Rubin Carter, nicknamed Hurricane, for a triple murder from 1966, opening as a screenplay (Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night) and ending more than eight minutes later with Carter in the prison. The attention generated by Dylan resulted in a new trial, in which Carter was again found guilty. In 1985, the verdict was rejected and in 1988 all charges of murder were dropped. #BobDylan
“Hurricane” is a protest song by Bob Dylan. He wrote the folk rock song in collaboration with Jacques Levy and recorded it from July to October 1975. The song was released as a single by Columbia Records in November 1975, and in January 1976 it served as the opening track of Dylan's seventeenth studio album, Desire. The production was in the hands of Don DeVito, who also produced the albums Hard Rain (1976) and Street-Legal (1978). Hurricane ranked 39 of the list of 100 best Dylan numbers from Rolling Stone magazine. Source:Wikipedia
Gunshots sound in the night of the bar
Go into Patty Valentine from the upper hall.
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood,
Calls out, “My God, they killed them all!”
Here comes the story of the hurricane,
The man the authorities blamed
For something he never did.
Locked in a cell, but one day it could have been him
The champion of the world.
There are three bodies there, Patty sees
And another man, named Bello, is mysteriously moving around.
“I didn't do it, “he says, and he throws his hands in the air
“I was just robbing the register, I hope you understand.
I saw them leave, 'he says, and he stops
“One of us better call the police.”
And so Patty calls the police
And they come on stage with their red lights flashing
In the hot night of New Jersey.
Meanwhile far away in another part of the city
Rubin Carter and some friends are driving around.
Number one contender for the middleweight crown
I had no idea what would happen
When a cop pulled him to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before.
In Paterson, that's just the way things go.
If you're black, you might as well not appear on the street
Unless you want to take the heat.
Alfred Bello had a partner and he had a rap for the police.
He and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just snooping around
He said, “I saw two men running out, they looked like middleweights
They jumped into a white car with license plates that were out of state. '
And Miss Patty Valentine just nodded her head.
The cop said, “Wait a minute, guys, this one's not dead.”
So they took him to the infirmary
And although this man could hardly see
They told him he could identify the guilty men.
Four in the morning and they bring in Rubin,
Take him to the hospital and they'll take him upstairs.
The injured man looks up through his one eye
He says, “Why did you bring him here? He's not the man! “
Arthur Dexter Bradley said, “I'm really not sure.”
The police said, “A poor boy like you could use a break
We got you for the motel run and we'll talk to your friend Bello
Now, you don't want to go back to jail, be a nice guy.
You're doing society a favor.
That bastard is brave and gets braver.
We want to move his ass
We want to put this triple murder on him
He's not a Gentleman Jim. '
Rubin could take out a man with only one blow
But he never liked to talk about it so much.
It's my job, he'd say, and I'll do it for a fee.
And when it's over, I'll move on as fast
To a paradise
Where the trout flows and the air is delicious
And ride a horse along a path.
But then they took him to prison
Where they try to turn a man into a mouse.
All Rubin cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig's circle, he never had a chance.
The judge turned Rubin's witnesses into drunks from the slums
To the whites who watched, he was a revolutionary wanderer
And to the black people, he was just a crazy nigger.
No one doubted he pulled the trigger.
And although they couldn't produce the gun,
The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed.
Rubin Carter was wrongly tried.
The crime was murder “one”, guess who testified?
Bello and Bradley and they both lied bald
And the papers, they all went for the ride.
How can the life of such a person
In the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him clearly framed
I couldn't help that I was ashamed to live in a country
Where justice is a game.
Now all the criminals in their jackets and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits in a three-meter cell as a Buddha
An innocent man in hell.
That's the story of the hurricane,
But it won't be over until they clear his name
And give him back the time he's given up.
Locked in a cell, but one day it could have been him
The champion of the world.
