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Bob Dylan

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:40,000.00 - 60,000.00 USD
Bob Dylan

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Auction Date:2014 Oct 23 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Handwritten lyrics, in pencil, unsigned, on both sides of a 7.5 x 10 lightly-lined note book page, dating from around November of 1961. Dylan has written out the lyrics to four songs he was working on memorizing for performances in Greenwich Village. He writes out the complete lyrics to ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down,’ by Roy Acuff; ‘Wreck on the Highway,’ by Dorsey Dixon; and two traditional ballads, the 1840s ‘Mary of the Wild Moor,’ and ‘Crying Holy to the Frost,’ by Irene Amburgey. Dylan has written the titles to three of the songs above their lyrics, with the ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down’ lyrics reading in part:
“I been all around this
Been down to sunny Alabama
My momma always told me son
Never let your deal go down

Last time I seen my girl of mine
She’s standing in the door
She said honey I’ll be a long time gone
You’ll never see around no more.”

Dylan also writes out all eight verses of the folk ballad ‘Mary of the Wild Moor,’ which begins:
“It was on one cold winter night,
When the wind blew across the wild moor.
When Mary came wandering home with a child,
Till she came to her own father's door.

‘Father, dear father,’ she cried,
‘Come down and open the door,
Or the child in my arms will perish and die,
From the winds that blow across the wild moor.”

In fine condition, with intersecting folds, some scattered light soiling to reverse (slightly affecting a couple lines of lyrics), and some ballpoint marks in the upper right blank area.

Having moved to New York City at the beginning of 1961, Dylan began playing at various clubs in the city’s famed Greenwich Village almost immediately, including The Cafe Wha?, The Gaslight Cafe, and Gerde’s Folk City, where he played his first professional gig in April. His sets would include songs from other folk musicians he met in the Village, as well as country and Irish folk songs, as evidenced here by including Dorsey’s Dixon’s 1937 ‘Wreck on the Highway,’ and the blues song ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down,’ made popular by Roy Acuff. It was in this thriving folk scene that he would cut his teeth in preparation for his first album, recorded right around the time these lyrics were written. Dylan would return to ‘Mary of the Wild Moor’ during his 1980 West Coast tour, performing the song 16 different times, with ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down’ appearing on a handful of set lists in 1992. These lyrics represent the very beginning of Dylan’s musical career, with this particular example containing an amazing four songs, with 80 lines in Dylan’s hand.