Listen to the earliest known recording of Bob Dylan
The Nobel Prize-winning songwriter Bob Dylan is an extraordinary man cut from somewhat ordinary cloth. His trail from the small venues of Minneapolis to worldwide stardom took just a couple of years, fuelled by affecting political commentary and a unique voice that would inspire music’s most important moment as a cultural driver.
Born in 1941 as Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, Bob Dylan hailed from a sizable Jewish family. At the age of six, his immediate family moved to the mining town of Hibbing, where his father, Abraham, co-ran a furniture shop with his uncles after contracting polio.
Dylan’s connection to his Jewish heritage became more complex during his formative years, particularly when he started mingling with non-Jewish friends in school. This period marked his crucial introduction to rock ‘n’ roll, the genre popularised in the 1950s as an offshoot of the blues.
Initially, Dylan took up the piano as his first instrument, encouraged by his parents, and later by the energetic stylings of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Through his early teens, Dylan harboured aspirations to form a rock band of his own, driven partly by a desire to impress his female classmates.
In Clinton Heylin’s book Behind the Shades, Dylan’s close school friend John Bucklen discussed his particularly fierce appetite for the opposite sex. “As far as girls were concerned, Bob always seemed to have a thing for girls who were top-heavy … I was going through my old high-school yearbook recently, and they were all fat and big-breasted … He was going with these girls while he was with Echo [Helstrom Casey], and it sort of tore her up a bit. She used to call me up and start crying.”
Bonnie Beecher is another of Dylan’s early flames. They met in college, where both attended infrequently due to having their hearts set on careers outside academia. Beecher had a considerable influence on Dylan’s music, constantly networking for him to arrange gigs in cafes and bars across Minneapolis.
It is generally understood that ‘Girl From the North Country’ was written about her, but some sources hint that it was instead an ode to Dylan’s high-school sweetheart, Echo Casey, who was brought into his orbit during the days of The Golden Chords, his first band.
Below, you can hear Bob Dylan’s earliest known recording. Taped in 1958, the clip hears a 16-year-old Dylan performing several covers and early originals in his family’s garage alongside Bucklen. The latter part of the video is a recording of Bucklen remembering his high school years with Dylan.
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