A minor notoriety who inspired a great song

It was announced this week that William Zantzinger had died at the age of 69. This rather unpleasant man would not have been remembered at all but for the fact that a crime he committed in 1963 resulted in a Bob Dylan song called 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' which was included on Dylan's 'Times they are a Changin'' album released in 1964 which contained a whole host of gems.

Zantzinger (right) is pictured with his wife and lawyer outside the Baltimore courtroom



The report of Zantzinger's crime and what he did later in his life - extorting rents from black people who lived in shanties he no longer owned - is contained here.

Zantzinger was, apparently, angry at the treatment he received in Dylan's song saying it was unfair and loaded but he sounds like one hell of an unpleasant guy to me, so my sympathy for any distortion or 'poetic licence' is considerably muted.