Bob Dylan – Folk-Singer Humdinger Vol. 1 Review

There are few better ways to spend the lead-up to Halloween, a nonsense holiday, than in experiencing the official playlists of the Bob Dylan YouTube channel. Copyright law is an elusive beast, and it means the bootleggers around the world are at an advantage to those with the keys to Dylan’s archives. Trading CDs and FLAC files will trump these meaningless collections every time. Folk-Singer Humdinger Volume One is a depressing piece. Not because of the songs, but because of what is featured, because of how little care and effort is put into these. There should be a higher bar of quality for all compilations, not just those from Dylan’s team. Piecing together the earliest releases from Dylan, either to maintain copyright or to trick those without the ability to discern new releases from compilations, is awful. There are a few gems from the team, but this is the usual experience.  

Trudge on through the likes of Gospel Plow and Baby Let Me Follow You Down, then. A few of these songs are given a different album cover. That’s the only change here. Connections between the songs are clear. These are the earliest works from Dylan and are recorded for his debut album. A few cuts here, a couple of changes to the tracklist there, but all without purpose. There’s no reason for it, not because the work is of a lesser quality than the hits, but because this repurposing of old material is useless. Forty-five songs and all of it available elsewhere without the confusion caused by a seemingly generated playlist. Folk-Singer Humdinger Vol. 1 manages to avoid the very best of his folk works, presumably because anything from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is off limits. This is what compilation work has been reduced to. Bootleggers have the advantage then not just because of their pool of songs, but because they care.  

Perhaps deriding The Original Recordings 1961 –1962 as this set is also called, is futile. But muddying the waters of an already near-impossible-to-use internet, be it because of adverts or artificial intelligence, is the work of a fool. Where these recordings are from, what studio they were pieced together and even where the song can be found beyond this compilation is lacking. It is not just the insincerity of Folk-Singer Humdinger Vol. 1 which should worry listeners, but the lack of care taken. The music featured throughout is not the problem. There are some wonderful versions of Song to Woody and Hard Times in New York featured, the issue is where they come from. They are, for the passive fan, now tied to a compilation which does not exist beyond YouTube.  

Published by Music Corporation of America tells you it all. There is something shady about a release which does nothing but erode the origins of the song. Even bootleggers know to credit the performance or leave a date. Dylan’s playlists are in dire need of quality control and context. There’s no excuse which could placate the lacklustre release cycle found on this channel. It’s strange, though. Why are they muddying the waters of Dylan’s earliest works so frequently? Why only his earliest works? It comes down to trickery. A fan may see a title they are unaware of and click on through, though the lack of views, which can be seen on these YouTube uploads, shows that it’s not working, beyond being an annoying development which decreases the visibility of the source material.