Bob Dylan - Carnegie Chapter Hall, New York City, 11-4-1961

I'm making an effort to post some more Bob Dylan concerts, since I haven't posted many so far. He's got a zillion recorded concerts that one can find on the Internet, so one can easily get overwhelmed by the choices. I want to help by offering only the best of the best. I didn't know about this particular concert until a few days ago, when I stumbled across a list by Rolling Stone Magazine of what some writer considered the 10 best Dylan concert recordings of all time. I gave it a listen, and I was stunned by the sound quality, performance, and historical importance. How the heck is this concert not better known?!

This appears to be Dylan's first real concert as a headliner. Prior to this, he'd played in clubs in New York City for about ten months, but those generally were low-key affairs, with different artists on the bill, and a hat passed around for tips. This was different. To boost his profile, Izzy Young, a Dylan supporter who owned the local folk club The Folklore Center, helped him rent a venue that was part of the prestigious Carnegie Hall. Note though, this wasn't held in THE main Carnegie Hall venue, which seats thousands. This was in the same complex, but a much smaller room, basically a rehearsal room on the sixth floor that seated only a maximum of about 200 people. Still, Dylan was trying to make a statement with this show.

Unfortunately, only about 50 people showed up, and nearly all of them were friends either of Dylan or of his long-time girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. (She's pictured with him on the cover of his album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.") Apparently, Young spent about $100 to make the show happen, and lost most of that due to the poor attendance. (Yet he was still nice enough to give Dylan $20 of the supposed profit.) But luckily, the show was recorded in fantastic sound quality. I am amazed this is from 1961! Since this was Dylan's first concert, he and/or his friends must have gone to great lengths to record it properly, probably so he could analyze his performance to help him make improvements.

Strangely, only one song from this concert has been officially released: the Woody Guthrie classic "This Land Is Your Land" came out on the "Bootleg Series, Volume 7: No Direction Home." So that suggests the record company has the full show, but apparently they continue to just sit on it. Over time, bits and pieces of the concert have leaked onto bootlegs, but six songs remain missing: "San Francisco Bay Blues," "Car Song," "Sally Gal," "Pretty Polly," "The House of the Rising Sun," and "The Cuckoo (Is a Pretty Bird)." Hopefully, those will appear someday.

I don't mind the missing songs that much though, because the concert is still a hefty hour and 18 minutes long without them. At the time, Dylan was mostly doing covers. But four of the songs here are originals: "Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues," "Man on the Street," "Song to Woody," and "Talking New York." He must have been very nervous, but it doesn't show much. One nice aspect of this concert is that he talked before most of the songs. Six of the songs (including two of the originals) would appear on his first album, 1962's "Bob Dylan," but many of the others have never been officially released and often only appear on bootleg in excellent quality in this show.

The one key snag with the recording has to do with the first song, "Pretty Peggy-O." The sound quality was fine, but the volume went up and down in waves. I was able to fix that though by making careful volume adjustments throughout the song. That's why it has "[Edit]" in the title. Also, at times, the guitar sound overloads the microphone a bit, but that's a minor quibble considering how primitive concert recording equipment was in the early 1960s. Oh, also, I occasionally cut out some excess guitar tuning between songs, but never any of his banter.

If you're a Dylan fan, this concert is a must have. I have to agree with Rolling Stone Magazine that this is one of his top ten concert recordings, period. True, it's mostly covers, and the originals aren't famous ones, but is probably the best document of very early Dylan, over all the other recording that exist from 1961 or earlier, and even over most of the stuff from 1962.

With this show, Dylan's music career was on its way. He would return to play a sold out show in the main Carnegie Hall venue in October 1963, a little less than two years later.

UPDATE: On November 18, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. Alert commenter Charles Fontaine found an article talking about the opening of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, scheduled to take place in May 2022. The article talked about some rarities that will be available at the center, and included an mp3 of the previously unbootlegged "He Was a Friend of Mine" from this show as an example. So I've added it in where it belongs in the set list. It only had a second of cheering when the song ended, so I used the cheering of another song from earlier in the concert to make up for that.

Up above, I had listed the seven songs that were still missing from this concert. I was able to edit that down to six. Hopefully, the others will become available once the Bob Dylan Center opens to the public.

01 Pretty Peggy-O [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
02 talk (Bob Dylan)
03 In the Pines (Bob Dylan)
04 Gospel Plow (Bob Dylan)
05 talk (Bob Dylan)
06 1913 Massacre (Bob Dylan)
07 talk (Bob Dylan)
08 Backwater Blues (Bob Dylan)
09 talk (Bob Dylan)
10 A Long Time A-Growin' (Bob Dylan)
11 Fixin' to Die (Bob Dylan)
12 talk (Bob Dylan)
13 Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues (Bob Dylan)
14 talk (Bob Dylan)
15 Man on the Street (Bob Dylan)
16 This Land Is Your Land (Bob Dylan)
17 talk (Bob Dylan)
18 Talking Merchant Marine (Bob Dylan)
19 talk (Bob Dylan)
20 Black Cross [Hezikiah Jones] (Bob Dylan)
21 He Was a Friend of Mine (Bob Dylan)
22 talk (Bob Dylan)
23 Freight Train Blues (Bob Dylan)
24 talk (Bob Dylan)
25 Song to Woody (Bob Dylan)
26 talk (Bob Dylan)
27 Talking New York (Bob Dylan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15106974/BobD_1961a_Carnegie_Chapter_Hall__New_York_City__11-4-1961_atse.zip.html

In an attempt to get more people to the concert, Izzy Young made a handbill and distributed it around town. Apparently, it didn't get many people to attend, but copies of it still exist, so I was able to use that to make the cover art. I had to crop the rectangular shape to get a square shape, but I didn't leave out anything important. I kept the picture of Dylan unchanged, but to get the important text to fit, I squeezed that part vertically. Oh, and since I hate black and white album covers, I tinted it yellow.