A lot of us woke up this morning to
the startling news from Stockholm that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel
Prize for Literature which in recent years has been noted for mostly
honoring writers from the Third World and emerging voices. The last American to win the most prestigious award in the world was novelist Toni Morrison 23 years ago in 1993. Although Dylan’s name had been publicly proposed it was a stunning surprise when the Swedish Academy made the announcement—the
first ever to an artist whose principle body of work was song lyrics.
The citation for the award declared that Dylan earned the prize “for
having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,”
One member of the selection panel compared his work to Homer and Sappho—classic poets whose work was meant to be performed rather than read off the page.
The news this morning put a
smile on my face and a spring in my
step. It was a tonic for a week befouled by
Donald Trump. I even felt validated personally and for my generation for having recognized this genius long ago.
To celebrate, I am recycling
this post from March of 2015 about Dylan’s breakthrough first LP.
 |
| Bob Dylan--Minnesota urchin on the streets of Greenwich Village. |
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 and 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.
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 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.
Dylan became especially close
friends with a young poet and writer, Richard
Fariña 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 judgment
of one of his most successful producers.
Studio time for the first album was booked for late November.
Dylan spent the next weeks
frantically searching 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 Columbia 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 was 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 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.
 |
| Although disappointed by poor sales, Bob Dylan was exactly the recording the singer set out to make. |
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, and then replaced Rotolo in
his bed. Pete Seeger took an interest in him and encouraged his move 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's personal and professional relationship with Joan Baez enhanced his image early in his career. |
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment