Artist: Bob Dylan
Release Date: May 27, 1963
Side One
Blowin' in the Wind
Girl from the North Country
Masters of War
Down the Highway
Bob Dylan's Blues
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
Side Two
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Bob Dylan's Dream
Oxford Town
Talkin' World War III Blues
Corrina, Corrina (Traditional, Adapted and Arranged by Bob Dylan)
Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Henry Thomas, Bob Dylan)
I Shall Be Free
All songs credited to Bob Dylan except where otherwise noted (but see below)
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is not Bob Dylan’s most representative album and it is arguably not his best, given contenders for that spot such as Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Bringing It All Back Home and Blood on the Tracks. But it is certainly one of his most important and best known, and I’d certainly rank it as one of his top five. It is the album that made him famous, catapulting him to the top rank of contemporary artists and causing him to be dubbed the spokesperson for his generation by the media, much to his dismay.
Some of Dylan’s most famous songs are included on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The opening track, “Blowin’ In the Wind”, is still perhaps his best-known song of all, with numerous covers beginning with the hit version by Peter, Paul and Mary; it is certainly the one best known here in Taiwan. “Masters of War”, “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall”, and “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right” are also among his most popular recordings. Among the less widely played songs, a favorite of mine is “Oxford Town”, a song about the civil rights movement, but really I enjoy all of the album, from the English folk of “Girl from the North Country” to the humor of songs like “I Shall Be Free”. Songs like the latter, or “Talking World War III Blues” provide a contrast with the intensity of songs such as “Masters of War” or “Hard Rain”. It’s this variety in styles and lyrical content that makes the album more exciting to listen to than many other folk albums. The album represented a big leap forward for Dylan as an artist, showing progress far beyond his more run-of-the-mill first album (which only had two originals on it, and nothing with nearly the dramatic impact of the best songs on this album). Indeed, it represented a leap forward for contemporary folk music in general, as no one was doing anything quite like what Dylan was doing.
Dylan justly gained fame for his brilliant lyrics, particularly on songs like “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall”, “Blowin’ In the Wind”, and “Masters of War”, but his skill as a writer (recognized last year with a Nobel Prize in Literature) is also evident on songs like “Oxford Town”. The music that accompanied these lyrics was also excellent, but despite what the album credits say, it wasn’t entirely original. Nearly all his melodies were based on older folk tunes, though in some cases he adapted them to the point that they were quite different from his source materials. Still, at most he properly speaking should only be considered a co-writer of the music on these songs, and in some cases only the lyrics are his. Even with the latter he often retained lines and themes from the original songs, though generally the lyrics were at least 80% original, and essentially constituted a new creative work. From today’s perspective, claiming credit for melodies and words that are not your own is considered dishonest, but for what it’s worth it should be remembered that Dylan came out of a folk tradition where such practices were widespread. His hero Woody Guthrie also took his many of his melodies from older songs but then copyrighted them under his own name, as did Pete Seeger (though the latter took pains in the liner notes to later compilations to talk about his sources). The same practice was widespread in the blues as well, with performers like Robert Johnson taking bits and pieces from older songs to make their own. For that matter, while he hasn’t been as meticulous about explaining the origins of his songs as Seeger, Dylan himself has been open about the origins of at least some of these tunes. In any case, it is beyond debate that while perhaps “Blowin’ In the Wind” couldn’t exist without “No More Auction Block” and “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall” couldn’t exist without “Lord Randall”, these songs are still highly original creations that go far beyond their source material, and no one but Dylan could have created them.
It is actually an interesting exercise to compare the folk songs Dylan used as the basis for his songs on this album to his final product. In many of the song descriptions below I've included references to the older songs to make it easier to do this. While the relationships are pretty obvious in most cases, it's also clear that Dylan's songs still ended up sounding quite different, particularly in terms of lyrics, but often in arrangement and even melody. At all events, while Dylan was clearly building on what went before, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan remains a highly original album, and also Dylan's definitive statement as a folk singer (along with his excellent follow-up single "The Times They Are A-Changin'"), as it was not long afterwards that his style evolved dramatically, with his lyrics become more abstract and less direct and his music incorporating more rock elements, as on albums like Highway 61 Revisited. Along with several of those later albums, it is an essential part of any substantial music collection.
Note 1: Unfortunately, the studio recordings of most of these songs are rather hard to find on YouTube. One person seems to have posted most of the album, though whether those will remain available for long is hard to tell. There is an "official" posting of the audio of the album version of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and there's one video accompanied by what sounds like the album version of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". The links in the album track listing above are all to these album versions. Some of the links in the song descriptions below, however, are to various live versions from around the same time as the album; for instance, the versions of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Girl from the North Country" are from a 1964 TV.
Note 2: A few early copies of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan were pressed with a different track listing, including four tracks that were dropped from the later version: "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", "Let Me Die In My Footsteps", "Rambling Gambling Willie", and "Rocks and Gravel". These songs were replaced by "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues", and "Bob Dylan's Dream". While the later version is generally considered a big improvement, the dropped songs are interesting in their own right. "Let Me Die In My Footsteps" is even mentioned in the liner notes for the original album (written for the final version), where it is compared to "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", and "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" gained notoriety when Dylan was told he couldn't sing it on the Ed Sullivan Show, leading him to refuse to appear.
Blowin' in the Wind: The song that first gained Dylan nationwide recognition, and still one of his best known songs. It is both a civil rights anthem and an anti-war anthem, and this wide applicability no doubt helped make it so widely sung. Though it was Peter, Paul and Mary who had a big hit with it, Dylan's own version has always been widely played as well, and remains definitive. Dylan himself acknowledged that he based the melody on the African American spiritual "No More Auction Block" (which was also a major influence on the anthem "We Shall Overcome"), but "Blowin' in the Wind" still manages to sound quite different from the original spiritual (though the similarities between the two are fairly obvious).
Girl from the North Country: As most fans of 1960s pop will immediately recognize, this song is based on the old English folk ballad "Scarborough Faire", which Simon and Garfunkel famously covered a few years after this album came out. Dylan even retains several lines from the original: "Remember me to one who lives there/She once was a true love of mine". But Dylan altered the melody and wrote new lyrics for most of the song, updating the ballad to tell the tale of a modern romance rather than a medieval one.
Masters of War: The most lyrically vicious song on the album and one of its highlights, this song attacks those who profit off of war. The words are entirely original, but the music is based fairly closely on Jean Ritchie's arrangement of the folk song "Nottamun Town" (he apparently had to pay her a few thousand dollars to settle a suit over the matter). Though the relationship between the two songs is instantly obvious, Dylan's song has an additional edge to it, in part due to the lyrics but also due to the way he performs it.
Down the Highway: A 12-bar blues lamenting the absence of a departed lover, this song doesn't have the impact of the songs that came before it, but it makes a nice change of pace.
Bob Dylan's Blues: Another blues-based tune, this one a more humorous one. Nothing really exceptional, but a decent album track.
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall: If I had to pick a single song as the best on this album, it would probably be this one. It's a lyrical tour de force and Dylan's performance is also excellent. Musically it's based on the Anglo-Scottish folk song "Lord Randall" (or "Lord Randal"), but Dylan altered the original tune and his delivery is quite different from what went before. The result is one of his most powerful songs.
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right: This song also became a hit when covered by Peter, Paul and Mary in the same year Dylan's own version was released. A rather vitriolic song sung to a lover the narrator is about to abandon, it represents another facet of Dylan's writing, one further developed on songs like "It Ain't Me Babe", "Like A Rolling Stone", "Positively 4th Street" and "Idiot Wind". The melody ultimately derives from the traditional song "Who's Gonna Buy Your Chickens When I'm Gone", but Dylan's immediate source was fellow folk singer Paul Clayton's "Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone?", from which Dylan also borrowed a few lines.
Bob Dylan's Dream: An evocative song based on the traditional song "Lady Franklin's Lament". Dylan reworks the original fairly drastically, turning it into something new while retaining the feeling of the original folk song. Another solid album track.
Oxford Town: As noted above, this is one of my favorite songs on the album. The lyrics are very cleverly written, and the jaunty tune is very enjoyable and yet still doesn't seem like a mismatch for the rather serious subject matter. Where the tune comes from I am uncertain; I seem to recall reading it somewhere, but I can't track it down now. In any case, even if it's not an original, it's a good choice and quite different from the other tunes on the album.
Talkin' World War III Blues: The talking blues is a style Dylan picked up from his idol Woody Guthrie. Here he uses it to good effect in the humorous take on the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Corrina, Corrina: This is the one song that is officially credited as being a traditional song, perhaps because Dylan didn't alter it much, though he threw in a few lines from songs by bluesman Robert Johnson, another performer Dylan admired. Not as interesting as the songs for which Dylan wrote original lyrics, perhaps, but a decent nod to his various roots.
Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance: This and "Corrina, Corrina" were the only tracks not solely credited to Dylan. He based it roughly on "Honey, Won't You Allow Me One More Chance?", a song popularized by Texas bluesman Henry Thomas, who recorded it in 1928 (though he didn't actually write it either). In fact Dylan changed the song considerably, such that it only vaguely resembles Thomas's version, though it retains almost the same title phrase. Another humorous song, it's a good album track.
I Shall Be Free: This song was based roughly on Lead Belly's "We Shall Be Free", originally performed by Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston and Sonny Terry, though Dylan altered it quite a bit. This is perhaps my favorite of the humorous tracks on the album, and makes a good closer. Some listeners would perhaps have preferred Dylan to end with another major statement like "Blowin’ In the Wind", "Masters of War" or "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", but Dylan decided to close on a lighthearted note, and I think it works just fine.
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