{"id":6161,"date":"2025-10-23T08:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T08:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/bob-dylans-through-the-open-window-the-bootleg-series-vol-18-1956-1963-reviewed-documenting-the-dawn-of-a-legend-151807\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T08:00:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T08:00:14","slug":"bob-dylans-through-the-open-window-the-bootleg-series-vol-18-1956-1963-reviewed-documenting-the-dawn-of-a-legend-151807","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/bob-dylans-through-the-open-window-the-bootleg-series-vol-18-1956-1963-reviewed-documenting-the-dawn-of-a-legend-151807\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan\u2019s\u00a0Bootleg Series Volume 18: Through The Open Window, 1956-1963 reviewed: documenting the dawn of a legend"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

The first time we hear Bob Dylan on this fabulous 8CD, 168-track boxset, it\u2019s Christmas Eve 1956. Dylan\u2019s high school trio, The Jokers \u2013 Bob Zimmerman (vocals and piano), Larry Keegan and Howard Rutman (vocals) \u2013 are whomping through Shirley And Lee\u2019s \u201cLet The Good Times Roll\u201d in a version recorded on a 78rpm acetate at the Terlinde Music Store in St Paul, a bus ride from the 15-year-old Dylan\u2019s home in Hibbing, Minnesota.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
Click here and subscribe to Uncut<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"Bob
Photo: Sandy Speiser\/Sony Music Archives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The young Dylan, hollering his head off<\/h2>\n

The first time we hear Bob Dylan on this fabulous 8CD, 168-track boxset, it\u2019s Christmas Eve 1956. Dylan\u2019s high school trio, The Jokers \u2013 Bob Zimmerman (vocals and piano), Larry Keegan and Howard Rutman (vocals) \u2013 are whomping through Shirley And Lee\u2019s \u201cLet The Good Times Roll\u201d in a version recorded on a 78rpm acetate at the Terlinde Music Store in St Paul, a bus ride from the 15-year-old Dylan\u2019s home in Hibbing, Minnesota.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s barely a minute long, not much more than a gloriously raucous din, but there distinctly is the young Bob, hollering his head off. The last time we hear him, it\u2019s October 1963, at the end of his first headlining show at a sold-out Carnegie Hall, Dylan in full command of 3,000 hip New Yorkers who\u2019ve just been profoundly wowed by a set full of era-defining songs, all of them written in the two and a bit years since Dylan blew into Greenwich Village from Minneapolis in January 1961.<\/p>\n

Dylan\u2019s remarkable transformation is the stuff of legend <\/h2>\n

Dylan\u2019s remarkable transformation from cocky young Woody Guthrie disciple into a seemingly unstoppable songwriting force, moving at speed without caution or brakes, is the stuff of legend. Through An Open Window, as historian and Dylan fan Sean Wilentz writes in his illuminating sleevenotes, is basically an audio documentary of that legend taking shape, the content across these eight CDs drawn from a vast trove of studio outtakes, alternative versions, concerts, club gigs, privately recorded performances at the apartments of friends, stage banter and radio broadcasts, the bulk of it previously unreleased. There are highlights galore.<\/p>\n

After the staticky blast of \u201cLet The Good Times Roll\u201d, CD1 continues with the teenage Dylan in May 1959, singing one of his own early songs, \u201cI Got A New Girl\u201d, more doo-wop than Woody Guthrie, recorded at the home of a Hibbing folk fan friend, Rick Kanga, amazingly preserved. The versions that follow of Jesse Fuller\u2019s \u201cSan Francisco Bay Blues\u201d and Guthrie\u2019s \u201cJesus Christ\u201d were recorded at his own Hibbing home in September 1960. Dylan attacks both with more determination than finesse, but no noticeable lack of confidence, assuming even then an exaggerated dustbowl twang whenever he gets near anything written by Guthrie.<\/p>\n

A lament for something already lost<\/h2>\n

Elsewhere on the disc, there\u2019s a breathtakingly intimate \u201cSong To Woody\u201d from an early show at The Gaslight in Greenwich Village, an affecting version of Woody\u2019s \u201cPastures Of Plenty\u201d, recorded at the New Jersey home of Guthrie fans Bob and Sid Gleason, who also taped his version of \u201cRemember Me\u201d, a song full of hobo twilight originally recorded by Lula Belle And Scotty, The Sweethearts Of Country. The disc ends with an alternative take of \u201cI\u2019ll Fly Away\u201d from the Carolyn Hester album Dylan played harmonica on at sessions in September 1961 produced by John Hammond, who would soon sign him to Columbia.<\/p>\n

CD2 opens with six tracks recorded in November 1961 at Carnegie Town Hall, including an electrifying version of the traditional \u201cGospel Plow\u201d, a tender cover of Liam Clancy\u2019s \u201cYoung But Daily Growing\u201d, a frantic take on the traditional \u201cPretty Polly\u201d, so urgent it sounds like it might spin off into \u201cIt\u2019s Alright Ma (I\u2019m Only Bleeding)\u201d. The highlight here is the version of Guthrie\u2019s \u201cThis Land Is Your Land\u201d that previously appeared on No Direction Home: The Soundtrack, The Bootleg Series Vol 7. Versions of the song are usually celebratory, anthemic, stirring. Dylan slows it down, turns it into something melancholic and plaintive, a lament for something already lost or at least quickly vanishing.<\/p>\n

\n
\n