RESETTING THE VALUE OF MUSIC:Bob Dylan’s First New Studio Recording of“Blowin’ In The Wind”Since 1962

On 7 July 2022, Bob Dylan’s first new studio recording of “Blowin’ in the Wind” since 1962, from a special session with multi-Grammy winning producer T Bone Burnett, on the recently announced groundbreaking Ionic Original disc, sold for £1,482,000 / $1,769,508 / €1,733,940 (estimate: £600,000-1,000,000) during The Exceptional Sale at Christie’s London, during Classic Week.

Peter Klarnet, Christie’s Senior Specialist, Americana, Books and Manuscripts: "We are so pleased with the excellent result this evening for the 'Ionic Original' disc of Bob Dylan's first new studio recording of "Blowin' in the Wind" since 1962. To work with such an incredibly important and groundbreaking advance in analogue playback technology is a tremendous honor. We are excited that this is just the beginning for this amazing new opportunity for recording artists to work with T Bone and NeoFidelity to reset the value of music."

T Bone Burnett, Founder of NeoFidelity Inc. and multi-Grammy-winning producer: “Marshall McLuhan said that a medium surrounds a previous medium and turns the previous medium into an art form, as film did with novels, as television did with film, as the internet has done with television, and as digital has done with analogue. With Bob Dylan’s new version of “Blowin’ In The Wind", our first Ionic Original archival analogue disc, we have entered and aim to help develop a music space in the fine arts market. I trust and hope it will mean as much to whomever acquired it today at Christie’s Exceptional Sale as it does to all of us who made it, and that they will consider it and care for it as a painting or any other singular work of art.”

This ‘Ionic Original’ disc is the first recording to utilise this patented technology from Burnett’s company, NeoFidelity, Inc. The auction of this unique lot – in Bob Dylan's 60th anniversary year as a recording artist – marks a first in music history: the new recording of Bob Dylan’s seminal song is a landmark moment and Burnett noted at the time the sale was first announced that the technology used to create the Ionic Original disc “advances the art of recorded sound and marks the first breakthrough in analog sound reproduction in more than 70 years, achieving dramatic improvements in listening experience and durability.”

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BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

This year marks not only the 60th anniversary of Bob Dylan as a recording artist, but of one of the most iconic and profound songs written in the last century, “Blowin' in the Wind.” Debuted on the diminutive stage of Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village in April 1962, Bob Dylan's “Blowin' in the Wind” was an instant classic, and is today woven firmly into the fabric of American culture.

Dylan first recorded the song for Columbia on 9 July 1962 for his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. He entered the studio again in 2021 to re-record the song with his friend, Joseph Henry ‘T Bone’ Burnett III, the Grammy and Oscar winning composer, musician and producer. Unlike Dylan's 1963 release which achieved platinum status, only a single copy of this new recording of “Blowin' in the Wind” will be offered on the groundbreaking new audio medium: Ionic Original.

The cultural impact of “Blowin' in the Wind” cannot be overstated. Covered by hundreds of artists since the words and music first appeared in print in May 1962, the song not only brought Bob Dylan to the world stage, it gave new voice to the burgeoning social movements of the 1960s.

T BONE BURNETT
Multiple Grammy and Oscar winner Joseph Henry ‘T Bone’ Burnett is a producer, musician and songwriter. Burnett most recently released Acoustic Space, the first full-length instalment in The Invisible Light trilogy, an experimental song cycle which explores the idea that society has been subject to a programming pandemic which is causing us to lose our ability to differentiate fact from fiction. Burnett also composed and produced the music for critically acclaimed HBO series True Detective, and his film work includes the five-time Grammy winning soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski, Cold Mountain, The Hunger Games, Crazy Heart and Walk The Line, among others. He has collaborated with numerous artists including Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello and Roy Orbison, and won Album of the Year and Record of the Year Grammy Awards for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand.