Robert Shelton (critic)
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Robert Shelton (June 28, 1926, Chicago, Illinois, United States – December 11, 1995, Brighton, England) was a music and film critic.
Shelton's most enduring claim to fame was that he helped launch the career of a then unknown 20-year-old folk singer named Bob Dylan. Dylan was performing at Gerdes Folk City in Greenwich Village the ne-plus-ultra of New York City folk venues, opening for a bluegrass act called the Greenbriar Boys. Shelton's positive review brought crucial publicity to Dylan, which led to a Columbia recording contract and a Peter, Paul and Mary cover of "Blowin' in the Wind".
Shelton was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, He served in US Army in France during 1944-45 and then attended the School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He moved to New York in the 1950s, joining the staff of the New York Times not long after. For a decade (1958-1968), Shelton reviewed music, in particular folk music, but also pop and country music, becoming a good friend of many of the artists and extending his influence beyond the pages of the Times. His other work included writing the programs at the Newport Folk Festival; and doing album notes for several artists, including Dylan, as "Stacey Williams." During the early 1960s, he co-edited a magazine, Hootenanny, at the same time his friend Linda Solomon edited a different magazine titled ABC-TV Hootenanny.
Shelton spent decades writing and rewriting his Dylan opus, No Direction Home, which was published in 1986. The title is taken from the lyric of a Dylan song, "Like a Rolling Stone", from the Highway 61 Revisited album. The title of Shelton's biography of Dylan was borrowed by Martin Scorsese for his 2005 film about Dylan's early career. Other books include "Electric Muse: The Story Of Folk Into Rock" and "The Face of Folk Music".
In 1982 Shelton moved to Brighton, England, where he wrote mostly about films for a number of publications up to the time of his death. Much of the collection of his early work has been donated to the University of Liverpool.
[edit] Books
- No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, 1986, Da Capo Press reprint 2003, ISBN 0-306-81287-8
