Back Where I Come From: The Roots of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

Everything has a past and a history. All trees have roots. All rivers have a source. There is nothing new under the sun.

A weekly, one-hour radio show hosted by Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour aired from 2006 to 2009 on XM Radio, and later on Sirius XM when the two satellite radio services merged. Each episode was an eclectic, mix of blues, folk, rockabilly, R&B, soul, bebop, rock-and-roll, country and pop music, centered on a theme such as “Weather.”

Fifty-odd years ago, in a New York City loft apartment, a young man rummages through a shelf of old audio tapes. He stops, re-reads a label. He doesn’t know the title on the box, but he definitely recognizes the performer’s name.

“Can I listen to this?” Bob Dylan asks.

Sixty-six years before the first episode of Theme Time Radio Hour, when radio was just radio and the…