Bob Dylan’s self-titled 1962 debut is as understated of an entrance as any significant musician has ever made. Already well-versed in American roots music, Dylan simultaneously pays homage to tradition and extends it by putting his own stamp on classic material that metaphorically functions as the soil of our contemporary songs and styles.

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Bob Dylan Catalog Audiophile Restoration Series

• MONO Edition Strictly Limited to 3000 units!
• Numbered Edition
• 180 Gram 45rpm High Definition Vinyl pressed at RTI USA
• Half-Speed mastering on MFSL Gain 2 Ultra Analog System
• Mastered by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
• Cut from the Original Mono Analog Master Tapes
• Cut in MONO by Krieg Wunderlich & Shawn Britton
• Special Static Free & Dust Free Inner Sleeves
• Deluxe Gatefold Cover

Understated 1962 Debut Launched Immeasurably Influential Career: Inspired by Woody Guthrie and Blues Legends, Bob Dylan Is Clearest Connection to Singer's Purist Folk Roots. Mastered from the Original Master Tapes and Strictly Limited to 3,000 Copies: Mobile Fidelity Mono 45RPM 2LP Features Unparalleled Directness and Sound Dylan, Producers Originally Intended.

Made when mono was still king, Bob Dylan's self-titled 1962 debut is as understated of an entrance as any significant musician as ever made. Already well-versed in American roots music, Dylan simultaneously pays homage to tradition and extends it by putting his own stamp on classic material that metaphorically functions as the soil of our contemporary songs and styles. Free of ego, and performed with masterful conviction, Bob Dylan ranks with the debut efforts of similar artistic giants Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones.

Mastered from the original master tapes, pressed at RTI, and strictly limited to 3,000 copies, Mobile Fidelity's restored 180g mono 45RPM 2LP analog version brings the contents of this seminal release as closest as they've ever come to master tape-quality in the original mono configuration. Transparent to the source, the simple sounds of Dylan's voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica take on lifelike perspective and directness—the "husk and bark" to which Robert Shelton referred in his now-legendary New York Times review of a Dylan appearance at Gerde's Folk City. MoFi has made possible an inexpensive time-traveling trip back to the Greenwich Village coffeehouses and folk clubs in which Dylan cut his teeth, albeit in much better fidelity and without any annoying background chatter. Wider grooves mean more information reaches your ears.

As the preferred mix at the time of the recording, the mono version presents Dylan as he and his producers originally intended. Since the separation of the stereo versions isn’t as sharp, the mono edition places Dylan’s vocals in the heart of the musical action and as one with the accompaniment. It paints listeners an incredibly accurate portrait of the attention-getting, concrete mass of sound that features no artificial panning and straight-ahead immersion into the music. This is how almost everyone first heard this timeless album—making the mono mix all the more historically valuable and truthful.

Much has been made of the commercial indifference that greeted the album upon its low-key release. Yet focusing on sales figures and the reaction of a public not yet hip to Dylan's name or music is to miss the forest for the trees. Distinguished from the era's other folk efforts by way of the determination, brazenness, and lived-through-this worldliness Dylan approaches the material and sings the songs, Dylan lays the groundwork for the path he'd soon trailblaze and everyone else would follow.

By nodding to Woody Guthrie at the same time he completely re-imagines a sobering tune such as Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," Dylan straddles the past and future. He also displays, with challenging authority and savant-like expertise, the ability to handle weighty topics such as death, sorrow, and lamentation with the vaudeville flair, bluesy mannerisms, and poignant command of an artist three times his age.

As Dylan scholar and pop-culture critic Greil Marcus observed in 2010, "Everybody knew Joan Baez and the Kingston Trio; if you knew Bob Dylan, you knew something other people didn't, something that soon enough everybody had to know. Within a year, an album could put an adjective in front of the singer's name as if it were already common coin." It all starts here.

Track Listing:

Side A
1. You're No Good
2. Talkin' New York
3. In My Time Of Dyin'
4. Man Of Constant Sorrow

Side B
1. Fixin' To Die
2. Pretty Peggy-O
3. Highway 51

Side C
1. Gospel Plow
2. Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
3. House Of The Risin' Sun

Side D
1. Freight Train Blues
2. Song To Woody
3. See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

Click here to listen to samples on YouTube.com ♫