Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What a lovely, lovely record, September 25, 2005
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is one of those albums that I think I could listen to and enjoy anytime, regardless of mood. It's just a wonderful classic album. Dylan's second album, Freewheelin' is a great improvement over his debut (which is also a very good record). After composing only two songs for his debut, Freewheelin' finds Dylan significantly more confident in his songwriting abilities. As well he should be, because his original songs here are amazing.
1. Blowin' in the Wind - One of the greatest folk songs of all time, and has been covered by numerous artists. Still one of Dylan's most well-known songs today.
2. Girl from the North Country - A lovely folk ballad, and one of my favorite romantic Dylan songs. In 1969, Dylan would resurrect this song as a duet with his Johnny Cash on his Nashville Skyline album.
3. Masters of War - Dylan's most scathing anti-war song and one of his most vicious protest songs ever. You can feel the venom in his voice as he talks of politicians who use war for financial gain. This song is still powerful now in 2005, in fact it may be more relevant than ever now.
4. Down the Highway - Country-blues tune with Dylan doing sort of an imitation of Hank Williams. A good song, but not the most memorable.
5. Bob Dylan's Blues - A short, lightweight country-folk tune. One of the album's lesser tracks.
6. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall - One of Dylan's all-time classics. It resembles a protest song, but it's not quite direct enough lyrically to qualify. But it is one of the finest songs of Dylan's early years.
7. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - Another classic and one of my personal favorites. This is a lovely ballad directed to Dylan's girlfriend Suze Rotolo. Heartfelt lyrics, a wonderful vocal from Dylan and excellent fingerpicked guitar too. One of his best songs.
8. Bob Dylan's Dream - A lovely folk song in which Dylan reminisces about the past. A great lesser-known Dylan song.
9. Oxford Town - Potent protest song about a racial incident, but I'm not sure exactly what incident is referred to.
10. Talking World War III Blues - A humorous narrative-song with lots of great lines including "'I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,' I said that." However, I prefer the version of the song on Bootleg Series, volume 6 - Live 1964.
11. Corrina, Corrina - A lovely interpretation of an old folk song, and the only song on the album to feature accompaniment. It features a drummer and possibly a second guitar player. It was to be the B-side of an early single, "Mixed-Up Confusion", which would have been Dylan's first electric song.
12. Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance - Another folk tune arranged by Dylan. Dylan's energetic vocal style on this song is quite similar to that of his debut.
13. I Shall Be Free - The album closes with this humorous story song which starts a style that Dylan would revisit several times in the future. This song reveals Dylan's sense of humor better than nearly anything else he would record. "I make love to Elizabeth Taylor... catch hell from Richard Burton".
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is an excellent album that any serious fan of music should own and relish. If you're new to Dylan, this should be one of your first purchases, after Blonde On Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited and Blood On The Tracks. But don't stop here! If you like Freewheelin' be sure to check out Dylan's third album, The Times They Are A-Changin' which is almost as good.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Kind of Warning, April 19, 2005
Released in March of 1963 this album, unlike his first, consists mostly of songs by Mr. Dylan himself. The songs, everyone a gem, seem to be a running commentary on what it must have been like to be in young in the early Sixties and getting mixed messages from those in power. JFK was alive with the promise of hope and a New Frontier, yet the war in Vietnam was hotting up.
Songs like the lead off "Blowin' in the Wind," "Talking World War III Blues," "A Hard Rain," and "Masters of War," which appears to be just as relevant now as it was forty years ago, seem to be a somber message of the turbulent times to come.
With "Don't Think Twice," "Girl From the North Country," and "Corrina, Corrina," Mr. Dylan shows us that he's not just about protesting and complaining, that he can sing the tender ballads as well, and why not, this was a time of hope, there was tenderness in 1963, however there were storm clouds on the horizon, Dallas and a full blown war were coming and this record seems to be a warning.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Voice Like a Claw that Reaches into Your Gut, April 10, 2008
I was a junior back at Lakewood High School when this record came out just two weeks after my seventeenth birthday. My dad brought it by the house (my parents were divorced) and really surprised me. I'd liked his first record, but I was still listening to The Kingston Trio, that kind of music. Lord I loved The Kingston Trio from the Hungry I record.
But that all changed when I heard this record, which sadly I didn't play for a couple months. I'd been familiar with "Blowing in the Wind," who wasn't. Peter, Paul and Mary were coming out of every kid's transistor radio with that song. I really liked their In the Wind record, really liked them too, but that changed as well when I finally gave this record a good listen. I knew then Bob Dylan was the real deal. The Trios, both Kingston and Peter, Paul and Mary will always have a place in my heart and they reside on my MacBook, but they don't get played anymore. "Freewheelin'" changed that. Yes, they might have been singing about stuff that mattered, but Bob Dylan had a voice like a claw that reached into your gut and somehow made you care.
Six months after the release of Freewheelin' John Kennedy was shot and everything changed. Listen to "A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall." It's almost like Bob Dylan was trying to warn us.
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Bob Dylan: "The 'Queen of the Folksingers,' that would have to be Joan Baez... The sight of her made me high. All that and there was her voice. A voice that drove out bad spirits. It was like she'd come down from another planet." Read more musical excerpts from Chronicles, Vol. 1 on our Music You Should Hear page.
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