In this second edition of How Many Roads? Bob Dylan’s Back Pages, we’ll rejoin the great American wordsmith by listening to his work from the last 25 years. We won’t forget the historic and ancient roots of his modern sounds, from the Old Testament to the Civil Rights movement. We’ll hear from collaborators and friends, Mavis Staples and Joan Baez, and from Kris Kristofferson who overheard Dylan’s recording sessions while working as a custodian in Nashville. We’ll go to our archives for the late producer Jerry Wexler on Dylan’s spiritual transformation and hear songs that address outlaws and lovers, memories and mortality.

During the Cold War, the U.S. State Department sent jazz musicians overseas with the tactical aim of using their hot licks to thaw relations with Eastern Bloc countries. Jazz great Dave Brubeck recalls how Louis Armstrong, a.k.a. “Ambassador Satch,” won international hearts and minds with his trumpet. Band member Arvell Shaw saw Armstrong literally disarm Russian guards in East Berlin. Meanwhile, fear of nuclear war with the Soviets infiltrated American popular consciousness resulting in gospel, bluegrass, and pop odes and protests against atomic weapons. In the Sixties, the airwaves were dominated by rock’n‘roll, which pirate radio stations and the Armed Forces Network piped across the Iron Curtain. AFN soldier/deejay Rik De Lisle tells about spinning tunes that helped destabilize the Berlin Wall, and Hungarian diplomat/rock guitarist Andras Simonyi and Russian musician Stas Namin talk about life in the Soviet sphere, and the cultural revolution sparked by the Beatles, Traffic and Jimi Hendrix.