FROM WIKIPEDIA:
In the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan was at the peak of his creativity, having officially broken into the mainstream with his popular and acclaimed albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. In the latter half of 1965, during the interim between those two albums, Dylan began touring with The Hawks (later known as The Band). Their live collaboration would continue into the first half of 1966, culminating in a legendary 'world' tour documented in The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966.
On July 29th 1966, Dylan suffered a mild concussion and cracked vertebrae when he crashed his Triumph 650 Bonneville motorcycle near Woodstock, New York. He was taken to a local hospital where he phoned the members of the Hawks, informing them of his injuries. Dylan and the Hawks were scheduled to perform at several concerts later in the year, but with Dylan's current condition, those concerts had to be cancelled.
Some sources close to Dylan have said that the accident wasn't as serious as originally reported, and that Dylan was actually in rehab to get over a speed habit.
A little more than a week later, Dylan was back in Woodstock, wearing a neck brace and recuperating at a local doctor's house. While he was recovering, Dylan reviewed a preliminary cut of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary of the 1966 world tour.
According to the late Rick Danko, the Hawks joined Robbie Robertson at their house in West Saugerties in February of 1967. Nicknamed "Big Pink," the house originally belonged to "Rick [Danko], Richard [Manuel] and Garth [Hudson].
"We used to get together everyday at one o' clock in the basement of Big Pink, and it was just a routine. We would get there and to keep [every] one of us from going crazy, we would play music every day ... There was no particular reason for it. We weren't making a record. We were just fooling around. The purpose was whatever comes into anybody's mind, we'll put it down on this little tape recorder." That tape recorder was actually an old Uher that was used on their legendary 'world' tour in 1966. Equipped with a couple of Altec PA tube mixers and allowing up to three microphones to be input per channel, with four or five studio-quality Neumann microphones, the machine was operated by the Hawks' Garth Hudson during the recording sessions. Dylan would later say in 1969, "that's really the way to do a recording — in a peaceful, relaxed setting, in somebody's basement, with the windows open and a dog lying on the floor."
Eventually, rumors of Dylan and The Band's enormous stash of unreleased recordings began to circulate. Rolling Stone Magazine even ran a cover story in June of 1968, claiming that "there is enough material ... to make an entirely new Bob Dylan record, a record with a distinct style of its own ... These tapes could easily be remastered and made into a record. The concept of a cohesive record is already present."
These demo acetates became the source material for a number of bootlegs, the first of which was titled Great White Wonder.
Columbia officially released a 24-song, double-album titled The Basement Tapes
on 6/26/75.
