The Dylan Tapes:
Friends, Players and Lovers Talkin’ Early Bob Dylan

Back in the late 1960’s Tony Scaduto was the pop music expert at the New York Post. A book editor for a major Book publisher suggested he write a biography of the albino blues singer Edgar Winter. Tony said the only subject he would consider was Bob Dylan. In 1971 Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography by Anthony Scaduto was published. Tony approached his subject as the thorough investigative journalist he was, and it was the first time a pop music figure had been treated in such a way.

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Fast forward to 2016. Tony came across a box of reel-to-reel tapes, his Bob Dylan book interview tapes, in the basement of our Brooklyn home. They were the archival, raw material that were the basis of his Dylan biography. These were Tony Scaduto’s “Basement Tapes.” Tony died in 2017 before he could publish the tapes in book form. I was performing the cabaret show I created, Becoming Chavela, but as Tony’s former research assistant and wife of almost 40 years, I took on the “project.”

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The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players and Lovers Talkin’ Early Bob Dylan was published in April 2022. It’s the voices of Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk and even Bob Dylan telling their stories about Bob Dylan. The Dylan Tapes is available in independent bookstores and on Amazon.