On
March 19, 1962 Bob Dylan, the self-titled
first album of 21 year old former Robert
Zimmerman hit the stores. Outside of
the immediate precincts around Greenwich
Village the Columbia Records LP landed
with a thud. Only 2,800 copies were sold
nationwide in the first year. Recording industry wise asses were
deriding it as Hammond’s Folly and
predicting the fall from grace at the label
by producer John Hammond. Luckily for him, despite the dismal sales
the record actually turned a tiny profit
thanks to its incredibly low cost to produce
in just two, two hour sessions with no side
musicians.
That
the record was made at all, and on the biggest, most important label in the
country managed under the steely eye of Columbia A&R Director Mitch Miller was a minor miracle.
Dylan,
the name was brand new, stolen from poet
Dylan Thomas, blew into the Greenwich Village folk scene at the age of 19
in January, 1961 shortly after dropping out of his freshman year and the University
of Minnesota. He had already
reinvented himself personally and musically at least once. In high school had idolized Little Richard and Elvis Presley, slicked his hair back in a greaser’s DA, and played electric
guitar in garage bands. But he had spent most of his time during
his aborted college career mining the extensive folk music collection of a
friend—he may have actually stolen much of it—especially the Folkways field recording of blues and hillbilly artists. Then he
discovered Woody Guthrie.
The
trip to New York was supposed to be a pilgrimage to meet Woody, then in a sanitarium in the advanced stages of
the Huntington’s chorea that would
kill him. His hair now an unruly curly
mop topped with a little corduroy cap, Bob went to the hospital on several
occasions playing music for the man who on some days could barely acknowledge
his presence.
Gerde's Folk City, one of the Village night spots where young Dylan quickly rose. |
Dylan
fell easily and quickly into the Village’s lively folk music scene. The legend
that he would later carefully cultivate was that he was something of an
outsider and loner, a rebel like Marlon Brando in the Wild
Ones against “what ya got.” In
point of fact as Joan Baez would do
a couple of years later, the folk community seems to have warmly adopted the
young ragamuffin. Guthrie’s disciple Ramblin’ Jack Eliot was the first to take him under his wing. Soon he was playing basket houses and hobnobbing with Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil,
Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers, and the Clancy Brothers and Tommy
Makem. They would invite him to join
with them for on stage jams and take him home with them at night and spend
hours sharing songs and teaching him the fine points of guitar and harmonica.
Soon
Dylan had a pretty girl friend, Suze
Rotolo whose sister Carla was an
assistant to famed folklorist Alan Lomax
and who made her large record collection available to him to mine for more
material. Dylan was a sponge. He soaked it all up. “I only had to hear a song once or twice to
learn it,” he said.
John Hammond. |
Dylan
became especially close friends with a young poet and writer, Richard FariƱa who introduced him to
his then wife, Carolyn Hester, one
of the reigning queens of the folk scene.
On September 14, 1961 they gathered in Hester’s apartment to rehearse
for an album she was preparing. Dylan
was blowing mouth harp. Producer Hammond turned up to check on
progress and was impressed with Dylan.
He hired him on the spot to play on Hester’s album.
After
sitting in on the recording session on September 29, Dylan opened a two week
stint at Gerde’s Folk City, billed
behind The Greenbriar Boys. That engagement got his first rave
reviews in the New York Times.
Impressed, Hammond called Dylan into his office and offered him the
standard Columbia five year recording
contract. Dylan couldn’t sign on the
dotted line fast enough. His dream was
coming true.
Hammond
first had to get the contract approved by Mitch Miller, not a fan of folk music
that wasn’t Burl Ives. Miller was skeptical but deferred to the
judgement of one of his most successful producers. Studio time for the first album was booked
for late November.
Dylan
spent the next weeks frantically search Carla Rotolo’s and other’s record
collections and going over song he had picked up in those late night
sessions. His set list in the clubs was
still short and he did not yet have a lot of original material. Besides, he wanted to cast himself as an
authentic folk musician preserving the best of traditional American music in
the tradition of those Folkways records he loved.
Dylan in the recording studio.. |
The
recording sessions were held on November 20 and 21. Dylan cut 17 tracks accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica. Despite this simple set up, Hammond reported
that Dylan was “the most undisciplined artist” he had ever worked with and hard
to record because he “popped every p, hissed every s, and habitually wandered
off mike...Even more frustrating, he refused to learn from his mistakes.” And he generally refused to do more than one
take. Singing the same song twice bored
him. Hammond was left to perform what
limited technical wizardry available in those days of monaural recording.
In
the end, 11 songs made it to the album, only two of the Song for Woody and Talkin’
New York Blues which was inspired by Guthie’s Talkin’ Dustbowl Blues,
were originals. The rest were an eclectic
mix of blues, country, and folk. Dylan
claimed arrangement credit for In My
Time of Dyin’, The Man of Constant Sorrows (a Carter Family staple), Pretty Peggy-O (picked up from the
Liam Clancy), Gospel Plow, and Freight Train Blues by John Lair.
The
inclusion of two songs caused some hard feelings between Dylan and those who
had graciously accepted him although he gave arrangement credits in both
cases. He learned the version of Please
Let Me File You Down from Boston
Folkie Eric Von Schmidt for whom it was a signature song. And Dylan lifted Van Ronk’s version of The
House of the Rising Sun before the Mayor
of McDougal Street could record it himself.
The
album was rounded out with Jesse
Fuller’s Your No Good, Highway 51 by
Curtis James, Bukka White’s Fixin’ to Die, and
Blind Lemon Jefferson’s See That My Grave is Kept Clean.
The
cover of the album featured Dylan in his cap and in a fleece-lined jacket
holding his guitar. The image was flipped so the guitar head would not obscure
the Columbia logo.
After
release when sales lagged, both Dylan and Hammond professed to be disappointed
in the album. But it must be said that
it was exactly the record Dylan set out to make.
Despite
the setback, Dylan was growing fast as an artist. He was moving up to top billing at Village coffee houses and clubs. He was expanding his repertoire and improving his skills,
particularly in bottleneck style
guitar playing.
Under
the influence of Suze Rotolo, an activist with SNCC and the anti-nuclear
group SANE, Dylan began writing more political
songs. Peter. Paul and Mary and other top folk acts began to cover his
songs in concert and on LPs
including the iconic Blowin’ in the Wind. Joan Baez famously
brought him on stage with her at the Newport
Folk Festival and brought him along on her tours, boosting his career, then
replaced Rotolo in his bed. Pete Seeger took an interest in him and
encouraged his moves to protests
songs. Still under contract to
Columbia, he recorded material for the Broadside Magazine record label
under the thin cover name Blind Boy
Grunt.
Dylan
was emerging as a real star and
Columbia gave him another shot. Dylan
and Hammond had fallen out over the failure of the first album so the young
Black jazz producer Tom Wilson was brought in. The result was Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan with
the iconic photo of the singer with Rotolo in the streets of the Village on the
cover. Released in May of 1963 it
included the classic protests songs that defined Dylan’s early career.
He
had re-invented himself not just as a folk singer, but as poet/bard voice of his generation.
Over his amazingly long and still thriving career, Dylan, ever the chameleon, would reinvent himself a
dozen or more times.
As
for that first album, well, with rising fame came respectability. It sold steadily, if unspectacularly, to hard
core Dylan fans for years. Issued in Britain in 1965, it rose to #13 on the
album charts there in the midst of the era of Beatlemania. Critics who ignored or panned it first time out,
revisited it and found much merit in it.
It was re-issued as part of a box
set of Dylan’s nine mono records in 2010 and in 2013 as a stand-alone CD Hoodoo Records with an additional 12
tracks taken from the B side of a single and radio performances contemporary to the original record.
One
more thing. Thousands more Dylan fans
claim to have run out and bought that first album than actually did.
"bob dylan" is, not ironically at all, the only album in the bob dylan catalogue which was released when the man behind the artist was named robert allen zimmerman. all the rest have been since he legally changed his name to robert dylan in august 1962.
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