Album #2: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

 Well, here we go. 

This was the album that made everyone notice, that propelled Dylan towards fame. The one that inspired Johnny Cash to write him a fan letter! The one that contains at least five classics: “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “ Girl from the North Country,” “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” You can definitely hear the folk/blues influences, we’re still acoustic, but things are shifting. 

This one is the opposite of his first one, in terms of authorship - he wrote all but two of the songs. Apparently, he recorded some additional songs he didn’t write, but he kept bringing in more and more obviously better songs that he wrote, and the record producers woke up to what they had. 

You can read hundreds (thousands?) of detailed articles about this album, so I won’t go on. 

My favorites here are “Masters of War” (I can almost hear the anti war protesters saying “this is not “Where Have all the Flowers Gone”) and “Hard Rain” - the lyrics!! The complexity! He was 21! 

Guess where I was last month? 






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dylan’s discography

Image
 So… A long time ago, I had a blog. I never did much with it, but I recently discovered that it does, in fact, still exist. And I was contemplating a project, so… I’m going to listen to all of Bob Dylan’s studio albums, in order (yes, even the Christmas one!) and write about them here - maybe a couple of my favorite songs from each one, maybe a little bit of analysis (as if there isn’t enough of that out there already!) This will appease my Virgo brain, which wasn’t happy with the scattershot way I was listening to Dylan all winter. Order and organization!  I’m not going to tackle all of the live albums or the bootlegs, but I’ll probably mention some of them.  This is probably only of interest to me and maybe three other people, but I figured I’d mention it.  Up next: “Bob Dylan,” his first album from 1961, when he was still a baby-faced child. Bob Dylan at Indian Neck Folk Festival, 1961                       ...
Read more

Album #11: New Morning

Image
 Released October 24, 1970  This album was released only four months after “Self Portrait” - possibly because Dylan wanted to make people forget about “Self-Portrait,” although he’s said it was just the way the timing worked out. It was much more positively received by the critics. It’s definitely a more cohesive album. Most of the songs are pretty simple, about the joys of country living and domestic life. Dylan mostly returned to his regular voice, and there’s some great playing on it. A few of the songs were written for a project that never worked out - Archibald MacLeish asked Dylan to write some songs to use in his new play, “Scratch”. Things really didn’t go well.   I wasn’t mesmerized by any of the songs, but there are some I liked, including “Day of the Locusts “ and “Went to see the Gypsy.”  “Three Angels” is odd but interesting. “If Not for You” was a hit for Olivia Newton-John. I did not like “The Man in Me” because I don’t listen to Dylan to hear him...
Read more

Album #40: Shadow Kingdom

Image
 Released June 2, 2023 It seems fitting to end my project with this album, Dylan’s last studio album to date. Recorded in early 2021 to accompany the film of the same name, it’s a collection of 13 songs from Dylan’s earlier career, plus one instrumental.  The album received rave reviews, and it deserves them. Dylan sounds great and his reinterpretations of these familiar songs are fascinating. They are all eminently recognizable, but transformed. The accompanying musicians, as always, are excellent. Dylan used no drums. The songs flow into one another,  which I don’t think he did on any other album, at least, not for every song.  My favorites on this album are “What Was It You Wanted” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. The only one I didn’t like in its new form was “Tombstone Blues”. He sings it very slowly.  I like it fast ;-)  The film this was used for is well worth seeking out. It was filmed on a soundstage in California, but is credited as being in the...
Read more