Don\u2019t think twice, it\u2019s all right. Bob Dylan\u2019s earliest New York recordings are finally getting their due.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe\u202fBootleg\u202fSeries\u202fVol.\u202f18:\u202fThrough\u202fthe\u202fOpen\u202fWindow,\u202f1956\u20111963,\u201d a massive collection of previously unheard performances<\/a> from the \u201cLike a Rolling Stone\u201d singer\u2019s first years in Greenwich Village and beyond, dropped Friday, Oct. 31.<\/p>\n Bob Dylan\u2019s latest release, \u201cThe Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through The Open Window, 1956-1963,\u201d features the musician\u2019s earliest recordings in New York City. Legacy Recordings<\/p>\n Dylan performing at the Bitter End folk club in Greenwich Village in 1961. Getty Images<\/p>\n Spanning from his first appearances at the now-closed Gerdes Folk City to a charged performance uptown at Carnegie Hall, the compilation captures the young Dylan at a time when he was still finding his voice in the city that would help shape it.<\/p>\n Born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941, Dylan moved to downtown New York City<\/a> in January 1961 with a stack of songs, a restless drive to make music and a dedication to tracking down his idol, Woody Guthrie.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to get a sense of Greenwich Village<\/a> as much as anything else,\u201d historian Sean Wilentz, who both produced the new release with Steve Berkowitz and wrote its liner notes, exclusively told The Post.<\/p>\n Dylan recording his self-titled debut album at Columbia Studio in New York City in November 1961. Michael Ochs Archives<\/p>\n Dylan plays an acoustic guitar and smokes a cigarette in this headshot taken in New York City in September 1962. Michael Ochs Archives<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the wider Bohemia, but especially Greenwich Village,\u201d the Princeton professor continued. \u201cAnd you get that because you\u2019re coming out of a community, not an easy community, always, but a community.\u201d<\/p>\n Dylan\u2019s rise in the early 1960s coincided with a creative explosion in the Village, where folk music clubs like Gerdes, the Gaslight, Cafe Wha? and the Bitter End doubled as sonic laboratories for new songs and ideas.<\/p>\n Sean Wilentz attends the 56th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California, on Jan. 26, 2014. WireImage<\/p>\n Wilentz speaks at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, California, on Nov. 7, 2012. WireImage<\/p>\n \u201cThere was nothing like what was going on in Greenwich Village,\u201d Wilentz, who wrote the 2010 book \u201cBob Dylan in America,\u201d said. \u201cAnd he was very much a part of that, and that was very much a part of him. And that\u2019s what we wanted to get across.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s Dylan biopic<\/a> starring Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, \u201cA Complete Unknown,\u201d gave audiences a dramatic big screen look<\/a> at that early Greenwich Village scene by showing the caf\u00e9s, jam sessions and restless energy of the young musician finding his place.<\/p>\n A spray-painted sign outside Greenwich Village\u2019s Cafe Wha? in the early 1960s. Bettmann Archive<\/p>\n People in the entrance of the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, circa 1960. Getty Images<\/p>\n The Gaslight Cafe on McDougal St. in Greenwich Village in January 1961. Bettmann Archive<\/p>\n