At 7/17/2006 10:17 AM, phillip holmes wrote: >Dylan was found by John Hammond.The same guy who had previously >discovered Benny Goodman, Bessie Smith,Count Basie,Billie >Holiday,and Pete Seeger,amoung others.Columbia Records pretty much >respected his judgement,by 1961,and pretty much gave him carte >blanche to sign whoever he wanted. Dylan was never "lost." He was very visible within the growing Greenwich Village folk music scene. If John Hammond hadn't signed him for Columbia, some other New York label -- probably Jac Holzman's Elektra or Maynard Solomon's Vanguard -- would have signed him at about the same time. Those early records wouldn't have been the same with somebody else producing them, but that's a different issue. John Ross