When Dylan Went Electric--THREE Years Before Newport

His first "rock n roll" single was released in 1962.

Dec 31, 2024

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books including “The Tunnels” “Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady” and “The Campaign of the Century” and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre.” You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.

Finally reading the Elijah Wald Dylan-goes-electric book on which some of “A Complete Unknown” is based. I say “some,” because Wald himself, while admiring the movie, has pointed out dozens of fabrications and even key omissions. Still, the book is very much worth reading as it is not just another Bob-at-Newport tome but focuses its first half on the history and rise of folk music in the 1950s and early 1960s with a good deal on Pete Seeger’s role along with others.

We then get Bob’s scuffling first months in NYC, and his surprise signing by John Hammond at Columbia, which caused resentment among friends and peers who considered him an interesting character but only a middling talent. As is well known, his first album, virtually all covers (and slanting toward blues), bombed and he was known by some as Columbia as “Hammond’s Folly.”

Much less known (although I’ve been familiar with the episode for decades) is that Bob went back in the studio shortly after the first lp came out and recorded another dozen or so songs, again nearly all covers. But before they could be fashioned into an album, the legendary Albert Grossman, on the heels of steering the early Top Ten success of Peter, Paul and Mary, became his manager and, presto, Bob was back in the studio recording new covers and a couple of originals.

Wald does not make clear whose idea it was to hire studio cats to provide rock ‘n roll electric backing for a Bob single. One of them was guitarist Bruce Langhorne, who would go on to play on “Bringing It All Back Home” more than two years later.

Columbia released the single “Mixed Up Confusion” along with the B-side standard—but still lightly electrified, and with drums—“Corinna Corrina” in late-1962 (before anyone heard “Blowin’ in the Wind”), and it stiffed, despite a 4-star review from Billboard. Columbia or Grossman or Dylan had taken the attempt seriously enough to try fifteen takes of “Mixed-Up Confusion.”

One wonders: If the song had become even a fair-sized hit, would Bob have gone fully electric in 1963? After all, he had been a rocker as a teen back in Minnesota.

None of this is in “A Complete Unknown.”

In any event, Dylan recorded yet more songs for his second album that would cement his folk/protest/singer-songwriter reputation, including “Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War.”

The freewheelin’ “Mixed Up Confusion” was left off that second lp, although the far less jarring “Corinna Corinna” was included. It would not be released until Dylan began his “bootleg” series more than 20 years later.

Here it is from 1962, followed by “Corrina Corrina.”