BOB DYLAN JOHN WESLEY HARDING INSANELY RARE ORIG'67 UNEQUALIZED COLUMBIA ACETATE

$

1,000

WE CURRENTLY HAVE  MORE THAN 400  LISTED ITEMS

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·       BOB DYLAN - JOHN WESLEY HARDING - ORIGINAL 1967 COLUMBIA STEREO (NO NUMBER ON THE LABEL AND NO MATRIX STAMP -- ACETATES TYPICALLY DO NOT HAVE MATRIX MARKINGS; HOWEVER, THE MATRICES MATCHING THE ORIGINAL 1967 COLUMBIA RELEASE ARE INSCRIBED ON BOTH THE LABELS AND ON THE TRANSCO INNER SLEEVE)

·       ORIGINAL US PRESSING

*** INSANELY RARE ORIGINAL 1967 COLUMBIA ACETATE WITH INCREDIBLE (UNCOMPRESSED?) MASTERING!!!

·       THIS ACETATE COMES IN ITS ORIGINAL, YELLOW TRANSCO LACQUER FACILITY (WHICH WAS COMPLETELY DESTROYED IN A FIRE ON FEBRUARY 6, 2020) GENERIC SLEEVE WITH HANDWRITTEN ARTIST, TITLE, NAME OF THE COLUMBIA EXECUTIVE THE DISC WAS MADE FOR AND  MATRIX NUMBERS: THE SAME INFORMATION, PLUS THE EQUALIZATION LEVELS,  IS WRITTEN ON BOTH LABELS.

·       THIS IS THE ORIGINAL, AUTHENTIC, U.S. ACETATE ; THIS IS NOT A REISSUE, AN IMPORT, OR A COUNTERFEIT PRESSING.

·       CLEAN, WEAR-FREE LABELS (SLIGHTLY YELLOWED FROM AGING)

·       COPYRIGHT NOTICE: THIS TITLE IS BEING OFFERED FOR SALE AS IT IS DEEMED TO BE (OR HAVE BEEN) PUBLICLY AND COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE (ALTHOUGH IN A VARIETY OF FORMS AND FORMATS). IF YOU ARE THE OWNER OF THE COPYRIGHT AND HAVE QUESTIONS, COMMENTS OR DOUBTS, PLEASE CONTACT US DIRECTLY THROUGH EBAY.

·       THE WINNING BIDDER WILL RECEIVE AN IMPORTANT BONUS: THE ORIGINAL 1967 COLUMBIA STEREO PRESSING OF THE ALBUM ON RED & WHITE "360 STEREO" LABEL, WHICH CAN BE USED FOR REFERENCE AND COMPARISON PURPOSES (THE CONDITION OF THE STOCK COPY IS VG+ (COVER)/VG++ (RECORD).

(►PLEASE SEE THE IMAGE OF THE COVER, LABEL OR BOTH, SHOWN BELOW)

(Note: this is a REAL image of the ACTUAL item you are bidding on. This is NOT a "recycled" image from our previous auction. What you see is what you’ll get.  GUARANTEED!)

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Well folks, here it is. One of the singularly important Rock items we have ever held in our hands.  We would be entirely disingenuous  if we  told  you that our hands were not trembling and shaking like a little kid's while holding this precious object, a veritable sacred relic or an object of veneration. This was like touching Elvis Presley's first guitar.

What we have here is an acetate (NOT a test pressing and NOT a promo) of one of Bob Dylan's most fascinating and durable artistic achievements, which was sent to Joe Senkiewicz (whose name is butchered as "Cienkiewicz" (sic) on BOTH the yellow Transco sleeve and the acetate labels). At the time, Senkiewicz was the Columbia Records Regional Promotion Manager based in the CBS Records New York branch office, which I believe at the time was in Rego Park (yes, folks...the very neighborhood yours truly currently resides in), although possibly right next door, in Elmhurst, NY. The purpose of the acetate was to give Joe something to play radio programmers in his region to get them excited about a new Bob Dylan record. Remember, Bob Dylan had been quiet for a while, his previous studio album (Blonde on Blonde) having been released more than year and a half earlier.  Mr. Senkiewicz  would also have used it to play for the CBS Records sales staff in the local branch. Chances are that he was given more than one acetate, along with some information about the album, who plays on it, etc.

John Wesley Harding is one of three or four of Bob Dylan’s greatest works (for me, personally, it is a strong contender for the # 3 spot - right after "Highway 61" and "Blonde on Blonde"); this 1967 recording session came just months after Bob Dylan had a near-fatal motorcycle accident and a close encounter with his own mortality, which probably helps explains the doom-and-gloom atmosphere, ascetic production, scaled-down arrangements and an abundance of memento mori and biblical references all over the place, which make this incredible album even more powerful, mesmerizing and hypnotic. This is a one-of-a-kind item in entire Bob Dylan output. Nothing - absolutely nothing - matches this collection of songs in terms of sheer power of esoteric mysticism -- so much so that Jimi Hendrix covered two songs from this album ("All along the Watchtower" and "Drifters Escape") , Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker both covered the same track ("Dear Landlord"), and the list of other artists who found these songs irresistible and highly alluring goes on and on and on. And then, there are musicians: This album assembles in one place the cream of the crop of the Nashville musical elite circa 1967: Charlie McCoy (Bass), Kenny Butrey (Drums) and Pete Drake (steel & other guitars). Finally, if all of this leaves you unimpressed you can always contemplate the cover photo of Dylan and the four musicians which, purportedly, shows the four Beatles ‘buried’ somewhere in the background. Hmmm. I could not find them. Maybe you will have better luck unearthing them…

Over the years, the album has received a somewhat undeserved reputation for being the most dream-like and surreal of all Dylan's works (which is saying a lot, because there are practically no Dylan songs that are not in some ways dreamy and surreal).  The characters in this song set come and go and interact as detached, unreal, ghost-like and hallucinatory figures from some Bergman movie, Chekhov drama or Samuel Beckett novel, completely devoid of flesh & blood, life, dynamics, dimensionality or causality. There is no action or plot to follow, just ambiguous, kafkaesque dialogue (or monologue) with some amorphous moral story left to the listener to discern, flowing from one track to another without any rhyme or reason and making sense only on a very basic, intuitive, visceral level.  In opting to merge his dreamlike lyrics with a top notch Nashville C&W band, Dylan literally created a Nashville Sound from hell, a singer-songwriter's C&W album recorded in the deepest recess of a personal dream or nightmare (think Buck Owens meeting Salvador Dali at Ian Curtis' house party and you get the idea). At least that is the impression one gets from the released version of the album.

But there is more to the picture than meets the eye. When you listen to this acetate, you get an almost completely different audio picture: the artist making a bright, energetic, imbued with life, lust and power, lyrical painting on the sonic canvas weaved by a rollicking, cheerful Country & Western Band. So, perhaps, John Wesley Harding was intended to be more of a sequel to Blonde on Blonde and less a prequel to New Morning. It seems to me that, ultimately, the dream-like quality of the album was achieved more by a deliberate engineering and mastering maneuver than by the artist himself.

Since the album was recorded (I'd first heard it around 1975), I have owned (and discarded) a number of different pressings and versions of this album (American, Japanese, Canadian, German, British, original US mono, at least three digital versions (the 1986 CD, 2003 Super-Audio CD and, finally, the 2009 mono CD). Although the 2003 Super Audio CD comes closest to being the golden standard of clarity and dynamic range, it still falls short of the acoustic and dynamic standards Bob Dylan developed on his previous three recordings (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde). I am simply appalled by how good this acetate sounds and how beautifully underequalized and uncompressed it is (although it is possible that the dramatic difference in sound stems not from equalization or compression, but from the simple fact that this acetate is the very first generation of the pressing, the very next step from the original, unequalized session tapes) . The rhythm section - bass in particular - kicks some serious a$$, and Dylan's harmonica wails and screams dramatically like I've never heard on this title before (stock mono pressing comes relatively close to this stereo acetate in the dynamics department, but definitely falls short - the acetate is superior by the order of magnitude). The overall "feel" of the acetate is more Nashville Skyline than Basement Tapes. Dylan's voice is XYZ times clearer and fine-grained than on the released version and the whole thing screams bloody drama, which is entirely antithetical to the album's perceived image as a collection of loose and disjointed dreamy, surreal, subdued folksy vignettes. It is, in short, a massive improvement over what the lowly, unwashed,  record-buying masses would eventually be able to buy in the stores.

N-level you see written at the bottom of the labels means "normal" operating level.  Whatever tone or tones were printed on the tape, in the '60s, would have been a uniform standard, most likely 185HZ. That way if there were any problems with the needle tracking on the test pressings or the artist or producer wanted the tracks hotter or quieter, the cutting engineer could cut 1dB hotter (N+1), or bring down level  (N-1), etc. There would be instructions notated on the cutting cards which are kept both in the tape box and in a separate file at the studio. These cards still exist at Sony/Columbia in nearly all cases and are frequently referred to each time a new master needs to be made due to tape wear, the need for a duplicate tape copy, etc. If the dramatic difference between this acetate and the commercially released version was, as I suspect, achieved through a deliberate compression (i.e. "limiting") of the dynamic range,  Columbia's mastering engineers may have had a mitigating circumstance working in their favor: the compression may have been used to keep the record stylus from jumping out of the grooves due to groove excursions.

The truth is: we don't know how to explain the massive sonic difference between this acetate and the released LP, but there is something intangibly different about this acetate  that is making the whole listening experience radically different. The quality of sound is so much superior that, at times, it really feels like a completely different mix. With the released version, you kinda never know which way Dylan is heading, the entire recording occasionally sounds mushy and murky and devoid of dynamic peaks and valleys. With the acetate, his vision is loud, clear, precise, self-assured - even cocky - and decidedly uncluttered. The (intentional?) suppression of Charlie McCoy's bass on the released version is one of the biggest engineering and/or mastering crimes in the annals of the popular music, because his bass artistry really carries the whole session and should be taught in music schools as Bass 101, in the same breath as Aston Barret's playing on 'Catch a fire',  Chris Hillman's finest moments on 'Notorious Byrd Brothers' , John Entwistle's Live at Leeds or Billy Cox's playing on Jimi Hendrix' Band of Gypsys.

This is the version that finally, at long last, lifts the Veil of Isis from the face of John Wesley Harding - and what a beautiful, joyful face it is! Whatever the source and origin of this acetate's superiority, if you are looking for the Ultimate John Wesley Harding, seek no further. THIS IS IT. 

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For its extraordinary contribution to the modern music, superb production, craftsmanship, fine musicianship, revolutionary significance and influence it exerted on numerous generations of musicians, writers and general public, or for some other innate quality, this album was voted one of top-200 albums of all time in one of the largest poll of critics, music reviewers, professionals and producers ever organized: the poll, which was conducted by Paul Gambaccini, legendary BBC Radio A&R man, surveyed more than 50 top music professionals (including Roy Carr, Jonathan Cott, Robert Christgau, Cameron Crowe, Chet Flippo, Ben Fong-Torres, Charlie Gillett, Greil Marcus, Murray the K., Lenny Kaye, Bruce Morrow (a/k/a "Cousin Brucie"), Tim Rice (of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita" fame), Lisa Robinson, Robert Shelton (who wrote liner notes for Bob Dylan's first album), Ed Ward, Joel Whitburn, Pete Wingfield, etc.). For more details, see: "Critics Choice: Top-200 albums" compiled by Paul Gambaccini, Omnibus Press, Library of Congress Catalog No.7855565.

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PLEASE NOTE: THIS ACETATE APPARENTLY NEVER HAD A CUSTOM COVER;  THE ALBUM WILL BE SHIPPED IN A PLAIN, GENERIC [YELLOW] TRANSCO SLEEVE AND THEN IN GENERIC WHITE CARDBOARD COVER. ACETATES AND REFERENCE PRESSINGS ARE RARELY – IF EVER – FOUND IN CUSTOM (STOCK) COVERS.

While this acetate is in a very nice state of preservation, we do expect bidders to understand that the aluminum-based, shellac-coated acetates can never be graded by using the exact, same stringent standards used by collectors for modern long-play, hi-fi LPs or singles. The buyer – if not familiar with acetate (reference) recordings - should be cautioned that these discs were intended for brief, limited use only; they were meant to be played only a few times, then discarded or destroyed. In view of this, the surface layer of the disc is manufactured in such a manner that it will wear off pretty quickly, even under normal conditions -- and specially if not handled with due care. Each subsequent playing increases wear and tear of the disc’s surface layer and diminishes the disc’s playability. This disc appears to have been unplayed recently and the grooves are still well-formed and fully visible.

This acetate is in about VERY GOOD++ (VG++) condition, with some MINOR,  superficial but visible   scuffs on the surface, and some light loss of surface sheen and lustre (nothing major). Absolutely NO part of the shellac (surface layer) of the disc is  missing, and the surface layer is NOT dented, chipped, broken or otherwise compromised.  The disc plays beautifully, with some audible - but entirely bearable - surface noise,  in full frequency and dynamic range and without any distortion whatsoever.

ON A SCALE FROM 1-10 (where 10 is the best), WE GRADE RECORD AS 6+ to 7

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·       COVER : This acetate comes without any custom jacket, and will be shipped in a plain, generic, white cardboard cover.

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POSTAGE & SHIPPING:

We offer THREE postage rates for both Domestic and International Mail: Media Mail, Priority Mail and Express Mail for domestic, and First Class, Priority International Mail, and Express International Mail for international orders. INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS PLEASE NOTE: WE RECOMMEND that you pay for USPS International Priority Mail OR International Express mail when making a payment in order to obtain tracking information, which is NOT available for First Class International shipments.

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FINE (BUT IMPORTANT!) PRINT

 (1) The year indicated in the title bar is the year of the original release,  NOT necessarily the year of the actual pressing; for the actual generation of the pressing, please see our item description (top section, text in red letters). (2) Please do NOT bid based on the title bar, subtitle bar or item specifics box alone; instead, please read the entire description and grading before bidding; (3) Absolutely NO order cancellations after the auction closes. ever, under any circumstances. We can ONLY cancel bids before the item closes. (4) We are unable to cancel bids in the final 12 hours of the auction; if you need to do so, please contact eBay for help (5) We are unable to provide matrix-, stamper- or other pressing  information in the final 24 hours of the auction. If you require this information, please contact us well before the final day of the auction. (6) Yes, we DO combine shipments. Please click on "Shipping and Payment" tab on top of the auction page for additional details. (7)  All Paypal payments must be made from confirmed Paypal shipping addresses. NO third party shipping addresses will be honored  (8) Absolutely NO partial refunds: if you are unhappy with the merchandise you received, please return it for a full refund, postage included (9). Civilized people can disagree without accusing each other of being indecent or dishonest; if you need proof of this seller's personal integrity, please check our eBay feedback, which speaks for itself  (10) All disagreements and miscommunications can be - and will only be - solved in a civil and mutually respectful manner;  please avoid puerile, offensive, abrasive or menacing language (attempted humor is fine and usually appreciated, although overused-to-death sarcasms can be really, really tedious. (11) This seller will accommodate all reasonable requests and is generally a flexible and agreeable person (12) Our love & appreciation for your trust, loyalty and business, always and forever;  Thank You & Good Night!

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