I’m not a huge fan of folk, though my mother played a lot of it when I was growing up and I love some of it, the more melodic stuff. I tend to prefer folk-rock, things like Simon and Garfunkel’s later recordings. I think of acoustic folk as boring in general, and pretentious at worst.
Dylan is admired for his song writing, obviously, and since his first album “Bob Dylan” is mostly covers (it only has two originals), I was never anxious to get it. I was sure at that stage in his career - he was 20 when it was released - and with so few originals, it would be boring.
In 1985, when I was in the Air Force in Hawaii, I bought the first boxed set ever put out for a popular artist, Dylan’s 5-LP “Biograph.” Got it at the Tower Records downtown in Honolulu. I still have it and it’s in great condition. It was the first time Columbia went back to Dylan’s masters and the sound was revelatory. It contains highlights from his albums and many rare B-sides and previously unreleased recordings. One of the songs is “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” from Dylan’s first album.
This is an early 2-track recording and on “Biograph’s” stereo version, everything’s panned hard left and hard right with nothing in the middle. With a 2-track recording, there aren’t a lot of options. Many early 60s albums sound weird today because of that. At the time people didn’t mind, it let them know they really had a stereo album, but those recordings were meant to be mixed down to mono. The stereo releases were afterthoughts, gimmicks. The best way to hear them is via the mono mixes. That’s why the Beatles mono vinyl boxed set was such a hit; mono was the way the band intended you to hear that early music.
The other day I picked up the 2010 mono box set of Dylan’s first eight albums on CD. These were the albums that had mono releases - I think everything later was intended for stereo - and as far as I know, the mono versions have been out of print since the originals. I’d wanted the vinyl mono box when this first came out but it was God-awful expensive, I think around $250. The CD set was pricey too, though not as bad. I recently saw a great deal on the CD box and picked it up.
I listened to the first album tonight, “Bob Dylan,” and what a shock. It’s fantastic! It’s mostly covers and it’s just Dylan’s vocals, harmonica, and guitar, but I’m stunned at how powerful and confidently executed it is. Dylan can sing “nice” when he wants to - listen to the beautiful “Lay Lady Lay” from “Nashville Skyline” as an example - so when he chooses to get gruff and gutteral, it’s deliberate. And brilliantly effective. He takes known traditional songs and reinvents them. The kid was 20-years-old, a nobody, recording for the biggest label in the country, for the first time, and he lets it rip without a hint of self-consciousness or insecurity. How did he DO that? Was it the desperate hubris of youth when you have nothing to lose and will go-for-broke to make a mark? That’s something that can push you to take chances and reach heights people often can’t as they get older. The playing, the certainty of the singing, Jesus, even the falsettos are amazing! This is a rocking album!
Here’s another interesting thing. I compared the stereo version of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” from “Biograph” on vinyl to the mono version on the CD box and there’s no comparison; the CD blows the old vinyl out of the water. First, the CD’s in mono and sounds much better with all the music blended nicely into one point in space. But more than that, the fidelity is so much more vibrant than it is on the stereo vinyl, which sounds a bit muddy in comparison (and weird with the extreme stereo spread). I was surprised. The vinyl was sourced for the first time from the masters and is great. But this CD mono boxed set sounds much better. Were the mono mix tapes in better shape than the stereo masters? Was better technology used in the transfer for this latest release?
I’m not saying CDs sound better than vinyl, things aren’t that simple. The reason I’ll still buy CDs and never stopped buying vinyl is because done properly, they can both sound fantastic. I’d wanted this Dylan mono boxed set in vinyl, but the great price on the CD boxed set persuaded me to pick that up, and it sounds unexpectedly great.
In the end, it’s all about the ears of the engineers working on any release, whether the medium is vinyl, CD, or hi-res digital.
So the CD boxed set sounds great and Dylan’s first album sounds great. Good purchase! Now to listen to the other albums in the set…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Original_Mono_Recordings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biograph_(album)
