Thank you for buying this record. What follows is its documentation: the pressing identified, the matrix / runout transcribed by hand from the dead wax, and the condition as assessed before it was listed. It is yours to keep with the record.

— Paul, Vinyl Curator

Bob Dylan

Highway 61 Revisited

1965 · Columbia CL 2389 · Mono · US · LP · 33 1/3 RPM

Pressing details

Label	Columbia
Catalogue number	CL 2389
Year	1965
Mono / Stereo	Mono
Country	US
Format	LP
Speed	33 1/3 RPM
Genre	Rock - Folk Rock/Blues Rock
Producer	Bob Johnston, Tom Wilson (Like A Rolling Stone)
Composer	Bob Dylan
Musicians	Bob Dylan (guitar, harmonica, piano and police car), Michael Bloomfield (guitar), Al Kooper (organ and piano), Paul Griffin (piano and organ), Bobby Gregg (drums), Harvey Goldstein (bass), Charley McCoy (guitar), Frank Owens (piano), Russ Savakus (bass)

Matrix / Runout

Side A:  XLP110638-1B T 0
Side B:  XLP 110639-1H 1 0 A1

Condition

Cover: EX
Vinyl: VG+

Variant chronology

1965 - US mono white-label promo pressing
1965 - US mono two-eye "Nonbreakable" label, early (1A/1A) stamper run
1965 - US mono two-eye "Nonbreakable" label, later (1B/1H) stamper run  <- this copy
1965 - US stereo original (CS 9189)
1967 - US mono repress, later flat label - no documented sale found for this variant
c. 1967-on - US stereo reissue (CS 2389)

This Pressing

Original-era mono pressing (1965) on the two-eye Nonbreakable Columbia label; this copy carries a later stamper generation than the earliest-stamper copy of the same label era in the collection.

The Album

Recorded in New York in June and July 1965, this album marked Bob Dylan's full turn from acoustic protest folk to an electric, surreal rock and blues idiom, a shift that had already stunned and divided audiences that summer. The album opens with a six-minute single built around a snarling organ riff and an escalating vocal performance, a song whose length and tone upended what a hit record was supposed to be and became one of the most influential recordings in popular music. The remaining songs pair hard Chicago-style blues shuffles with some of Dylan's most vivid and absurdist lyric writing, stacking carnival imagery, literary and historical figures and black humor over a loose, live-in-the-studio band sound. The title track and its closing nine-minute piece pushed the length and ambition of a rock recording further than almost anything that preceded it, closing the record on an unresolved, epic note. The record arrived in the midst of the uproar over Dylan's electric sets that year, cementing his reputation as both a lightning rod and a visionary songwriter who had outgrown any single genre. It is now regarded as one of the defining albums of 1960s rock, a touchstone for the fusion of poetic lyric writing with electric blues-rock instrumentation, and a permanent fixture near the top of any accounting of the greatest rock albums ever made.

Tracklist

Side 1

1. Like A Rolling Stone
2. Tombstone Blues
3. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
4. From A Buick 6
5. Ballad Of A Thin Man

Side 2

1. Queen Jane Approximately
2. Highway 61 Revisited
3. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
4. Desolation Row

The Label

The side labels are the classic Columbia two-eye red design: the walking-eye logo boxed at each side of the spindle, an arc reading "360 SOUND" at the bottom rim with "MONO" centered beneath it, and the catalogue number with the word "NONBREAKABLE" printed beneath it next to the hole. That NONBREAKABLE line is a feature of the earliest Columbia pressing runs on this catalogue number before the label text was reset; both copies in hand carry it, placing them in that early label-design window. Within that same label era the runout suffixes separate the two copies by stamper generation rather than by label artwork - this copy's later-lettered stampers follow the other copy's earlier ones off the same set of masters.

Fidelity

This is a Columbia 360 Sound mono cut from the original 1965 masters, mastered and pressed domestically for the mono configuration that was still the primary commercial format that year. Collectors on the forums consistently favor the original mono mix of this album over Columbia's contemporary stereo mix, hearing the mono as the tighter, more focused presentation of the full band and Dylan's vocal. Within the mono pressing run itself, earlier-stamper copies are generally regarded as marginally fresher sounding than later-stamper repressings such as this one, though the difference is subtle rather than dramatic; later stereo reissues and remasters are not considered to supersede a clean original mono pressing for this title.

Notes

This is a 1965 Columbia CL 2389 mono pressing on the two-eye "Nonbreakable" label, the earliest Columbia label design used for this catalogue number. The runout reads a later stamper letter on this copy (-1B/-1H) than the earliest-lettered stampers (-1A/-1A) carried by the first issue of this pressing, making this copy the later of the two despite sharing an identical label design. The back cover shows the corrected wording in its closing paragraph rather than the uncorrected word printed on the misprint first issue of this release.

Documenting collections

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