Like 1999's tribute to Gram Parsons, Return of the Grievous Angel, this successful collection revives the tired "tribute" concept and applies it in homage to a key figure in country music. Interpreting songs from across Hank Williams's short and troubled career, a range of high-profile artists use different approaches with equally gratifying results. Tom Petty, Sheryl Crow, and Hank Williams III play familiar songs with traditional arrangements (Ms. Crow's yodel is an eye opener); Beck, Mark Knopfler, and Keb' Mo' stay closer to their own idioms. Keith Richards's reedy vocal makes "You Win Again" all his own, and Bob Dylan, who has only rarely lent his services to these sorts of projects, leads his touring band through a blues shuffle on "I Can't Get You Off of My Mind." The estimable Lost Highway label has assembled an illustrious cast to sing the praises of the artist who inspired its name, and in doing so it has created a far better testament to its musical mindset than can ever be captured in the term Americana.

On his first LP of original songs in nearly a decade—and his first since reluctantly accepting Nobel Prize honours in 2016—Bob Dylan takes a long look back. Rough and Rowdy Ways is a hot bath of American sound and historical memory, the 79-year-old singer-songwriter reflecting on where we’ve been, how we got here and how much time he has left. There are temperamental blues (“False Prophet”, “Crossing the Rubicon”) and gentle hymns (“I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You”), rollicking farewells (“Goodbye Jimmy Reed”) and heady exchanges with the Grim Reaper (“Black Rider”). It reads like memoir, but you know he’d claim it’s fiction.And yet, maybe it’s the timing—coming out in June 2020 amidst the throes of a pandemic and a social uprising that bears echoes of the 1960s—or his age, but Dylan’s every line here does have the added charge of what feels like a final word, like some ancient wisdom worth decoding and preserving before it’s too late.

Months before Bob Dylan released Blood On The Tracks in early 1975, a small number of test pressings were circulated, consisting entirely of material from sessions at A&R Recording Studios in New York City. (Dylan re-recorded five of these tracks in Minneapolis for inclusion on the final album.) Those original records were soon bootlegged, and the alternate history of one of Dylan’s most acclaimed works was born. This LP is an exact duplicate of the test pressing, containing unique mixes from the New York session, available commercially for the first time.

The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall is a complete recording of Bob Dylan's October 31, 1964 "Halloween" show at New York's Philharmonic Hall. It was released in 2004. The set list was dominated by Dylan’s protest songs, including "The Times They Are a-Changin’," "A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall," and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll". Joan Baez, a major supporter of Dylan's in his early career, duets with Dylan on three songs, as well as singing another alone ("Silver Dagger"). However, Dylan performed these songs alongside early versions of three songs from the soon-to-be-recorded Bringing It All Back Home. New compositions like "It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" showed Dylan moving in a new direction, becoming more immersed in evocative, stream-of-consciousness lyrics and moving away from social, topical songwriting.

Arriving in 1967, Greatest Hits does an excellent job of summarizing Dylan's best-known songs from his first seven albums. At just ten songs, it's a little brief, and the song selection may be a little predictable, but that's actually not a bad thing, since this provides a nice sampler for the curious and casual listener, as it boasts standards from "Blowin' in the Wind" to "Like a Rolling Stone." And, for collectors, the brilliant non-LP single "Positively Fourth Street" was added, which provided reason enough for anybody that already owned the original records to pick this up. This has since been supplanted by more exhaustive collections, but as a sampler of Dylan at his absolute peak, this is first-rate.

Mastered on Mobile Fidelity's World-Renowned Mastering System and Strictly Limited to 3,000 Numbered Copies.

Surprise Party is a 2014 compilation of some of the most influential party tracks in rock & roll. Originally a 5CD box set, this is an edited version done digitally so it would be limited to about two compact discs worth. This was released by Wagram, with some of the tracks targeting the label's French audience.

If The Times They Are a-Changin' isn't a marked step forward from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, even if it is his first collection of all originals, it's nevertheless a fine collection all the same. It isn't as rich as Freewheelin', and Dylan has tempered his sense of humor considerably, choosing to concentrate on social protests in the style of "Blowin' in the Wind." With the title track, he wrote an anthem that nearly equaled that song, and "With God on Our Side" and "Only a Pawn in Their Game" are nearly as good, while "Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" are remarkably skilled re-castings of contemporary tales of injustice. His absurdity is missed, but he makes up for it with the wonderful "One Too Many Mornings" and "Boots of Spanish Leather," two lovely classics. If there are a couple of songs that don't achieve the level of the aforementioned songs, that speaks more to the quality of those songs than the weakness of the remainder of the record. And that's also true of the album itself - yes, it pales next to its predecessor, but it's terrific by any other standard.

Time Out of Mind was a legitimate comeback, Bob Dylan's first collection of original songs in nearly ten years and a risky rumination on mortality, but its sequel, Love and Theft, is his true return to form, not just his best album since Blood on the Tracks, but the loosest, funniest, warmest record he's made since The Basement Tapes. There are none of the foreboding, apocalyptic warnings that permeated Time Out of Mind and even underpinned "Things Have Changed," his Oscar-winning theme to Curtis Hanson's 2000 film Wonder Boys. Just as important, Daniel Lanois' deliberately arty, diffuse production has retreated into the mist, replaced by an uncluttered, resonant production that gives Dylan and his ace backing band room to breathe…

This fascinating program tells the story of the music and artists that have influenced Bob Dylan throughout his career. Although his reputation as a songwriter stands supreme, Dylan has often covered tracks from vintage blues, folk and country performers or incorporated elements from them into his own material…

Bob Dylan (/ˈdɪlən/; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, and painter, who has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became a reluctant "voice of a generation" with songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" that became anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement. In 1965, he controversially abandoned his early fan-base in the American folk music revival, recording a six-minute single, "Like a Rolling Stone", which enlarged the scope of popular music…

Forrest Gump (1994) is one of the most successful films ever made, winning Tom Hanks his second successive Best Actor Oscar (he won the previous year for Philadelphia) as well as claiming the Best Picture Oscar and many other awards and nominations, including several for music. A unique fable of American life from the 1950s to the 80s, the film blends comedy, drama, war, romance and groundbreaking special effects into a social and political portrait of the passing years, all seen through the eyes of the intellectually challenged but immensely likeable Forrest Gump. The soundtrack is a double album featuring 31 classic pop tunes plus a suite from Alan Silvestri's rich orchestral music, represented more completely on the companion score album.

Bob Dylan's influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notion that a singer must have a conventionally good voice in order to perform, thereby redefining the vocalist's role in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock.

Bob Dylan (/ˈdɪlən/; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, and painter, who has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became a reluctant "voice of a generation" with songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" that became anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement. In 1965, he controversially abandoned his early fan-base in the American folk music revival, recording a six-minute single, "Like a Rolling Stone", which enlarged the scope of popular music…

Bob Dylan (/ˈdɪlən/; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, and painter, who has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became a reluctant "voice of a generation" with songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" that became anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement. In 1965, he controversially abandoned his early fan-base in the American folk music revival, recording a six-minute single, "Like a Rolling Stone", which enlarged the scope of popular music…