I grew up in a small suburban predominantly white area north of Oxford my parents having moved us down from Merseyside in the late fifties and much of my early learning about race and the racism of America especially, came from listening to Bob Dylan. Who today would boycott the television companies for 6 years (SIX YEARS!? ED) because of being censored. My brother, Steve. bought 'Freewheelin'' when he could get it over here and we listened to little else (well that's not quite true but it featured large in my burgeoning growth into contemporary music for sure) I remember distinctly when the first Asian family moved in to the top of the hill where we lived and I was filled with excitement and wonder at their colourful clothes and the wonderful cooking smells as we passed their house full of old people and teeming with bright cheerful children. Later living in the centre of the Aisan community in Leicester on the Belgrave Road I experienced no racism against me or my then girlfriend, soon to become my wife, although we witnessed plenty of it and on a rainy dismal overcast Leicester day if one was feeling down or miserable I knew of no better cure than to pop and in stand in a sari shop! My father worked for Oxfam so in his middle class way he thought he was setting about solving the worlds problems and whilst I still shared a bedroom with my brother we had a lodger [as Dad's pay was pretty low at some £20 per week then] and he was an African man who was working for Oxfam too but soon was asked to leave for reasons I didn't seem to understand as all I knew was he left the state of the spare bedroom in a pretty funky condition smelling of strange heady exotic smells and covered in little burn marks and tiny dark brown granules on the carpet and coverlet on his bed. But I digress. I had of course never heard of the John Birch Society and although there were many such tracks that opened my ears, mind and heart to the injustices of American politics this song had its own special profound affect upon me

On this day in music history: May 12, 1963 - Musician Bob Dylan withdraws from an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Scheduled to make his national television debut on the highly rated variety show, Dylan is told during rehearsals by the CBS network “head of program practices” that he cannot perform the song “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”, a song from his about to be released second album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”. The executive tells Dylan that the network believes that the song criticizing the John Birch Society (an ultraconservative anti-communist group, also known to have highly xenophobic and racist underpinnings), is potentially libelous. Rather than comply to the network’s wishes, Bob Dylan walks off of the show, and does not perform on US network television until he appears on The Johnny Cash Show in 1969. As a result of his declining to appear on Ed Sullivan,  "Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues" along with three other songs are removed from the “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album and are replaced by four other songs. The initial pressing of the album featuring the deleted songs becomes one of the most valuable LP’s of all time, since nearly all copies are destroyed before being shipped to record stores. An original stereo copy of “Freewheelin’” sold at auction for over $35,000 in recent years.