Thanks to his last couple of albums — and to songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” — Bob Dylan was, in 1964, considered by practically everyone to be at the forefront of the popular protest movement … everyone, that is, except for one: Bob Dylan.

Dylan began almost immediately to try leaving this image behind, and one of the first major salvos fired in the war between Dylan the Image and Dylan the Man was Another Side of Bob Dylan, an album focused almost entirely on relationships and more personal — and decidedly not socially conscious — songs.

(1) “All I Really Want to Do”:  The album starts with one of the more playful songs in Dylan’s discography … but it’s playful in the same way a cat leaping at a window to get at the bird it sees flitting about on the ground outside is playful.  It might not seem so playful if you were a bird.  (It might not have seemed so playful, also, if you were one of the fans of Dylan the Protest Singer.  After all, this song is entirely about Dylan not wanting to do the things it’s been intimated that he wants to do.)

Another Side of Bob Dylan was recorded in a single day, and there is a rawness, a lack of polish, that serves some of the songs poorly and some of them well.  I think it serves “All I Really Want to Do” pretty well.  With the song presumably fresh for him, it comes off as having more of his personality than might be present on some of his other records, and as such, I think it’s possible to argue that this one of the most “Dylan” of all Dylan albums.

That said, “All I Really Want to Do” has never been one of my favorite Dylan songs.  It’s kinda vapid, and mean in a way.  This is what passes for bubblegum music in Dylan’s canon, though, and as far as bubblegum music goes, it’s not too bad.

(2)  “Black Crow Blues”:  This is probably one of my least favorite Dylan songs, at least amongst his output from the ‘60s.  It sounds like what it probably is: a song Dylan came up with five minutes before he recorded it.  However, it’s always fun to hear Dylan doing the blues, and it’s also always fun to hear him playing the piano.  In some ways, I think the song points the way toward Highway 61 Revisited, but that point of interest isn’t enough to make me interested in this song.

(3)  “Spanish Harlem Incident”:  This one is a good case-in-point to show how recording an entire album in a single day might not be the best idea in the world.  Just listen to this song, and pay attention to how Dylan’s energy level seem to simply disintegrate by the time he finishes the third and final verse.  At several points, it seems as if the whole endeavor is simply going to fall apart.  As such, what could have been a solid entry in the Dylan canon is reduced to being a merely decent recording.

It’s probably worth noting that the song does offer more evidence of where Dylan’s songwriting was going.  This, despite being played only on a single acoustic guitar, is blatantly a rock song, and I think it would have been much better in that guise.  Imagine a good anchoring rhythm section, and maybe a nice Al Kooper organ section … that might have been something slightly magical.

Still, there are some decent lyrics here – “On the cliffs of your wildcat charms I’m riding; I know I’m ‘round you, but I don’t know where” – so it’s not a waste of time by any means.

(4)  “Chimes of Freedom”:  Lyrically, this is a complex, complicated, and possibly even confusing song, and it’s unquestionably one of the high points of the album.  From a narrative standpoint, what seems to be going on in the song is that the singer and a friend have been caught out in the open by a thunderstorm, and have sought shelter in the doorway of a building (possibly a church).  From there, the pair of friends are awed by the sight of the lightning and the sound of the thunder, and of hail, and this summons in the singer’s mind sympathetic connections with various members of society, such as pacifists (“warriors whose strength is not to fight”), refugees, rebels and rakes, “mistreated mateless mothers” and “mistitled prostitutes,” and so forth.

Look, I’ll be honest here: apart from that, I really have no fucking clue what this song is about.  And that kinda bothers me, but only kinda.  Really, this is a song that’s entirely about how well-performed it is (Dylan’s voice gets dangerously close to giving out at a couple of points, but by and large it is a tour de force), and also about the not-so-simple thrill of the way the words sound in relation to that performance.  There are some lovely images, such as these:  “Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail, the sky cracked its poems in naked wonder”; “In the wild cathedral evening, the rain unraveled tales for the disrobed faceless forms of no position”; and so forth.  I don’t necessarily understand a lot of this, and I’m about halfway convinced that there no understanding to be had, not really.

But sometimes, abstraction is okay, and it’s pretty damned okay here.

(5)  “I Shall Be Free No. 10”:  Not by any means one of Dylan’s better-known songs, this is another seeming example of the musician just farting around in the studio.  However, it is clear that he was in high spirits – possibly literally – when he recorded it, and it practically drips with Dylan’s weirdo sense of humor; as a song, it’s not entirely dissimilar to some of those infamous press conferences he would give a few years later.  The song is filled with hilarity (“Well, I set my monkey on the log/and ordered him to do the dog/He wagged his tail and shook his head/and he went and did the cat instead/He’s a weird monkey; very funky”), and it seems to be a bit of a head-scratcher until you think about what the song’s first verse means.

Here’s how it starts: “Well, I’m just average, common too/I’m just like him and the same as you/I’m everybody’s brother and son/I ain’t different from anyone.”  Dylan goes on then to say that “It ain’t no use talking to me/It’s just the same as talking to you.”  Given the album’s title and intent – to distance Dylan from the protest movements of the time – I think it’s hard to interpret this as anything except the singer saying, Seriously people, don’t look to me for any sort of wisdom.  After this first verse, the song launches into a series of bizarre bits involving Dylan challenging Cassius Clay to a fistfight, the aforementioned monkey episode, Dylan imagining himself in the guise of a tennis player at a country club (and later as a golfer), and so forth.  Each verse is self-contained, and seems to have no larger significance, unless being confusing is Dylan’s goal (which it almost certainly was).

Dylan performs all of this with an invisible smile on his face and with laughter constantly threatening to erupt from the weirdness.  I’m especially fond of the line in which Dylan rhymes “home” with “poem” by pronouncing it “hoem,” and I also love the final verse, which contains a musical joke I don’t have the vocabulary to articulate.  So I’ll just leave it to you to go and have a listen.

(6)  “To Ramona”:  Another of the album’s highlights, “To Ramona” is a terrific song that addresses a woman who, evidently distressed (by the state of the world,?) has come to the singer for solace, which he gives for a time, until finally counseling Ramona to go and do what she thinks is best — with the knowledge that whatever she does, she’ll have to do it without him.

It seems entirely likely that “Ramona” is in fact none other than Joan Baez, with whom Dylan had a famously troubled relationship.  I always resist applying any sort of strict biographical reading of songs, but with this particular song, the temptation proves to be do much for me to overcome.  If the album represents Dylan trying to break with the protest movement – which his sometime-lover Baez was very much a part of – then it also, in some ways, has to represent Dylan trying to break at least some part of his relationship with Baez herself.  And indeed, the final verse of “To Ramona” seems to take that, or some fictional version of it, into consideration: “I’d forever talk to you,” the singer seems to sigh to his distressed lover, “but soon my words would turn into a meaningless ring.”  This is a thought that is both gentle and cruel, and if you know much about Dylan’s marital life during the next decade, it’s impossible not to feel some serious pangs for the younger 1964 version of the man … and to wonder if maybe he ought not to have given “Ramona” a bit more of an opportunity.

“Everything passes, everything changes; just do what you think you should do.  And someday, maybe – who knows, baby? – I’ll come and be crying to you.”

Great stuff.

(7)  “Motorpsycho Nitemare”:  Another comedic song, this one tells the story of the singer spending the night – part of it, at least – at a country farmhouse, where he has run-ins with the farmer and the farmer’s daughter.  The whole thing seems to be a lead-up to a punchline about freedom of speech, but frankly, it’s a bit tiresome as a song.  There are a couple of amusing line-readings, but that’s about all there is to recommend here.

(8)  “My Back Pages”:  Here’s something you won’t often hear me say: I think I might actually like this song if not for the lyrics.  Remember earlier, when I was expressing slight concerns over “Chimes of Freedom” not entirely making sense to me?  Well, “My Back Pages” makes almost no sense at all, up to and including the refrain “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”  Basically, the song is a long series of images that occasionally come close to having some sort of concrete meaning, but never quite get there even individually, much less as a whole.  But Dylan sings the song with conviction, so if you do the listening equivalent of letting your eyes go crossed, you might enjoy it.

(9)  “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)”:  It’s got its problems, I guess (some of the lyrics are fairly crap if you just read them on the page), but Dylan plays the piss out of this song, and I just like the conceit of it.  It’s bitter, confused, and slightly jaunty in a righteously belligerent way.  I’d guess this is a good example of a fairly mediocre song being elevated by being recorded at precisely the right moment in time and thereby somehow becoming better than it has any right to be.

(10)  “Ballad in Plain D”:  The best thing I can say about this song is that Dylan sings it with utter conviction.  Here, however, is a song so blatantly autobiographical that there’s no need to wonder how to interpret it.  The song is about Dylan’s breakup with Suze Rotolo (she’s the woman on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan), which – depending on who you talk to – was exacerbated by Suze’s sister Carla.  Dylan and Carla didn’t get along too well, and at one point had a shouting match so violent that it literally put Suze into a catatonic stupor.  Dylan seems to have felt the need to write a song about it, and it’s probably one of his least successful compositions – both musically and lyrically – from this era of his career.

It does have a nice final verse, however, which makes reference to Dylan’s feelings about being “free” from his relationship and single again: “Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me, ‘How good, how good does it feel to be free?’, and I answer them most mysteriously: Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”

(11)  “It Ain’t Me Babe”:  A piercingly sad song, Dylan here is singing about how he’s simply not the person his lover needs him to be … and maybe I’m hearing what I want to hear, but he sounds like he’s pretty damn bummed out about it.  The only other song on this album with the same tone is “To Ramona,” and that leads me draw the conclusion that this song, too, is about Joan Baez.

Dylan gets a bit nasty toward the end this time, though: “Go melt back into the night, babe; everything inside is made of stone, there’s nothing in here moving … and anyways, I’m not alone.”  But his voice is sad, and clearly wishful that he wasn’t having to break the heart of whoever he is addressing in this fashion.

Even long before I knew enough of the biography to know that Dylan and Baez had been a couple, I was struck by Baez’s cover of “It Ain’t Me Babe,” but with the biographical details – rightfully or wrongfully – in mind, it kinda hurts a bit to hear Baez sing the song.  In more than a few of her Dylan covers, it almost sounds as if she’s using his songs – which may or may not be about her – both as an attempt to reconcile herself to the facts and to bring herself closer to Dylan.  Baez’s singing voice, on these occasions, becomes positively angelic with distressed beauty.

Apropos of perhaps only a little, I’m also a big fan of the Johnny Cash/June Carter version of the song.  Knowing what we know about their biography, the song becomes something else entirely: a song in which two people are desperately, and with blithely unconvincing cheerfulness, trying to convince each other that they don’t need each other at all, not really.  But, of course, we know better.

FINAL THOUGHTS:  By no means a great album, Another Side is nevertheless an interesting piece of work that has several extremely worthy songs on it.

Several of this album’s songs are about breakups of one type or another, and it’s interesting to compare the tone Dylan takes in dealing with each scenario.  In “To Ramona” (and “It Ain’t Me Babe”) it is wistful, regretful, but resigned; in “I Don’t Believe You” it is peeved but curiously detached; in “Ballad in Plain D” it is genuinely heartbroken.

Dylan here is also breaking up – or, at least, trying to (he wouldn’t be successful until his next album) – with a large portion of his fanbase.  It’s interesting to note that as far as attempted breakups go, Another Side of Bob Dylan is fairly gentle and understanding.  But it was also unsuccessful, and perhaps that accounts for the steps Dylan would take to make sure that the next time out, nobody could possibly misinterpret his meanings.

Honk’s rating: 3.5/5 spuds

The Times They Are A-Changin’ — released January 13, 1964

(1)  “The Times They Are A-Changin’ “:  Adopted by nearly every person who has ever heard it (including me) as a protest song, this one is unquestionably a classic … but, as I wrote in my last Dylan review about a different song, what is this one actually protesting?  Upon further reflection, I think I’d have to say it isn’t protesting anything: instead, it’s simply talking about a fact of life, which is that things change.  Old things die off and new things take their place, an eternally-in-process cycle of change and renewal.

Of course, there can be little doubt that the cause by which this song was adopted — the civil rights movement — would have been in Dylan’s thoughts when he wrote the song, and also on at least some of the many occasions he performed it live.  His genius was in not making it too specific; he avoided tying the song down to a single cause, instead opting for a sense of universality that has enabled the song to remain vital and relevant decades later.  That’s how it managed to sound like it fit perfectly in a movie about costumed crimefighters (Watchmen) and wow who knows how many people who might have never heard it before.

As for the song itself, it’s one of the many instances in which Dylan’s voice matches the song perfectly.  It’s an incredibly famous song, and it has been covered by a legion of guitar-playing singers, none of which has done the song better than Dylan does it on this recording.

(2)  “Ballad of Hollis Brown”:  This blues ballad is the story of a destitute farmer who, unable to bear his own hunger and the complaints from his wife and children, goes to work on them all with the seven shotgun shells upon which his last dollar was spent.  It is a terrifyingly bleak song, one that jolts you with its raw power.  Again, Dylan is in fine voice on this song, but this time I can think of one singer who did it justice at least as well: Nina Simone, whose dark voice and personality were well suited to the material.

(3)  “With God on Our Side”:  A rather Irish-sounding ballad, this one quite venomous in its castigations of the American human tendency to use religion as an excuse for atrocity.  Oddly, though I do like the song, of Dylan’s major works it is one of the ones I have the least affection toward.  And it’s not terribly well-played on this recording, either: pay attention to Dylan’s guitar work, and try and make any sense out of what he’s doing.

However, much as I hate to carp on this issue, Dylan’s singing, once again, is excellent here.  If you can, find a recording of Joan Baez performing the song, or, worse, dueting with Dylan on it.  Pay attention to how she chases the words, trying to elevate them into something that sounds religious in and of itself.  Dylan approaches the song from a more grounded place; he knew the lyrics did a perfectly good job of elevating the song, and had the sense to simply deliver them in an effective manner.  Dylan’s voice itself might sometimes be lacking, but the intelligence with which he uses it makes up for it and then some.

(4)  “One Too Many Mornings”:  A Freewheelin’-style lost-love ballad, this one is okay, but it’s nowhere near as good as either “Girl from the North Country” or “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”  It’s very rough, and Dylan barely sings the song at all; it could have used some substantial work before being put into the world.  Lest I sound too anti-Baez in my take on “With God on Our Side,” I’d like now to mention that Joan’s cover of this song is simply sublime, and far better than Dylan’s.

(5)  “North Country Blues”:  Baez also did a bang-up job on this song when she covered it … but Dylan’s original, too, is a knockout.  Sung from the perspective of a mother whose life has taken a turn for the worse: her town is dying because the mine that formed its backbone has shut down, and as a result, she is faced with the prospect of her children leaving town (and leaving her alone) once they’ve grown … after all, with no work, what would hold them there?

Dylan, of course, was the child of a dying mining town, and while his mother was neither a miner nor a miner’s wife, she was certainly the mother of a child who left home to seek a better life elsewhere in the world.  This may have something to do with the incredible sadness in Dylan’s voice as he sings this song.

Musically, the song is a waltz, like several other tracks on the album (“The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “With God on Our Side,” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”).  Dylan had used this format on Freewheelin’ with “Masters of War,” to great effect.

(6)  “Only a Pawn in Their Game”:  One of Dylan’s most overt protest songs (one of the few, in fact), this song for slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers is easily one of my least favorite tracks from Dylan’s entire career.  As on “With God on Our Side,” Dylan seems scarcely to know what to do with his guitar, and mainly uses it to just prop us his lyrics.  Unfortunately, the lyrics are nothing special, either; there are a lot of rhymes, most of them obvious.  This is the type of song Dewey Cox specialized in singing.

(7)  “Boots of Spanish Leather”:  Musically identical to “Girl from the North Country,” the song is more complex and ambitious lyrically.  There is no chorus, and of the nine verses, the first six represent a dialogue between two lovers, one of whom is leaving for Spain, and the other of whom desperately wants her to stay with him.  The final three verses are entirely from the point of view of the one who has stayed behind.  It’s a wistful song, one Dylan puts himself into fully.  I think I prefer “Girl from the North Country,” but if so, it’s not by much.

(8)  “When the Ship Comes In”:  An energetic song in the mold of an Irish drinking ditty, “When the Ship Comes In” is a tale of righteous retribution due to be delivered at the doorstep of the narrator’s foes.  In the film No Direction Home, Joan Baez makes the (highly credible) claim that the song was written on the fly, dashed off in a fit of pique by Dylan when a surly hotel attendant refused him a room due to his unkempt appearance; the more presentable Baez had to vouch for him, and in the movie, she seems amused, and more than a little envious, that such an event gave rise to such a song … and gave rise to it almost immediately.  In a couple of places during this review, I’ve railed on Dylan for his guitar playing.  Well, no such worries on this song; he plays furiously, and while I’m not qualified to assess it from a technical standpoint, I know it sounds great, and that’s good enough for me.

(9)  “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”:  Practically dripping with righteous indignation, this is a much more successful attempt at protest — and at songwriting — than is “Only a Pawn in Their Game.”  Based on the real-life death of Hattie Carroll at the hands of William Zantzinger (Dylan calls him “Zanzinger,” which is either a cagey gambit to avoid getting sued or a bad sign about how much Dylan actually knew about the case), the song is a strong example of Dylan’s storytelling skills.

(10)  “Restless Farewell”:  Yet another one that makes me think of Irish drinking songs, this is a pretty good song, but falls a bit short of being much more than that.  Dylan makes the mistake of singing a bit too forcefully in several places.  Listen to the way he belts out the word “farewell” in the last line of each verse; his voice simply isn’t strong enough to pull it off.  (In her excellent cover of the song, Joan Baez’s voice is much better suited to the challenge.)

FINAL THOUGHTS:  Not nearly as strong an album as Freewheelin’, this one nevertheless has about half a dozen great songs on it, which is better than a lot of musicians will manage during their entire careers.  Dylan, with songs like “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” seemed to be getting closer toward actually taking on the mantle of Protest Singer, and he doesn’t sound totally comfortable with it.  As such, this was the last time until the mid-’70s that he would tackle An Issue head-on in one of his songs.  To the extent he remained political at all, he would continue from this point forward to bury his politics inside of his art, rather than burying his art inside of his politics.  On this record, you can practically hear him learning that lesson.

Honk’s rating:  4/5 spuds

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan — released May 27, 1963

(1)  “Blowin’ in the Wind”:  Arguably one of the best-known songs of the twentieth century, “Blowin’ in the Wind” is certainly one of Dylan’s most enduring compositions.  It’s not necessarily one of my favorites, partially because the performance on this album is a bit listless; Dylan doesn’t sound terribly engaged by his own song.  Still, any song that has lasted as long as this one has lasted must have something going for it, and what this one’s got is the ability to make people reflective.  The lyrics, as I’m sure you know, are a series of seemingly simple questions (How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?, How many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?, and so forth) that, upon further contemplation, reveal themselves to be utterly unanswerable … unanswerable, at least, if your goal is to be definitive.

The song was immediately interpreted as a protest ballad, and is still seen that way well over forty years later.  But what, exactly, is “Blowin’ in the Wind” protesting?  My guess is that its most direct protest is against the type of mindset that refuses to ask questions about the world around it, regardless of whether or not answers can be had.

(2)  “Girl from the North Country”:  Occasionally — and incorrectly — referred to with an “of” instead of a “from” in the title, “Girl from the North Country” is unquestionably one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs.  There are several times during his early career when his guitar skills and his singing (neither of which are especially impressive on their own) combine to create something close to perfection.  This is one of those instances (and it’s not the only one on this album, either).  Taking the folk ballad “Scarborough Fair” as an inspiration, Dylan’s song is a lonely tale of a fellow who is remembering a lost love.  His lyrical talents are on full musical display in lines such as these: “If you’re travelin’ in the north country fair/where the wind hits heavy on the borderline/remember me to one who lives there/she once was a true love of mine.”

Dylan has long been regarded as one of the most poetically gifted of all songwriters, and you need look no further than the final of those four lines to see why.  Being no expert on poetry, I cannot quite tell you why the line sounds so much better — sung, spoken, or read silently — with the construction “once was” instead of the more obvious “was once,” but it’s nearly undeniable that it does indeed sound better that way.

Listening to the song also reveals Dylan’s skills as a singer in terms of his pauses between words; placing the pause in one place as opposed to another frequently adds a sort of magic to the song’s meanings, and this is a skill that not every singer possesses.  Dylan, a born storyteller, possess it in abundant quantities.

(3)  “Masters of War”:  Another nearly perfect song, this is one of the (surprisingly) relatively few in Dylan’s songbook that can genuinely be said to be protest songs.  This isn’t the venue to get into a discussion about why Dylan got adopted as The Voice Of A Generation, and I won’t go down that road very far except to say that “Masters of War” is a chance to hear Dylan actually being what people thought he was.  Here, Dylan is spitting bile at the industries that profit from war, the people who make the machinery of death and destruction.  Dylan’s voice is restrained, but you can hear a world of anger lurking beneath it, and the song ends with what has to be one of the most chilling lyrics in all of music: “And I hope that you die, and your death will come soon/I’ll follow your casket by the pale afternoon/And I’ll watch while you’re lowered down to your deathbed/And I’ll stand over your grave ’til I’m sure that you’re dead.”

(4)  “Down the Highway”:  Dylan is doing straight blues on this tedious track.  The guitar playing is especially weak, and it sounds like Dylan might have written the song about ten minutes before playing it.  I’m sure there’s somebody out there who’d rank this amongst his best songs … and I hope I never meet that person.

(5)  “Bob Dylan’s Blues”:  Another fairly boring track, this one at least features a Dylan who sounds interested in the song he’s playing.

(6)  “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”:  Yet another of my very favorite Dylan songs, this one would probably get my vote for the best on this album.  In some ways, it feels like a more polished version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” almost as if Dylan wrote the former and was then inspired to write this one as a better, stronger sequel.

The song is a series of questions in which a parent asks a child where the child has been, what the child has seen and heard, who the child has met along the way, and what the child will do (presumably as a reaction to the experiences).  The child answers each of these questions with a series of dazzling images that somehow manage to convey the world without losing the air of mystery inherent in the best poetic imagery.

“And what’ll you do now, my darling young one?”

“I’m going back out before the rain starts falling.  I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest, where the people are many and their hands are all empty … where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters … where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty priso,n and the executioner’s face is always well-hidden … where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten … where black is the color, where none is the number … and I’ll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it, and reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it.  Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking, but I’ll know my song well before I start singing.”

There’s a lot going on in those words, and while I don’t understand it all, I don’t mind; I don’t think I want to understand it all.

(7)  “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”:  Another classic song of lost love, this one and “Girl from the North Country” have been embroiled in a  steel cage match in my brain for over a decade, and a clear winner has not yet emerged.  Probably, one never will.

“I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind; you coulda done better, but I don’t mind.  You just kinda wasted my precious time, but don’t think twice; it’s all right.”

(8)  “Bob Dylan’s Dream”:  “Don’t Think Twice,” of course, is all about regret, and so is this song.  It’s an interesting song, too, one in which Dylan sings about not lost love, but lost friendship.  At the point at which this song was recorded — April of 1963 — Dylan was still more or less an unknown, but with this song, you can almost imagine that it’s being sung from the vantage point of 1965, when the world for the singer has forever changed: “Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat/I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.”  It’s a beautifully played song that is not particularly well-known … but it ought to be.

(9)  “Oxford Town”:  Less than two minutes long, this is a simple song, but it’s a great one.  The music is sprightly and cheerful, and that lies in complete contrast to the lyrics, which are dark as can be: “Oxford town in the afternoon/Ev’rybody singin’ a sorrowful tune/Two men died ‘neath the Mississippi moon/Somebody better investigate soon.”  It’s an interesting juxtaposition you get here, with those downbeat lyrics being conveyed through upbeat music.

(10)  “Talkin’ World War III Blues”:  It’s kinda sloppy, but this is a fun song … to the extent that a song about nuclear war can be fun.  Dylan is in storytelling mode, and while it doesn’t all quite work, you’ve got to love a song that rhymes “thumpin’ ” with “somethin’.”

“Half of the people can be part right all of the time … some of the people can be all right part of the time … but all the people can’t be all right all of the time; I think Abraham Lincoln said that.  I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours; I said that.”

(11)  “Corrina, Corrina” (traditional):  If I’m not mistaken, the drums on this song are the first instrumental accompaniment Dylan had on one of his records.  It’s a old blues song that Dylan gives a lovely, gentle performance of in a country-ish style.

(12)  “Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance” (Henry Thomas):  This song is a brief return to the type of song Dylan did on his debut album: a rollicking cover of an old country blues ditty.  It’s fun enough, but it does not fit in with the rest of this album at all.

(13)  “I Shall Be Free”:  One of Dylan’s more humorous songs, this one is kinda ugly in some ways, with some fairly misogynistic lyrics lurking in there.  But it’s sung in such a cheerful manner that it’s hard to take seriously.  Dylan sounds pretty happy in this one, which is a welcome relief after some of the bummers on this album.  It shares at least one thing in common with some of the album’s more overtly serious songs: it expresses a sort of overwhelmed confusion at the world around Dylan.  It doesn’t go into the wild fits of imagistic wonder that, say, “Hard Rain” goes into, but if the songs aren’t qute siblings, they’re definitely cousins.

“Well, you ask me why I’m drunk all the time?  It levels my head and eases my mind; I just walk along and stroll and sing, I see better days and do better things … catch dinosaurs … make love to Elizabeth Taylor … catch hell from Richard Burton …”

FINAL THOUGHTS:  I’d call at least seven of these tracks genuine classics (“Blowin’ in the Wind” included, of course, despite not being one of my faves), and when you consider that this was only Dylan’s second album, that’s quite an achievement.  He made some serious strides between Bob Dylan and Freewheelin’.  The overwhelming emotion stirred up by the album as a whole is one of wistfulness; many of the songs are about lost love, but they seem to come from a place of acceptant resignation, and are mostly free of bitterness.  It’s a great album, and the first indication of what Dylan was truly capable of.

Honk’s rating: 4.5/5 spuds

Bob Dylan — released March 19, 1962

(1)  “You’re No Good” (Jesse Fuller):  I don’t know anything about Jesse Fuller, or about most of the other artists Dylan covered on his debut album, so I don’t have much to say about this song as a cover … or about this album as a series of covers.  What I’ll say about this song is that there’s not a lot in it that would betray Dylan’s future status as pop culture icon; as lead-off songs for an entire recorded career go, this is fairly inauspicious.  That said, it’s a rollicking little tune that shows off Dylan’s skill on the guitar and finds him in seemingly good spirits here at the beginning of it all.

(2)  “Talkin’ New York”:  A Dylan composition, this song is one of the undoubted highlights of Bob Dylan.  It’s not quite as lyrically sharp as some of the songs that would follow in the next few years … actually, it’s not as lyrically sharp as most of those songs, but that’s hardly an insult, is it?  Dylan’s early-years wit is on full display, though, in verses like this one: “Well, I got a harmonica job, begun to play/Blowin’ my lungs out for a dollar a day/I blowed inside out and upside down/The man there said he loved my sound/He was ravin’ about he loved my sound/Dollar a day’s worth.”  The downside to this song is that it sounds like Dylan just stopped playing it before it was actually finished, or quit writing it … and knowing Dylan, that just might be what happened.  Either way, it sounds like it’s just getting wound up when it fades out, and that can be a bit jarring.

(3)  “In My Time of Dyin’ ” (traditional, arr. Dylan):  Dylan does his best to sound like an 80-year-old black man, and does a passable job at it.  One of Dylan’s great strengths as a cover artist has been his good taste in music.  This is a great song, and while Dylan might not bring anything earthshaking or particularly revelatory to the table in interpreting it, that doesn’t make it any less fun to listen to.

(4)  “Man of Constant Sorrow” (traditional, arr. Dylan):  I must confess that I knew this song from the Soggy Bottom Boys version in O Brother, Where Art Thou? before I ever heard Dylan’s version, so it’s hard for me to listen to this one without imagining George Clooney lip-syncing.  Once again, it’s a great song, and Dylan does a fine job playing it … but there’s nothing special going on here.

(5)  “Fixin’ to Die” (Bukka White):  I’ve never heard another version of this song, but Dylan’s version takes flight for me in a way some of the other covers on this album never do.  Dylan plays it ferociously, and so much so that the song — about a dying man who is terrified of leaving his children destitute — sounds totally natural coming out of the mouth of a then-twenty-year-old who had had few of the life experiences such a song implies.  As such, this song stands as a fine early example of Dylan’s acting ability behind the microphone.  He would spend his entire career playing one character or another, often disappearing utterly into the part … after all, lest we forget, “Bob Dylan” is a character.

(6)  “Pretty Peggy-O” (traditional, arr. Dylan):  I kinda love this song.  Dylan — both at this point in his career and, popularly, even today — is most frequently referred to as a folk musician, but the truth is, most of the songs on Bob Dylan are retooled blues numbers.  “Pretty Peggy-O,” on the other hand, definitely comes out of the folk tradition (check out the song’s Wikipedia page if you want to know more about where Dylan’s version comes from).  Dylan plays and sings with an intensity on this song that sounds, in places, almost like some early form of punk rock.

(7)  “Highway 51 Blues” (Curtis Jones):  Dylan’s guitar playing here is intense, but ragged, and unfocused; so are the vocals.  In short, this is one of the least persuasive songs on the album.  It’s not bad, but it’s definitely weak compared to some of the others (not to mention how it compares to some of the songs recorded for, but not included on, the album).

(8)  “Gospel Plow” (traditional, arr. by Reverend Gary Davis):  Dylan plays with pure ferociousness on this track, zipping through the song in a way that, again, makes me think of punk; it clocks in at a mere 1:47, and I can imagine the Ramones being somewhat envious of its energy.  I loved the way Dylan crams into a single line the words “Well I never been to Heaven but I been told,” and does it with such aplomb that it sounds like machine gun fire but makes it sound completely natural.  Good stuff.

(9)  “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” (traditional, arr. Eric Von Schmidt):  Dylan’s voice is actually a bit too pure for this song.  It’s a song that probably sounds best when performed by someone like Tom Waits, or Leonard Cohen, or even Nick Cave; since the moral of the lyrics is “mama, when you goan lemme fuck?”, the singer ought to sound like the nastiest, most depraved sumbitch in history.  Or, at least, he ought to sound horny.  Dylan is just playing the song, more or less straightforwardly.  Again, it’s not bad, but it’s a clear instance of Dylan not quite being up to the material.

(10)  “House of the Risin’ Sun” (traditional, arr. Dave Van Ronk):  Now this material…?  Dylan does just fine by it.  There’s a famous story in which Dylan borrowed the arrangement from Dave Van Ronk, who had planned to record it himself, and put it on record; henceforth, every time Van Ronk performed his version of the song, people assumed he was getting it from Dylan!  Oh, well.  Dylan again is playing a character, this time a female prostitute, and when he sings the line “Oh tell my baby sister not to do what I have done,” listen to the way he’s got anger, despair, resignation, and hope in his voice all at the same time.  I’m not sure he could possibly have gotten all of that from Van Ronk.  This is one of the songs I’d point to any time I’m in a conversation with someone who claims that Dylan “could not sing.”

(11)  “Freight Train Blues” (Elizabeth Cotten, arr. Dylan):  Dylan here appears to be doing country music by way of Buddy Holly, with the same intensity that he exhibited on several other tracks on this album.  The results are fairly mediocre, though; this is probably my least favorite track on the record.

(12)  “Song to Woody”:  A fairly simple little song, it’s a heartfelt paean to Woody Guthrie that doesn’t sound a whole heck of a lot different from the others songs on this album.  Is that because Dylan was writing in that mode…?  Or is it a testament to his skill as a performer that he was able to take blues, folk, country, and gospel and mash it all up, filter it through his personality, and churn it back out in a fashion that sounded like it was all coming from the same place?  Maybe a little bit of both.  I’m intrigued by the last couple of lines: “The very last thing that I’d want to do/Is to say I’ve been hittin’ some hard travelin’ too.”  With those lines, Dylan seems to be acknowledging that while he might be walking in Guthrie’s footsteps, he could never wear Guthrie’s shoes; that a humbleness that you don’t often find in Dylan’s music, and it’s kinda refreshing.

(13)  “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” (Blind Lemon Jefferson):  Dylan again takes on the guise of an elderly black man, but I don’t think he quite nailed this one.  It’s a good song, and Dylan does alright by it, but there’s a bit too much intensity in his voice, where there probably ought to have been quiet despair instead.  Why this made the album where “House Carpenter” and “He Was a Friend of Mine” were left off will remain a mystery to me.

FINAL THOUGHTS:  This is a better album than a lot of people give it credit for being.  Starting with his next album, Dylan quickly took on the guise of folk prophet/voice of a generation, and all other facets of his art were subsumed, but Bob Dylan gives you the impression that he could have had a good, long — if not especially fruitful — career as an interpreter of other people’s work.  There are no flat-out classics on this album (with the possible exception of “House of the Risin’ Sun”), but of the thirteen tracks, I’d say at least nine of them range from good to very good.

Honk Mahfah’s rating:  3/5 spuds