Bob Dylan's "Freewheelin'" tone

[capefisherman]

Originally Posted by bufflehead

In 1964 he was playing a Martin 00-42 and a Gibson J-45. The following year is when he went infamously electric at the Newport Folk Festival with a Stratocaster, and was righteously booed for his efforts.

If you want to sound like Dylan, any guitar will do. Pour a cup of mud in through the sound hole and wait until the strings get rusty. Then rig a harmonica onto a neck holder and play it poorly enough to make the guitar sound sweet.

....and as one who was in row 4 that night at Newport, I can assure you he was not "righteously booed." A few people way in the back booed just a bit but the vast majority responded with a somewhat subdued (shocked?) but decent level of clapping.

[janepaints]

concerning the 'bob dylan woulda been nothing without PPM' stuff...

hmmm ya think maybe albert goldman, who managed bob AND PPM, and who deliberately created' PPM as a 'folk group' for the then-burgeoning 'folk music market', had anything to do with PPM's choice of material?.....

like urging them to do Bob songs because Albert had a percentage deal on Bob's writing royalties and thus Albert would make more $$$ ?

i sure do!

now back to Bob's always great, PERFECT, crummy old okie dust bowl acoustic broke-down geetar sounds.....

[Al Acuff]

Thanks to the OP for starting this thread. I just sat down and listened to the original mono mix of Freewheelin'. It's a treat! What talent!!!

Everyone who knew "Bobby" in the early days will tell you that he was ambitious and determined. If it hadn't been Albert Grossman and PPM there would have been someone else...

Could Elvis have made it without the Colonel? The Beatles without Brian Epstein? To be fair, it doesn't matter. We have the music they gave us so let's just be glad for that.

Music and sausage... if you enjoy them you don't want to know everything that goes into making them.

[bjewell]

I was into Dylan beginning in 1962. By 1963, I was a freshman at Ohio State, learning the wonders of weed and flunking out (twice) while getting my chops together. Our crew was the hip crew, hanging out at Larry's, discovering acid, getting way more sex than the frat and sorority kids ever dreamed of and having a blast. We were post Beat, pre-hippie. Well read of obscure poetry and versed in what was happening around the major ports in the world.

The line was this: you understood what a deep talent Dylan was or you didn't. If you didn't, you didn't hang with us. And "us" mostly moved on to the Bay Area or Europe. Some folks still don't understand how great Dylan was. and some folks wear socks with their Birkenstocks. See you know something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsLkfrgJ2QM

Oh yeah.. that guitar tone? Monel strings, not brass or bronze. Not so much dead, just how they sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ex-m-eEKsg

[pjroberts]

Originally Posted by Rexsblues

It's a super interesting guitar. What modern Gibson's would be comparable to that model?

One of the closest Gibson Lucas reproductions is the Santa Cruz H-13, which comes in the same base 13 fret configuration as the Dylan guitar.

Have I got some details for you:

• Gibson’s Dylan Nick Lucas model page: http://www.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle...s-bob-407.aspx
• SCGC H-13 page: https://www.santacruzguitar.com/h13/
• SCGC H model history: http://www.lutherie.net/model_h.html
• Other Nick Lucas replicas (AGF 2012): http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=269447

[zmf]

Originally Posted by bjewell

Our crew was the hip crew, hanging out at Larry's, discovering acid, getting way more sex than the frat and sorority kids ever dreamed of and having a blast.

If Dylan hadn't written "Mr. Tambourine Man", I wouldn't have gotten to the next step. Yeah, he said it wasn't about psychedelics, but ......

Point is, Dylan carried the load. Big job. And did an OK job. Not perfect, but a little beyond OK. Don't sell it short.

I suggest we beat up on Frank Sinatra next -- always used the same phrasing.

[frankmcr]

Originally Posted by Mycroft

Actually Mr. Zimmerman had been a thing for a few years before The Byrds came along.

Eh.

"Mr Tambourine Man" was on Bob's Bringing it all back home album released March 1965, which was on the charts for 29 weeks.

Byrds' Mr Tambourine Man album released June 1965; the single was a Billboard #1, the album was on the charts for 38 weeks.

Don't sniff at the Byrds, Dylanologists. They made yer man many a dollar. Symbiotic? Okay. Just that Bob was not some pure folk warrior forging his lonely path unappreciated through a philistine world. He had plenty of help.

I like his singing by the way.

[thegazza]

All solid Recording King RNJ-26 worth a look. Designed by same guy that came up with the Santa Cruz model. 13 frets.

Gazza

[bluesfreek]

While the Beatles were writing "I wanna hold your hand" and "She loves you" Dylan had written this epic. Dylan considers this the best song he's ever written. My favourite version is from Before The Flood.

He's playing the Nick Lucas in this.

[mercy]

That one is more poetry than song. it just dosnt fit the song format. Tambourine man is great.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by mercy

That one is more poetry than song. it just dosnt fit the song format. Tambourine man is great.

Speaking now of "It's all right ma..."

Yes, and that kind of Beat poetry (influenced by the early 20th Century Modernists and the French poets that influenced them) had never been noticed crammed into a song before. I say "noticed", because someone must have done it, but as soon as Bob Dylan did it, a great many folks saw you could do that and began writing songs like that.

Around the same time the Modernists were doing their poetry thing, Afro-Americans were devising their own new song form, what we call the Blues now, another form of Modernism. Combine old traditional British Isles folk music, the blues, and those Modernist poets inside Bob Dylan's head and you get a revolution in songwriting. He's just huge as an influence, and while the specific tactics and events that set his revolution loose may have some interest in themselves, that's the big thing we shouldn't overlook.

I know rap and hip hop have few fans here, and those are broad forms with lots of variations (like the Blues have), but if you listen to some of those "how can he fit all those words into the beat" tunes which are part of what Dylan did in the Sixties you hear what emerged later as rap flow, which is all about pulling off the same trick. I suspect if you don't like one you won't like the other. There's also some aspects of Hebrew religious chanting in Dylan's mix too.

Sorry to go off on this tangent. I've been something of a bug on this since engaging in substantial self-study of the birth of Modernist poetry in the past year after having already studied a lot of the musical forms, and I've got my own website that goes into all this on my own time.

Oh, the thread...

Yes, by all means try monel strings like Martin Retros.

[John K]

Hebrew religious chanting:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBSfuqPhIec

[zmf]

Originally Posted by John K

Hebrew religious chanting:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBSfuqPhIec

Thanks. Didn't know about that one.

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by frankmcr

Eh.

"Mr Tambourine Man" was on Bob's Bringing it all back home album released March 1965, which was on the charts for 29 weeks.

Byrds' Mr Tambourine Man album released June 1965; the single was a Billboard #1, the album was on the charts for 38 weeks.

Don't sniff at the Byrds, Dylanologists. They made yer man many a dollar. Symbiotic? Okay. Just that Bob was not some pure folk warrior forging his lonely path unappreciated through a philistine world. He had plenty of help.

I like his singing by the way.

You can put your offense away, as none was intended. I was simply pointing out that Dylan had been releasing some pretty highly thought of albums before the Byrds covered "Tambourine Man." (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin,' Another Side of Bob Dylan and the aforementioned Bringing It All Back Home.) And he was already at work on Highway 61 when the Byrds released The Mr. Tambourine Man album.

Which was their first album. And this was meant in no way as a dis of the Byrds, who were simply put one of the great rock and roll bands of all time, and loaded with great songwriters (Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Chris Hillman, and someone I think sadly overlooked, Gene Clark. All in one band...)

Did the Byrds cover help raise Dylan's profile? I wouldn't be a bit surprised. But influences, cause and effect, are tricky things to assign. PP&M helped raise his profile too, as did Joan Baez. The effect worked the other way as well. Remember that the Byrds covered 4, yes, 4, Dylan songs on the first album. "Tambourine Man," plus "Chimes of Freedom", "All I Really Want to Do", and "Spanish Harlem Incident." So who benefited more?

A more interesting influence, to me, might be from Dylan having visited a Byrds rehearsal and listened to them doing a run through of their electric version of Tambourine Man, before it was recorded. How much did the Byrds version influence Dylan's move to using a full on electric sound? (Although he certainly had other influences in that regard as well, without question.)

As to these "either/or" type arguments, I find them a bit tedious. Why not both? Heck, I probably heard the Byrd's version of Tambourine Man long before I heard Dylan's myself. I was, what , about 7 years old in 1965, and living in rural Eastern Oregon. I'd probably heard of Dylan first, though.
OMMV

[frankmcr]

Originally Posted by Mycroft

You can put your offense away,

As to these "either/or" type arguments,

Ain't no offense in my post, ma.

ain't no either/or there neither, I even stuck the word "symbiotic" in there ... whatever that means ...

"Don't follow leaders", Bob Dylan said that ...

"Bob sings good", I said that...