Bob Dylan turns 85 on May 24. June 20 will mark the 60th anniversary of the release of Blonde on Blonde, perhaps Dylan’s most ambitious album and the one that concluded the trilogy of albums that was the peak of his legendary rise to mythical musical supremacy in the 1960’s. Dylan is still going strong today and is in the middle of the so-called “never-ending tour.”
A recent box set of his music—yet another laudable archival project in his long-running Bootleg Series—magnificently frames the era when Dylan, the musical artist, was being born and then exploded like a comet in the early ’60s. There have been some exceptional bootleg series releases, but this one is truly consequential and could not have come at a more opportune time.
The Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through The Open Window, 1956-1963 is available in various formats, including an eight-CD box set with 139 tracks and a 4-LP Highlights package with 42 tracks. Both will be covered here.
The release doesn’t just cover Dylan’s emergence as a musician and songwriter, but also places his music and its significance in the context of the folk revival and the fertile, historic Greenwich Village folk scene of the early ’60s. It also reflects the watershed protest voice of a generation of songs that Dylan himself called his finger-pointing songs. Dylan was never comfortable with the protest-singer/voice-of-a-generation label and quickly shed that sobriquet as his songwriting matured.
Dylan fans who relish collecting and hearing his unreleased recordings will be thrilled by the overflowing bounty of never-before-released recordings included in this set. The eight-CD set includes a whopping 59 previously unreleased recordings.
The songs included here begin with tracks recorded before Dylan’s signing with Columbia. They go on to include material that covers the period of his first three albums: Bob Dylan (1962), The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), and The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964).
These recordings do not come solely from concert appearances, rehearsals, demos, alternative studio takes, radio and television broadcasts, or the usual kinds of unreleased tapes often found in archival box sets. There are lots of homemade recordings from people’s apartments in the Village, including from parties and other informal settings. Although some of these homemade tapes are rather primitive due to the amateur equipment used, they flesh out Dylan’s evolution in this period and include recordings of his songs and others that he would never perform again or that have never been chronicled in any setting.
This project is very much a musical journey. It follows Dylan from the Terlinde Music Shop, in St. Paul, Minnesota, with a recording made 70 years ago in 1956 and believed to be Dylan’s first ever recording, with early stops along the way that include Hibbing hometown recordings, many other Minnesota recordings, one from Madison, Wisconsin, an East-Coast stop in East Orange, New Jersey and then the first of many Greenwich Village recordings that launched Dylan out into the world that began his musical career.
Early recordings from such iconic Village clubs as Gerde’s Folk City and the Gaslight are interspersed with recordings from the Riverside Church in Manhattan, including radio broadcasts from the legendary WRVR-FM and the Folklore Center. Two recordings Dylan made with future member of The Blues Project, Danny Kalb, are included here, as is his first studio time making music that would be released commercially backing folk singer Carolyn Hester, and music he performed with the help of Jim Kweskin—and that’s just the first disc.
Disc two features recordings from his self-titled debut album. Also of note are eight performances from the small Carnegie Chapter Hall in 1961. Some of the best radio recordings here are five from WBAI from 1962 on disc three. There are five recordings from The Finjan in Montreal from 1962. Sessions in which Dylan was a backing musician are included on this disc of rehearsals and recordings featuring Harry Belafonte, Victoria Spivey, and Big Joe Williams. The disc also includes live versions of the first recordings of “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
There are several outtakes from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan on disc four. There are also recordings here that, for the first time, featured backing musicians during one of his Columbia Studio A sessions, an idea producer John Hammond proposed. The Freewheelin’ session would mark the final album Hammond would produce for Dylan.
Disc five includes nine performances from Dylan’s April 1963 Town Hall performance. There are also BBC recordings, Witmark demo tapes, and recordings for Broadside magazine that featured support from Gil Turner and Happy Traum.
There are many historic performances on disc six, including four from the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, including duets with Joan Baez; two from the 1963 historic march on Washington; three from a SNCC Rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1963; and one with him playing with Tony Glover. Discs seven and eight include Dylan’s entire historic Carnegie Hall concert from October 26, 1963.
Some of the recordings here have been previously available, including on earlier Bootleg Series releases. Still, they are worthy of inclusion here, as they fit with the time and place that are the central themes of this project.
It’s remarkable to hear studio recordings of many of Dylan’s early songs and cover songs from folk, blues, and other musical genres, in previously unreleased form, as well as one-of-a-kind live performances and rare tapes recorded in non-professional settings. Hearing the cover songs and Dylan originals together over eight CDs offers a depth of understanding of his birth and early evolution as a musical artist.
A hardcover portfolio houses the eight CDs, with tape box and tape box session notes serving as artwork. The accompanying 124-page hardcover black-and-white and color book is an indispensable companion to the eight CDs of music. The detailed, informed, and elegant essay by Sean Wilentz is among the best writing on this rich period in Dylan’s career. It offers a vivid account of Dylan, the times, the scene, and the era’s politics, particularly the civil rights movement.
While some of the writing is a sad reminder of the struggles Black people faced regarding racial violence and inequality, it was the crucible that ultimately yielded the Voting Rights Act and the end to racial segregation in schools, almost a photo negative of the current seemingly end of the Voting Rights Act, the end of DEI, and a widespread acceptance of racism by the president of the United States, his administration, many in the Republican party, and large swaths of right-wing media and institutions.
Many of these songs should be strictly historical and have no relevance today, yet they are chillingly contemporary. Oddly, there are almost no voices out there today addressing these issues than there were in the 1960s.
The 4-LP Highlights vinyl set, while not including as much music or as much information as the hardcover book, will be something Dylan fans will want to have. The vinyl sound is warm and inviting, adding a certain level of intimacy to home recordings and club performances.
The 24-page, album-size book offers a wide-screen, eye-popping visual presentation of the photos and memorabilia. And, as these vinyl sets tend to go, while the CD boxes tend to stay in print longer, vinyl sets sell out quickly. Like the CD set, the music is housed in a hard-shell slipcase. The albums come in record jackets with die-cut paper sleeves featuring various kinds of Columbia Records’ period label artwork. This must be considered one of the best releases in the Bootleg Series and one of the best reissues of the last year.
There will certainly be more to come, and Dylan fans have their wishlist. It would be great to get a box of recordings Dylan made with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from their 1986 True Confessions tour. A VHS of performances from Australia is long out of print. It would be a very welcome release on Blu-ray. And, of course, fans are always clamoring for releases of the films and music associated with Renaldo and Clara and Eat the Document.
If all this Dylan music isn’t enough, Rhino Records has released a 20-track, two-LP vinyl set on the Elektra label titled Jac Holzman Presents: Dylan’s Circle.
Curated by the founder of the Elektra label, it includes two Newport Folk Festival performances by Dylan, along with a host of artists that ranges from recordings made by the traditional folkies, blues, and traditional roots artists such as Jean Ritchie and Josh White through to the cusp of the electric blues revival (The Paul Butterfield Blues Band), new folk (Tom Paxton), singer-songwriter and interpreter era (Fred Neil, Judy Collins, Tom Rush), and even the first stirrings of psychedelia (Love).
The beautiful gatefold package includes detailed liner notes and a track-by-track song annotation, album cover photos, and a replica of four Elektra period labels. This lovingly curated set is the perfect companion to the latest Dylan Bootleg Series release, but it is also a perfect standalone introduction to the ’60s folk revival.
This is very much in the vein of the long-out-of-print Bleecker & MacDougal (The Folk Scene Of The Sixties) 4-LP box set released in 1984, although that set had more than twice as much music, came in a box, and also included a lavish book.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
Bob Dylan, The Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through The Open Window, 1956–1963
A+
VA, Jac Holzman Presents: Dylan’s Circle
A-
