Neil Young talks a lot about how important it was to capture early takes. The newness of the music seems to give it a different character. A lot of his recordings have a fair amount of mistakes. Young calls it "rust". Tonight's the Night is a good example of this.
Miles Davis also had the philosophy that first takes produced the most ingenuity in improvisation.
Off topic but thank you for informing me that Greg Graffin made a folk album. Had no idea even though it's apparently not new at all. Just goes to show that for all the access I have to music these days it's still easy to miss something due to just not hearing about it.