Country Bob: Dylan and Country Music by Don Cusic

Country Bob: Dylan and Country Music is the first book to explore how country music shaped Bob Dylan's songwriting, performance style, and musical evolution.

Dylan has said that Hank Williams was his first musical hero. Music historian Don Cusic follows that thread from Dylan's Minnesota boyhood, when he heard country songs on the radio and on records, through the Greenwich Village folk years, the Nashville sessions for Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, and Nashville Skyline, and his appearance on The Johnny Cash Show, and on into his later work. Along the way he shows how country music has stayed a steady thread through a long and restless career, and how Dylan, now in his eighties and still performing, keeps drawing on it.

With praise from filmmaker Ken Burns, Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel, Mickey Raphael of Willie Nelson's band, and studio musician Charlie McCoy.

University Press of Mississippi · American Made Music Series · Paperback · October 2026