So far, the earliest tape known of the young Bob Dylan
What appears on this tape is extremely fragmentary and features the young Dylan and boyhood pal John Bucklen fooling around with a tape recorder and trying out a few songs
This photograph was taken by Bob’s mother, Beatty, in Hibbing, and dated September 1958, a 17-year-old Bob is shown with his second electric guitar. Most more youthful rock’n’roll moments seem to have him on piano.We can say for certain from the photograph that this electric instrument is not a Fender (it’s sometimes been said that he owned a Fender in Hibbing)—and we can say that it isn’t his first electric, a $39 turquoise Silvertone bought mail-order from Sears Roebuck, but must be his second, a new Supro Ozark (a guitar Jimi Hendrix also had as a lad), bought at Mr. Hautala’s store in Hibbing at a knock-down $60 because Bob and his friend John Bucklen each bought one at the same time: and September 1958 is too late for him to be just acquiring the Silvertone. This is the picture of a boy who’s proud of having upgraded. In Minneapolis, Bob swaps his electric for an acoustic. From there he emerges as an acoustic playing folkie, and remains so until July 1965.
Gray, Michael. The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. New York: Continuum, 2006, 0826469337, page 285.
“John Bucklen soon became the closest friend Bob had in Hibbing. He was six months younger than Bob, and a year below him in high school. His father, a disabled mine worker, was an accomplished musician who enjoyed a wide variety of music. His sister, Ruth, had a record player. The boys began to spend a lot of time at each other’s houses, although Bucklen got the impression Abe may not have approved of the friendship as he seemed to frown upon most of Bob’s friends.
“During jam sessions with Bucklen, Bob mixed up snatches of pop tunes with song ideas of his own. The first song Bob invented was about actress Brigitte Bardot. Bob played his parents’ white baby grand, and Bucklen accompanied him on guitar. Bucklen had a tape recorder and they recorded the sessions, interjecting juvenile humor and bits of hipster slang, as if making their own radio show. When they got tired of the game, they headed over to Crippa’s where they could listen to records in the sound booths. On visits to see his relatives in Duluth and the Twin Cities Bob was able to visit bigger stores that stocked the race records he liked.”
Sounes, Howard. Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan. New York: Grove Press, 2001, page 44f.
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John Bucklen tape (1958)
The Home of Bob Dylan
Hibbing, Minnesota
1958
1. Hey Little Richard
2. Buzz, Buzz, Buzz (Gray/Byrd)
3. Jenny, Jenny (Johnson/Penniman/Crewe)
4. Blue Moon (Lorenz Hart/Richard Rogers)
Zimmerman:
This is Little Richard…(fakes wild crowd noises into microphone) …Little Richard’s got a lot of expression.
Bucklen:
You think singing is just jumping around and screaming?
Zimmerman:
You gotta have some kind of expression.
Bucklen:
Johnny Cash has got expression.
Zimmerman:
There’s no expression. (sings in boring, slow and monotone voice): “I met her at a dance St. Paul Minnesota… I walk the line, because you’re mine, because you’re mine…”
Bucklen:
You’re doing it wrong, you’re just –
Bucklen:
What’s the best kind of music?
Zimmerman:
Rhythm and Blues.
Bucklen:
State your reason in no less that twenty-five minutes.
Zimmerman:
Ah, Rhythm and Blues you see is something that you really can’t quite explain see. When you hear a song Rhythm and Blues – when you hear it’s a good Rhythm and Blues song, chills go up your spine…
Bucklen:
Whoa-o-o!
Zimmerman:
When you hear a song like that. But when you hear a song like Johnny Cash, whadaya wanna do? You wanna leave, you wanna, you – when you hear a song like some good Rhythm and Blues song you wanna cry when you hear one of those songs.
after Jenny Take A Ride:
Bucklen:
Listen, man you gotta to do it a little bit faster than that. I mean I’m trying to cut a fast record here, that’s right …
Zimmerman:
I can’t help it.
Bucklen:
I know it ain’t slow but it’s not fast enough too.
Zimmerman:
Whadaya talking about, man, that’s plenty fast!
Bucklen:
No, it isn’t.
Zimmerman:
That’ll sell – that’ll sell (clicks fingers) just like that – ten million in a week! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Bucklen:
What are you trying to do man, coming in with ‘weeelll’ like that? I mean ….
Zimmerman:
Well that’s for the new song and I’m starting another one.
after Blue Moon:
Zimmerman:
Yeah, ah, Ricky Nelson. Now Ricky Nelson’s another one of these guys. See Ricky Nelson, Ricky Nelson –
Bucklen:
Ricky Nelson is out of the question.
Zimmerman:
Well he copies Elvis Presley! Yeaah, it’s perfectly…
Bucklen:
He can’t do like Elvis Presley.
Zimmerman:
Well he can’t sing at all, Ricky Nelson. So we may as well forget him. See I mean – I mean, ya know when you hear music like The Diamonds. For instance The Diamonds are really cool, they’re out on the street really popular, really record [?], you know. So they’re popular big stars but where, where do they get all the songs? You know they get all their songs, they get all their songs from little groups. They copy all the little groups. Same thing with Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley, who did he copy? He copied Clyde McPhatter, he copied Little Richard, …
Bucklen:
Wait a minute, wait a minute!
Zimmerman:
…he copied the Drifters
Bucklen:
Wait a minute, name, name, name four songs that Elvis Presley’s copied from those, from those little groups.
Zimmerman:
He copied all the Richard songs –
Bucklen:
Like what? –
Zimmerman:
“Rip It Up”, “Long Tall Sally”, “Ready Teddy”, err … what’s the other one…
Bucklen:
“Money Honey”?
Zimmerman:
No, “Money Honey” he copied from Clyde McPhatter. He copied “I Was The One ” – he copied that from the Coasters. He copied, ahhh, “I Got A Woman” from Ray Charles.
Bucklen:
Er, listen that song was written for him.
SONGS
01. Friendship Music
02. Little Richard
03. Johnny Cash
04. A Good Place To Leave
05. Best Kind Of Music
06. Talent Show/Buzz Buzz Buzz (Garry /
Byrd)
07. Jenny /Ten Million In A Week
(Penniman / Johnson)
08. Scotty Moore
09. Blue Moon (Richard Rogers /
Lorenz Hart
10. Elvis Presley
11. Bass Player
12. Echo
13. Underground Folk Music
14. Bob Dillon
By 2004, in Chronicles, Dylan was saying that ‘I Walk the Line’ was ‘a song I’d always considered to be up there at the top, one of the most mysterious and revolutionary of all time’. After his death, Bob Dylan said: ‘Johnny was and is the North Star. You could guide your ship by him—the greatest of the greats then and now.’
The power of television was illustrated in 1993 when a BBC-TV documentary team visited Minnesota and were offered something that not even Robert Shelton’s assiduous and privileged researches had managed to discover—a tape made at Bob’s own boyhood home in 1958 (long before he was Bob Dylan) with one of Shelton’s interviewees, Bob’s ‘best buddy’, John Bucklen.
This features Bob Zimmerman the rock’n’roller, playing piano and guitar and singing snatches of five songs (with some shared vocals by Bucklen) interspersed with conversation between the two. The songs are ‘Little Richard’ (composed by Dylan), ‘Buzz Buzz Buzz’ (a hit for the Hollywood Flames in late 1957 to early 1958), ‘Jenny, Jenny’ (a Little Richard song), ‘We Belong Together’ (a minor chart hit in March that year for an adenoidal black harmony duo from the Bronx called Robert & Johnny, i.e. Robert Carr and Johnny Mitchell) and the unknown ‘Betty Lou’ (sometimes listed wrongly as ‘Blue Moon’). Four were first heard, though incompletely, on BBC-TV’s excellent ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, first broadcast in the UK on May 8, 1993.
sources
https://www.punkhart.com/dylan/tapes/bucklen.html
http://hibbing.yolasite.com/family-and-friends.php