"Bob Dylan" - 1962

Let's begin at the beginning. In 1962, Bob Dylan's eponymous first album arrived and folk music had a new hero. In 2019, I listened to it for the first time. To my knowledge I had never heard the album before and though some of the songs were familiar to me, I do not believe I'd ever heard Dylan's versions of them before.

My first exposure was on my drive to and from work. I've got about a half-hour commute, just MADE for absorbing a lot of music every day. This album was a welcomed experience, and when I arrived to work, I was counting the hours until the end of the day to finish up the second half of the album.

Going in, I was conscious in thinking, "I don't expect it to be great--how great is ANYONE'S first album?" Well... It turns out that sometimes they're pretty great! I was surprised by this one. My initial thoughts were that his voice was so clean and clear--he didn't really sound like Bob Dylan yet. Nevertheless, it was all THERE right away. The performances were solid. The guitar playing was all it needed to be and a little bit more. It was a strong debut--all that was missing was more of his own lyrics.

"Bob Dylan" was made up of 11 songs by other people and only two by Bob ("Talkin' New York" and "Song to Woody" respectively). He got one-per-side. Not an uncommon thing in the folk world, even today. Nevertheless, I feel like Dylan really took off once he got to write a little bit more. You can still hear his heart on the songs that aren't his writing, but you can FEEL his heart when he's using his own words, in my opinion.

The album was recorded over the course of three afternoons with producer John H. Hammond later joking that Columbia Records had spent "about $402" to record it. Some of the short and cheap timeframe comes through on the recording. Dylan reportedly refused to do second-takes on most if not all of the tracks. As a result, there are some plosives (popped-ps and similar) that still come through on my CD player in 2019. I don't know if I would notice them if I weren't conscious of them in my own work as a musician. But they're there, and they jumped out at me. But rather than find them irritating, I found them charming and they made me feel better about my own work. If anyone ever accuses me of popping a p again, I'll just shrug and say, "It worked for Dylan."

The album cover is apparently a reverse-image. I only learned that researching for this post. They flipped the photo to prevent the neck of Dylan's guitar from covering up Columbia's logo. That's a record company for you.  So...1962 Bob Dylan actually looked more like this in real life:

How's the Columbia logo look now?

My understanding is that there are several tracks that were recorded during the sessions that didn't make it onto the album, as often happens. The copy I have in the box set stops where the original release stops. And that's the way I prefer it. I'm not too big a fan of "Bonus Tracks" that come out on re-releases. I usually think those songs were cut for a reason. Although I'm sure in Dylan's case I'll encounter most of them in time with the existence of the "Bootleg Series." I'm cool with that.

The format of how I do these posts may change over time, but for now I think I'm going to end with a list of the tracks I particularly enjoyed and maybe expand on why for some of them. It's likely that I'll skip over some tracks that you like a lot or that I'll name one you hate or whatever. I may even skip over some tracks that people who've loved Dylan for longer than I have would feel are unskippable. (The heresy!) Whatever the case may be, I'm not saying you're WRONG. I'm just saying I dug these in particular.

Favorite Tracks (in order of appearance):

• "You're No Good" - About halfway through the song I found myself thinking, "This is going to be a good listen." Blew me away how fully formed the album felt right away.
• "In My Time of Dyin'" - An old standard touched on by many an artist. Perhaps most famously by Led Zeppelin. Though Zeppelin didn't bother mentioning that they didn't write it in the liner notes...and for some reason stretched it to 11 minutes. I definitely preferred this version, especially when it was over in just under 3 minutes.
• "Man of Constant Sorrow" - I have bad memories of this song thanks to the damn "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" flick. It's not a criticism of the movie, but I felt beat over the head by the song before the end of that Summer. A punk band I was in had a gig at a dive-bar that year and some drunk down front kept yelling "Soggy Bottom Boys" at us and singing the first note of the song and nothing else. And that was when we were setting up. Fortunately he left mostly without incident shortly into our set when it was clear we weren't going to play anything close to it. I assume he's dead now. With that story in mind, I was stunned to find myself singing along with Bob!
• "House of the Risin' Sun" - I'm far more familiar with the Animals version, of course. And I've covered the song in bands since the early 90s. I had not heard Bob's version until I started listening to the record. I like that he keeps the character singing the song in the feminine. Most versions where it's a man singing, they change the gender and the song makes less sense. I felt like Bob's version added a lot, and was passionately performed.
• "Song to Woody" - One of the only two originals on the record. Sorry I skipped over the other one. I know I've heard this song before, but I don't think I'd heard the studio version. I liked it a lot. I'm under-familiar with Woody Guthrie, but it does make me want to learn more.
• "See that My Grave is Kept Clean" - Good closing track to the album. It would probably be a good closing song to use if you're making a Dylan playlist sometime. I like songs that have a down-note like this, exploring the singer's mortality. Dylan did a good job with it.

In closing, I think this was a great debut album. It set the tone for the first part of his career and established some strong precedent for everything that came next. That he's still doing albums in the 2010s (and likely 2020s) that feature a ton of cover-material fits right in with the way he started. As I said earlier, I was stunned by how much of the blueprint for Bob's career is present right at the beginning. That said, he has obviously changed a lot over time and reinvented himself a lot. But I feel like even given those reinventions, there's a lot of this album in his DNA. And I love that.

I don't know how often I'm going to be posting these. Maybe weekly? Probably less. Even if I did weekly once you factor in live albums and the Bootlegs, we're looking at over a YEAR of posts. So...settle in, I guess. I hope we both enjoy the ride!