UPDATE: Bob Dylan Poem Up For Auction Was Plagiarized

Derek Evers — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:23:11 +0000

Eh, we’ve all done it as a kid. Wrote down our the lyrics to a certain song that spoke to us. Turns out a young Bob Zimmerman — later to be known as Bob Dylan — was doing the same thing when he was 16. The poem titled “Little Buddy” that famed New York auction house Christie’s will be auctioning June 23 is actually a Hank Snow song.

From the Wisconsin State Journal:
Bill Malone, Madison’s esteemed country music historian, was on the phone early Wednesday morning.
“That’s a Hank Snow song,” Malone said. “I’ve been singing it my whole life.”

Malone had just read the front page story in Wednesday’s State Journal about a handwritten Bob Dylan poem titled “Little Buddy” that Christie’s, the famed New York auction house, will auction June 23.

Proceeds of the sale will benefit Herzl Camp in Webster, which Dylan attended in the summer of 1957, when he was 16. He was known as Bobby Zimmerman then, and that was the name he signed on the poem he wrote for the Herzl Camp newspaper.

The editor of the camp paper, Lisa Heilicher, told the Associated Press that she kept the poem and once Dylan became famous, she put it in plastic and placed it in an encyclopedia under ‘Z’ for Zimmerman.

Bob Dylan, however, did not compose “Little Buddy.” Malone was right. It was written and recorded by Hank Snow, a Canadian-born country artist who sold 70 million records and was best known for his 1950 hit, “I’m Movin’ On.”

Read the full story here.

The Tripwire » Hank Snow

UPDATE: Bob Dylan Poem Up For Auction Was Plagiarized