John Wesley Harding

Orpheus releases his eighth album on December 27, 1967. This one's #337 on Rolling Stone's Greatest Albums of All Time. Listen to John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan on Amazon Music ... #JohnWesleyHarding #BobDylan #60srock #country #countryrock #folkrock #orpheus

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1000 Day Album Challenge (#22) Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding (1967) [22.01.24]

just tell me where you’ll be / Judas pointed down the road / and said eternity…

Bob Dylan’s career began with a creative explosion. he released seven studio albums, including one double LP in just over four years. at least four of them (Freewheelin’, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 and Blonde On Blonde) you can find strewn over countless lists of the greatest albums of all-time. by comparison the Beastie Boys released 8 studio albums in 25 years.

Dylan had withdrawn from his public and creative life just after Blonde On Blonde had been released in the summer of 1966. there may or may not have been a motorcycle accident in or near Woodstock, NY that triggered this withdrawal.

the following summer, he had begun hanging out and recording with The Hawks, not yet The Band, at their place “Big Pink” in West Saugerties, New York, just outside Woodstock. The Hawks had backed up Dylan on tours in 1965 and1966. so this was a group of musicians with whom he felt eminently comfortable. these loose and playful sessions would later be known as The Basement Tapes, they recorded over 100 songs - many originals and many other traditional folk and country tunes.

that fall, Dylan snuck of town to Nashville to record John Wesley Harding with a group of studio musicians. there were only three studio sessions lasting less than 12 hours. although I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight was the only purely country song on the album John Wesley Harding would become a bit of a touchstone for the burgeoning country rock scene.

Dylan was out of step with the zeitgeist of the era. The Beatles, The Stones, Hendrix and most of the bands from the San Francisco scene were steeped in psychedelia and spending countless hours in the studio to perfect their sound. Jon Landau said it best, “for an album of this kind to be released amidst Sgt. Pepper, Their Satanic Majesties Request, After Bathing at Baxter’s, somebody must have had a lot of confidence in what he was doing… Dylan seems to feel no need to respond to the predominate trends in pop music at all. and he is the only major pop artist about whom this can be said."

JWH has never struck as deep for me as Bringing It All Back Home or Highway 61 Revisited, but it truly is an amazing record. as I listen to Drifter’s Escape and scan the track list I can’t think of a song I wouldn’t miss if it wasn’t here. there’s one song here that everyone knows whether they are a Dylan fan or not because of Jimi Hendrix’s definitive cover of All Along the Watchtower. (here’s a hint, check out Barbara Keith’s version. it’s fantastic.)

#1000DayAlbumChallenge #BobDylan #JohnWesleyHarding #AllAlongTheWatchtower #TheBalladOfFrankieLeeAndJudasPriest

Apropos of nothing in particular, other than history repeating itself, over and over.

#TheBeatles #JohnWesleyHarding

https://youtu.be/afCZQyhrn6U?si=-hGJWdgG-aXIwydg