Positively 15th Avenue

Tommorow’s Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that the earliest known recordings of Bob Dylan have been deposited at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul, where they are available for your listening pleasure. Chris Riemenschneider writes:

The so-called “Minnesota Party Tape,” believed to be some of the earliest recordings by Bob Dylan, are now more than just sought-after bootlegs.
Minneapolis resident Cleve Pettersen, who made the recordings on reel-to-reel tape in 1960, recently donated the 12-song collection to the Minnesota Historical Society. Thursday, the society announced that the tape can now be listened to in the library at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.
Then a student at the University of Minnesota, Dylan met Pettersen in Dinkytown-area coffeehouses and agreed to an informal recording session with him at an apartment on 15th Av. SE in Minneapolis.
He sang traditional folk songs by Woody Guthrie, Jimmie Rodgers and others, including “Blue Yodel No. 8,”Jesus Christ,”Talkin’ Merchant Marine” and “Streets of Glory.” Dylan would not make any formal recordings until two years later.

The Star Tribune story is “Minnesota Historical Society gets the original Dylan Dinkytown tape.”
UPDATE: See also “Desire revisited” regarding Dylan’s Dinkytown period. (Courtesy of reader Randy Burns.)

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