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But this one just wasn't good so I wish I hadn't bought it. And I really like the early folk albums he made more than the albums he made when he plugged in. And I'm surprised Dylan was offered any more contracts after releasing this stuff. I pretty much hated every song on this album. And I am a big Dylan fan.
I had bought this album a long, long time ago, and I swear I've only played it twice, maybe three times. His two originals, Song to Woody and Talkin' New York, are nice. So why did I decide to buy it on CD.This is a pretty awesome album. His voice is remarkably strong and angry, and he sings the 11 traditional tunes with a bravado unmatched by any of his contemporaries at the time.
This album can stand up with them easily. His guitar playing is phenomenal along with his harmonica. I think that's shortsighted and silly. Dylan's debut album is an unjustly forgotten album that needs to be rediscovered. Dylan did two albums of standards in the 90's (Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong), and those are both excellent albums. The copy that I had bought was warped, so I had another incentive not to play it.
Many dismiss this album because there's only two Bob Dylan originals on it. It's a great album that is filled with great blues songs and a harbringer of the brilliance to come. Dylan was a mere 21 when he recorded it, and he sounds like a veteran. His choice of material is exemplary, with such great blues/folk classics as Jesse Fuller's You're No Good (which is one of the best songs on the album), House of the Risin' Sun, In My Time of Dyin', and See That My Grave is Kept Clean.
And, like so many other newbie folksingers during the revival of 1958-64 (a period during which rock 'n' roll was laying low and waiting for the British Invasion which would revitalise it and even influence the folkies to some degree, even bringing some of Britain's own folksingers to these shores), Bob packed out his debut album with covers and traditional songs.Even so, we have two originals on this album--"Talkin' New York," in the talking-blues style that some have blamed for the eventual rise of rap (although there are many differences which I won't go into here), and "Song to Woody," Bob's tribute to the older folksinger then resident at Greystone Hospital in New Jersey, suffering from the Huntington's Disease that would ultimately be the cause of Guthrie's demise. It's really not bad, either. It could reasonably be said that this, Bob Dylan's debut LP, was like any other artist's (or band's) first LP. Bob pursued the talking-blues form further on his next album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (although only a couple results of that would actually appear on the record, the rest left as outtakes that would be bootlegged heavily until 1991 and Sony's inception of the Bootleg Series); similarly, his Woody-influenced stylings would appear in greater detail on his next few albums.The other tracks here borrow from other singers as well--Dylan's arrangement of "House of the Risin' Sun" is, by his own admission, lifted directly from the late Dave Van Ronk (who was outraged at the time, but later forgave Dylan and took great amusement when Dylan was forced to retire the song from his repertoire after the Animals had a hit single with it in 1964); "In My Time of Dyin'" (covered by others, most famously by Led Zeppelin on their Physical Graffiti album), "Fixin' to Die," "See That My Grave is Kept Clean," and "Highway 51" bear resemblance to the singing styles of such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Howlin' Wolf and perhaps a touch of John Lee Hooker (for whom Dylan opened in his first major gig in the Village--Dylan's first gig, that is, not Hooker's).So this debut album is really Dylan's formative recording; for those of us, like myself, who weren't there for one reason or another (I wasn't born yet), this is a little slice of Bobby's beginnings. It's not hard to believe that this album sold only 5,000 copies on its initial release--or that John Hammond, who discovered Bob and produced this album (as well as Freewheelin'), when told that Columbia was prepared to drop Dylan from their roster as a result of the album's disappointing sales, heatedly told the exec who gave him this news that "You'll drop him over my dead body." And it's a good thing Columbia acceded to Hammond's wishes.who knows if we'd have heard what Bob had to offer in the coming years. There is really nothing about this record that gives away anything of what Dylan would become, even just 12 months hence. Even Bob's appearance--faux-sheepskin jacket and fisherman's cap--is borrowed from influential contemporaries (in this case, Ian Tyson of Ian & Sylvia).
This is truly one of music's greatest albums, and if you really do appreciate music, this album is a must have. His heart cries out to the world in every one of these songs. There's two kinds of people in the world, people who get Bob Dylan and people who don't. Bob Dylan's first album portrays his very soul in its rawest confusion and crisis.
They broke out of that habit like Dylan after a couple of albums. The Rolling Stones kind of did the same thing, the difference is they were just doing covers of other people's songs. A majority of the album is him and his talent but about 1/3 of the album is him singing as country folk in the same vein as Woody Guthrie does. That part of the album annoys me for the most part it is not his persona at all, his personality is way more complex and deep.
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