New Dylan Box Includes Two Rare Tracks Taped in East Orange
Bob Dylan’s new box—Through The Open Window 1956-1963—is the 18th volume of The Bootleg Series (Columbia Records). The mammoth 8-CD set—with 48 of 139 songs never-before released—comes out October 31 and includes two super-rare tunes Dylan taped of himself in 1961 at the home of Bob and Sid Gleason on North Arlington Avenue in East Orange, Essex County.
“Pastures Of Plenty” is a Woody Guthrie song. Woody wrote and recorded it in 1941 about the travails and dignity of migrant farm workers who would work themselves to the bone, and often to death, barely seeing anything in return. Two years earlier in 1939, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes Of Wrath was published, covering some of the same territory. Did Woody read that book? “Pastures Of Plenty” stands as one of the earliest protest songs (along with Billie Holiday’s 1939 “Strange Fruit.”)
“Remember Me” from 1940 is the best-known original by Lulu Belle and Scotty Wiseman of North Carolina who were a married duo from 1934 to 1958. Willie Nelson and Paul Simon have also covered it.
The Gleasons hosted folk music events at their apartment every week that Dylan and Woody Guthrie would sometimes attend. It is probably where Dylan first met Guthrie. According to a Columbia press release, “Through The Open Window tells the story of Dylan’s emergence and maturation as a songwriter and performer, from Minnesota to the Greenwich Village bohemia in the early 1960s. Arriving amidst a global resurgence in appreciation for Dylan, the collection includes rare Columbia Records outtakes, recordings made at club dates, in tiny informal gatherings, in friends’ apartments, and at jam sessions in long-gone musicians’ hangouts. Many of the recordings are exceedingly rare; others have never been presented in any form.”