Unearthed Lyrics for Bob Dylan’s Absurdly Silly Ode to Wisconsin Could Be Yours

Handwritten lyrics to an unpublished Bob Dylan song from 1961 will be auctioned off this week, Rolling Stone reports. The song, which is about Wisconsin, includes some seriously silly lyrics. It opens, “Wisconson [sic] is the dairy state/I guess you all know well/I was in Wow Wow Toaster there/The truth to you I’ll tell/It’s milk & cheese & cream.” Later, Dylan—now a Nobel laureate—wrote, “I’ll pick my banjo gently there/And twiddle my mustache,” and also, “I’ll tune my banjo than the hills/And feast on milk and cream.” Check out the listing, which includes photos of the lyric sheet, here.

Bidding opens at $30,000 and ends on March 30. According to the report, Dylan wrote the song when he was 20 just after he’d moved to New York City and signed with Columbia Records. It followed an unfruitful period working around Madison in 1960 after Dylan dropped out of the University of Minnesota. Dylan reportedly gave the lyric sheet to his former roommate Peter Crago. The winning bid comes with a certificate of authenticity.

Earlier today, it was reported that Dylan will finally accept his Nobel Prize for Literature with the condition that he can deliver a taped Nobel lecture. 

Read Pitchfork’s Sunday Review of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, as well as the op-ed “The World Does Not Need Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize Winner in Literature” on the Pitch.

Explored Blood on the Tracks in four minutes on Pitchfork.tv:

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