Forty-five years ago on this date in Rock and Roll History, Bob Dylan released one of the best albums ever recorded, “Highway 61 Revisited.”

On Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, this Desert Island Disc came in at #4, but it could just as easily have been #1. To me, this one solidified Dylan’s status as an unparalleled lyricist, as he painted vivid pictures with a slew of disturbing and chilling songs brimming with literary references.

The track list reads like a greatest hits, with “”Like a Rolling Stone,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Desolation Row,” “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “Queen Jane Approximately. The rest of the tunes are less heralded, but certainly no less appreciated by Dylan afficionados. “Tombstone Blues,” “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry,” “From a Buick 6″ and a brilliant title track make this one of the most listened to discs in my collection.

I used to live a few blocks from Hwy 61 in Iowa, and this cassette was a staple of my roadtrips up and down the Mississippi. “Like a Rolling Stone” is a freakin’ anthem, “Tom Thumb” is my favorite Phil Lesh cover and Dylan was playing “Desolation Row” last summer when I took my tumble and tore up my ankle at Summerfest.

This was the first record where Dylan electrified every track, save for the acoustic closer of “Desolation Row.” In retrospect, it’s hilarious that the folkies were up in arms when Dylan went electric earlier that year.

An interesting side note is that Dylan also recorded “Positively 4th Street” during the sessions for “Hwy 61,” but it was released only as a single until it appeared on “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits” a couple years later.

Although I was a small child when it was released, I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know this album inside-out.

Thanks Bob. It has brought me phenomenal joy through the years.