On this day in 1963 — 57 years ago — Bob Dylan completed the recording of The Times They Are a-Changin,' his third studio album.
The album finished recording on this day and released in January, 1964 by Columbia Records. Produced by Tom Wilson, it was the singer-songwriter's first collection to feature only original compositions.
The album consists mostly of stark, sparsely-arranged ballads concerning issues such as racism, poverty and social change. The title track is one of Dylan's most famous. It captured the spirit of social and political upheaval that characterized the 1960s.
The Times They Are a-Changin' peaked at #20 on the U.S. chart, eventually going gold.
Dylan began work on the album on August 6, 1963, at Columbia's Studio A in New York City. Eight songs were recorded during that first session, but only one recording of "North Country Blues" was ultimately deemed usable and set aside as the master take.
Another session at Studio A was held the following day, this time yielding master takes for four songs: "Ballad of Hollis Brown," "With God on Our Side," "Only a Pawn in Their Game" and "Boots of Spanish Leather” — all of which were later included on the final album sequence.
A third session was held in Studio A on August 12, but nothing from this session was deemed usable. Sessions did not resume for more than two months. During the interim, Dylan toured briefly with Joan Baez, performing a number of key concerts that raised his profile in the media.
When Dylan returned to Studio A on October 23, he had six more original compositions ready for recording. Master takes for "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" and "When the Ship Comes In" were both culled from the October 23 session.
Another session was held the following day, October 24. Master takes of "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and "One Too Many Mornings" were recorded and later included in the final album sequence.
The sixth and final session for The Times They Are a-Changin' was held on October 31, 1963. The entire session focused on one song — "Restless Farewell" — whose melody is taken from an Irish-Scots folk song, "The Parting Glass," and it produced a master take that ultimately closed the album.
As Clinton Heylin wrote: "in less than six months [Dylan] had turned full circle from the protest singer who baited Paul Nelson into someone determined to write only songs that 'speak for me'... Dylan's ambitions as a writer for the page...may have been further fed at the end of December when he met renowned beat poet Allen Ginsberg, author of Howl and Kaddish."
Dylan was already familiar with Ginsberg's work. By now, beat poetry and French symbolists had become an enormous influence on Dylan's work, as Dylan "passed from immediate folk sources to a polychrome of literary styles."
In a 1985 interview, Dylan said that he didn't start writing poetry until he was out of high school: "I was eighteen or so when I discovered Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Frank O'Hara and those guys. Then I went back and started reading the French guys, Rimbaud and François Villon."