Bob Dylan Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again

1962 album of Bob Dylan

1962 studio anthology by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan
Studio anthology by Bob Dylan
Released	March xix, 1962 (1962-03-19)
Recorded	November 20 and 22, 1961
Studio	Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York City
Genre	Folk[one] country dejection[i] protest music[1]
Length	36:54
Label	Columbia
Producer	John H. Hammond
Bob Dylan chronology
Bob Dylan (1962) The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[3]
Entertainment Weekly	B[iv]
MusicHound	[half-dozen]
Rolling Stone	[5]
The Rolling Stone Anthology Guide	[vii]
Tom Hull	B+[8]

Bob Dylan is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on March 19, 1962^[ix] by Columbia Records. The album was produced by Columbia's legendary talent scout John H. Hammond, who had earlier signed Dylan to the label, a decision which was at the time controversial. The anthology primarily features folk standards, but besides includes two original compositions, "Talkin' New York" and "Song to Woody". The latter was an ode to Woody Guthrie, a major influence in Dylan's early career.

The album did non initially receive much attending, but it achieved some popularity following the growth of Dylan'southward career, charting in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland three years after its release, reaching #13.

Recording [edit]

Dylan met John Hammond at a rehearsal session for Carolyn Hester on September 14, 1961, at the apartment shared by Hester and her so-married man, Richard Fariña. Hester had invited Dylan to the session equally a harmonica role player, and Hammond canonical him as a session role player later on hearing him rehearse, with recommendations from his son, musician John P. Hammond, and from Liam Clancy.

Hammond subsequently 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 tape of that recording has turned upwards in Columbia's files, but Hammond, Dylan, and Columbia's A&R director Mitch Miller accept all confirmed that an audition took place.

On September 26, Dylan began a two-week run at Gerde'southward Folk Urban center, second on the bill to The Greenbriar Boys. On September 29, an uncommonly favorable review of Dylan'south performance appeared in the New York Times. The same day, Dylan played harmonica at Hester'southward recording session at Columbia's Manhattan studios. Later the session, Hammond brought Dylan to his offices and presented him with Columbia's standard five-year contract for previously unrecorded artists, and Dylan signed immediately.

That night at Gerdes, Dylan told Shelton about Hammond's offer, but asked him to "proceed it quiet" until the contract'south concluding approval had worked its way through the Columbia bureaucracy. The label'southward official approvals came quickly.

Studio time was scheduled for late November, and during the weeks leading upwardly to those sessions, Dylan began searching for new fabric even though he was already familiar with a number of songs. According to Dylan'southward friend Carla Rotolo (sis of his girlfriend Suze Rotolo), "He spent nearly of his time listening to my records, days and nights. He studied the Folkways Album of American Folk Music, the singing of Ewan MacColl and A. Fifty. Lloyd, Rabbit Dark-brown's guitar, Guthrie, of course, and blues … his record was in the planning stages. Nosotros were all concerned nearly what songs Dylan was going to practise. I think clearly talking near information technology."

The album was ultimately recorded in three short afternoon sessions on Nov 20 and 22. Hammond after joked that Columbia spent "nearly $402" to record it, and the figure has entered the Dylan legend as its actual price. Despite the low toll and brusque amount of fourth dimension, Dylan was all the same difficult to record, co-ordinate 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. Information technology occurred to me at the fourth dimension that I'd never worked with anyone and so undisciplined before."^[10]

Seventeen songs were recorded, and v of the anthology's chosen tracks were really cut in single takes ("Baby Let Me Follow You Downwardly", "In My Time of Dyin'", "Gospel Plow", "Highway 51 Blues", and "Freight Train Blues") while the master take of "Song to Woody" was recorded after one false first. The album'south 4 outtakes were too cut in single takes. During the sessions, Dylan refused requests to do second takes. "I said no. I can't come across myself singing the aforementioned song twice in a row. That's terrible."^[11]

The anthology cover features a reversed photograph of Dylan holding his audio-visual guitar. This was done to prevent the neck of the guitar from obscuring Columbia'due south logo.

Music [edit]

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 likewise close friends who performed with Dylan, often inviting him to their apartments where they would introduce him to more folk songs. At the aforementioned time, Dylan was borrowing and listening to a big number of folk, dejection, and country records, many of which were hard to find at the fourth dimension. Dylan claimed in the documentary No Management Home that he needed to hear a vocal merely once or twice to learn it.

The final album sequence of Bob Dylan features merely 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 ready in September 1961. Dylan stated in a 2000 interview that he was hesitant to reveal too much of himself at first.^{[ commendation needed ]}

Of the two original songs, "Song to Woody" is the all-time known. According to Clinton Heylin, the original handwritten manuscript to "Vocal to Woody" bears the following inscription at the bottom of the sheet: "Written past Bob Dylan in Mills Bar on Bleecker Street in New York City on the 14th 24-hour interval of February, for Woody Guthrie." Melodically, the song is based on one of Guthrie's ain compositions, "1913 Massacre", but information technology is possible Guthrie fashioned "1913 Massacre" from an fifty-fifty earlier melody; similar many folk artists, including Dylan, Guthrie would often adapt familiar folk melodies into new compositions. Guthrie was Dylan'due south main musical influence at the fourth dimension of Bob Dylan 's release, and indeed on several of the songs, Dylan is apparently imitating Guthrie'south vocal mannerisms. "Talkin' New York" is closely based on Guthrie's song "Talking Dustbowl Blues" and too references "The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd".

Dylan takes an arranger'due south credit on many of the traditional songs, but a number of them tin can be traced to his contemporaries. For example, the arrangement of "House of the Rising Dominicus" was adult past Dave Van Ronk, who was a close friend at the time. Van Ronk had intended to tape this arrangement himself and was upset that Dylan had recorded it. During his recording of "Baby Let Me Follow You Downwardly", Dylan mentions the arranger, Eric Von Schmidt, whom he met in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Von Schmidt introduced the arrangement to Dylan equally well every bit an arrangement for "He Was a Friend of Mine", which was also recorded for simply omitted from Dylan'south beginning album.

Dylan would leave most of these songs backside when he moved to the concert stage in 1963, but he performed "Homo of Abiding Sorrow" during his start 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 alive recording was included on Live 1966.

Afterwards 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 [edit]

Three boosted songs recorded during the Bob Dylan sessions were included on Volume ane of the Homemade Series: "House Carpenter", "He Was a Friend of Mine" and some other original limerick, "Man on the Street". A fourth outtake, "Ramblin' Blues" written past Woody Guthrie, remains unreleased.

Of these 4, the most celebrated is maybe "House Carpenter", a new rendition of the 16th-century Scottish ballad "The Daemon Lover" and the last vocal recorded for Bob Dylan. Biographer Clinton Heylin described the song as "the near extraordinary performance of the sessions, as demonically driven every bit anything Robert Johnson put out in his name". Though information technology was a favorite at the time in folk circles, Dylan plainly never played "House Carpenter" in any documented performance.

An alternating (shortened) version of "House of the Rising Sun", heavily overdubbed with electrical instruments in 1964 (produced past Tom Wilson), was afterward included on the Highway 61 Interactive CD-ROM.

Critical reception [edit]

Bob Dylan did non receive acclaim until years afterwards. "These debut songs are essayed with differing degrees of conviction," writes music critic Tim Riley in 1999, "[but] even when his achieve exceeds his grasp, he never sounds like he knows he's in over his head, or gushily patronizing … Like Elvis Presley, what Dylan tin 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 outset album is its most striking feature, a determined, iconoclastic baying that chews up influences, and spits out the odd mixed signal without one-half trying."^[12]

At the time of its release, however, Bob Dylan received piffling notice, and both Hammond and Dylan were presently dismissive of the beginning album's results. In the Apr 14, 1962 consequence of Billboard magazine it was highlighted as a 'special merit' release, proverb; "(Dylan) is one of the most interesting, and most disciplined youngster to appear on the pop-folk scene in a long time" and "moving originals such as "Song to Woody" and "Talkin' New York". Dylan when he finds his own manner, could win a large post-obit."^[thirteen] Despite this positive notice, the album also did not initially sell well and Dylan was for a fourth dimension known equally "Hammond's Folly" in record company circles.^[fourteen] Mitch Miller, Columbia'due south chief of A&R at the time, said U.S. sales totaled about 2,500 copies. Bob Dylan remains Dylan'southward simply release non to chart any in the U.South., although information technology eventually reached No. 13 in the UK charts in 1965.^[xv] Despite the anthology's poor sales, it was not a financial disaster because information technology was very cheap to record.

On Dec 22, 1961, a month to the day afterward Bob Dylan 's 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 breezy session at her flat, performing 26 songs which were recorded by Glover on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Often known past a misnomer, the Minneapolis Hotel Tape soon entered individual circulation, providing a thorough look at Dylan'due south musical potential only a calendar month afterward recording his debut anthology. A larger and far more various selection of songs, it was all recorded the night of the 22nd in roughly two and a half hours.

Amongst the songs recorded that night were the harrowing, racially charged morality tale "Black Cantankerous", 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 Immature When I Left Home" and later on issued on The Bootleg Serial Vol. 7: No Direction Abode: 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 Land Working on Ketty'southward Farm" and afterwards released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–iii (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991), and the John Lomax discovery "Dink'south Vocal". (Co-ordinate to Clinton Heylin, Lomax first heard the song "in 1908^[16] when, across the Brazos river from Texas A&Thousand College, he heard a lady called Dink sing her song.")^[17] Offset published in Folksong USA, Dylan's "hotel" recording would later be included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Management Abode: The Soundtrack.

Though only a few selections from the Minneapolis hotel tape were e'er officially released, all 20-vi songs have been heavily bootlegged and celebrated past Greil Marcus, a music critic who wrote near the recordings in Rolling Stone magazine. Equally 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".^[xviii] This would come up to fruition when Dylan began piece of work on his next anthology, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, a yr later, by which time both Dylan's reputation and his stockpile of original compositions had grown considerably.

Bob Dylan was re-released in 2010 as the first of a 9 CD boxset titled The Original Mono Recordings, with new liner notes by Greil Marcus on a lx pages booklet.^[nineteen]

Considering its copyright expired in Europe in 2012, several editions have appeared in the EU from competing oldies labels. One edition, from Hoodoo Records, includes 12 bonus tracks (1 unmarried and 11 live radio recordings from 1961 to 1962) and a 16-folio booklet.

Rail list [edit]

Side one

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"You're No Expert"	Jesse Fuller	1:twoscore
2.	"Talkin' New York"	Bob Dylan	three:20
3.	"In My Time of Dyin'"	Traditional, arranged by Dylan	two:40
4.	"Man of Constant Sorrow"	Traditional, arranged past Dylan	3:x
5.	"Fixin' to Die"	Bukka White	2:22
6.	"Pretty Peggy-O"	Traditional, arranged by Dylan	3:23
7.	"Highway 51"	Curtis Jones	2:52
Full length:			nineteen:27

Side two

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"Gospel Plow"	Traditional, arranged by Dylan	1:47
2.	"Babe, Let Me Follow You Down"	Traditional arranged by Eric Von Schmidt	ii:37
3.	"House of the Risin' Sun"	Traditional arranged by Dave Van Ronk	5:twenty
iv.	"Freight Train Blues"	John Lair, arranged by Mississippi Fred McDowell, the remastered version was bundled past Dylan[20] [21]	ii:18
5.	"Vocal to Woody"	Dylan	two:42
6.	"Encounter That My Grave Is Kept Clean"	Blind Lemon Jefferson	2:43
Total length:			17:27

2013 Hoodoo reissue bonus tracks

No.	Title	Author(south)	Length
14.	"Mixed-Up Confusion" (single)	Dylan	2:thirty
15.	"Roll On John" (live)	Traditional, arranged past Dylan	3:16
16.	"Hard Times in New York" (alive)	Dylan	2:32
17.	"Smokestack Lightning" (alive)	Chester Burnett	iii:03
18.	"Stealin' Stealin'" (live)	G. Gannon	three:24
19.	"Baby, Please Don't Go" (live)	Joe Williams	2:nineteen
xx.	"The Death of Emmett Till" (live)	Dylan	5:11
21.	"Man on the Street" (live)	Dylan	2:25
22.	"Omie Wise" (live)	Traditional	4:02
23.	"Don't Remember Twice, It's All Right" (live)	Dylan	3:21
24.	"The Girl I Left Behind" (live)	Traditional, bundled past Dylan	5:39
25.	"Blowin' in the Wind" (live)	Dylan	2:29

Personnel [edit]

• Bob Dylan – vocals, audio-visual guitar, harmonica
• John H. Hammond – production

Charts [edit]

Album

Yr	Chart	Position
1965	UK Top 75	13[15]

Certifications [edit]

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c} Ian Ousby (Feb 23, 1996). The Cambridge Paperback Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge Academy Press. p. 125. ISBN978-0-521-43627-4.
2. ^ AllMusic review
3. ^ Larkin, Colin (2007). The Encyclopedia of Pop Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0195313734.
4. ^ "Bob Dylan'due south discography". EW.com.
5. ^ "RollingStoneAlbumGuide'due south music - Rate Your Music". rateyourmusic.com.
6. ^ Graff, Gary; Durchholz, Daniel, eds. (1999). MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide (2nd ed.). Farmington Hills, MI: Visible Ink Printing. p. 371. ISBN1-57859-061-two.
7. ^ Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian, eds. (2004). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York, NY: Fireside. p. 262. ISBN0-7432-0169-eight . Retrieved Baronial 22, 2015.
8. ^ Hull, Tom (June 21, 2014). "Rhapsody Streamnotes: June 21, 2014". tomhull.com . Retrieved March one, 2020.
9. ^ Vulliamy, Ed (March 17, 2012). "How Bob Dylan, music's keen enigma starting time revealed his talent to the world fifty years ago". The Guardian . Retrieved March 19, 2020.
10. ^ Heylin, Clinton (1997). Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960–1994. Macmillan. pp. 7–8. ISBN0-312-15067-9. OCLC 81953762.
11. ^ Cavallo, Dominick. A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History. St. Martin'southward Press (1999), pp. 178–79. ISBN 0-312-21930-10.
12. ^ Riley, Tim. Difficult Pelting: A Dylan Commentary. Da Capo Press (1999), pp. 38–39. ISBN 0-306-80907-nine
13. ^ "Special Merit Albums". Billboard. Billboard. April 14, 1962. Retrieved February 17, 2019.
14. ^ Gilliland, John (1969). "Bear witness 31 – Ballad in Obviously D: An introduction to the Bob Dylan era" (audio). Pop Chronicles. University of North Texas Libraries. Track 3.
15. ^ ^{a b} "Bob Dylan". Official Charts Company.
16. ^ Adventures Of A Carol Hunter by John Lomax, published past MacMillan in 1947
17. ^ Heylin, Clinton. Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited. HarperCollins (2003), pp. 78–79. ISBN 0-06-052569-X.
18. ^ Heylin (2003), p. 88.
19. ^ "The Original Mono Recordings". bobdylan.com. October nineteen, 2010. Archived from the original on February 27, 2011. Retrieved April 24, 2011.
20. ^ Catalog of Copyright Entries, Third Series: 1963: January-June (Google eBook). Copyright Role, Library of Congress. 1964. p. 958. Retrieved November 10, 2013.
21. ^ "Freight Train Blues (Lyrics)". CountryMusicTreasures.com. Archived from the original on Nov nine, 2013. Retrieved November 10, 2013.
22. ^ "British album certifications – Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan". British Phonographic Industry.

Bibliography [edit]

• Dylan, Bob. Chronicles: Volume ane. Simon and Schuster, October five, 2004, hardcover, 208 pages. ISBN 0-7432-2815-4
• Hammond, John. John Hammond On Record, Ridge Press, 1977, 416 pages. ISBN 0-671-40003-7. Title sometimes reported as On The Record.
• Heylin, Clinton. Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen Moments, Schirmer Books, 1986, 403 pages. ISBN 0-8256-7156-vi. Besides known every bit Bob Dylan: Day Past Day
• Heylin, Clinton. Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited. Perennial Currents, 2003, 800 pages. ISBN 0-06-052569-X
• Shelton, Robert, No Management Home, Da Capo Press, 2003 reprint of 1986 original, 576 pages. ISBN 0-306-81287-8
• Greene, Andy. 50 Years Agone Today: Bob Dylan Released His Debut Album. Rolling Stone, 2012

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_(album)

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