The Times They Are a-Changin'

Dylan began work on 6 August 1963 at Columbia Studio A, with Tom Wilson producing the whole album. Eight songs were cut that day, but only North Country Blues was kept as a master. The next day produced masters for Ballad of Hollis Brown, With God on Our Side, Only a Pawn in Their Game and Boots of Spanish Leather. A session on 12 August yielded nothing for the album. After more than two months he returned on 23 October for The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and When the Ship Comes In, then cut The Times They Are a-Changin' and One Too Many Mornings on 24 October. The last session, on 31 October, was given to Restless Farewell alone, whose melody comes from the Irish-Scots folk song The Parting Glass.

It was the first Dylan album made only of original songs, mostly stark, sparsely arranged ballads about racism, poverty and social change. In 1985 Dylan told Cameron Crowe the title song was written with a purpose and drew on Irish and Scottish ballads. In 1964 he said it had nothing to do with age. With God on Our Side first appeared at New York's Town Hall on 12 April 1963, and its melody resembles The Patriot Game, whose lyricist Dominic Behan called Dylan a plagiarist. North Country Blues was the first time he wrote a narrative from a woman's point of view, and Only a Pawn in Their Game refers to the murder of Medgar Evers.

It reached 20 in the US and went gold, and in 1965 it reached four in the UK. Outtakes appeared later: Paths of Victory, Moonshine Blues and Only a Hobo on Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3 in 1991, and Percy's Song and Lay Down Your Weary Tune on Biograph in 1985.