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49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The roots of Dylan..., July 30, 2005
A younger than seems possible Bob Dylan stares at us from the cover of his very first album. The year was 1962. Inside the CD booklet, the pictures reveal a slightly awkward looking Dylan who doesn't quite exude the confidence that inexorably burgeoned approximately a year later (compare these photos with the photos included in the remasters of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'"). And who can blame him for possibly feeling a little out of place? The great John Hammond had just discovered him playing in clubs such as the Gaslight in Greenwich Village (Hammond also discovered such indispensable names as Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, and others). Suddenly (he left Minnesota for New York around 1959) Dylan finds himself in a Columbia records recording studio. Not only that, he's recording two of his own compositions.
Though the young Dylan might look a little awkward here, he by no means sounds awkward. The now 42 year old pictures belie the extreme confidence and "wise beyond his years" mood that pervades his first album. Dylan was only 20 at the time. Nonetheless, the songs about death and sorrow carry a mood of experience and feeling that most 20 year olds probably can't imagine. Dylan grunts and strains in "In My Time of Dying" (a traditional blues number sometimes attributed to Blind Willie Johnson and sometimes credited as just 'traditional') and "Fixin' To Die" (by "Bukka" White - another blues singer that lived the blues) as though the issue has direct immediacy for him. And the great closer "See that my Grave Is Kept Clean" (by the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson - another man who lived the blues) carries a similar impact. At times, Dylan's voice takes on a harsher growl here than on any of his subsequent albums (listen to the songs above as well as "Highway 51 Blues", "Gospel Plow", and "House of the Risin' Sun" for more examples). Songs such as "Talkin' New York" - the album's funniest song with original lyrics by Dylan - and "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" point to the Dylan that emerges on 1963's "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan". Dylan began to evolve even on his first album.
The Dylan original, "Song To Woody", shows Dylan's great promise as a songwriter, but it does pale a little in comparison to his output of 1963. In fact, very little on this album, great as it is, points to the Dylan that we know over 40 years later as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Had Dylan ceased recording after this album he would've remained an interesting, and probably obscure, footnote in folk music history. Had he stopped recording after "Freewheelin'" he would probably still be remembered as somewhat of a legend. In fact, the transition from this album to its successor is startling and shows an evolution and progression probably unmatched in popular music history. In his "Chronicles, Vol. 1" Dylan even expressed some surprise at what happened. At the time he said the only thing of any significance he had written was "Song To Woody". That soon changed.
Dylan's first album is a great listen. The long overdue remastering sounds incredible. It has also likely exposed many people to great blues and folk classics. It probably also fueled the young Dylan with the confidence and assurance to go on to write timeless songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind", "Masters of War", and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall". This album exposes Dylan's roots, and provides a fascinating document of where he came from and, subsequently, what he became.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bob Dylan, now centered in glorious mono, September 15, 2005
The audio quality of this remastered CD is head and shoulders superior to the standard CD that we have endured for decades.
Do not be put off by the monophonic sound (not labeled as such on the CD package, probably for that reason). These recordings are the result of two sessions from November 1961, featuring Bob Dylan solo on vocal, guitar, and harmonica. The stereo version, on both LP and CD, had an idiotic arrangement of vocal and harmonica on one channel, and guitar on the other. Depending on how far apart your speakers are, you could have Dylan playing guitar 20 feet away from where he is singing and playing harmonica!
This is the case no more! Unless you are fortunate enough to have the mono LP of this debut album, you have never heard it the proper way until now, with this superb, newly remastered CD, with Bob Dylan--vocal, harmonica, and guitar--centered between your speakers.
This CD also contains a few previously unpublished photos from the recording sessions.
Although the booklet doesn't say so, I believe this was DSD mastered. Steve Berkowitz, also uncredited on this remaster, is in charge of the overall remastering of Dylan's catalog. He deserves a lot of thanks.
The standout tracks are "Fixin' To Die," "Gospel Plow," and "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down." For an excellent outtake from these sessions, "House Carpenter," you need to buy "The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3."
Trivia: This first album, "Bob Dylan," was originally going to be released under the title "Free Wheeling." A variation of the title survived for the second album.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
8.9/10.0, September 17, 2006
IT was the coldest winter on record. Some of the guys and I from the Chase-Plaza construction site decided to hustle into one of the Village's basket clubs. We huddled together at a small table, coffees and creamers all around. Wooden chairs creaked under our weight, and the place was filled with a bustle so common to small restaurants- the clattering of plates and silverware, the beat of rubber soles upon wood floors.
Up on the stage was a quiet kind of child- he looked like he belonged in a museum! His face was impossibly untainted, and, combined with his uneasy movements, gave the impression of a marionette. He began to tune his guitar, and then hummed on the harmonica for brief moments- suffice it to say, almost no one looked toward the stage; there was a slow rumble of talk, every now and then a single phrase rose through the fog.
The guitar began to rear up, and then the kid started to sing. There was a moment of uncertainty at first. No one could understand that the voice came from the kid. His voice, its timbre and pitch, sounded as if it came from a man three times his age. It was as if he were performing ventriloquism; only that the voice's source came from someplace we couldn't see, only feel. The emotions of self-inflicted misery and calamitous love for another coursed through his words; and everyone understood, the sweet heartache of a woman who both saps and gives us our strength.
His next song seemed to roll right off the frozen Village streets. Harmonica premiered, a dizzy zig-zag of notes that blended disorientation and comfort. The crowd rumbled with sympathetic musings as he sung about the oppression of the big city, the wheelings-and-dealings that the honest man could never get his hands around: "People going down to the ground: buildings going up to the sky." The several minutes that the song occupied constituted a perfect moment: the artist became the spokesman for the audience's consciousness.
As the boy offered more and more songs, we were transformed, from casual patrons into devout listeners: the music seemed to surge from a place far back in time, when the primary way to experience music was not to hear it, but to sing it. His voice had all the craggy imperfections of a raggedy southern farm hand, relating the tragedies and the prayers of a life of hard work.
I could tell, both the young boy and we were exhausted when he bottomed out the session with "Song To Woody." He gave us a short preface to this work, and this new voice seemed otherworldly, alien, compared to the one with which the audience had been so affixed. Of course, the guys and I had all heard most of Woody's work. But few of us had heard anything as plainly honest as this song. Listening to it, it seemed to hold an eternity with it, as if it composed all the truth and excellence one could hope for in music.
But it ended. Afterwards, the boy stepped to a corner. Nearby were a few records, his face posted upon them. Most everyone clamored for them, but my friends and I managed to buy one each. We slid it inside our jackets, then headed outside. Tomorrow would be another lesson in breaking our backs, but it was as if this experience had rejuvenated each of us.
Looking back now, it's hard for me to understand the face on this record. He's different now than he ever was back then; he's become a signature of an entire social kinesis. In fact, Dylan is more an idea than he even is a human being like us. This picture of him, though, shows him back when he was nothing! Just a nobody kid from Minesota who could give a knockout session. Back then, as one of those old construction crew friends of mine have said, Dylan was un-Dylan-like. But this first opus, this first success, although it borrows much from other musicians, shows the awesome talent that eventually manifested the whirl-wind of creativity that the United States (and other countries, to a lesser extent) knows as Bob Dylan.
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