Why Did Bob Dylan Decide to Sing Only Woody Guthrie Songs?

David Senra, reading Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One, says an actress led Dylan to Woody Guthrie. Dylan already knew he would sing and write songs. He made $3 to $5 every time he played a coffee house or a pizza parlor, and he slept on a mattress in an empty storage room with a sink, a window on an alley, no closet, and a toilet down the hall. Senra adds that this same musician later sold 125 million records.

The actress had long red hair, dressed in black from head to foot, believed in reincarnation, and believed in the occult powers of trees. She took Dylan to hear Guthrie alone, on records her brother owned. Guthrie singing his own songs stunned him. The songs made his head spin. A voice in his head said he had found the game. A friend lent him Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory, and he read it cover to cover. Guthrie was a hustling ex-sign painter from Oklahoma, an anti-materialist who grew up in the Depression and the Dust Bowl and migrated west.

Dylan felt he had almost no choice. He decided to sing nothing but Guthrie's songs and to be Guthrie's greatest disciple.