Let Me Die In My Footsteps (Studio Outtake - 1962)

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  Seven Songs for the Week #139 - 3rd Dec 25

  Jason Carty

  So last week I went to see Bob in concert, and this week I bought The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, an album I actually don't have. Two things: (1) I don't particularly have an affinity for very early Bob (so the recent Through An Open Window box wasn't for me), and (2) The copy of The Freewheelin' that I bought was the Record Store Day reissue of the album with its original tracklisting. Four songs would get replaced/removed, one of them being this one, Let Me Die In My Footsteps. On the eventual Freewheeln', Masters of War would take its place, but this original track says just as much about war. Listening to the record, I hadn't heard this track before, but I obviously own it, because it first surfaced on 1991's first Bootleg series collection, which I picked up about 25 years ago but obviously didn't pay much attention to. The danger of too many CDs.

  Overall, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan stands up and cuts through to today. Another song pulled from the album, and also ignored by me on the 1991 Bootleg collection is Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues which rings true about the current state of beliefs of the US political right.