Bob Dylan Plagiarisms

 - Chimes Of Freedom

This song was at least partly inspired by "Chimes Of Trinity" (Michael J. Fitzpatrick, 1895), see Dave van Ronk, The Mayor Of MacDougal Street, Da CapoPress, p. 4:

"Bob Dylan heard me fooling around with one of my grandmother’s favorites, “The Chimes Of Trinity,” a sentimental ballad about Trinity Church [...] He made me sing it for him a few times until he had the gist of it, then reworked it into the 'Chimes Of Freedom'. Her version was better".

The sheet music for this song is available at Jscholarship and the Lester S. Levy Collection. Here's an mp3 of a recording by the Peerless Quartet (1925, c/o The Internet Archive):Dylan only retained a slightly reworked variant of the first four bars of the refrain:
















For more about this song please check out an earlier post on this blog: Chimes of Trinity, Chimes of Freedom and the Girl on the Police Gazette.