BOB DYLAN

Lavishly illustrated history of Bob Dylan’s musical apprenticeship and breakthrough.

In the beginning, there was the folkie Dylan, who arrived mysteriously on the Greenwich Village scene and single-handedly changed the world. That’s the received wisdom—sort of. Writing in this extended version of his liner notes to Dylan’s Bootleg Series early-years box, historian Wilentz argues that Dylan was very much part of a community of artists “that included detractors as well as mentors, rivals as well as allies.” Dylan has been notoriously hard to track over the years, thanks to his inventions and reinventions, but Wilentz, backed by plentiful documentary and archival material, pins down facts and dates. One comes on Christmas Eve of 1956 with a 15-year-old Dylan cutting his first record with two high school bandmates, his ragged but inspired performance making up in part for “the trio’s inability to stay on key, let alone find a steady groove.” Seeing Buddy Holly at his third-from-last performance before his fatal plane crash, a tragedy that “has stayed with him as a fateful, even prophetic event,” confirmed Dylan as a devoted rocker. But hearing Odetta made him trade in his electric guitar for an acoustic and pushed him to Greenwich Village in the full bloom of its second flowering, the streets full of artists and musicians, cheap restaurants, and welcoming cafes. Dylan found an early champion in Israel Goodman Young, whose Folklore Center doubled as a performance venue, and tutors in Woody Guthrie, Dave Van Ronk, and the Clancy Brothers. Wilentz also turns up an amusing tidbit in which Dylan plays harmonica on a Harry Belafonte record, doing 17 takes before getting it right, Belafonte always keeping his cool. With a few rough moments, these were Dylan’s salad years, when some of his most iconic songs were written and recorded, and Wilentz’s book, with photographs on nearly every page, is a worthy tribute.

A fine addition to the vast library surrounding America’s great troubadour.