Bob Dylan LP: New Morning (Song-by-Song + Rarities & Live Apperances, 1970-71)

If It Ain't Me Babe is gone, maybe George took it!

Or maybe they were going to use it for a single with the mysterious NM take of Blowin' In The Wind.

 

whatever the reason, it makes me think that it must have been a good take.

 

Maybe. Or perhaps it was part of an early New Morning sequence that hasn't been made public?

 

Dylan + Cash 1969 sessions
Dylan + Harrison 1970 sessions
Dylan + Bromberg 1992 sessions

Release 'em all in their entirety, please, Mr. D.

 

I guess I approached the set from a completist mentality. Why would I want a few songs from this and few songs from that when I wanted to have it ALL? And when you already have 95% of what's on a very expensive 3 CD set (and you MUST have that new material - we're talking the demo for "Caribbean Wind" here!), you start thinking "greed!" I've since "taken the cure" (and just went the Internet made it so much easier and cheaper to keep up, oh well).

 

You're talking "Copyright Extension Collection" material in the not so distant future (at least the first two - barring the missing material).

 

It's plum ridiculous that the Dylan/Cash and Dylan/Harrison tapes haven't been released yet, they've been bouncing around for so long. Much of it is sloppy, loose jam stuff, but so were the Basement Tapes.

Maybe the Cash tracks could be included in a Nashville Skyline Revisited box, as part of the Bootleg Series (and we might get to hear Wanted Man and Mystery Train). The Harrison sessions might be more tricky to put out, for legal reasons, since Apple/EMI or whoever might demand a king's ransom in royalties.

But the copyright angle, in connection with the uncertain future of physical media, might convince the vaultkeepers to put it all out in one form or another. Maybe they could start with the "complete" Basement Tapes, making them all available as downloads. Like much of the historical and archival material being issued, it would be like free money for the record companies.

Ever since the 1970s or '80s, when I bought that copy of Bob Dylan: His Unreleased Recordings, a book by Paul Cable, I've been searching for a lot of this stuff, and seeing a lot of bootleggers make a lot of free money. I'd feel better about the situation if it was all on the level -- like the man said: "Why must I always be the thief?"

 

The MFSL New Morning sounds good, perhaps the best it's going to sound. Not a particularly well recorded or mixed album though, in my opinion.

 

But there's sloppy, loose jam stuff and then there's 'inspired' sloppy loose jam. From what I've heard of the Dylan/Cash and Dylan/Harrison sessions, these don't rise nearly to the level of importance and achievement of the Basement Tapes - and I personally don't miss the fact that they're mostly not 'officially' available.

As for any possible 'complete' official Basement release, there's a lot of practical reasons why this may prove to be a difficult and challenging endeavor for Sony/Columbia. But I'll be getting to all that shortly as I wrap up the Basement Tapes thread...

 

Oh, I agree that the material isn't up to snuff for the most part, but my point was: Since most of it's out there already, why not clean it up, remix it and sell it? It's 45 years old now. It's not going to damage anyone's reputation at this point in time. And in the case of the Basement Tapes, an organized release/reissue would bring newer listeners into the fold, I'm certain.

EDIT: And we're tuning in for every last word of your Basement thread. Great stuff over there.

 

Well, you could say that about many of his best albums, which weren't made with audio fidelity as a top priority. It's really the heart and soul in the music that counts, isn't it?

 

Sure, of course that what counts. The mix of this album sounds muddy to me in a way that Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited or Blood on the Tracks don't, though. But that's just one man's opinion.

 

"Muddy" is a word that's often used in connection with the sound of this record, and in many ways it is, starting with Bob's vocals, which someone here described as sounding "congested." But we must overlook a lot of the technical deficiencies when we listen to Dylan albums.

 

its not muddy at all ( the original lp/cd), its a new york album.

 

I was familiar with this guy's version of this title track, but look at the rest of the songs on this LP -- was this record on the phonograph at the Dylan household?

PERNELL ROBERTS (actor on Bonanza / Ponderosa TV show)



Album: Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies
Label:
Release Date: January 01, 1963
Tracklist:

• The Bold Soldier
• Mary Ann
• They Call the Wind Maria
• Sylvie
• Lily of the West
• The Water Is Wide
• Rake and a Ramblin' Boy
• A Quiet Girl
• Shady Grove
• Alberta
• Empty Pocket Blues
• Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies

 

Hmmm. That's quite a find, and an amazing overlap with Dylan's 1970 repertoire. But Pernell Roberts???? Seems like the kind of guy that Dylan would throw out as a poser. And it's not like most of the songs are rare and weren't covered by dozens of people. I don't know.

 

Well remember, Bob did take his alias from Marshall Dillon. <s>

 

I thought we might take a look at the New Morning-era tracks on the Dylan album (not released until November 1973). These were all recorded before the bulk of the tracks that made up the original LP, and as Dylan later maintained, he "thought that it was well understood" that they weren't supposed to be released, because they were only warm-ups or studio jams.

BALLAD OF IRA HAYES ...................................................06/01/70
SARA JANE............................................................................06/01/70
MARY ANNE...........................................................................06/02/70
MR. BOJANGLES.................................................................06/02/70
CAN'T HELP FALLING IN LOVE......................................06/03/70
LILY OF THE WEST.............................................................06/03/70
BIG YELLOW TAXI..............................................................06/04/70

These recordings are all ingrained in my brain after hearing them for four decades, and apart from that grating harpsichord overdub on Lily of the West, it's difficult for me to be objective and find fault with them. I would be curious to hear what some of the newcomers to the Dylan canon think about these cover versions. (I've not yet heard the remastered version of this album, released last year, but if anyone else has, please tell us what you think.)

 

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Bob was lying. "Working on a Guru" is a jam and "Telephone Wire" is a warm-up. These are serious attempts at recording these songs. He must have had the lyrics - surely he wouldn't have remembered the lyrics to any of these songs as completely as he does, nor would I believe him capable of the spontaneous gender re-write of "Big Yellow Taxi" (and why bother to switch the gender if it's a warm-up that you have no intention to release?)

 

I agree with you completely. Some of them were recorded more than once, at different sessions. Perhaps he was hedging his bets, and wasn't sure he could finish enough original songs before the album was "due," so he recorded all the covers and remakes of his older songs, sometimes doing multiple takes.

 

if i were to sing big yellow taxi i would change the gender automatically, it wouldnt matter to me if i was recording it or not, it would make internal sense.

 

That some these "Dylan" songs were originally part of the New Morning running order is further evidence they were serious takes at the time.

I think he ended up dropping them and distancing himself from them because of the reaction to Self Portrait.

 

I think he dropped them because he came through with more originals on June 5th -- If Dogs Run Free, Winterlude, The Man In Me (in only 2 takes!) and Father of Night. as well as Day of the Locust later that summer. (This just occurred to me.)

 

Quite possibly - that 5 June session is remarkable - but aren't a few of the unused running orders attributed to after the June sessions when Al Kooper seems to have taken over production?

Either way, Dylan's claim that these weren't real takes isn't very credible.