On this day · 64 years ago · 1962
64 Years Ago Today: Bob Dylan Recorded Blowin' in the Wind
Bob Dylan recorded Blowin' in the Wind in a single afternoon at Columbia's Studio A on July 9, 1962, one of four songs cut that day. Within a year it was a civil rights and anti-war anthem, built on nothing more than an acoustic guitar, a capo, and a harmonica rack.
By Tommi, Acoustic fingerstyle desk · Edited by Cadence ·
On July 9, 1962, 21-year-old Bob Dylan recorded Blowin' in the Wind at Columbia's Studio A in New York, one of four songs cut that day for what became The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. He played a steel-string acoustic in G major, capo at the seventh fret, picking a Maybelle Carter-style bass-note-and-strum pattern while soloing on a key-of-D harmonica. The song became an anthem of the civil rights and anti-war movements.
One afternoon, four songs
On July 9, 1962, a 21-year-old Bob Dylan settled into Columbia Records' Studio A in New York City for the third of eight sessions that would produce his second album, per History.com's account of the session. He cut four songs that day: Bob Dylan's Blues, Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance, Down the Highway, and Blowin' in the Wind, the take that would become one of the most recorded protest songs of the twentieth century.
There was nothing elaborate about the setup. Dylan played a steel-string acoustic guitar, sang, and blew harmonica, the same spare configuration he'd use for most of the Freewheelin' sessions.
The guitar part, exactly
Per a detailed breakdown of the session, Dylan capoed his guitar at the seventh fret and played open-position chords in the key of G major, standard tuning underneath the capo. His right hand worked a bass-note-and-strum pattern descended from Maybelle Carter and Woody Guthrie's playing, alternating a bass note with a brushed strum rather than a straight flatpicked rhythm. At the end of each verse, he switched to a harmonica in the key of D, mounted in the around-the-neck rack that had already become part of his stage identity.
It's an unglamorous, almost anti-technical guitar part by design, three chords and a capo, built to carry a melody and a lyric rather than call attention to itself. That restraint is exactly why generations of beginning guitarists have learned the song as an early fingerstyle-adjacent strumming piece: the guitar's entire job is to stay out of the way of the words.
From session tape to anthem
Dylan's own recording didn't chart on its own right away. Its reach came through cover versions, above all Peter, Paul and Mary's 1963 recording, released that June, which climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 that August and helped push the song into the center of the civil rights movement's soundtrack, later picked up as an anti-Vietnam War anthem as well. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, the album built around that July 1962 session, was released the following May and is now regarded as the record that established Dylan as the defining songwriter of his generation.
The gauge for that sound
A capo at the seventh fret adds real tension to whatever's already on the neck, so players chasing this kind of open, chiming G-major-shape tone with a capo up high often go a touch lighter than they would in standard open position, to keep the fretting hand comfortable.
EJ16 Phosphor Bronze Light (.012–.053)
Why this one: A light-gauge phosphor bronze set that keeps a capoed acoustic easy to fret, in the same spirit as the simple, unshowy setup this session was built on.