The Ersatz Woody Years (Summer of Dylan)

This week I embarked on my project of listening to all of Bob Dylan's albums in order while interspersing the relevant Bootleg Series content in chronological order. I feel like his first three albums represent a particular period of his career, the folkie years. In this era Dylan comes on the folk scene like a reincarnated Woody Guthrie, singing folk standards as well as protest songs. When I first started listening to Dylan in high school this was the music I started with, and was also what I assumed most of his career was all about until I learned better. 

Once I became a real fan I learned better, and then rarely revisited this period. Listening to this music again, however, its power has been renewed for me. This is especially the case since I've been listening to a lot of early 60s doo wop and pop music and now I can hear just how revolutionary Dylan's whole thing was in the context of the times. It's easy to miss that since the folkie stuff seems rather tame compared to what followed in 1965-66.

(In this and future posts I will make some notes on the relevant albums, and offer my ratings, which range from zero to five Bobs.)

Bob Dylan (1962)

I will admit that I had never heard this album before starting this project. I'd always heard it was a fair collection of folk covers with originals but still very much a gestational work. I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The covers have a verve and confidence that places them above the standard folk music of the time. In an alternate universe where Bob Dylan was hit by a car while crossing MacDougal Street in 1962 people would still be talking about this album as a lost classic of the Greenwich Village folk boom. 

There is little of the twee tourism of so much folk music of the time. His takes on "House of the Rising Sun" and "See That My Grave is Kept Clean" mine their harrowing emotions. You would never think these are the work of a callow 20 year old. This album only seems slight in light of what's to come.

Rating: Four Bobs

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)

This album is usually considered the best of Dylan's folkie years (I disagree, but more on that later.) It starts with "Blowin' in the Wind," which announces that this will be very different from his debut. Instead of singing folk standards Dylan is singing his own material, and songs directly commenting on the times. This song manages to do that while still being timeless. It is a simple song, and one I have maybe heard too many times, but listening with fresh ears I can only imagine how it hit people in the midst of the nuclear threat and civil rights movement. "Masters of War" directly addressed the former and "Oxford Town" the latter. 

While "Masters of War" is deadly serious, Dylan hits on similar themes with the jocular "Talking World War III Blues." There's a streak of goofy humor throughout, something Woody Guthrie wasn't immune to, either. While the album starts with a heavy protest song, it ends with the silly "I Shall Be Free." The Bootleg Series shows just how insanely creative Dylan was at the time, and ending with this song expresses a kind of joy in the self-confidence such a creative streak can create. 

For a younger generation emerging from years of postwar consensus, the Red Scare, and an increasingly depoliticized public sphere, this album had to have been an exciting jolt. In the midst of American self-satisfaction Dylan included a song like "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," which is still one of the most searing critiques of America's failure to live up to its promise. It also points to the future Dylan, one who could say something about the state of things without being so directly topical. 

Rating: Five Bobs

The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964)

As great as Freewheelin' is, this is still my favorite of Dylan's folkie trilogy. "Hard Rain" is probably his best song of that era, but this album has two of the most trenchant critiques of American dysfunction ever put to wax: "With God on Our Side" and "Only a Pawn in Their Game." The first examines the ways that unthinking nationalism is bloody scourge on this nation; the second addresses the wages of whiteness and the blood shed in order to pay them. It's not just a song about the horrible murder of Medgar Evers, it's about the racist disease that led to his tragic death. This is a whole other level of protest song. 

The seriousness of the whole enterprise is there on the stark cover. The last time around Dylan is walking with his girlfriend through the streets of the Village. Here he looks like an austere prophet, befitting the music within. There is a harder, more revolutionary edge. The title song is a harsher one than "Blowin' in the Wind," issuing threats to people in authority that their days are numbered. "When the Ship Comes In" also envisions a kind of revolutionary apocalypse. 

The topical songs like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" and "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" brim over with existential dread. They speak of needless deaths and the crushing blows of oppression that do not seem to have any vindication. The more personal songs, like "One Too Many Mornings," have a similar level of Weltschmerz. 

It's easy to see why he mostly abandoned protest songs after this, since he had taken them to the furthest extent that the form could still sustain emotional heft amidst all the didactic finger-pointing. 

Rating: Five Bobs

The Bootleg Series Volume 1 (and tracks 1-3 of Volume 2)

As I have written about earlier, the first three volumes of the original bootleg series were the first Dylan albums I ever bought because a record store was going out of business and I could get them for cheap. It was a strange way to be introduced to Dylan, but it helped me appreciate the official releases that much more when I finally heard them. It is interesting how more than a third of the original three volume release, which covered thirty years of his career, are concentrated in that short three year folkie period. 

The songs in this session reveal just how much Dylan was producing at the time. Freewheelin' easier could have been a double album and maintained the same high quality. Some of the songs are truly stunning, like the nuclear war-themed "Let Me Die in My Footsteps." Others are interesting attempts at self-authored takes on traditional folk themes, like "Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie." This is all essential listening.

Rating: Five Bobs

The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack (tracks 1-13 of disc one)

My favorite songs from this Bootleg Series entry come later in the 1965-66 material, but there's plenty of worthy stuff here. There are some things copied over from other bootleg series releases, but it generally more fully fleshes out what Dylan was up to. Since it's a soundtrack and not a typical excursion into the vaults it is less a treasure trove and more a curated look at Dylan's process.

Rating: Four Bobs (for these particular tracks)

The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos 

I had actually not listened to this Bootleg Series entry until doing this project. These are all the demos Dylan recorded for a music publisher to entice others to perform them. They are pretty raw, and at times you can hear Dylan coughing or cutting songs off. After having heard a lot of other bootleg material I did not find this music to be super revelatory, other than the reemphasize the extent of Dylan's creativity at the time, when he was just churning out mountains of songs. This is less essential, but still worth a listen for the real Dylanologists. 

Rating: Three and a half Bobs