"New" Dylan archival recording unearthed?

Amongst Dylan geeks, "Minnesota Party Tape" has always referred to a May 1961 session at the Mpls. apartment of one Bonnie Beecher, one of many women who fell under Bob's spell in his formative years (note how I'm not using the word "groupie"). Recent mentions of the May '61 "Party Tape" session in reference to a newly donated tape at the MN History Center are clearly in error.

The "new" tape in question appears to be very similar to this one:

http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/tapes/60-sep.html

although the published tracklisting of the "new" tape reference a few songs that haven't appeared on any previous tracklistings of this session. Clinton Heylin dates this session to September 1960 and places the location at "Hugh Brown's apartment - Minneapolis" (presumably this is the apartment in Dinkytown, about 2 miles from where I'm typing right now, referred to in recent articles). Like the May '61 "Party Tape," this 9/60 session - referred to in some circles as the "Minnesota University Tape" - is in circulation. If the "new" tape everyone is talking about is in fact from the 9/60 session, the rarity ascribed to it by pundits in recent days has been vastly overstated.

This article:

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050113/cgth041_1.html

offers this tracklisting of the "new" tape:

Blues Yodel No. 8 (aka Muleskinner Blues)
Come See Jerusalem
San Francisco Bay Blues
I'm a Gambler
Talkin' Merchant Marine
Talkin' Hugh Brown
Talkin' Lobbyist
Red Rosey Bush
Johnny I Hardly Knew You
Jesus Christ
Streets of Glory
K.C. Moan

In Heylin's reference book, he lists 9 of these songs for the 9/60 session, omitting "Come See Jerusalem," "San Francisco Bay Blues" and "Talkin' Lobbyist." His list includes "Talkin' Inflation Blues" and "Talkin' Columbia," which aren't on the above list (note: the titles of many of these Woody Guthrie "talking blues" songs are a confusing mess).

Whether this "new" tape is an upgrade - in quantity and/or quality - of the 9/60 "University" tape or something completely different remains to be heard. I'm gonna try and head over to the MN History Center next week and find out for myself. To me, it seems rather unlikely that two informal sessions from the same timeframe would be virtually identical, save for a few song titles.

One thing I can tell you, a lot of these informal Dylan sessions took place here in Mpls in 59-62, many of them recorded semi-professionally on high quality reel-to-reel recorders that seemed to be ubiquitous in folk circles back then. Some of them have leaked out over the years (one of the very first rock boots, "Great White Wonder," featured a big chunk of the Dec. 61 "Minnesota Hotel Tape") while others remain tucked away in shoeboxes and attics. When I worked with Tony Glover (old Dylan pal, local radio DJ and one of the leaders of the '60s folk/blues revival) back in the early 80s, he spoke of literally hundreds of hours of stuff from this period that was stashed away. He would be one to know; he taped a lot of it himself, including the aforementioned "Hotel Tape."