RAY PADGETT’S FLAGGING DOWN THE DOUBLE Es 
young young young . . .
"A curiously arresting mumbling"
'Earliest Concert Tapes' #2: Bob Dylan at Riverside Church, July 1961
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As the story goes, New York Times music critic Robert Shelton made Dylan famous—or, at least, got him a record deal—with a rave review on September 29, 1961. In A Complete Unknown, Albert Grossman reads that review to Dylan in an elevator on the way to his Columbia audition. It’s a core piece of the Bob Dylan origin story.
So imagine my surprise to learn that review was not the first time Shelton praised Dylan in the New York Times.
That actually occurred two months prior, in a writeup about a new FM-radio station, WRVR, airing a live 12-hour concert of folk music from, mostly, Riverside Church on the Upper West Side. As part of his report about the concert, Shelton wrote, “Among the newer promising talents deserving mention are a 20-year-old latter-day Guthrie disciple named Bob Dylan, with a curiously arresting mumbling, country-steeped manner.”
Okay, it’s just one sentence. Less, technically, since it ends with a semicolon. A single part-sentence was not enough to fast-track Dylan’s career, but still, that’s two months before the famous rave that starts him down the path to stardom.
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