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
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
1963 · Columbia CL 1986 · Mono · US · LP · 33 1/3 RPM
Pressing details
| Label | Columbia |
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| Catalogue number | CL 1986 |
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| Year | 1963 |
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| Mono / Stereo | Mono |
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| Country | US |
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| Format | LP |
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| Speed | 33 1/3 RPM |
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| Genre | Folk |
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| Producer | John Hammond |
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| Musicians | Bob Dylan (vocals, guitar, harmonica); on "Corrina, Corrina": Dick Wellstood (piano), Bruce Langhorne (guitar), Leonard Gaskin (bass), Herb Lovelle (drums) - the liner notes misattribute this accompaniment to "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." |
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Matrix / Runout
Side A: XLP-58717-3B P 0 1 2
Side B: XLP-58718-2A P 0
Condition
- Cover
- NM-
- Vinyl
- VG+
Variant chronology
1963 - US Columbia CL 1986, mono <- this copy
1963 - US Columbia CS 8786, stereo
1963 - UK CBS BPG 62193, mono
1963 - UK CBS SBPG 62193, stereo
1963 - Canada Columbia CL 1986, mono
1965 - US Columbia CL 1986, mono, repress
1966 - US Columbia CL 1986, mono, reissue
1968 - US Columbia CL 1986, mono, reissue
2018 - US Columbia/Legacy, 180 gram reissue
This Pressing
Early mono pressing (1963) - two-eye Guaranteed High Fidelity Columbia label, back cover "3" printer's mark.
The Album
Recorded in New York between 1962 and 1963, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was the twenty-one-year-old singer's second album and the one that transformed him from a Greenwich Village curiosity into the voice of a generation. Where his debut leaned on traditional and borrowed material, nearly every song here is his own, written out of the political anxiety of the Cold War, the folk revival's moral urgency, and his relationship with Suze Rotolo, who appears on the famous cover walking arm in arm with him down a snowy Jones Street. "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements almost overnight, while "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Girl from the North Country" showed a gift for intimate, literary songwriting that set him apart from his folk contemporaries. The album was assembled and revised right up to release, with songs dropped and added as Dylan's writing accelerated through late 1962. Its mix of topical protest, wry talking blues, and tender balladry established the template for the singer-songwriter movement that followed and remains one of the most influential records in American popular music, regularly cited among the greatest folk albums ever made.
Tracklist
Side 1
1. Blowin' in the Wind
2. Girl from the North Country
3. Masters of War
4. Down the Highway
5. Bob Dylan's Blues
6. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Side 2
1. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
2. Bob Dylan's Dream
3. Oxford Town
4. Talking World War III Blues
5. Corrina, Corrina
6. Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance
7. I Shall Be Free
The Label
This copy carries the red Columbia label with the arched COLUMBIA wordmark, a two-ring “eye” logo in a white-bordered square on each side of the spindle, and GUARANTEED HIGH FIDELITY arcing along the bottom rim, with ® COLUMBIA MARCAS REG. PRINTED IN U.S.A. in small type - the two-eye, Guaranteed High Fidelity design used across Columbia's catalog through the early-to-mid 1960s before it gave way to the “360 Sound” ring design later in the decade. GUARANTEED HIGH FIDELITY on a two-eye mono label is the design Columbia used for the album's first mono commercial release and its immediate repressings, so the label alone places this copy in that early window rather than the later 360 Sound era. The back cover bears a small “3” printed in the bottom corner, the printer's mark Columbia used for Modern Album Finishing Co. Nothing on the label itself distinguishes a specific pressing plant.
Fidelity
This is an analog mono cut from the original Columbia session tapes, mastered in the label's own New York facilities rather than by an outside engineer of note. Collectors on the forums regard the original mono mix as the definitive way to hear this album, with a tighter, more upfront presentation of Dylan's voice and guitar than the later rechanneled or true stereo mixes. Among mono pressings, the earliest-stamper two-eye copies are considered sonically indistinguishable from one another and are preferred over the 1965-68 two-eye and 360 Sound repressings, and far preferred over any electronically rechanneled stereo edition; no audiophile remaster of the mono mix has supplanted an authentic early two-eye pressing in collector esteem.
Notes
This is a mono CL 1986 pressing on the red two-eye, Guaranteed High Fidelity Columbia label, the design used for the album's first commercial mono run and its earliest repressings. The back cover's small “3” corner mark identifies the Modern Album Finishing Co. printing used on this edition's jacket. The side-A runout carries a stamper suffix outside the earliest group, while the side-B runout carries one of the earliest stamper letters - an early two-eye mono pressing with an early stamper on side B and a later stamper on side A.
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