Every once in a while something wacky happens that stretches the bounds of belief such as a Jackson Pollock painting is found in a thrift shop or someone comes up with a theory that predates the Big Bang.

Well, a handwritten song by Bob Dylan (then Robert Zimmerman) called NYC Blues is just such a thing. The lyrics were written with pencil on ruled paper shortly after Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village in 1961 and were left at the apartment of Mac and Eve McKenzie, on East 28th street. Their son, Peter inherited the scribbled NYC Blues lyrics and now he’s offering them up for auction.

The NYC Blues lyrics are not quite a complete song, but rather a work in progress as one can see by the brevity of the work. Nonetheless, finding these lyrics is like an archeologist finding a human skull predating the earliest known man.

NYC Blues Lyrics

You ever been walking down the streets in NY town
Walking down east fourth St,

Call for the Mayor to fix the trouble there, mayor’ll say there ain’t no
trouble, it’s all down in Wash-S

Standing on the corner of Broadway an’ 49th seen so many people I never saw in my life

I went to sleep at nite clean as I could be when I awoke in the morning dirt all over me

Now I don’t mind dirt cause there’s dirt on the land but did you ever see dirty - that’s one thing I can’t stand

If you sang the words in Dylan’s voice like I did, then you can get a feel for what Greenwich Village must have been like back then from the eyes of one of the world’s most popular folk singers.

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