Bob Dylan – John Wesley Harding

The Dylan kick continues.

This is an album for which the term “deceptive simplicity” might have been coined.

It was recorded in about 12 hours total, across 3 sessions.

It was commercially released about 4 weeks after the recording sessions were complete.

There are only two other musicians on the bulk of album—Kenny Buttrey on drums and Charlie McCoy on bass. There is a bit of steel guitar from Pete Drake on 2 songs. All the rest is Dylan, on acoustic guitar, piano, and harmonica.

There are 12 songs total.

The album is less than 40 minutes long.

There are, give or take, something like 60 different “biblical allusions” to be found in the lyrics.

Of this album, Dylan once said, “There’s no blank filler. Each line has something.”

I believe it was Rodin who once famously described sculpting as something to the effect of , chipping away at everything that wasn’t the sculpture.

When you’ve chipped away the sculpture, this is the album that remains.

And what a perfect sculpture it is.

Deceptively simply.