Vultures circle the still-living musician, pecking away in the hope of a piece of flesh, a slice of skin, to promote as a new release. Music Legends Bob Dylan: The Poet’s Folk Hits is a compilation of his contemporary folk period, though it lacks the expected hits. This is not, as many may believe, a passive adaptation of his early albums, not at all. This is just the self-titled debut, far from the folk quality Dylan would set on later releases, paired with songs initially cut from the first record. It is the height of laziness from Wagram Music, the distributors of what can only be described as a cash-in on materials which are out of copyright, circulating online already. At least the hits are found within. It would be hard to pitch this as the folk hits without the essentials.
Yet it occurs anyway. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, Blowin’ in the Wind, and Mr. Tambourine Man are laughably absent from a compilation which adds Gospel Plow and Freight Train Blues. All great songs in their own right, but lacking the perspective, nuance, and power those classics to follow have. These additions are of solid quality, but even the passive listener will question whether these are, truly, the hits. They are far from it. Cover after cover, ample material irrespective of false labels, but the so-called voice of a generation was not labelled as such by covering traditional songs from the Great American Songbook. He made his name with his own work, as evidenced by follow-up album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Corrina, Corrina features, at least, though it is a slim pickings, which suggests Wagram Music has few rights to the actual hits and classics of the folk period. The trouble, then, is creating without cause.
If an album claims to be the hits, then it should either align with history or challenge it with some leftfield choices. This, along with the series of YouTube playlist offerings, is a low rung which cashes in on a period now relevant because of the Timothée Chalamet-starring movie. But even before then, with Music Legends Bob Dylan: The Poet’s Folk Hits releasing well before A Complete Unknown, there was a chance from smaller record and streaming companies to cash in on the name value. All it means for listeners is a dirtying of the waters. For the passive fan, a chance to mistakenly buy a record which does a minimal at best job of collecting these so-called hits. Once more the official releases, the Greatest Hits packages like Biograph or Pure Dylan, do a far better job than these early releases claiming to be an overview of the folk period. This is anything but.
Can anything be salvaged from this release, then? Not really. Gospel Plow is always nice to hear, even if in briefly so, as is the case here. Music Legends Bob Dylan: The Poet’s Folk Hits is a lie. These are not the folk hits, this is just the first album. More must be done to not only prevent this sort of muddying of the waters, but to steer people away from releases which, more than anything, have the chance to cause confusion or erode the origins of this song or that recording. Not as menacing or manipulative as the uncredited YouTube playlists coughed up on the official channel, but still as lazily pieced together. A chance to draw people back into Dylan’s music is never a bad thing, unless it is done solely with the intent of offering something which, in practice, it simply cannot.
