Morning becomes eclectic

How did a limited-edition, copyright-confounding, Europe-only reissue series become the must-have item in the Bob Dylan back catalogue? Andrew Male has the answers.

“These outtakes have a charm – Dylan sounds content, playful, happy.”

1970: The 50th Anniversary Collection COLUMBIA/LEGACY. CD/DL

WAY BACK in March of 1991, Columbia Records released The Bootleg Series Volumes

1-3 box set. Thirty years into his career, and buoyed by the critical and commercial success of 1989’s Oh Mercy, Bob Dylan finally allowed fans to glimpse behind the curtain, and gave them “Official” access to demos, offcuts, and live recordings that had previously only been available, if at all, as unofficial, under-the-counter product.

From 1969’s Great White Wonder on, the trade in bootlegs became an accepted aspect of Bobology, and both Dylan and his record label undeniably benefited from their outlaw cultural cachet. Plus, it cemented a belief in the heart of true Dylan fans that, whatever sub-par material he might release, from Saved to Down In The Groove, there was a parallel world where the good shit was getting shelved. And the Bootleg Series seemed to confirm that. Of course, there was a seven-year gap between those first three volumes and Bob Dylan

Live 1966, The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert, but here was that hidden path in clear view, adding historical depth to Dylan’s career, and allowing his fans to feel like archivists poring over lost manuscripts. However, a number of things have shifted in the 22 years since

Live 1966. The audience still buying beautifully packaged and curated CD box sets has diminished and grown older. They also know their stuff, and view releases such as 2010’s Whitmark Demos and 2019’s Travelin’ Thru, 1967-1969 as recordings long in bootleg circulation and, as with the Johnny Cash duets, fun but inessential.

Simultaneously, something with fewer frills was unfolding. Since 2012, Sony Europe had been quietly releasing copyright extension collections of previously unreleased Dylan recordings, to keep the recordings out of public domain for a further 20 years. The print run of the first – unheard recordings from 1962 – was limited to 100 copies, pressed on CD-R. Demand among collectors grew. Sony began pressing on vinyl, print runs increased to 1,000. Then, in 2016, Columbia released the 1966 Live Recordings, a 36-CD box set featuring every known recording from that world tour, plus audience tapes. This was no carefully curated addition to the series, but the equivalent of a massive data-dump. You became the curator. This, evidently, was something fans wanted, total Dylan access with no worry that a lost masterpiece, perfect fragment or minor sketch had been missed.

On December 4, 2020, Sony released their first version of this collection, again in limited quantities. Maybe there would have been a time when three-and-a-half hours of unreleased music from the New Morning and

Self Portrait sessions, tracks not already on Bootleg Series Vol 10: Another Self Portrait,

wouldn’t have caused such a fan furore.

After all, the best had already been chosen for us. Right? However, the positive reception Another Self

Portrait received, plus the promise of the complete May 1, 1970 studio recordings with George Harrison, has led us here.

The look is still bare bones, the CD digipack still (relatively) limited release and it won’t be available for streaming, but what do we have? As MOJO’s Michael Simmons outlines in his linernotes, the first songs Dylan recorded were Tom Paxton’s I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound, Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Universal Soldier and Eric Andersen’s Thirsty Boots. Familiar, comfortable stuff.

What’s interesting is that you get to hear Bob in transition, a Doctor Who-style regeneration. Initially still reliant on his “old fashioned” folk voice, he also revisits the Webb Pierce-with-a-head-cold tones of

Nashville Skyline before trying out variants of the nasal New Morning style across his own songwriting past. These delight, especially the versions with Harrison.

Recorded at New York’s Columbia Studios B on May 1, 1970, and starting with a murmured ripple through Ghost Riders In The Sky, the Harrison session moves from lazy jams (One Too Many Mornings; Gates Of Eden; Mama, You Been On My Mind) to playful covers (All I Have To Do Is Dream; Matchbox). Their take on The Beatles’ Yesterday, unfortunately, is closer to

Self Portrait’s rendition of Paul Simon’s The Boxer, Dylan vocalising somewhere between politeness and parody, and Harrison feeling he should play along. Such strangeness is forgotten on a country ramble through Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, a lazily laid-back retread of 1962’s Song To Woody, a joyful One Too Many Mornings and an It Ain’t Me Babe that turns the original’s snide plead into a free-and-easy clarification, like some older Dylan, in Woodstock and backed by a Beatle, turning away fans looking for answers.

That’s something else time and context have changed. These outtakes now have a charm that would have been harder to read in 1970 because Dylan sounds content, playful, happy. That wasn’t wanted as the ’60s dream collapsed: Give us some answers, Bob! OK, here’re three different versions of Jimmy Newman’s Alligator Man! You’d better dance! The mood is light but tight, with Dylan playing at his absolute best alongside Harrison, Al Kooper, fiddle player Dave Bromberg, guitarist Ron Cornelius, drummer Russ Kunkel, Charlie Daniels on bass. As Kooper tells Simmons, “Bob’s piano playing was exquisite. It was four-fingered, he didn’t use his pinky. Great dexterity for an eight-fingered pianist.”

Listen to his soft-padded playing on take one of New Morning’s

Sign On The Window. One of this collection’s absolute highlights, it’s both heavenly and strange, sure-footed and mysterious, a Zen koan buried inside a peaceable country dream of future contentment. The test of the true fan is whether you’ll then want to listen to seven further takes of the same exquisite song. If your answer is a loud ‘YES!’, you have come to the right place.

There is a strong argument for the fact that New Morning was Dylan’s first religious LP, the singer embracing a kind of Buddhist simplicity on tracks like Three Angels and Sign On The Window. Listen to the alternate version of Three Angels here with Kooper’s organ playing in a mellower key, and Dylan just listing things he sees in front of him: “One U-Haul trailer/A truck with no wheels/ A man with a badge”, and the world feels like a better place.

In their own separate ways, Self Portrait and New Morning seemed inexplicable 50 years ago, an artist associated with ideas of youth and protest settling into a cosy early middle-age, content to watch the world drift by, and pass out good vibes. It wasn’t what was wanted of Dylan then. Thankfully, it’s what we can get from Dylan now.