Bob Dylan - Town Hall, New York City, 4-12-1963

Last week as I write this, a new official album in Bob Dylan's "Bootleg Series" was released, called "Volume 16: Springtime in New York, 1980-1985." I have some things I want to do with some of the newly revealed and/or improved songs there, but before I do, I want to fill in some gaps from earlier in his career. But listening to that new release has put me in a Dylan mood, so I want to post something else by him.

This 1963 solo acoustic concert came to mind. It's incredible. Technically, all of it has been officially released, but only in the very most technically correct way. A few songs here and there have been widely released, but not that many. For instance, the "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" from this concert came out on the "Greatest Hits, Volume 2" album in 1971, and the "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie" poem was released on the "Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3" in 1991. But the vast majority of it only came out in 2013 on the "50th Anniversary Collection 1963." This was an extremely limited release, with only 100 copies sold, just enough to preserve copyright rights in Europe. So, for all practical purposes, unless you are one of the very lucky 100 people to own that, most of this remains effectively unreleased.

The reason bits and pieces have been released over the years is because the whole concert was professionally recorded at the time, in the hopes of making an official live album out of it. There was a live album planned, to be called "In Concert," mixing songs from this concert and one other one. It was so close to being released later in 1963 that the album cover and all the other artwork was made. But apparently Dylan was shy about including his "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie" poem, which the record company wanted to do, and it never happened. However, some point in the 2010s, a fantastic version of the entire concert was bootlegged, taken from the professional recording. It actually sounds better than the "50th Anniversary Collection 1963" version, so that's what I've used here.

One thing to keep in mind about this concert is just how early it was in Dylan's career. When this concert took place, his first album, "Bob Dylan," had been released the previous year, but his pivotal second album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," was still to be released one month later. Thus, incredibly, only three of the 24 songs he did in the two hour long concert were released at the time! (Those three were the original "Talkin' New York," plus the only covers in the concert, "Highway 51" and "Pretty Peggy-O.") Even if the songs from the imminent album release "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" were included, that's only another five songs. A good portion of the songs would not be released at all, until archival releases like the Bootleg Series ones decades later. 

So the audience must have been blown away, with many future classics heard, including "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," and "Masters of War." The audience seemed familiar with many of the songs, with occasional catcalls for certain ones. I can only guess that because this concert took place in New York City, and Dylan had been performing there a lot over the past couple of years, some of the songs had become well known to some fans through such concerts. (Note that even the cover versions of many of these songs would come later. For instance, Peter, Paul and Mary's huge hit with "Blowin' in the Wind" wouldn't be released until the second half of 1963.)

That said, for even the most die-hard Dylan fan at the time, the concert must have been a revelation. A number of songs were performed in public by him for the first time ever, including "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," "Dusty Old Fairgrounds," "Ramblin' Down through the World," and "Bob Dylan's New Orleans Rag." Also, "Hiding Too Long," a nice original, seems to have been played only once ever, at this concert, and was never recorded in the studio. I figure that Dylan knew the concert was being recorded for a likely live album, so he went all out to make an impression. But the piece de resistance was the last "song," which is actually a spoken poem, "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie." Dylan is famous for his poetic genius, but I'm pretty sure this is the one and only time in his long music career that he read a poem on stage instead of just singing songs. In my opinion, it's one of the most impressive things he ever did.

I made some changes to improve this album. As I mentioned, the sound quality is fantastic. But there was a little bit of dead time between songs here and there where he tuned his guitar. I cut those down, eliminating about four minutes from the total length of the concert. Believe me, you're not missing anything. I didn't cut out a single word he said between songs, just some of the tuning. The other thing I did was boost some of his talking, because sometimes he talked quietly or mumbled. So you can hear all of his comments really well now. Another neat thing about this concert is that he was fairly talkative between songs, at least in comparison to later in his career, when he often would have no banter at all. He spoke before almost every song here, though usually just a sentence or two.

Finally, the great bootleg version I used had one flaw in that the audience noise at the very beginning was cut short, with the concert starting only a couple of seconds before the first song. I found a different version with about 10 more seconds of audience noise, and added that in.

01 Ramblin' Down through the World (Bob Dylan)
02 talk (Bob Dylan)
03 Bob Dylan's Dream (Bob Dylan)
04 Talkin' New York (Bob Dylan)
05 talk (Bob Dylan)
06 The Ballad of Hollis Brown (Bob Dylan)
07 talk (Bob Dylan)
08 The Walls of Red Wing (Bob Dylan)
09 talk (Bob Dylan)
10 All Over You (Bob Dylan)
11 talk (Bob Dylan)
12 Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues (Bob Dylan)
13 Boots of Spanish Leather (Bob Dylan)
14 talk (Bob Dylan)
15 Hero Blues (Bob Dylan)
16 talk (Bob Dylan)
17 Blowin' in the Wind (Bob Dylan)
18 talk (Bob Dylan)
19 John Brown (Bob Dylan)
20 Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Bob Dylan)
21 talk (Bob Dylan)
22 A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan)
23 talk (Bob Dylan)
24 Dusty Old Fairgrounds (Bob Dylan)
25 talk (Bob Dylan)
26 Who Killed Davey Moore (Bob Dylan)
27 talk (Bob Dylan)
28 Seven Curses (Bob Dylan)
29 talk (Bob Dylan)
30 Highway 51 (Bob Dylan)
31 talk (Bob Dylan)
32 Pretty Peggy-O (Bob Dylan)
33 talk (Bob Dylan)
34 Bob Dylan's New Orleans Rag (Bob Dylan)
35 talk (Bob Dylan)
36 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Bob Dylan)
37 Hiding Too Long (Bob Dylan)
38 talk (Bob Dylan)
39 With God on Our Side (Bob Dylan)
40 talk (Bob Dylan)
41 Masters of War (Bob Dylan)
42 talk (Bob Dylan)
43 Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie (Bob Dylan)

https://www.imagenetz.de/cGaSX

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2gc9NX1L

For the cover art, I was tempted to use the cover of the "In Concert" live album that almost was released. However, I plan on posting another great 1963 concert, and that cover fits better there, I think. So instead I've used the actual promotional material for this exact concert. The only thing I did was crop it, and then tint it blue to make it look a little more interesting.