Dylan wrote to his girlfriend Suze Rotolo in July 1962, mentioning that "Down the Highway" was one of two songs in a recent recording session that referred to her.[1] Rotolo was studying in Perugia, Italy, having left in June,[1] and the song contains the lines "My baby took my heart from me / She packed it all up in a suitcase / Lord, she took it away to Italy, Italy."[2] The song is a Twelve-bar blues, which may have been inspired by the work of Robert Johnson and Big Joe Williams; Dylan's delivery of some of the lines recalls Williams, according to Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon.[3][1]
Paul Williams says that of six "love songs of one sort or another" recorded by Dylan in July 1962, all of which show a blues influence, "Down the Highway," a song about loneliness, is the only one of them that "expresses real distress."[5] Oliver Trager praised the "cathartic" vocals and "Dylan's astounding guitar pattern" on the track.[3] Chick Ober, reviewing The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan for the Tampa Bay Times, selected the track as one of the best three on the album.[6]
In the sleeve notes of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, concerning "Down the Highway," Dylan explained to Nat Hentoff: "What made the real blues singers so great is that they were able to state all the problems they had; but at the same time, they were standing outside of them and could look at them. And in that way, they had them beat."[7] Dylan has never performed the song live.[8][2][a]Howard Sounes titled his biography of Dylan Down the Highway: the Life of Bob Dylan.[9]
^ abcdefMargotin, Philippe; Guesdon, Jean-Michel (2015). Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track. Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. p. 59. ISBN978-1579129859.