Bob Dylan - Introducing Bob Dylan - Non-Album Tracks (1961-1962)

I've already posted a couple of alternate Bob Dylan albums, both from the 1970s. But now I'm going to get serious and post a series of albums to catch all his stray tracks from the 1960s, especially all of the songs he wrote (minus a few clunkers that just aren't worth hearing).

Dylan has been a very prolific songwriter, especially in the early 1960s. Yet he only put out one or two albums a year in that time when he could have easily put out more. (In addition to this one, I have five more Dylan albums I've made of stray songs written by him before he went electric in 1965!) As a result, a lot of other artists, especially folk musicians, did covers of his unreleased songs. Only decades later have more of Dylan's own versions been gradually officially released, but in a very scattered fashion.

I want to start this series by going all the way back to when he first started recording his songs, in late 1961 for the album "Bob Dylan" that came out in March 1962. Unfortunately, that album wasn't that great. On the plus side, it introduced Dylan to the world, but his main genius is songwriting, and it only included two songs he wrote. As a result, the album only sold a few thousand copies, and it wasn't until his next album, 1963's "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," that he really set the musical world on fire.

For the first album in this series, I'm looking only at songs done prior to the release of "Bob Dylan" to see what else he could have put on that, and make an alternate version that contains none of the same songs. I mainly want to focus on the songs he wrote in time to have included them on that album. At the time, Dylan was performing dozens, if not hundreds, of cover songs, so I'm only going to include the very best of those.

Unfortunately, in early 1962, Dylan hadn't written that many good songs yet. These are the following ones I'm including:

Hard Times in New York Town
Man on the Street
Poor Boy Blues
Ballad for a Friend
Standing on the Highway

There are some other early songs that are simply not very good, so I didn't include them, such as  "When I Got Troubles." Also, some others I did include are sort of a grey area between an original and a cover song, because as part of the folk tradition of using a traditional melody and adding new lyrics. For instance, "I Was Young When I Left Home" is considered an original Dylan song by Wikipedia, but it's heavily based on the traditional song "Nine Hundred Miles" in both lyrics and melody.

I added some covers, or semi-covers, to give the album a good length of 35 minutes. All of them have been officially released on various archival albums, with the exception of "Black Cross (Hezikiah Jones)," which I think is one of the most hard-hitting political songs he ever did, even if he didn't write it.

All in all, I consider this a better album that the official "Bob Dylan" album which could have been released in the same month.

"Bonnie, Why'd You Cut My Hair" is not much of a song, but there's an interesting story behind it. In 1961, Dylan planned to return to his home in Minnesota to visit his parents for a holiday. His hair had grown long, and he didn't want them to see him like that, so he asked a friend, Bonnie Beecher, to cut his hair. She did, but later when his hip friends saw how short his hair was, they teased him for it. Thus he made up this song. 

This album is 36 minutes long.

01 Hard Times in New York Town (Bob Dylan)
02 Man on the Street (Bob Dylan)
03 Bonnie, Why'd You Cut My Hair (Bob Dylan)
04 Dink's Song (Bob Dylan)
05 He Was a Friend of Mine (Bob Dylan)
06 I Was Young When I Left Home [Nine Hundred Miles] (Bob Dylan)
07 Black Cross [Hezikiah Jones] (Bob Dylan)
08 House Carpenter (Bob Dylan)
09 Poor Boy Blues (Bob Dylan)
10 Ballad for a Friend (Bob Dylan)
11 Standing on the Highway (Bob Dylan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15105593/BobD_1961c-1962_IntroducingBbDyln_atse.zip.html

I had a very hard time finding any color photos of Dylan in his early years. If the picture I used isn't from 1962, it must be from 1963.