48 (Not 38) Years Ago Today

We all (or at least many of us) know about Bob Dylan's appearance at a Joan Baez concert at the Forest Hills tennis stadium, in New York City. It took place on August 17, 1963, and a partial recording of the show, including Baez's solo tracks and two Dylan-Baez duets, but not Dylan's solo songs or the last duet, circulates. One duet, "Troubled and I Don't Know Why," was released some years back on a Baez box set.

Hardly anybody remembers that Dylan himself topped the bill at a "hootenanny" at the Forest Hills stadium a month earlier. Sharing the top of the bill were Odetta and Bud and Travis. I haven't found any accounts of that concert so far, no setlists, certainly no recordings. It probably was Dylan's warmup gig for the Newport Folk Festival a few days later.

Bud and Travis retired long ago, and both have since died. But an interesting relic of their career turned up on YouTube three years ago, a televised cover of "Tomorrow Is A Long Time." It's quite nice. There's also a short introduction where they talk about "Bobby Dylan," which to me makes it likely that this clip comes from 1963, rather than the later date attached to it on YouTube. But that's just guesswork.



If the embed doesn't work for you, this is the basic link:

http://youtu.be/H3yUZOaZICE

There are a lot of almost-forgotten Dylan history and chronology from the early 1960's out there to be found, and sadly fewer and fewer folks who can give us their recollections.of those events. I've turned up a small pile of "vanished" dates (no recordings, sorry) and they'll be among the things I talk about here, going forward.