The Cutting Edge an end to the myth of Bob Dylan as a one-take artist

A deep dive into the deluxe box set reveals Bob Dylan the writer, arranger and recording artist like never before

By Peter Stone Brown

In the middle of January 1965, Bob Dylan went into Columbia Records Studios in New York to begin work on his fifth album, an album that would be very different from his previous four. He had a few musician friends from the New York folk scene, guitarist Bruce Langhorne, John Sebastian who was starting to a lot of studio work playing harmonica, and blues singer John Hammond. One of the things these three musicians had in common was all of them were experimenting with playing electric instruments. Hammond was about to release his third album, So Many Roads, his second with a band, a band that included a guitarist named Jaime R. Robertson, a drummer, Mark Levon Helm, an organist, Eric Hudson and on piano and guitar, one Michael Bloomfield. Bruce Langhorne a well-known side man who played and recorded with several artists including The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem and Odetta, had started using a De Armond pickup in his Martin guitar. Six months after these sessions Jo…