Links to Q&A that features Tupelo: Click here for link to Newsweek blog - Exclusive Excerpt: Dylan on Mysticism, Obama the South. Click here for link to Times Online on Dylan.

TUPELO – A musical icon has been talking about Tupelo on the World Wide Web.

During an interview, Bob Dylan mentioned “rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits” in the Southern air, and that led him to Elvis Presley.

“I was in Elvis’ hometown, Tupelo,” he said. “And I was trying to feel what Elvis would have felt back when he was growing up.”

The discussion was part of a Q&A with music journalist Bill Flanagan to promote the April 27 release of Dylan’s “Together Through Life.”

Early installments of the Q&A are located at www.bobdylan.com, and the most recent installment dealing with Tupelo is featured on Newsweek’s’ Web site and The Times of London site.

Flanagan asked if Dylan got a feel for the music that Elvis must have heard growing up in Tupelo.

“No, but I’ll tell you what I did feel. I felt the ghosts from the bloody battle that Sherman fought against Forrest and drove him out,” Dylan said. “There’s an eeriness to the town. A sadness that lingers. Elvis must have felt it too.”

There’s no way to tell exactly what visit to Tupelo the folk singer is referring to. He performed at the venue now known as the BancorpSouth Arena on Nov. 2, 1996, and on Feb. 18, 2002.

He could be talking about one of those trips, or any other day because the Elvis Presley Birthplace and Museum regularly draws visits from the rich and famous.

“Sometimes you don’t recognize them until they get up to pay and you see their credit card,” said Rhonda Lamb, a longtime employee at the birthplace. “Sometimes we never know about it until we hear about it from somebody else.”

No one expects Dylan to be a historian, but his comments about Gen. William Sherman and Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest could mislead some readers.

Edwina Carpenter, director of Brice’s Crossroads Visitor and Interpretive Center and Battlefield, said Sherman and Forrest never faced each other in Lee County.

“Sherman did send Gen. (Samuel) Sturgis to Brice’s Crossroads,” Carpenter said. “His objective was to keep Forrest away from Sherman’s railroad supply lines.”

Confederate troops carried the day on June 10, 1864, so Sherman sent Gen. A.J. Smith to Tupelo for the same mission. Forrest fought at the Battle of Harrisburg, July 14-15, but Southern troops were under the command of Gen. Stephen D. Lee, Carpenter said.

Since Sherman gave the orders, it could be said that Sherman battled Forrest. Maybe that was what Dylan and Elvis felt in Tupelo.

Then again, who knows?

“I think Dylan and Elvis are both wide open to interpretation,” said Ted Ownby, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. “I don’t know if anyone has a right to say they have either one of them figured out.”

Contact M. Scott Morris at (662) 678-1589 or scott.morris@djournal.com.