William Zantzinger dead--Made Infamous by Dylan in Song

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll is surely one of Dylan's most important songs --the detailed imaginative leap in understanding Hattie Carroll's world allows us to feel in our spleen Zantzinger's repellent racist act--teaching our entire moral sensibility-- not just our heads.

We now might regard the death of William Zantzinger on January 3rd this year as an end of an era as we get ready to inaugurate our first African American President. A bookmark made more poignant by noting that Zantzinger was a child of privilege and attended the same school--Sidwell Friends --as the one that the Obama children have just begun this past week.
The Washington Post notes his passing and opens the obituary notice with words taken from the great lyric:

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll

With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger

At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'.

The song first appeared on his 1964 album "The Times They Are A-Changin'." The Post informs us that "Dylan used an incorrect spelling of Mr. Zantzinger's surname in the song lyrics."


The Post reconfirms that Dylan did not change any of the essential details of the incident :

On Feb. 8, 1963, a young, socially prominent tobacco farmer from Southern Maryland named William Devereux Zantzinger got uncontrollably drunk at a charity ball hosted at Baltimore's Emerson Hotel. Carrying a cheap toy cane and dressed in top hat for the Spinsters Ball, he began the evening in a spirit of jest by imitating Fred Astaire.

As he drank more, Mr. Zantzinger, who was a husky 6-foot-2, became threatening in his demeanor. He assaulted a bellhop with his cane and shouted at a waitress, "Hey, black girl, bring me a drink!" He tumbled down on his wife while dancing with her.

Then he went back to the bar and demanded a drink from Hattie Carroll, a 51-year-old barmaid with 11 children and a history of high blood pressure. "Just a minute, sir," she said, which angered Mr. Zantzinger. It was not how he was used to being treated on his 630-acre farm along the Wicomico River in Charles County.

Zantzinger we learn from the obituary served only six months in jail and paid a $500 fine. The 'regular Southern Maryland boy' then in 1991 was indicted for collecting more than $64,000 in rent on properties he no longer owned--properties located off a dirt road and lacked indoor plumbing. He even had the audacity to sue for rent when his "tenants" did not pay and raised the rent on the properties. He had no kind words for Dylan whom he called a "no-account [expletive]" who had distorted the facts of the case. He told Dylan biographer Howard Sounes, "I should have sued him and put him in jail."

But let Dylan have the last word on this as he sings circa 1964 his great song--courtesy of YouTube: