Seven of the twenty-four tracks presented here were recorded with The Band in the summer of 1967 in West Saugerties, New York, during the informal sessions that were later released in a more complete form in Dylan's 1975 album The Basement Tapes.

Released by the infant Trademark of Quality label, created by two Los Angeles-based men, Ken and Dub, Great White Wonder was compiled from multiple sources: an informal ninety-minute tape that Dylan recorded in the apartment of Bonnie Beecher in Minneapolis in December 1961, a radio broadcast in 1962, studio outtakes, the famous Basement Tapes sessions and a TV appearance.

Five radio stations—KCSB-FM in Santa Barbara, KNAC in Long Beach, KRLA in Pasadena[1] and KMET-FM and KPPC-FM in Los Angeles—immediately began playing the album.

Unconcerned with legal niceties, these LA radio stations were quite willing to fuel demand for both Great White Wonder and the spate of bootlegs that soon followed its metal-stamped heels.

"[2] Said Dub, quoted in Clinton Heylin's Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry, "Great White Wonder was just this phenomenon.

[3] The Great White Wonder sparked a fake bootleg recording that began as a gag by editors at Rolling Stone magazine.

The album, The Masked Marauders, was supposedly recorded during a jam session between Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.