I KNOW, I know, but thanks nonetheless to a few readers for pressing it upon me: William Zantzinger died on January 3rd.

We know about him because he was convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of Hattie Carroll in 1963, and may she rest in peace. She had been struck with a cane by the then-24 year-old William Zantzinger on February 8th at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore, where she was working and Zantzinger was out eating, drinking and causing trouble. She felt ill afterwards, an ambulance was called, and on the morning of February 9th she died of a stroke. (This chronology is as detailed in the NY Times piece I linked to above.)

Bob Dylan read a news account of this story, and of how Zantzinger was charged with her murder, ultimately convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to six months in jail.

He then wrote a very powerful and fine song called The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, and that, indeed, is why the death of William Zantzinger this past January 3rd made the news.

The best appreciation of the song that I’ve ever seen or heard is the one written by Christopher Ricks, which can be found in his book Dylan’s Visions of Sin.

The double challenge to the song lay in its duty not to yield to the anger that had seized Zanzinger, and in its duty to resist melodrama and sentimentality.

Ricks highlights the ways in which the song succeeds in those respects and in others as only he can.

It’s a song that Bob Dylan continues to perform live. He’s performed it live at almost every stage of his career, so it’s clearly a song with which he is comfortable, and indeed he wears it well. The facts as presented in the song do not match the facts of the actual case in a legalistic or even a journalistic sense. As always, Bob Dylan the songwriter was trying to write a great song, and he certainly succeeded in that. It is a mighty howl in the face of earthly injustice that is only more powerful, moving and timeless thanks to its great emotional restraint. The song actually departs from legalistic and journalistic truth (to the extent such things exist) as of the second word that appears in the lyric. It was William Zantzinger who was convicted of manslaughter in the death of Hattie Caroll. Dylan’s first line, however, is: “William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll …” He both spells and articulates it differently as compared to the name of the man in the newspaper story.

William Devereux Zantzinger died eight days ago, and may he and all of us receive mercy from the one true and just Judge. William Zanzinger, I think, is as alive as he ever was, in Bob Dylan’s very great song, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.

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Here’s a fine live performance by Bob Dylan of the song from 2005, via YouTube:

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By the way, with the current situation in the Middle East, Billy Bragg’s “rewrite” of Dylan’s song, as The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie, has been getting some more exposure, not least on Expecting Rain. I wrote something about that song back when I first heard it in 2006. That post is here: Philosophizing Disgrace.

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• Christopher Ricks on Bob Dylan at Boston University
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