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John Wesley Harding

John Wesley Harding is the eighth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on December 27, 1967, by Columbia Records. Produced by Bob Johnston, the album marked Dylan's return to semi-acoustic instrumentation and folk-influenced songwriting after three albums of lyrically abstract, blues-indebted rock music. John Wesley Harding was recorded around the same time as the home recording sessions with The Band known as The Basement Tapes.

This article is about the Bob Dylan album. For its title track, see John Wesley Harding (song). For other uses, see John Wesley Harding (disambiguation).

John Wesley Harding

December 27, 1967 (1967-12-27)

October 17, November 6 and 29, 1967

38:24

John Wesley Harding was well received by critics and sold well, reaching No. 2 on the U.S. charts and topping the UK charts. Less than three months after its release, John Wesley Harding was certified gold by the RIAA. "All Along the Watchtower" became one of his most popular songs after Jimi Hendrix's rendition was released in the autumn of 1968.


The album was included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981).[5] In 2003, it was ranked number 301 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, moving to 303 in the 2012 version of that list,[6] then to 337 in the 2020 version.[7] It was voted number 203 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).[8]


The album is named after Texas outlaw John Wesley Hardin, whose name was misspelled.[9]

Packaging[edit]

The album is named after Texas outlaw John Wesley Hardin, whose name Dylan misspelled.[9] Singer Wesley Stace, who used the stage name John Wesley Harding, said in a New York Times editorial that "no one knows why" Dylan misspelled Hardin's name in the title, and that to his knowledge, "no one’s ever bothered to ask".[12] The cover photograph of John Wesley Harding shows a squinting Dylan flanked by brothers Luxman and Purna Das, two Bengali Bauls, Indian musicians brought to Woodstock by Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman. Behind Dylan is Charlie Joy, a local stonemason and carpenter.


Upon the album's release, rumors circulated that the faces of the Beatles were hidden on the front cover in the knots of the tree. When contacted by Rolling Stone magazine in 1968, album cover photographer John Berg "acknowledged their presence but was reluctant to talk about it."[13] However, in a 1995 interview, Berg clarified that although the images seem to resemble the Beatles, this was not done intentionally, nor was he aware of the resemblance until it was pointed out to him after the album's release: "Later on, I got a call from Rolling Stone magazine in San Francisco. Someone had discovered little pictures of The Beatles and the hand of Jesus in the tree trunk. Well, I had a proof of the cover on my wall, so I went and turned it upside down and sure enough . . . Hahaha! I mean, if you wanted to see it, you could see it. I was as amazed as anybody."[14]


The album sleeve is also notable for its liner notes, written by Dylan himself. The liner notes tells the story of three kings and three characters (Terry Shute, Frank, and Frank's wife, Vera), incorporating details from the album's songs.

Release dates[edit]

Contradictory release dates have been claimed for John Wesley Harding. The liner notes to the Dylan mono box states December 17, 1967 as the original date of release.[15] Reproduced in the liner notes to the eleventh volume of the Dylan Bootleg Series is an article by Al Aronowitz for The New York Times, date stamped December 23, 1967, in which he states that John Wesley Harding would be released "within the next two weeks".[16] Original CD editions from the 1980s and 1990s have the copyright year of 1968. The January 20 issue of Billboard reported on the "blockbuster response" to the LP, saying: "In stores less than a week, the record is reported to have sold more than 250,000 copies."[17] In his encyclopedia of all things Dylan, Michael Gray indicates a January 1968 release date for the LP.[18]


In the February 3, 1968 issue of Melody Maker, the album was reviewed and announced for release in Britain on February 23.[19] It first charted there on March 2, at number 25, before achieving a run of 13 weeks at number 1.[20]


The album was re-released as one of the 15 Dylan titles remastered for Hybrid SACD on September 16, 2003, and was reissued again as part of The Original Mono Recordings on October 10, 2010.[21]

 – acoustic guitar, harmonica, piano, vocals

Bob Dylan

Additional musicians


Production and design

Dundas, Glen. Tangled Up in Tapes : a Recording History of Bob Dylan (Thunder Bay, Ontario: SMA Services, 1999 (4th ed.))  0-9698569-2-X

ISBN

Heylin, Clinton. Bob Dylan : The Recording Sessions, 1960-1994 (London: St. Martin's, 1995)  0-312-13439-8

ISBN

at Spotify (streamed copy where licensed - registration required)

John Wesley Harding