Production
Dylan delivers an incredible interpretation of this haunting blues song. He plays his Gibson J-50 with conviction and inspiration with an open tuning in D, even if he slightly tangles his fingers at 1:08. His voice is poignant and tormented; the shadow of Robert Johnson is omnipresent—Dylan adored him. Of all the covers, it is certainly the one that sounds the most authentic. Even B. B. King does not hold a candle to Bob Dylan’s version. And he was only twenty years old… Dylan would later say: “What’s depressing today is that so many young singers are trying to get inside the blues, forgetting that those older singers used them to get outside their troubles.”11 It took four takes, after a false start, to record the song. The last is judged the best and retained. “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” had another life in the Dylan discography, since he rerecorded the song with the Band on The Genuine Basement Tapes in 1967.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
The grave of Blind Lemon Jefferson is located in the cemetery in Wortham, Texas, but to this day remains unidentified. In 2007, a municipal committee was appointed to maintain the cemetery, renamed the Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery in honor of the musician. Hopefully his grave will be kept clean!
The Bob Dylan Outtakes
In 1991, Sony released the first set box of its Bootleg Series, The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991. This discography lists fifty-eight songs recorded between 1961 and 1989. It also includes alternate takes, such as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry,” live versions of “No More Auction Block” and “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” as well as some demos. Three of the demos come from the four songs recorded and not included in the November 1961 recording sessions for the first album, which are referred to as “Bob Dylan” outtakes.
He Was A Friend Of Mine
Traditional / Arrangement Bob Dylan / 4:01
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York, November 20, 1961 / Producer: John Hammond / Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 1) / Release Date: March 26, 1991
Bob Dylan told Robert Shelton that he had heard “He Was a Friend of Mine” for the first time sung by a Chicago bluesman street singer, Blind Arvella Gray. It is a Southern prison song recorded by Leadbelly in 1935 and some other detainees, including Casey Smith in 1939, under the title “Shorty George.” This controversial version was recorded by Eric Von Schmidt; later, Dave Van Ronk did a very successful adaptation. During a concert in 1996, Van Ronk presented the song as follows, “I learned this song from Eric Von Schmidt, who learned it from Dylan, who learned it from me.”25 He explained that each of them had added a stone to the “building” of the song, so that it was difficult for anyone to claim sole authorship.
Bob Dylan included “He Was a Friend of Mine” in his repertoire in the early 1960s and interpreted it many times in the clubs in Greenwich Village. This song also inspired the Byrds and, more recently, the Black Crowes and Willie Nelson—his version is heard on the soundtrack to Brokeback Mountain (2005).
Unlike Van Ronk’s version, which oscillates between sweetness and power, Dylan interprets “He Was a Friend of Mine” with an intimacy bordering on confidentiality. His voice, full of emotion, captivates from the first notes; his guitar and harmonica playing reflect simplicity and sobriety. But perhaps the interpretation was so restrained that neither John Hammond nor Dylan selected it for the final track listing.
Man On The Street
Bob Dylan / 1:56
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York, November 22, 1961 / Producer: John Hammond / Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Ted Brosnan Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 1) / Release Date: March 26, 1991
The outtake “Man on the Street” from Dylan’s first album Bob Dylan was inspired by the traditional melody and structure of “The Young Man Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn,” a farmer’s song revived by Pete Seeger. The main character is the only notable difference. The “young man who wouldn’t hoe corn” has become an old man “found… dead in the street one day.” The young songwriter used a tragic event that he had witnessed in Greenwich Village: a man beaten by a policeman.
This is one of Dylan’s first topical songs and reflects his new familiarity with the drama and poetry of Bertolt Brecht (the poem “Litany of Breath” in particular). Dylan had learned Brecht’s work under the aegis of his girlfriend Suze Rotolo, who had worked on a production of Brecht on Brecht.
The song is based on just two chords. Dylan uses this harmonic deprivation to better express the strength of his text. Sensitive to all outcasts of this world, Dylan wrote a similar song two years later, “Only a Hobo,” during the recording sessions for The Times They Are A-Changin’. His lack of confidence may have made his interpretation too timid, which is unfortunate because the live version, especially the performance on September 6, 1961, at the Gaslight Cafe, is extraordinary for the depth and darkness that the song releases. In some ways, it is a missed opportunity.
House Carpenter
Traditional / Arrangement Bob Dylan / 4:09
Musician: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York, November 22, 1961 / Producer: John Hammond / Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Ted Brosnan Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 1) / Release Date: March 26, 1991
The last song recorded during the last recording session for his first album, “House Carpenter” is one of the oldest songs in Bob Dylan’s repertoire. It is an American rendition of the seventeenth-century Scottish ballad known as “The Daemon Lover,” “James Harris,” or “James Herries.” This traditional ballad has many recorded versions by Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, and Doc Watson, among others.
Still haunted by the blues, Dylan stays within the general style of the album, and this title could easily have found its place there. His guitar playing is pretty good, although a bit messy, and his vocal performance is strong. We can also note that it is the only song from these recording sessions to have a noticeable reverb, unless this was added specifically for the bootleg. Just one take was necessary. Dylan reworked the song in 2013 in a completely different and unrecognizable version for The Bootleg Series Volume 10: Another Self Portrait (1969–1971).
Bob Dylan / 2:29
SINGLE
RELEASED
“Mixed Up Confusion” / “Corrina, Corrina”
(See the album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, page 70, for the analysis of “Corrina, Corrina.”)
December 14, 1962
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Bruce Langhorne: guitar
George Barnes: guitar
Dick Wellstood: piano
Gene Ramey: bass
Herb Lovelle: drums
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: October 26 / November 1 / November 14, 1962
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
According to legend, Bob Dylan wrote “Mixed Up Confusion” in a cab on his way to the Columbia Recording Studio. This title appears on the A-side of his first single, and had hardly any success at the time of its release. This single was quickly forgotten. The recording differs from everything Dylan had done up to that time because of one major innovation: in it Dylan worked with a backup band for the first time in a studio recording. The idea probably came from his producer John Hammond. Dylan also implicitly recognizes: “I didn’t arrange the session. It wasn’t my idea.” The lyrics may express the “confusion” of an artist who was looking for some answers but didn’t know who to ask, as Dylan said in 1985 in the notes
on Biograph’s album set: “I’m not sure what I based it on.”12
Production
“Mixed Up Confusion” is a fast-tempo song, with a rhythm characteristic of “country beat,” in a style favored by Johnny Cash. Only two chords are necessary for the harmony and to get an entire song close to rockabilly. Although it is commonly accepted that this song is the first in Dylan’s entire career to be backed by a group of musicians, the reality is quite different: in fact, in a recording session dated April 24, 1962, seven different songs, including “Corrina, Corrina” the next B-side on the album, benefited from the participation of bassist Bill Lee (father of director Spike Lee), six months before the first recording session on October 26. Therefore, it is not the first title to benefit from a backing band, although “Mixed Up Confusion” remains the first released on an album that credits outside musicians.
“Mixed Up Confusion” was worked on along with other titles during the recording sessions for Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Three recording sessions and fourteen takes were necessary, suggesting the difficulty of obtaining a satisfactory track. The identity of musicians is not formally known, although in all likelihood they included Bruce Langhorne, a guitarist Dylan already knew, together with Bill Lee and Carolyn Hester during recording sessions on September 29, 1961. These were guitarists with whom Dylan recorded Bringing It All Back Home some years later in 1965.
Besides Bruce Langhorne at the acoustic guitar, about whom Dylan said “he already had a lot of ideas and played some interesting things at the guitar,” there was Herb Lovelle, who later accompanied B. B. King on drums; Dick Wellstood, who worked with Gene Krupa at the piano; Gene Ramey, who played bass for Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk; and George Barnes, who started his career with Big Bill Bronzy at the second guitar. Despite the presence of these experienced musicians, the song struggled to take off. Admittedly the atmosphere was not so wonderful. In his book, Robert Shelton repeats a story told by John Hammond: “Albert Grossman [Bob Dylan’s manager] and his partner John Court insisted on coming to all sessions and Court insisted on telling Bobby and me what we had to do, so that I ended up ordering them to leave the studio. They said, ‘It is not good’ and that I could not do that. I said, ‘John, if you don’t like it, you can always leave.’ And that’s what he did. Albert remained. It was Albert who had the bright idea of recording ‘Mixed Up Confusion’ with a Dixieland band. However, it was a disaster.”7 The idea of a Dixieland band (with Dick Mosman at the piano and Panama Francis on drums, according to Clinton Heylin), is not yet confirmed. But it could have provoked Dylan to leave in a huff after the third recording session on November 14. His anger was short lived, since he returned to the studio shortly afterward to resume the recordings alone.… Unfortunately, the details of each take for that day are unclear; however, there appear to have been four complete takes, and that take 14 was the final.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Take 10, recorded November 1, 1962, was reworked without Dylan on December 8, 1964, at the initiative of producer Tom Wilson, who wanted to replace the musicians of the original version with other unidentified musicians, except for the drummer Bobby Gregg. (Wilson successfully did the same thing with the “Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel in 1965.) This new version, a semitone down, was first released in Japan (Mr. D’s Collection #1 in 1974), and later in Masterpieces (1978) and then in Biograph (1985).
The
Freewheelin’
Bob Dylan
Blowin’ In The Wind
Girl From The North Country
Masters Of War
Down The Highway
Bob Dylan’s Blues
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
Bob Dylan’s Dream
Oxford Town
Talkin’ World War III Blues
Corrina, Corrina
Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance
I Shall Be Free
THE OUTTAKES
Going To New Orleans
Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues
Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues
Let Me Die In My Footsteps
Rambling, Gambling Willie
Talkin’ Hava Negellah Blues
The Death Of Emmett Till
Worried Blues
Kingsport Town
Walls Of Red Wing
Sally Gal
Baby, I’m In The Mood For You
(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle
Rocks And Gravel
Baby, Please Don’t Go
Milk Cow Blues
Wichita Blues
Quit Your Low Down Ways
Mixed-Up Confusion
That’s All Right Mama
Watcha Gonna Do
Hero Blues
The Ballad Of Hollis Brown
DATE OF RELEASE
May 27, 1963
on Columbia Records
(COLUMBIA REFERENCE 8786)
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Shades of Humanism
The Album
Toward the end of 1962, things were not great for Dylan: his first album did not sell well, his single was not recognized, and his recording company was seriously considering canceling his contract. Bob only released a second album because of the doggedness of his producer John Hammond and fellow Columbia Records artist Johnny Cash’s interest in him.
The recording sessions began in June 1962, during which the young songwriter went through a very creative jag and wrote many songs. Interviewed by Pete Seeger on New York radio station WBAI in April 1962, he mentioned that he had written five songs in one single night! “The songs are there. They exist all by themselves just waiting for someone to write them down. I just put them down on paper. If I didn’t do it, somebody else would,” he admitted to Sing Out! magazine in October 1962.13
A Protest Kind of Folk Music
According to Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend at the time, “The choice of the word freewheeling sounds like something either John Hammond or Albert Grossman might have come up with. But the spelling, with the dropped g at the end, is all Bob.”2 Therefore, this was a “freewheelin’” Dylan who wrote mainly political songs for his second 33⅓ rpm record (the working title was Bob Dylan’s Blues). He wrote chronicles of America in the early sixties, which offered hope to part of the world, but was also a showcase of troublesome paradoxes. For an entire generation of baby boomers and for the progressive and radical intelligentsia, he became mainly the spokesman of the struggle for civil rights and more general protest: “Blowin’ in the Wind” became the anthem of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” the ultimate song of the nuclear apocalypse, while “Masters of War” was a radical attack on the arms trade.
Did events turn out this way because of Suze Rotolo, who was considered an intellectual among the extreme left? Maybe so. “Suze was into this equality-freedom thing long before I was,” Dylan has said.15 Through her mediation and that of Broadside magazine, in which Dylan was involved, he began fraternizing with the student protest environment that fought for the rights of minorities. He struggled alongside other artists like Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson, and Peter, Paul and Mary in the civil rights movement. Three months after the record came out, on August 28, 1963, he participated in the March on Washington, where more than 200,000 pacifists converged on the Lincoln Memorial to denounce discrimination against the black population. After Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Bob Dylan sang “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and Peter, Paul and Mary performed “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The folksinger was immediately recognized as a protest singer, a label that soon felt constraining.
The Celtic Influence
Right from the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan on May 27, 1963, the critics noted the spectacular growth of the young songwriter within fourteen months. Whereas the first album only included two original compo
sitions (“Talkin’ New York” and “Song to Woody”), this time eleven out of thirteen songs were his.
The songs alternated between blues and folk with a minimalist interpretation (voice, guitar, harmonica), except for “Corrina, Corrina,” which was recorded with other musicians. What was radically new compared to the first album was the exalted British musical heritage, the Celtic touch. At the end of 1962, Bob Dylan went to London at the invitation of BBC director Philip Saville. He had heard the young singer perform in a Greenwich Village club, and wanted Dylan to sing, among other songs, “Blowin’ in the Wind” on a televised show that would be broadcast on the BBC on January 13, 1963, called Madhouse on Castle Street.
During this sojourn in London, Dylan soaked in the Soho folk scene by appearing at the famous Troubadour on Old Brompton Road (under the stage name of Blind Boy Count) and by meeting the pillars of the folk renaissance, Martin Carthy and Bob Davenport. They in turn gave him a taste of Celtic ballad music. This is why “Girl from the North Country,” “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and “Bob Dylan’s Dream” are influenced by it.
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 5
