Bob Dylan - Acoustic Troubadour (1990)

On November 4, 1961 -- the ink on his Columbia Records contract still wet -- Bob Dylan leaped from the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit to New York's Carnegie Chapter Hall, delivering his first-ever performance in a traditional concert venue. Regardless of whatever pressures Dylan may have felt upon hitting the big time, the surviving tapes document a young man with absolute confidence in his own talents, translating the energy of his small audience into a performance of extraordinary intimacy. The bootleg release Acoustic Troubadour assembles seven songs from the Chapter Hall date, and listeners who've heard Dylan's previous reel-to-reel sessions will be astounded by the rapid evolution of his ability. Joking and bullsh*tting like he never left the cozy confines of Gerde's Folk City, he invests traditional songs like Leadbelly's "In the Pines" and Bukka White's "Fixin' to Die" with relevance and reverence. Material from 1971's Concert for Bangladesh benefit and the original test pressing of Blood on the Tracks rounds out the package