Vinyl Record

Bob Dylan - The Times They Are a-Changin'

Bob Dylan - The Times They Are a-Changin' on LP vinyl. A 1964 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.

LP · 1964

Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.

Buyer notes: 1964 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.

The Times They Are a-Changin' is Bob Dylan at his starkest early-album pitch: young, severe, impatient with comfort and determined to make the acoustic song carry public consequence. Released in 1964, it was his third album and his first built entirely from his own compositions. That matters because the record is not merely a folk singer's repertoire; it is a self-authored moral landscape. The title track became the emblem, but the album around it is darker and less easily ceremonial than its reputation can suggest. Ballad of Hollis Brown turns poverty into a claustrophobic tragedy. With God on Our Side interrogates national righteousness through a long historical lens. North Country Blues brings economic collapse down to a single voice. Only a Pawn in Their Game examines racist violence through power structures rather than simple individual evil. Boots of Spanish Leather offers personal loss with unusual grace, while The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll turns reportage into accusation and lament. The arrangements are spare because the words need little decoration. Guitar, harmonica and voice carry the burden, and the voice is not asking to be liked. It presses, narrows, insists. The album can feel forbidding beside the wit and range of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but that severity is its identity. It is the sound of Dylan testing how much history, grief and judgment a folk record can hold before the form begins to crack. In that pressure, the young songwriter becomes impossible to treat as a passing topical figure.

It matters because The Times They Are a-Changin' fixed Dylan's early reputation as a writer who could make folk music speak to civil rights, war, poverty and moral responsibility without surrendering poetic force. It is also the album that shows the protest label at its most useful and most limiting. The songs are topical, but their craft and severity reach beyond the moment that produced them.

For collectors, this is an essential early Dylan record, especially for understanding why his acoustic period carried such cultural force. It is not the breeziest entry point, and that is part of its value. The album belongs on the shelf as the austere public-conscience chapter: a record of hard ballads, social witness and personal farewell before Dylan's writing began moving rapidly toward other masks.

Stark acoustic folk with hard-edged topical ballads, grave harmonica, young prophetic urgency and moments of intimate farewell.

Recommended for: Collectors tracing Dylan’s early protest-era authority; Listeners interested in civil-rights-era folk songwriting; Fans of spare acoustic records where words carry the full burden.

What year was The Times They Are a-Changin' released? The album was released in 1964. Was it Dylan's first album of all original songs? Yes. It was his first album made entirely from his own compositions. Is the album only about the title song? No. Ballad of Hollis Brown, With God on Our Side, Boots of Spanish Leather and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll are crucial to its power.