The Bootleg Series, which began back in 1991, has always been a rich and often revelatory treasure trove of Bob Dylan rarities, but the latest edition is particularly fascinating. It’s a time capsule, a vast piece of audio verite, in which we follow Robert Zimmerman from his Minnesota origins as a teenage rock ’n’ roller all the way to the Greenwich Village folk scene, the March on Washington and eventually a watershed concert at Carnegie Hall. A vivid chronicle of his rapid ascent and growth as an artist, it captures the thrill of a young man finding his voice while making an indelible mark on history.
Beginning with his earliest known recording from 1956, a scratchy DIY 78 recorded in a Minnesota music shop with his high school band, it goes on to chart his arrival in NYC as a Woody Guthrie-obsessed interpreter of folk ’n’ blues standards who effortlessly beguiled the bohemian coffee house crowd.
