George Jackson (song)

"George Jackson" is a song by Bob Dylan, written in 1971, in tribute to the Black Panther leader, George Jackson, who had been shot and killed by guards at San Quentin Prison on August 21, 1971, during an attempted escape from prison. The event indirectly provoked the Attica Prison riot.

Dylan recorded the song at Columbia Studio B, on November 4, 1971 and it was quickly released as a 45 rpm single, Columbia 4-45516, on November 12, 1971. The single consisted of a "Big Band version" of the song on Side A and an "Acoustic version" on Side B.

The song was a Top 40 hit in Canada, the Netherlands, and on the US Billboard charts. The "Big Band version" was later included on the 1978 album Masterpieces, released in Japan and Australia. Both versions were available on iTunes as part of Bob Dylan: The Collection. This package was removed from iTunes in December 2009. The acoustic version is available on the Side Tracks double album, included in the box set Bob Dylan - The Complete Album Collection Vol.1, released in 2013.

Considered within the chronology of Dylan's work, the song "George Jackson" is of special significance, because, along with the single "Watching the River Flow," it represents the only wholly new work to appear from Dylan in the years 1971-72, the period between the albums New Morning (1970) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). From the time of the appearance of his first album in 1962 until the 1990s, this was the longest period that Dylan went without releasing an album of new material (although he made several new recordings of older songs to be released for the first time in a Dylan performance on 1971's Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II). Along with the speed with which the song was written, recorded and released following the death of Jackson, its appearance in an otherwise creatively fallow period (an outlook described in the lyrics of "Watching the River Flow") suggests that Dylan was strongly motivated by this subject.

The song was recorded 33 years later by Steel Pulse on their 2004 album, African Holocaust; the album which also included an updated version of their own song 'Uncle George', which was also in tribute to George Jackson.