Bob Dylan (album)
Encyclopedia
Bob Dylan is the debut album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan
, released in March 1962 on Columbia Records
. It features two original compositions, the rest being old folk standards, and was produced by Columbia's legendary talent scout John H. Hammond
, who signed Dylan to the label.
on September 14, 1961, at the apartment shared by Hester and her then-husband, Richard Fariña
. Hester had invited Dylan to the session as a harmonica player, and Hammond approved him as a session player after hearing him rehearse, with recommendations from his son, musician John Hammond Jr.
, and from Liam Clancy
.
Hammond later told Robert Shelton that he decided to sign Dylan "on the spot," and invited him to the Columbia offices for a more formal audition recording. No record of that recording has turned up in Columbia's files, but Hammond, Dylan, and Columbia's A&R director Mitch Miller
have all confirmed that an audition took place. (Producer Fred Catero
, then a recording engineer for Columbia Records, claims to have the master of that session. It is not the original demo for Columbia, but a session from December 6, 1962, recorded by John Hammond, Sr..)
On September 26, Dylan began a two-week run at Gerde's Folk City
, second on the bill to The Greenbriar Boys
. On September 29, an exceptionally favorable review of Dylan's performance appeared in the New York Times. The same day, Dylan played harmonica at Hester's recording session at Columbia's Manhattan studios. After the session, Hammond brought Dylan to his offices and presented him with Columbia's standard five-year contract for previously unrecorded artists. Dylan signed immediately.
That night at Gerdes, Dylan told Shelton about Hammond's offer, but asked him to "keep it quiet" until the contract's final approval had worked its way through the Columbia hierarchy. The label's official approvals came quickly.
Studio time was scheduled for late November, and during the weeks leading up to those sessions, Dylan began searching for new material even though he was already familiar with a number of songs. According to Dylan's friend Carla Rotolo
, "He spent most of his time listening to my records, days and nights. He studied the Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music, the singing of Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, Rabbit Brown's guitar, Guthrie, of course, and blues...his record was in the planning stages. We were all concerned about what songs Dylan was going to do. I remember clearly talking about it."
The album was ultimately recorded in three short afternoon sessions on November 20 and 22. Hammond later joked that Columbia spent "about $402" to record it, and the figure has entered the Dylan legend as its actual cost. Despite the low cost and short amount of time, Dylan was still difficult to record, according to Hammond. "Bobby popped every p, hissed every s, and habitually wandered off mike," recalls Hammond. "Even more frustrating, he refused to learn from his mistakes. It occurred to me at the time that I'd never worked with anyone so undisciplined before."
Seventeen songs were recorded, and five of the album's chosen tracks were actually cut in single takes ("Baby Let Me Follow You Down," "In My Time of Dyin'," "Gospel Plow
," "Highway 51 Blues," and "Freight Train Blues") while the master take of "Song for Woody" was recorded after one false start. The album's four outtakes were also cut in single takes. During the sessions, Dylan refused requests to do second takes. "I said no. I can't see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That's terrible."
The album cover featured a reversed photo of Dylan holding his acoustic guitar. It is unknown as to why the photo was flipped.
that he needed to hear a song only once or twice to learn it.
The final album sequence of Bob Dylan features only two original compositions; the other eleven tracks are folk standards and traditional songs. Few of these were staples of his club/coffeehouse repertoire. Only two of the covers and both originals were in his club set in September 1961. Dylan stated in a 2000 interview that he was hesitant to reveal too much of himself at first.
Of the two original songs, "Song for Woody" is the best known. According to Clinton Heylin
, the original handwritten manuscript to "Song For Woody" bears the following inscription at the bottom of the sheet: "Written by Bob Dylan in Mills Bar on Bleecker Street in New York City on the 14th day of February, for Woody Guthrie
." Melodically, the song is based on one of Guthrie's own compositions, "1913 Massacre," but it's possible Guthrie fashioned "1913 Massacre" from an even earlier melody; like many folk artists including Dylan, Guthrie would often adopt familiar folk melodies into new compositions. Guthrie was Dylan's main musical influence at the time of Bob Dylans release, and indeed on several of the songs Dylan is apparently imitating Guthrie's vocal mannerisms. "Talkin' New York" references Guthrie's song "Pretty Boy Floyd".
Dylan takes an arranger's credit on many of the traditional songs, but a number of them can be traced to his contemporaries. For example, the arrangement of "House Of The Risin' Sun" was developed by Dave Van Ronk
, who was a close friend at the time. During his recording of "Baby Let Me Follow You Down", Dylan mentions the arranger, Eric Von Schmidt
, whom he met in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Von Schmidt introduced the arrangement to Dylan as well as an arrangement for "He Was a Friend of Mine
," which was also recorded for but omitted from Dylan's first album.
Dylan would leave most of these songs behind when he moved to the concert stage in 1963, but he performed "Man of Constant Sorrow" during his first national television appearance in mid-1963 (a performance included on the 2005 retrospective No Direction Home
). "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" would later return in a driving electric arrangement during his 1965 and 1966 tours with The Hawks; a live recording was included on Live 1966.
After 1966, Dylan performed only five songs from his debut album in concert, and only "Song to Woody" and "Pretty Peggy-O" would be heard with any frequency.
of the Bootleg Series
: "House Carpenter," "He Was A Friend of Mine
," and another original composition, "Man on the Street." A fourth outtake, "Ramblin' Blues" written by Woody Guthrie
, remains unreleased.
Of these four, the most celebrated is perhaps "House Carpenter," a new rendition of the 16th century Scottish ballad "The Daemon Lover" and the final song recorded for Bob Dylan. Biographer Clinton Heylin
described the song as "the most extraordinary performance of the sessions, as demonically driven as anything Robert Johnson put out in his name." Though it was a favorite at the time in folk circles, Dylan apparently never played "House Carpenter" in any documented performance.
An alternate (shortened) version of "House of the Rising Sun," heavily overdubbed with electric instruments in 1964 (produced by Tom Wilson), was later included on the Highway 61 Interactive CD-ROM
.
's Tim Riley, "[but] even when his reach exceeds his grasp, he never sounds like he knows he's in over his head, or gushily patronizing...Like Elvis Presley
, what Dylan can sing, he quickly masters; what he can't, he twists to his own devices. And as with the Presley Sun sessions, the voice that leaps from Dylan's first album is its most striking feature, a determined, iconoclastic baying that chews up influences, and spits out the odd mixed signal without half trying."
However, at the time of its release, Bob Dylan received little notice, and both Hammond and Dylan were soon dismissive of the first album's results. According to Shelton, who pseudonymously wrote the liner notes, Dylan told him a month after the album's sessions that his liner notes were better than the record. Dylan continues to express his disappointment with his debut album to the present day.
The album did not initially sell well either, and Dylan was for a time known as "Hammond's Folly" in record company circles. Mitch Miller
, Columbia's chief of A&R
at the time, said US sales totaled about 2500 copies. It would remain his only release to not chart at all in the US, though it eventually made the UK charts in 1965, reaching #13. Despite the album's poor performance, financially it was not disastrous because the album was very cheap to record.
On December 22, 1961, a month to the day after Bob Dylans final session, Dylan was in Minneapolis, Minnesota
, where he and his friend Tony Glover paid a visit to their friend, Bonnie Beecher. Dylan held an informal session at her apartment, performing twenty-six songs which were recorded by Glover on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Often known by a misnomer, the "Minneapolis hotel tape" would soon enter private circulation, providing a thorough look at Dylan's musical potential only a month after recording his debut album. A larger and far more diverse selection of songs, they were all recorded the night of the 22nd in roughly two and a half hours.
Among the songs recorded that night were the harrowing, racially-charged morality tale "Black Cross," Big Joe Williams' "Baby Please Don't Go" (in which Dylan displays his growing skills at bottleneck guitar), the Pentecostal "Wade in the Water", Dylan's own reinterpretation of the traditional "Nine Hundred Miles" (retitled "I Was Young When I Left Home" and later issued on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
), the traditional "Poor Lazarus", a Memphis Jug Band arrangement of the traditional "Stealin'", another rewritten folk song called "Hard Times in New York Town" (based on the traditional "Hard Times in the Country Working on Ketty's Farm" and subsequently released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991), and the John Lomax
discovery "Dink's Song
". (According to Clinton Heylin
, Lomax first heard the song "in 1908 when, across the Brazos river from Texas A&M College, he heard a lady called Dink sing her song." First published in Folksong USA, Dylan's "hotel" recording would later be included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
.)
Though only a few selections from the Minneapolis hotel tape would ever be officially released, all twenty-six songs have been heavily bootlegged and celebrated by Greil Marcus
, a music critic who wrote about the recordings in Rolling Stone
Magazine. As Heylin writes, some of these songs gave Dylan "an all-important clue as to how he might mold traditional melodies and sensibility to his own worldview." This would grow to fruition when Dylan began work on his next album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
, a year later. By then, both Dylan's reputation and his stockpile of original compositions would have grown considerably.
The album was re-released in 2010 with new liner notes by Greil Marcus
.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, released in March 1962 on Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
. It features two original compositions, the rest being old folk standards, and was produced by Columbia's legendary talent scout John H. Hammond
John H. Hammond
John Henry Hammond II was an American record producer, musician and music critic from the 1930s to the early 1980s...
, who signed Dylan to the label.
Recording sessions
Dylan met John Hammond at a rehearsal session for Carolyn HesterCarolyn Hester
Carolyn Hester is an American folk singer and songwriter. She was a figure in the early 1960s folk music revival.-Biography:...
on September 14, 1961, at the apartment shared by Hester and her then-husband, Richard Fariña
Richard Fariña
Richard George Fariña was an American writer and folksinger.-Early years and education:Richard Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Cuban and Irish descent. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School...
. Hester had invited Dylan to the session as a harmonica player, and Hammond approved him as a session player after hearing him rehearse, with recommendations from his son, musician John Hammond Jr.
John P. Hammond
John Paul Hammond is an American blues singer and guitarist. The son of record producer John H. Hammond, he is sometimes referred to as "John Hammond, Jr.".-Background:...
, and from Liam Clancy
Liam Clancy
William "Liam" Clancy was an Irish folk singer and actor from Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. He was the youngest and last surviving member of performing group The Clancy Brothers. The group were regarded as Ireland's first pop stars...
.
Hammond later told Robert Shelton that he decided to sign Dylan "on the spot," and invited him to the Columbia offices for a more formal audition recording. No record of that recording has turned up in Columbia's files, but Hammond, Dylan, and Columbia's A&R director Mitch Miller
Mitch Miller
Mitchell William "Mitch" Miller was an American musician, singer, conductor, record producer, A&R man and record company executive...
have all confirmed that an audition took place. (Producer Fred Catero
Fred Catero
Fred Catero is an American record producer and engineer. Originally from New York, where he worked for CBS Records/Columbia, in the mid-1960s Catero moved to San Francisco to work for Columbia Records there. In San Francisco Catero worked on many albums by top artists, including Bob Dylan and...
, then a recording engineer for Columbia Records, claims to have the master of that session. It is not the original demo for Columbia, but a session from December 6, 1962, recorded by John Hammond, Sr..)
On September 26, Dylan began a two-week run at Gerde's Folk City
Gerde's Folk City
Gerdes Folk City was a music venue in the West Village in New York City. Initially opened as a restaurant called Gerdes, by owner Mike Porco, it eventually began to present occasional incidental music. It was located at 11 West 4th Street , having moved in 1970 to 130 West 3rd Street before finally...
, second on the bill to The Greenbriar Boys
The Greenbriar Boys
The Greenbriar Boys were a seminal northern bluegrass music group who first got together in jam sessions in New York's Washington Square Park. Along with the New Lost City Ramblers, their urban traditional country sound inspired a generation of musicians and fans.-Biography:In 1959,...
. On September 29, an exceptionally favorable review of Dylan's performance appeared in the New York Times. The same day, Dylan played harmonica at Hester's recording session at Columbia's Manhattan studios. After the session, Hammond brought Dylan to his offices and presented him with Columbia's standard five-year contract for previously unrecorded artists. Dylan signed immediately.
That night at Gerdes, Dylan told Shelton about Hammond's offer, but asked him to "keep it quiet" until the contract's final approval had worked its way through the Columbia hierarchy. The label's official approvals came quickly.
Studio time was scheduled for late November, and during the weeks leading up to those sessions, Dylan began searching for new material even though he was already familiar with a number of songs. According to Dylan's friend Carla Rotolo
Carla Rotolo
Carla Rotolo is the older sister of Suze Rotolo, one of Bob Dylan's early girlfriends in New York City.Carla was the first child of Joachim Rotolo and Mary Pezzati Rotolo who were union activists...
, "He spent most of his time listening to my records, days and nights. He studied the Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music, the singing of Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, Rabbit Brown's guitar, Guthrie, of course, and blues...his record was in the planning stages. We were all concerned about what songs Dylan was going to do. I remember clearly talking about it."
The album was ultimately recorded in three short afternoon sessions on November 20 and 22. Hammond later joked that Columbia spent "about $402" to record it, and the figure has entered the Dylan legend as its actual cost. Despite the low cost and short amount of time, Dylan was still difficult to record, according to Hammond. "Bobby popped every p, hissed every s, and habitually wandered off mike," recalls Hammond. "Even more frustrating, he refused to learn from his mistakes. It occurred to me at the time that I'd never worked with anyone so undisciplined before."
Seventeen songs were recorded, and five of the album's chosen tracks were actually cut in single takes ("Baby Let Me Follow You Down," "In My Time of Dyin'," "Gospel Plow
Gospel Plow
"Gospel Plow" is a traditional American folk song. It is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index, number 10075. The title is biblical, based on Luke 9:62.-Recordings:* Duke Ellington Newport Jazz Festival...
," "Highway 51 Blues," and "Freight Train Blues") while the master take of "Song for Woody" was recorded after one false start. The album's four outtakes were also cut in single takes. During the sessions, Dylan refused requests to do second takes. "I said no. I can't see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That's terrible."
The album cover featured a reversed photo of Dylan holding his acoustic guitar. It is unknown as to why the photo was flipped.
The songs
By the time sessions were held for his debut album, Dylan was absorbing an enormous amount of folk material from sitting and listening to contemporaries performing in New York's clubs and coffeehouses. Many of these individuals were also close friends who performed with Dylan, often inviting him to their apartments where they would introduce him to more folk songs. At the same time, Dylan was borrowing and listening to a large number of folk, blues, and country records, many of which were hard to find at the time. Dylan revealed in an interview in the documentary No Direction HomeNo Direction Home
No Direction Home is a documentary film by Martin Scorsese that traces the life of Bob Dylan, and his impact on 20th century American popular music and culture. The film does not cover Dylan's entire career; it concentrates on the period between Dylan's arrival in New York in January 1961 and his...
that he needed to hear a song only once or twice to learn it.
The final album sequence of Bob Dylan features only two original compositions; the other eleven tracks are folk standards and traditional songs. Few of these were staples of his club/coffeehouse repertoire. Only two of the covers and both originals were in his club set in September 1961. Dylan stated in a 2000 interview that he was hesitant to reveal too much of himself at first.
Of the two original songs, "Song for Woody" is the best known. According to Clinton Heylin
Clinton Heylin
Clinton Heylin is an English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan.- Education :...
, the original handwritten manuscript to "Song For Woody" bears the following inscription at the bottom of the sheet: "Written by Bob Dylan in Mills Bar on Bleecker Street in New York City on the 14th day of February, for Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
." Melodically, the song is based on one of Guthrie's own compositions, "1913 Massacre," but it's possible Guthrie fashioned "1913 Massacre" from an even earlier melody; like many folk artists including Dylan, Guthrie would often adopt familiar folk melodies into new compositions. Guthrie was Dylan's main musical influence at the time of Bob Dylans release, and indeed on several of the songs Dylan is apparently imitating Guthrie's vocal mannerisms. "Talkin' New York" references Guthrie's song "Pretty Boy Floyd".
Dylan takes an arranger's credit on many of the traditional songs, but a number of them can be traced to his contemporaries. For example, the arrangement of "House Of The Risin' Sun" was developed by Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
, who was a close friend at the time. During his recording of "Baby Let Me Follow You Down", Dylan mentions the arranger, Eric Von Schmidt
Eric Von Schmidt
Eric "Rick" Von Schmidt was an American singer-songwriter and Grammy Award recipient. He was associated with the folk/blues revival of the 1960s and a key part of the East Coast folk music scene that included Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.-Background and associations with Dylan:Von Schmidt's father,...
, whom he met in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Von Schmidt introduced the arrangement to Dylan as well as an arrangement for "He Was a Friend of Mine
He Was a Friend of Mine
"He Was a Friend of Mine" is a traditional folk song in which the singer laments the death of a friend. The earliest known version of the song is titled "Shorty George"...
," which was also recorded for but omitted from Dylan's first album.
Dylan would leave most of these songs behind when he moved to the concert stage in 1963, but he performed "Man of Constant Sorrow" during his first national television appearance in mid-1963 (a performance included on the 2005 retrospective No Direction Home
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack is the third most recent installment in the Bob Dylan "Bootleg Series" of rare and/or officially unissued recordings....
). "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" would later return in a driving electric arrangement during his 1965 and 1966 tours with The Hawks; a live recording was included on Live 1966.
After 1966, Dylan performed only five songs from his debut album in concert, and only "Song to Woody" and "Pretty Peggy-O" would be heard with any frequency.
Outtakes
Three additional songs recorded during the Bob Dylan sessions were included on Volume 1The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991
The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 is a compilation box set by Bob Dylan, issued on Columbia Records, catalogue C3K 86572. It is the first installment in the Dylan bootleg series, comprising material spanning the first three decades of his career, from 1961 to 1989...
of the Bootleg Series
The Bootleg Series
The Bootleg Series is a collection of albums by Bob Dylan, all featuring rare and unreleased material. To date, nine volumes have been released: the first three volumes as a contiguous set; Vol. 4 Live 1966; Vol. 5 Live 1975; Vol. 6 Live 1964; Vol. 7 No Direction Home; Vol. 8 Tell Tale Signs, and...
: "House Carpenter," "He Was A Friend of Mine
He Was a Friend of Mine
"He Was a Friend of Mine" is a traditional folk song in which the singer laments the death of a friend. The earliest known version of the song is titled "Shorty George"...
," and another original composition, "Man on the Street." A fourth outtake, "Ramblin' Blues" written by Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
, remains unreleased.
Of these four, the most celebrated is perhaps "House Carpenter," a new rendition of the 16th century Scottish ballad "The Daemon Lover" and the final song recorded for Bob Dylan. Biographer Clinton Heylin
Clinton Heylin
Clinton Heylin is an English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan.- Education :...
described the song as "the most extraordinary performance of the sessions, as demonically driven as anything Robert Johnson put out in his name." Though it was a favorite at the time in folk circles, Dylan apparently never played "House Carpenter" in any documented performance.
An alternate (shortened) version of "House of the Rising Sun," heavily overdubbed with electric instruments in 1964 (produced by Tom Wilson), was later included on the Highway 61 Interactive CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
.
Aftermath
Bob Dylan did not receive much acclaim until years later. "These debut songs are essayed with differing degrees of conviction," writes NPRNPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
's Tim Riley, "[but] even when his reach exceeds his grasp, he never sounds like he knows he's in over his head, or gushily patronizing...Like Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
, what Dylan can sing, he quickly masters; what he can't, he twists to his own devices. And as with the Presley Sun sessions, the voice that leaps from Dylan's first album is its most striking feature, a determined, iconoclastic baying that chews up influences, and spits out the odd mixed signal without half trying."
However, at the time of its release, Bob Dylan received little notice, and both Hammond and Dylan were soon dismissive of the first album's results. According to Shelton, who pseudonymously wrote the liner notes, Dylan told him a month after the album's sessions that his liner notes were better than the record. Dylan continues to express his disappointment with his debut album to the present day.
The album did not initially sell well either, and Dylan was for a time known as "Hammond's Folly" in record company circles. Mitch Miller
Mitch Miller
Mitchell William "Mitch" Miller was an American musician, singer, conductor, record producer, A&R man and record company executive...
, Columbia's chief of A&R
A&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
at the time, said US sales totaled about 2500 copies. It would remain his only release to not chart at all in the US, though it eventually made the UK charts in 1965, reaching #13. Despite the album's poor performance, financially it was not disastrous because the album was very cheap to record.
On December 22, 1961, a month to the day after Bob Dylans final session, Dylan was in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
, where he and his friend Tony Glover paid a visit to their friend, Bonnie Beecher. Dylan held an informal session at her apartment, performing twenty-six songs which were recorded by Glover on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Often known by a misnomer, the "Minneapolis hotel tape" would soon enter private circulation, providing a thorough look at Dylan's musical potential only a month after recording his debut album. A larger and far more diverse selection of songs, they were all recorded the night of the 22nd in roughly two and a half hours.
Among the songs recorded that night were the harrowing, racially-charged morality tale "Black Cross," Big Joe Williams' "Baby Please Don't Go" (in which Dylan displays his growing skills at bottleneck guitar), the Pentecostal "Wade in the Water", Dylan's own reinterpretation of the traditional "Nine Hundred Miles" (retitled "I Was Young When I Left Home" and later issued on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack is the third most recent installment in the Bob Dylan "Bootleg Series" of rare and/or officially unissued recordings....
), the traditional "Poor Lazarus", a Memphis Jug Band arrangement of the traditional "Stealin'", another rewritten folk song called "Hard Times in New York Town" (based on the traditional "Hard Times in the Country Working on Ketty's Farm" and subsequently released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991), and the John Lomax
John Lomax
John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist and folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk songs...
discovery "Dink's Song
Dink's Song
"Dink's Song" is an American folk song played by many folk revival musicians such as Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk, as well as more recent musicians like Jeff Buckley...
". (According to Clinton Heylin
Clinton Heylin
Clinton Heylin is an English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan.- Education :...
, Lomax first heard the song "in 1908 when, across the Brazos river from Texas A&M College, he heard a lady called Dink sing her song." First published in Folksong USA, Dylan's "hotel" recording would later be included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack is the third most recent installment in the Bob Dylan "Bootleg Series" of rare and/or officially unissued recordings....
.)
Though only a few selections from the Minneapolis hotel tape would ever be officially released, all twenty-six songs have been heavily bootlegged and celebrated by Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...
, a music critic who wrote about the recordings in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
Magazine. As Heylin writes, some of these songs gave Dylan "an all-important clue as to how he might mold traditional melodies and sensibility to his own worldview." This would grow to fruition when Dylan began work on his next album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in May 1963 by Columbia Records. Whereas his debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, Freewheelin initiated the process of writing contemporary words to traditional melodies....
, a year later. By then, both Dylan's reputation and his stockpile of original compositions would have grown considerably.
The album was re-released in 2010 with new liner notes by Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...
.
Track listing
Charts
Album| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1962 | Billboard 200 | - |
| 1965 | UK Top 75 | 13 |