MIXED-UP CONFUSION
“Mixed-Up Confusion” is a song written and recorded by Bob Dylan, and released as his first single. The song was recorded with an electric band on November 14, 1962 during the sessions for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, but was not used on that album, which, aside from “Corrina, Corrina”, was entirely acoustic. Instead, the song, backed with “Corrina, Corrina” (a different take from the Freewheelin’ one), a traditional blues song, appeared as Dylan’s first single, released in the U.S. on December 14, 1962. A different version of the song – a November 1, 1962 recording with much later overdubbing – was released on the compilation album Masterpieces in 1978, and on the original 1985 issue of the Biograph box set. (More from Wikipedia)
Another amazing Bob Dylan rarity is one of his first singles, “Mixed Up Confusion”; it is surely Dylan’s first electric song and was released in December 1962. It was only on the market for a few months before being pulled and becoming yet another song that never got on an album. If Columbia Records had stuck with it, the folk-rock movement could have been launched several years earlier.
(April 2012)
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The first cut, “Mixed Up Confusion” was my introduction to Bob Dylan’s very first 45, as I have written about previously. With Dylan backed by an electric band, the song dates from November 1962 and was released on December 14, 1962 – 6 months before Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan came out, and fully 2½ years before the electric Dylan hit with full force on “Like a Rolling Stone” – but it was almost immediately pulled from the market and is now a great rarity. The flip side of this single, and the only song that I recognized on John Birch Society Blues was “Corrina, Corrina”; an alternative take of the song was included on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, but I had heard the song previously before I heard it there, by somebody somewhere. Wikipedia lists so many recorded versions of “Corrina, Corrina” that I have no idea which one it was; probably it was the Ray Peterson recording of “Corrina, Corrina” in 1960 that made it to #9 on Billboard Hot 100.
(September 2017)
