sixstr stories

They had travelled from Mississippi to Texas, the young black man with a guitar and the older, white buisness man. Years later, people along their route would still remember this unusual sight.

The business man was Ernie Oertle, a talent scout who covered the Southern region of the country for ARC Records. H.C.Speir, a Jackson, Mississippi-based record store owner and successful talent scout, had first auditioned the young Blues musician and passed his name on to Oertle. Oertle liked what he heard in the test recording that Speir had made and got in touch with the young man, inviting him to go with him to San Antonio for a recording session.

At the Gunter Hotel, A& R man Don Law and recording engineer Art Satherley had set up a make shift recording studio in two adjoining rooms. They had a machine that recorded directly onto aluminum disks, with about three minutes of recording time per side.

At today’s session, the young Blues singer/guitarist/songwriter recorded eight songs: “Terraplane Blues,” “Come On In My Kitchen,” “Kind Hearted Woman Blues,” “When You Got a Good Friend,” “Ramblin’ On My Mind,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Phonograph Blues.”

The young Blues musician recorded at the Gunter again on November 26 and 27.

“Terraplane Blues” b/w “Kind Hearted Woman Blues” were released on the Vocalion label in March of 1937. The 78-rpm record sold well enough for another recording session to be booked and the young Blues musician recorded again, this time in Dallas, Texas, on June 19 & 20, 1937.

The young Blues musician recorded a total of 29 songs or sides in his recording career.

But when you look at the list of songs recorded at his first session, on this day, November 23, in 1936, Robert Johnson would still be considered the King of the Delta Blues Singers.

The recording session started at 2:00 pm.

The 20-year-old Folk singer/guitarist/harmonica player/songwriter was Columbia Records producer John Hammond’s latest find. As the session progressed, Hammond must have had second thoughts. He found the young musician to be: “In a word… terrible. I’d never worked with someone so undisciplined before.”

The young musician had brought a wide repertoire of songs to record. As he told Hammond, they were “some stuff I’ve written, some stuff I’ve discovered, some I’ve stole.” The first song recorded was “You’re No Good”  from Blues singer/multi-instrumentalist Jesse Fuller. Other songs recorded this day were “Fixin’ To Die,” “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” and “In My Time Of Dyin’.”

Two original songs were recorded today, the only two that would appear on the released album, and they were: “Talkin’ New York” and “Song To Woody.” As was the preference of the young musician, all songs were given no more than three takes, many, like “Song To Woody,” were done in only one.

In what seems to have been one of several spur-of-the-moment song-choice decisions of the session, the fifth song recorded this day was “House of the Rising Sun.” The young musician performed a passionate rendition of the song in a minor key, 6/8-time arrangement borrowed from (without permission, and eventually released, despite a request not to, by) Greenwich Village Folk singer/guitarist Dave Van Ronk.

The session ended at 5:00 pm with seven songs finished. A second and final 3-hour session was held two days later and resulted in the other six tracks needed to complete the album. 

The album, “Bob Dylan,” was released on March 19, 1962.