Michael Gray identified several possible influences on "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", including "
The Memphis Blues" by
W. C. Handy, who wrote the music, published in 1912, and
George A. Norton, who wrote the lyrics the following year. He further notes the influence of
Ma Rainey's "Memphis Bound Blues" (1925); "South Memphis Blues" by
Frank Stokes (1929); and "North Memphis Blues" by
Memphis Minnie (1930). Gray saw similarities with the
Bukka White song "Aberdeen Mississippi Blues" (1940), which has the line "Sittin' down in Aberdeen with New Orleans on my mind". The song has nine verses, each, according to critic Andy Gill, providing "an absurd little vignette illustrating contemporary alienation". Musicologist
Wilfrid Mellers described the song as
strophic; Literature scholar
Timothy Hampton felt that Dylan's "technique of varying the chorus as a way of isolating the singer from the listener" as he employed on some of the
Blonde on Blonde tracks is in evidence on "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", where the chorus is sung differently by Dylan each time. Journalist Oliver Trager suggested that, like other Dylan songs of the time, the themes were "suspicion of authority figures, solicitous females, and a confused, persecuted, and possibly intoxicated narrator". Mellers wrote that the song, which features a list of characters including Shakespeare, Mona, Ruth, a ragman, a senator, a preacher, a rainman, railroad men, and a deceased grandfather, gave "evidence of the interdependence in Dylan's songs of everyday reality and myth". Each verse includes a distinct set of characters and circumstances.
Mike Marqusee felt that "thwarted escapism blends with a sense of impending doom" in the song. He added that: The sociologist John Wells argued that the song "cannot possibly be wholly experienced as a truly remarkable work of art" from reading the lyrics alone, but only when listening to Dylan's performance. He posited that after listening to the track numerous times, listeners would realise, "Mobile no longer just means being stuck in an Alabama city, but... represents the grotesque, turbulent world we all inhabit." Communication studies scholar Keith Nainby wrote that Dylan "enacted an alienated, tumultuous narrative persona that was troubled, not comforted, by his place and time". In a positive review of
Blonde on Blonde for
Asbury Park Press, Dave Margoshes considered the song, which he called a "surrealistic frenetic blues", to be one of the four "outstanding" tracks on the album.
Paul Williams named the track as his favorite from the album when he wrote in
Crawdaddy! in 1966 that it was "a chain of anecdotes bound together by an evocative chorus". He offered, "Dylan relates specific episodes and emotions in his offhand impressionistic manner, somehow making the universal specific and then making it universal again in that oh-so-accurate refrain." Williams also praised the musicianship, adding that he had never heard the organ "played so effectively" as by Kooper on the number. In the
Record Mirror review, Norman Jopling wrote that the song was "jolly.. with a teen-beaty backing" and was "quite amusing".
Neil Spencer gave the song a rating of 5/5 stars in an
Uncut magazine Dylan supplement in 2015, rating it as one of the three "grand statements" on
Blonde on Blonde, alongside "
Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" and "
Visions of Johanna". Author John Nogowski rated the song as "A+". He described it as "a brilliantly funny portrait in black velvet of a world gone mad", and one of Dylan's "most perfectly realized songs". ==Live performances==