This Date in Dylan: September 24
The Hawks debut and Bob takes a flute solo
Our extremely occasional series "This Date in Dylan" continues! I picked it because of one show in particular, which we'll get to, but turns out Bob had quite a few notable performances on September 24ths. Notable mostly in a good way…
September 24, 1961
Bob sits in with Paul Clayton at the Showboat Lounge in Washington DC, joining his folksinger friend for a Sunday night hootenany. There's no recording or information on what he played that I can find, but here's a little more context from the book Paul Clayton And The Folksong Revival:
September 24, 1965
Dylan debuts a new backing band! The band members' names were - hang on, let me pull up my notes here - Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson. That's right, Bob's first ever show with The Hawks went down 56 years ago today in Austin. Now if I say "here's the bad news," you know what's coming right? No one taped it.
We do, though, have the story of how promoter Angus Wynne happened to book the first ever Dylan and The Hawks show:
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