The Essential Bob Dylan (2001)

Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: The Essential Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 2001
Discs: 2
Series: The Essential... (Sony Legacy)
Type: Aural History

Review: One of the earliest compilation albums brought about by the smash success of The Beatles' 1, The Essential Bob Dylan marks the true beginning of Sony's Essential franchise (now before you try to correct me, I know that The Essential Journey actually predated this by a few months but it didn't fit in with the rest of the franchise at that point), a collection of double disc sets focusing in single artists. This wasn't an original idea as Rhino's Anthology series had at least 9 years on the concept, but The Essential created a brand image with a fixed packaging look and consistantly high quality remastering and track arrangement.

It seem somewhat surprising that Dylan would be the first artist to be featured in the series proper. Bob Dylan had had his share of compilations in the past with three volumes of greatest hits in the 60's, 70's (a double album featuring rerecorded Basement Tapes tracks) and early 90's. On top of that there was the classic box set Biograph in 1985 (remastered in 1997) and the the first three "volumes" (it was a box!) of The Bootleg Series. Therefore why was it necessary to do another compilation? The reason is pretty simple. Up to this point there had never been a Bob Dylan compilation that arranged his hits in order of release and there wasn't a set that had them all in one convenient package, you had to buy multiple volumes. A commercial opportunity had arisen.

Essential Bob Dylan takes that opportunity and runs with it ignoring his self-titled debut and kicking off with tracks from Freewheelin'... before plowing through 30 years of content (the album stops at "Things have Changed" from the Wonder Boys soundtrack) hitting the most important notes like Subterranean Homesick Blues, Mr. Tamborine Man, Like A Rollin' Stone, Tangled Up in Blue, and Jokerman along the way. There are some gaps of course, the programmers of this set understandably ignore dreck like Self-Portrait and the infamous 1972 Dylan album. But would it have been hard to sneak in The Groom is Still Waiting at the Alter from Shot of Love? Other albums like Nashville Skyline and Desire are barely represented at all and that's a bit disappointing.

Those flaws aside this compilation still stands tall and serves as a welcome first salvo in what would become one of the most influential compilation lines of all time.

Music: *****
Packaging: **** 1/2 (not much in the way of liner notes but the use of Columbia disk labels from the 20s is inspired)
Sound: *****
Overall: *****