Today’s track is the fourth Random Weekend selection from Bob Dylan’s Whitmark demos, a collection of songs recorded in the early 60s to shop around to other performers.
This one is well-timed, coming on the heels of the news that Dylan has sold the songwriting rights of his entire catalog to the Universal Music Publishing Group for a sum reportedly north of $300 million. It is likely the largest deal of its kind ever made.
Between 1962 and 1964, Bob Dylan recorded a few dozen tracks for the publisher M. Witmark & Sons, with a plan to shop those songs to other artists.
Those songs, along with eight tracks he recorded for Leeds Music, were released in 2010 as the ninth volume of Dylan’s Bootleg Series. The collection features some of the earliest versions of beloved classics along with lesser-known and previously unheard tracks.
Here’s a track from a collection of early Bob Dylan demos, recorded in 1961 and ’62.
Given my current obsession with the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, it’s hard not to hear a song like this in the context of that great film and the early Greenwich Village folk scene is captures.
One of the downsides of a truly random selection — such as that of my Random Weekend Songs of the Day — is that you wind up with clusters.
I haven’t checked the numbers, but it seems like tracks from Dylan’s Bootleg Series have turned up here on a pretty regular basis. Granted, he has released nine volumes of those bootlegs — all double-CD sets — so those songs make up a healthy percentage of my music collection. Around 3 percent, to be exact.
But 3-in-100 odds aren’t exactly the sort you’d bet heavily on in Vegas. Mathematically, these songs are over-performing.
Best Songs of 2010 – Honorable Mentions
I featured a lot of Bob Dylan on the blog this year, with my Dylan Weekends spanning from late January through October. Then Dylan returned the favor with a late year release, the latest in his Bootleg series.
The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (which is in my backlog of things to review) is a collection of early recordings Dylan made for the purposes of selling his songs for covers and selling his talents to major labels. The 2-disc set contains rough versions of such early classics as ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ ‘Masters of War,’ ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,’ ‘The Times They Are A’Changin” and more.
Meet Me In Montauk 