The ninth edition of Bob Dylan’s fabulous Bootleg Series will be released next week, and is currently streaming for free over at NPR.   The latest entry features almost fifty songs from an early twenties Bob Dylan recorded for the M. Witmark & Sons publishing company between 1962 and 1964.  The purpose of these sessions was to record demos that the Witmark Company would later sell to other artists to record their own versions of.  Many of these songs would later be recorded by other artists, and of course Dylan himself.

These sessions come after his  first album, which featured mostly covers of folk standards and showcases the emergence of Bob Dylan the songwriter.  The collection features early versions of some of his most famous material “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”, “Blowin In The Wind”, “Girl From The North Country”, and a piano version of  “Mr. Tambourine Man”.   Just as with most of Dylan’s material, the better known tracks are just the icing on the cake here, as the beauty of the collection lies in the deeper cuts.

Check out a selection of 25 of these tracks over at NPR right now, they will be streaming until the album’s release on October 19th.