Customer Reviews

Bob Dylan

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Bob Dylan" - An album that has sort of been ignored through the years, partially because Dylan only has a couple original songs on the album. But, to fully understand the man and what he would later become artistically, you must experience this amazing, gritty piece of Americana.

This album is not just folk, contrary to popular belief, neither was Bob...not really....this album is many things...blues, folk, gospel...sung and played by a real bluesman. It is a great collection of songs that are expressed from the soul.

The performances are quite spectacular for such a young man to be singing them. "In My Time of Dying", "You're No Good", "Man of Constant Sorrow", "Gospel Plow" and "House of the Rising Sun" are among the classics. "Song to Woody", written by Bob is beautiful. A MUST HAVE!

This is Bob at his unplugged best, wailing on the harmonica and playing his version of white-boy blues and folk. The recording is a little flat and sounds a little like Alan Lomax's hotel-room blues records, but Dylan shines through on this charming first album. If you are just discovering Dylan, you should probably start with the Greatest Hits albums or Another Side, Highway 61, Bringing It all Back Home and John Wesley Harding, but if you wish to hear Bleecker Bob exploring his roots, you have to own this one.

I really like the sparseness of just him and an acoustic guitar. Most of the songs are fast and more like country blues than the protest folk songs he would later write. I cant believe the gravely voice on FIXIN' TO DIE and IN MY TIME OF DYING come from the baby faced kid on the front. He sounds like some 60 year old black man from the Mississippi Delta. Great powerfull music!

Bob Dylan's first album, released in 1962, has only two Bob Dylan songs on it, and they're markedly different from the rest of the material on the album. The two songs, "Talkin' New York" and "Song to Woody" hold together well, both marked by an easy pace, conversational tone, and an attitude. A sort of bewildered, amused at the world mood, a shake your head and laugh at the absurdity of it all kind of attitude. In "Talkin' New York he mispronounces "Greenwich Village" and writes verses like

I get up on the stage sing and play
man there say come back some other day
you sound like a hillbilly--
we want folksingers here

punctuated by the harmonica after the punchline, where the laugh track would go if this were a sitcom.

The rest of the songs on the album are traditional folk songs. Funny, though, the songs he chooses; I've been listening to Joan Baez's self-titled 1960 release alongside this one, and all those songs are also labelled traditional folk songs. Baez's songs, however, often show their European roots: they sound like Irish jigs, Scottish folk songs, and so on. Bob's songs sound wholly, thoroughly American. I wonder if he chose them for that reason.

My favorite song is "Baby Let me Follow You Down," a real simple song that sounds so Dylan-ish I can hardly believe he didn't write it. After that are a series of hard, fast blues, the best of which is Highway 51 Blues, others being Fixin' to Die Blues, Freight Train Blues (which hiccups and yelps rockabilly style) and Gospel Plow. Gospel's prominent here, as is death. There are two slower blues ballads, See That my Grave is Kept Clean and In My Time of Dyin', which features a slide guitar, the only song on the album to stray away from the guitar, harmonica, voice formula.

Bob's version of "Man of Constant Sorrow" seems awfully pale compared to the version made popular by "O Brother Where Art Thou." And I just don't think his blue collar, undeniably masculine voice does much for "House of the Rising Sun--" a song about a woman of hard luck in New Orleans. I'll take Joan Baez's version. Such a tale needs a feminine voice.

1. Any real Dylan fan should have his debut release, just to know that Bob did not spring from the earth singing "Like a Rollin' Stone."

2. Any true fan of traditional folk should have a copy, to hear what the 20-year-old found interesting way back in 1962.

3. Anyone interested in the history of American recorded music in the second half of the 20th century should shelve this CD, in order to appreciate that once upon a time, Columbia Records paid smart people to find unique talents and produce records by them, even if they had no audience at the moment, and were not likely to win a big one with their first effort.

4. Bob's original "Song to Woody" is of historic significance, since at this early stage of Dylan's professional career, he was visiting Guthrie in the hospital, meeting Cisco Houston, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger and other friends of the tragic genius.

5. It grows on you, even if you don't like blues and Dylan's early voice so much. His guitar and harmonica playing are also strong on this one.

Like many others, i got familiar with Bob D. through albums such as Highway 61, Blood, B.O.B., Bringing it home, Freewheelin`and later Desire and Times. I`d read somewhere that the debut album was mediocre and much weaker than Freewheelin, which was supposed to represent a huge leap forward both career-wise and artistically.
Having heard and for the most part hated (although there are one or two good songs on any BD album) other `mediocre`albums such as Down in the groove and At Budokan, I shunned this one for a long time. After all, for a budding Dylan collector, there are a LOT of classics to buy, and being a poor highschool student, I had to make priorities.
So when I finally bought it, it was a spontaneous buy, just seemed nice to own the very first Dylan album, even if it wasn`t supposed to be very good...
Suffice to say, I was totally overwhelmed by it. Here are a few facts that the general record-buying public should know, but generally don`t know about it:

1.`Bob Dylan` has some of the best vocal work and guitar playing Dylan ever did.

2.It is bursting by the seems with a ferocious ENERGY (Freewheelin is much quieter and, frankly, more boring)

3.It contains distilled hoopla-Americana of a kind that you`ll have a hard time finding anywhere else.

4.It predates heavy metal-listen to his voice in Fixin`to die when he goes "There`s black smoke risin`,Lord, it`s risin`up above my head, UP ABOVE MY HEAD..

5.His version of `House of the rising sun`is the definitive one, full of emotion, copied but not bettered by The Animals.

6.`Song to Woody`is actually maybe the worst song on the album.

7.On `Freight train blues` Dylan holds a single note (blu-huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuues...) longer than he ever did, ever! :)

8.Unlike the detached, satirical/knowing singing style he was to develop later, here he is sometimes overwhelmed by emotion. On `See that my grave is kept clean`, he manages to convey a true dread and fear of dying that is down-to-earth, private and scary.

9. It is obvious that he is singing without any pressure from fans/the Movement/himself. This album is a rare oppurtunity to hear Dylan at his most liberated and free.

10.You should buy it.

In a mid 1960s review, Bob Dylan said that what disgusted him was all these people suddenly deciding they'd just start writing songs without any real knowledge of the traditional body of songs that have been before them. When asked about his own songwriting, Dylan said he didn't start writing his own songs until he had immersed himself in the tradition of his chosen field: folk songs from the American tradition. Some forty years later Dylan's newest lp is a testament to this fact. On his debut he was practicing and doing his own research in the folk-blues tradition to give his work much more depth than those people who just began writing songs without any sense of history behind it. That is what makes LOVE AND THEFT so rewarding: you feel Dylan giving us a history of modern musical traditions other than rock and presenting it in a rock context. This year, in an interview, Dylan said that the radio made "hideous noises," and there was none of the great musical tradition which made radio in his day so rewarding. So with LOVE AND THEFT, Dylan gives us a study in the musical structures of the past, and instead of it being a pale imitation LOVE AND THEFT raises to the level of a grand artistic statement that ranks among his best work.

So why am I going on and on about an album released forty years after this release? It's because LOVE AND THEFT would not have been possible without this. This is Dylan trying to pass for a rough, gravelly voiced old singer who's been thru hell and back and lived to tell all about his adventures. Now he really is an old gravelling singer whose has a tremendous amount of experience and has actually become what he was trying to be forty years ago. His voice has always been one of controversy, and this is just as rough hewn as any of his releases. If you're this far into Dylan's body of work, you've come to the same conclusion that most of us have: Dylan's actually a very good singer, just not in the traditional sense. His voice adds much to these songs, giving them that edgy feel which they need to accomplish what Dylan wants them to accomplish.

Dylan goes through 11 standard folk songs with a faster tempo than you'd expect (the tempo gives the album that edgy, paranoia feel) and each carry the weight of tradition behind it. Dylan, in a truly skillful way, captured the sense of history that accompanies each of these songs. Each song sounds personal and very relevant to the singer himself, which is amazing because of all the death obsession prevalent on the album. Dylan was only twenty at the time this record was cut, and yet he truly made you feel he was "fixin' to die," (which, btw, is more famous as the eleven minute monster on Led Zeppelin's PHYSICAL GRAFFITI) and that when he did you would need to his grave was "kept clean." In "Freight Train Blues," Dylan holds a note for probably the longest in his career, and after he finishes you expect him to be sucking air and yet he keeps right on singing. For you Animal fans here, we have the five-minute "House of the Rising Sun," which Dylan appropriately sings in high anguish.

And what of the two original songs? Dylan, the poet laureate of rock and roll and one if its most important songwriters, only has two original songs on his debut. For reasons already discussed, it is obvious why. "Talkin' New York Town" deals with Dylan's arrival in New York and his struggles there, and "Song to Woody" is his own tribute to Woody Guthrie, the most influential person in Dylan's young life. Each is startling.

Although this record does not point to THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN (judging from this, you could not deduce that Dylan's next lp would be one of the top albums of the 1960s), this album stands as an important introduction to Dylan and his muse. For those who want folk Dylan, I personally recommend his next three albums before turning to this. Although this is a fine LP, Dylan's body of work is large enough to make this more for the student of Dylan and music in general (which is impossible to study without a strong focus or emphasis on Dylan and his counterpart The Beatles) as opposed to the fan of Bob Dylan. BOB DYLAN becomes much more important in retrospect than it ever did upon its original release, and without Dylan soaking himself in all these traditional songs we would never have gotten a lot of the top rate material on THE BASEMENT TAPES (official and otherwise) or LOVE AND THEFT or TIME OUT OF MIND or much of his other material. Of his nine studio releases in the 1960s, this one should be the last on your list to buy, but for anyone who really wants to know Dylan (which is a very hard thing to do: people have built entire careers on the foundation of trying to figure him out) this is essential. Listen to this and then listen to LOVE AND THEFT and you can see the process which Dylan has been going through. He still covers a good number of traditional songs in his concerts.

For all you songwriters (and writers in general, for that matter) out there, take a lesson from Dylan. Study and immerse yourself in what's gone before and it will greatly broaden your own work.

well this album is good as are all bob dylan-musical geniuses.the stand out songs are "i am a man of constanr sorrow".yes its the same one on the movie "oh brother where art thou?"im not a real big fan of the song "house of the rising sun".but i know a lot of people are so i mentioned it for you.theres a real old timey,pure folk tune called the frieght train blues"i really liked also.then he does a song for his idol in his pre-christian days who is woodie guthrie.its his 1st album.good but theres better out there.

Bob Dylan's position in the upper echelons of popular music is unquestioned. So, we can then ignore his comparatively insignificant debut album, right?

Wrong.

Bob Dylan's self-titled debuts album is an extraordinary piece of work. I have been listening to his work passionately for years now, but only recently got around to buying this album. I now feel ashamed. One might be surprised to find that the album contains only two original compositions, but it is entirely logical. Dylan's field at the time was folk music, a genre traditionally played by old and very experienced musicians and not 20-year-olds like Dylan. Humbled by the storied history and rich tradition of folk music, he chose to immerse himself fully into the field, absorbing influences from all its corners, before delving into writing his own folk anthems. Also, at the time Dylan recorded this album, song interpretation was considered to be paramount and original composition tangential at best. (Dylan, of course, was soon to change all that.)

And what a crash course in song interpretation this amazing record is. That said, though Dylan was already a master of interpretation, he was, at this point, still clearly a product of his influences. The spirit of Woody Guthrie pervades this album. The two Dylan compositions, which name and quote him, and are clearly written within his established style, with Talkin' New York, in particular, exhibiting his trademark "talkin' blues" parameters, are not the only instances of this. He clearly had a profound influence upon Dylan's singing style: as few non-Dylan fans know, he is not singing in his natural voice here. Those who knew him before his immersion into folk music were used to hearing his soft, sweet voice and were as surprised by the harsh, primitive sounds of this record as everyone else was by his vocals on Nashville Skyline, where he returned to his natural sound. Dylan acknowledges his debt to Guthrie, and the other great artists who greatly influenced him, and demonstrates his humility before them, by declaring, in the last two lines of Song To Woody, that "The very last thing that I'd want to do/Is to say I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too." With that in mind, it is also absolutely essential to realize that Dylan, with this album and certainly with his performances at the time, was clearly transcending the traditional rules of folk music at the time. His blues influence made him stand out above the rest, as did his songwriting ability and poetic sensibility. Though this work sounds minor now, in comparison to all of the great music that he has subsequently issued, it is startling to see just how far ahead of his time Dylan was with this album. The album features an outstanding version of House of The Rising Sun, several years before The Animals did theirs (of course, it isn't electric.) In My Time of Dyin' is here, over a decade before Led Zeppelin did it more famously (and less effectively.) Oh, and that song that everyone was making a big fuss about a couple of years ago, Man of Constant Sorrow? Dylan's version is right here, 40 years earlier.

Dylan blazes through several traditional folk songs, doing them justice vocally and instrumentally, and adding many of his own twists along the way, often improving the song in the process. Though Dylan was only 20 when he recorded this album, he manages to make these songs of death, suffering, and mortality seem somehow personal. His vocals on this album are truly incredible: he truly sounds as if he were an old man, who has been through hell and lived to tell about it. Of course, Dylan's voice has been the subject of controversy throughout the entirety of his career. Those who can't, or won't, get into the man's music cannot, or will not, get past it; those who love and treasure the man's art can't understand how others can't see past its unconventionality and realize that Dylan is one of the truly great singers of our time, and, as has been stated by numerous different people, the greatest white blues singer alive. His voice here is far from pretty, but he brings a necessary emphatic element to the proceedings that other 20-year-olds crooners could not even dream of mustering up. He sounds at times as if possessed. His guitar playing is similarly outstanding. Herein is the best guitar playing of Dylan's entire career, a particular playing style that he has never really returned to. Though these are folk songs, plus a few blues, Dylan performs them at quite a fast tempo, strumming his guitar in an almost manic manner, always in parallel with his vocals, and managing to get in some quite spectacular guitar-playing in the process. His harmonica work is also very prominent -- and quite good, at that -- better, really, than it is on his next three albums. Though there are only two originals, Dylan reworks several of these traditional folk songs into almost entirely new compositions. Pretty Peggy-O is virtually a new song. In I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow, Dylan replaces "Kentucky" with "Colorado", thereby creating a rhyme with "sorrow" which would not have existed otherwise -- an early sign of Dylan the Poet. The two originals are also very good works, each managing to acknowledge his humble roots and his influences, while also allowing him to make his mark as a songwriter.

Certainly this album is not one of the first that you should pluck out of Dylan's vast catalog: you should have 15 or so others before getting around to this one. It is more for Dylan fans and scholars (of both Dylan and music in general) than it is for the casual Dylan fan, who would be best served by Bringing It All Back Home. If you are truly a fan of Bob Dylan, though, and especially if you love his folk period best, then you should make this an essential eventual purchase.

I absolutely hate the 1960s folk revival. I hate the flood of no-talent young singers and musicians that coursed into Greenwich Village in the early-1960s with a wide sweep of crummy albums in their wakes. Joan Baez. The Clancy Brothers. Peter, Paul, and Mary. And all of the others who slightly altered classic folk songs so they could give themselves arrangers' credits.
That said, this could have been an awful album. It consists mostly of old time folk songs, and it was covered right when all these other legions of no-talents were recording their similarly conceived albums.
But, as it happened, this is not only NOT awful, it's exceptional. It's astounding. That's because it was recorded by a young Bob Dylan, his voice so rough and raw and ragged, and his heart rising into every word, his guitar perfect though basic, and his harmonica frantic and soul-filled. The folk songs he covers here have never been covered so skillfully: I believe them when he sings them. He sings them as if he wrote them. And the originals--the originals!--especially "Song to Woody" are heartfelt tributes and musical masterpieces that brim with the potential that would later explode through subsequent albums.
Bob Dylan is a classic, and this, his first album, screams out exactly who he is, and who he wanted to become. It's a great introduction to him, it's Bob's voice at its rawest, and it remains a favorite of mine despite knowing almost all the other albums he's recorded since.
If you've haven't heard it yet, it's time to hear it now. Right now.