Bob Dylan’s debut with 60: “This is the blueprint”

On November 20, 1961, a precocious 20-year-old kid from Minnesota rolls into Columbia Studio A in New York City with an acoustic guitar and a set of point money from a major record company. Over three short sessions, he recorded 17 raw and scratchy songs – mostly covers of songs he recorded at folk clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village, or listening to his friends’ recordings – with little regard for the etiquette or processes of recording; he would roam off-mic, pop his “p “s and often refuse to do second take because” I can not see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s awful. ” Just two days and about $ 400 in studio costs later, he comes out with a tentative debut album full of covers, destined to bombard the record rack.

It’s a story as old as the music industry itself. But this precocious 20-year-old was Bob Dylan, fresh out of a five-year signing with Columbia Records’ John H Hammond, but still lacking the confidence to write many songs of his own. And the self-titled debut album he made – his first professional record, released today 60 years ago – would be a historic, if unfortunate, prelude to a glorious series of 1963 albums. The Freewheelin ‘Bob Dylan until 1967 John Wesley Harding this would reinvent the folk, marry it with rock’n’roll and change the course of popular music forever.

Including only two original Dylan songs (“Talkin ‘New York” and “Song to Woody”) under his plethora of covers of traditional folk and blues tracks – most notably “House of the Risin’ Sun”, with an arrangement “borrowed” from Fellow New York Folk Scene Dave Van Ronk – Bob Dylan was never awarded many canonical kudos. When Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell’s famous headline “Dylan Makes Chips, I Drink Champagne” was the record with which he compares the debut of his own band. But in recent years, later generations of folk fans and budding Dylanologists have come to the record, while experts recognize its significance as the groundwork from which one of the greatest creative leaps forward has been made. Here, contemporary musicians and experts discuss what Bob Dylan means to them.

Frank Turner, folk rocker who reworked “Song to Woody” as “Song to Bob” live and on record

“It’s the record before Dylan hit his perfect streak, which lasted for about seven albums of completely flawless material. You can hear the beginning of what he was trying to collect on that record. Much of it is basically traditional. Folk, and he almost deals with other people’s voices. He searches through a catalog of voices to find his own. Recording so quickly and cheaply was very punk. Folly “known. John Hammond signed him, and he signed Aretha Franklin and all the other people. He spent quite a lot of money signing Dylan and that first record did not really go anywhere.

“For me, the highlight of the album is ‘Song to Woody’, which is the only song on this record that I think is as good as anything. Another page … or The times are a-Changin ‘. The other stuff in there, proves in a way his bona fides as a folk singer. Dylan’s hinterland is the fact that he was a total nerd. There are all these stories about when he was in Minnesota, stealing a copy of the Smithsonian Folk Collection from one of his neighbors, literally breaking into his house and nodding it. He was a student [of folk]… this was around the time he would see Woody Guthrie in Bethesda Hospital at a point where no one else did. Woody Guthrie was largely forgotten and died in a hospital just outside New York and Bob Dylan went and rescued his wife, and then he. It was not a long line of people who did that, he was the only one who did it, where ‘Song to Woody’ comes from.

“He went on to write mostly original material, as much as it influenced folk, but this is the blueprint. It shows you where he came from and, with the benefit of hindsight, what he went for. I think it’s a really important document. It’s the doctoral dissertation before he went and wrote his first book, almost. It’s important that it proves that what he went on was founded on the right thing. He went on to play folk he continued to change a traditional genre that was crazy and basically only done once.It’s like Picasso’s childhood drawings.He was able to draw and draw in a photorealistic way, which means that his adventures in Cubism Makes sense because he could do anything. Similar to Dylan, it was he who established his place as a true folk singer before completely revolutionizing folk music. It is an important first step in his he evolution as an artist.

“‘Song to Woody’ was a great song for me in my life. I covered it for a BBC session many years ago and it was in my set here and there. I changed the lyrics because he mentions Sonny and Cisco has [Sonny Terry was a blind blues musician, Cisco Houston a folk singer/songwriter; both collaborated with Guthrie] and all the rest of it, and while folk music is at least in part a passage of a baton, I thought it would be effective to cover it up to change the words on my generational version of what he sang.

“One of the things I find appalling about Dylan is how fully formed he was when he broke onto the stage. It was almost as if he had not written the songs, he put them in a box on a Roof found or dug out of a hole in the ground or something left behind by a former civilization. It’s so fully formed for someone who was so young. This record is less fully formed [and] since it is not flawless, it almost makes the flawless running of the albums a little more bearable. It is quite humanizing and comforting. He’s a human being, and some of it is a bit of a swing and a miss, but most of the time it’s very, very good folk music.

Lia Metcalfe, singer with Liverpool alt-rocker The Mysterines and longtime Dylan fanatic; owns a self-made Dylan tattoo on her wrist

“I did [the tattoo] even when I was pretty drunk. I see him as the center for me, where it all began on my creative journey. I started listening to him at such a young age, I must have been around 12, so he had a really big impact on my life. My uncle is a super big Dylan fan and he introduced me to Bob Dylan when I was a kid. The first record he gave me was ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and after that De Freewheelin ‘… Once I passed the test and started learning his songs and how to sing Dylan, he then gave me the rest of the records and his debut album was in it. I still have it now.

“I thought it was a great Dylan record. I find it really interesting when it’s called a folk album, because I think it’s pretty blues – I put it in the same category as former Skip James and Muddy Waters. , in a weird way. They’re great covers. His performance on it is so raw and for me the vocals on that debut album are some of his best works. It’s very punk in a weird way. That would be pretty hard back then Considered as he sang, he was quite aggressive at times, and of course, the performance of ‘House of the Risin’ Sun ‘is one of the best recordings of the song ever.

“I think it was Tom Waits who said that Bob Dylan is a planet to explore and I’ve still exploring that. I’ve learned so much about myself as I listen to Dylan and still do. I think so. should be taught in the education system. “

Campbell Baum, bassist with London experimental rockers Sorry, co-founder of Ra-Ra Rok Records and instigator of the new folk collective Broadside Hacks, which DIY folk covers very much in the spirit of Bob Dylan. Their first compilation, Songs without Authors (Vol. 1)starring James Yorkston, Katy J Pearson, Junior Brother, ex-Goat Girl Naima Bock and others, was released last year

“During the lockdown, when I started the whole idea of ​​Broadside Hacks, it was interesting to me that a songwriter known for his own songwriting found his voice through playing all those old songs. The fact that [Dylan] and Paul Simon came to England and started playing around these folk clubs, playing traditional music that definitely had an impact because how many musicians were in this cycle of touring and giggling when the lockdown hit, it was probably a time to look at things from a different angle. Traditional music was something I listened to but it was not something I ever tried to play or perform. But I thought if there was enough foundation to start it, then there must be something in it that was worth exploring.

“This new recording we just released [a cover of traditional folk song ‘Barbry Allen’], we basically did it in one day. We did it all in a few tasks, in part because it was the only day anyone could do it. We wanted to capture the energy, the spirit that had it. I did not want to polish it too much; it is not really arranged. I read something about Dylan that he refused to do more than one or two take on most of that first record. Which is great about [Bob Dylan] it gives you context for the rest of what he did. It’s a snapshot of what he did at that particular time and may not have fully realized in his head. It is more that he finds his voice and imitates all his influences, all his idols.

Howard Sounes, author of Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan

“It’s not a great record. The first big record was set by Bob Dylan Freewheeling… The first record is usually a laughing bag with things he borrowed and covered and copied, except ‘Song to Woody’, which is the only flash in it. It’s a bit like Wes Anderson’s first film, Bottle rocket, it’s the first movie by a great director, but it’s not a great movie. It sounds like Bob Dylan, it has its nasal voice and it’s full of energy and a romantic idea of ​​America, but it’s like an audition piece, a student piece.

“This is one of the many oddball albums he’s released, it’s him trying to find his feet. What’s most interesting is that this week it came out, he wrote ‘Blowin’ in the Wind ‘. ‘Blowin’ in the Wind ‘is one of the great songs of the 1960s, it is historically important, it completely changed Bob Dylan’s career, it changed the songwriting. Bob Dylan in the Freewheeling… is so dramatic. He goes from something that is really not very impressive but slightly interesting to something that is ingenious. That’s because he has the confidence to write his own songs. In 1962, it all came together for him at once.