Bob Dylan

Recorded in two brief sessions in New York in late 1961, this debut introduced Bob Dylan as an interpreter of traditional folk and blues material rather than as the songwriter he would soon become, with only two originals - a talking blues and a tribute to his idol Woody Guthrie - among a set of blues, gospel and folk standards. John Hammond, the Columbia talent scout who had championed artists from Billie Holiday onward, signed the young Dylan after hearing him play harmonica on a Carolyn Hester session and staked his own reputation on the unproven twenty-year-old, prompting skeptics at the label to dub him “Hammond's Folly.” The performances are raw and unpolished, built around Dylan's guitar, harmonica and a voice already distinctive for its phrasing and character, drawing directly on the repertoires of Guthrie, Eric Von Schmidt, Dave Van Ronk and the blues tradition of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Commercially the record made little impact on release, overshadowed almost immediately by the original songs Dylan began writing within months, but it stands as the essential documentary record of the Greenwich Village folk apprenticeship from which his singular career emerged. In retrospect it is prized less for its hit potential than for capturing, unfiltered, the voice and instincts that would reshape American songwriting within two years.