The Definitive Era's of Bob Dylan (Part 1)
If you were like me, when you first listened to Columbia Records 2000 compilation The Essential Bob Dylan it was hard to believe all the songs were from the same man. The singer who howled his best Woody Guthrie impression on his early classics sounded barely related to the country crooner on "Lay Lady Lay". Neither of them, however, seemed to be connected to the growling preacher on "Everything is Broken" and "Things Have Changed". This apparent disconnection that my teenage ears heard on what amounts to Bob's greatest hits disc was my first hint that when you listen to Bob Dylan, you truly get a whole life. I'd bet that even older fans, who are lucky enough to have followed Bob step by step, were still taken by surprise to hear his crooning on 1969's Nashville Skyline, his spiritual declarations ten years later on Slow Train Coming , and his new "old" voice on 1989's Oh Mercy . Interesting that all of those albums are exac...