Bob Dylan

Description by OLDIES.com:

Bob Dylan is Dylan's astonishing debut album, recorded at Columbia Recording Studio in 1961. This is a 20-year old Dylan, newly arrived in New York to be the next Woody Guthrie, singing traditional songs and original compositions with an aggressiveness and emotion that belie his young age.

Guthrie's influence looms large over classic renditions of traditional songs, such as "Man Of Constant Sorrow" and "Pretty Peggy-O," as well as the poignant "Song To Woody" - one of two original compositions on the album. Even more powerful is the influence of Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson and the other great blues men, whose death-haunted emotions are carried through songs like "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," "Fixin' To Die" and "In My Time Of Dyin'." "Talkin' New York," the second original composition, is a first glimpse of the savage with that would come to mark his work.

Product Description:

Solo performer: Bob Dylan (vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica).

Recorded in Columbia Recording Studios, New York, New York in 1961. Includes liner notes by Stacey Williams and Robert Shelton.

The first album from the greatest musical poet of the 20th century gave little indication of what was to come. Although released in 1962, it reeks of the 50s folk/protest movement. Many of the standards covered by Dylan had been sung by a thousand troubadours throughout the McCarthy era and the anti-war movement. Dylan sings like an innocent angel, and makes Eric Von Schmidt's lusty "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" sound sweet. The seeds of greatness were apparent in the sensitive original "Song To Woody," a sadly overlooked entry in the massive Dylan catalogue. A wonderful exercise in what was then and what is not now.