For all your Bob Dylan fans out there, here is a neat bit of musical trivia that you may have not known about up until now! It’s all about 4 songs that were not released on his second album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, that did not make the final cut. They are “Let Me Die In My Footsteps”, “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie”, “Rock and Gravel” and “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues”
So this album, Bob Dylan’s second one which had the working title of Bob Dylan Blues, was a pure master piece! This album did much better then his debut album titled Bob Dylan, which sold about 5000 copies, just enough to break even at that time. This little known fact about these 4 songs made me sit back and scratch my head to wonder, why?
Can you actually believe that some idiots deemed them unusable for public consumption? This album made it to 97 on Rolling Stones Top 500 albums of all time!
With Blowin’ in the Wind on an album, I guess you can’t go wrong now can ya? Thank God they left that one on it!
So here is what I took out of this fairly long article. If I have misinterpreted any of this or got my info wrong then PLEASE tell us.
So Bob Dylan resumes his work on his second album at Columbia’s Studio A in New York city. This session started on October 26th, 1962. “Mixed-Up Confusion” and Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right Mama” were deemed unusable, so out came the scissors and they were cut. A master take of “Corrina, Corrina”, which was not an original, was selected for the final album. I remember listening to this one when I was a young kid at my parents house, what a great tune.
A few copies of the original pressing of the LP — with the subsequently deleted tracks, “Let Me Die In My Footsteps”, “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie”, “Rock and Gravel” and “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues” — finally turned up for general consumption, against Columbia’s blessings. CBS produced records later on with these four songs, but not the corresponding covers.
Imagine for a second, only 30 pressed copies with these tunes were released, then they stopped the presses, removed the offending songs and finally started the presses once again? Can you say really rare and valuable piece of plastic?
In April, 1992, the first known stereo copy (with the label listing the original four songs) was found at thrift store located in Greenwich Village in New York City. The quality of this valuable piece of music history was used and in not bad condition. It was later fetched $12,345.67. Envision, if you will, this album being in mint condition?
Keep on Jammin’
