<P> After the sentence was announced, the New York Herald Tribune conjectured he was given a sentence that short to keep him out of the largely black state prison, reasoning his notoriety would make him a target for abuse there . In the U.S., sentences over a year are generally served in a state prison; sentences under a year are usually served in a county jail or city lockup . Zantzinger instead served his time in the comparative safety of the Washington County county jail, some 70 miles (110 km) from the scene of the crime . In September, the Herald Tribune quoted Zantzinger on his sentence: "I'll just miss a lot of snow ." His then - wife, Jane, was quoted saying, "Nobody treats his niggers as well as Billy does around here ." </P> <P> Zantzinger was convicted of manslaughter on August 28, 1963, and was not tried by a jury of peers but by a panel of three judges . The sentence was handed down on the same day that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington . Bob Dylan, aged 22 at that time, was one of the celebrities at the march and on the journey home to New York City he read about the conviction of Zantzinger and decided to write a protest song about the case . According to a 1991 Washington Post report, Dylan wrote the song in Manhattan, sitting in an all - night cafe . A recent radio documentary on the song said rather that he wrote it both in New York and at the home of his then - lover, Joan Baez, in Carmel . According to Nancy Carlin, a friend of Baez who visited: "He would stand in this cubbyhole, beautiful view across the hills, and peck type on an old typewriter...there was an old piano up at Joan's...and peck piano playing...up until noon he would drink black coffee then switch over to red wine, quit about five or six ." He recorded it on October 23, 1963, when the trial was still relatively fresh news, and incorporated it into his live repertoire immediately, before releasing the studio version on January 13, 1964 . </P> <P> The song juxtaposes Zantzinger's wealth and connections with the brevity of that sentence . Despite the song's topical nature, Dylan has continued to perform it in concert as of May 2009 . His live - audience renditions of it appear on the albums The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue (2002) and The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall (2004). </P> <P> In Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan includes "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" in a list of his early songs which he feels were influenced by his introduction to the work of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill . He describes writing out the words of "Pirate Jenny" (or "The Black Freighter") in order to understand how the Brecht--Weill song achieved its effect . Dylan writes: "Woody had never written a song like that . It wasn't a protest or a topical song and there was no love for people in it . I took the song apart and unzipped it--it was the free verse association, the structure and disregard for the known certainty of melodic pattern to make it seriously matter, give it its cutting edge . It also had the ideal chorus for the lyrics ." </P>

The lonesome death of hattie carroll christy moore