A Contrarian's View of Dylan

Popular perception holds that Bob Dylan is first and foremost as a brilliant songwriter, an adequate guitar player, and a horrible singer. So it's kind of a surprising to most people to hear that his first album as a complete unknown was composed almost completely made of covers. Only two originals ("Song To Woody" and "Talkin' New York") are included. Clearly, Columbia thought that had something in this twenty year-old's voice and guitar picking. Not to mention his taste in traditional material. In fact the two originals are some of the weakest tracks on here. Both "House Of The Rising Sun" and "Man Of Constant Sorrow" are on here years before they became hits for The Animals and O Brother, Where Art Thou, respectively. Even though Bob himself didn't actually write them his ear is impeccable. Another great song (that still could be re-discovered and turned into a hit is) "In My Time Of Dyin'" which is also notable for being the first and only time we get to hear Bob's amazing/primitive slide guitar playing. Why?!? Bob Dylan is really more of a Blues album than Folk (witness songs like "Highway 51", "Fixin' To Die", and "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"). Bt was a good thing that, at that time, most people classified the album as Folk. Which during its big early 60s boom was mired in Ivory league intellectual-ism, bright harmonies and the squeaky-clean image of say the Chad Mitchell and Kingston Trios. None of them injected such humor as Bob into these old songs that were then considered somewhat untouchable (see "Pretty Peggy-O", "Freight Train Blues" or "Talkin' New York"). Which makes the two originals, as unimpressive as I think they are, that much more important. He was putting himself back into the process, returning it to the rough-hewn self-made form of Woody Guthrie. And in the process making the term folksinger to mean something closer to solo-singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar rather than someone who actually just sings and plays the kind of songs passed on down by the oral tradition.

Mood-swinging originality

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.

woody would have been proud

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.