Bob Dylan "Daddy Rolling Stone" rec.1961-1969 (bootleg 1970)****

I got this 1969 or 1970 Bob Dylan bootleg from a record shop in Leiden. It's a great copy with very few hairline marks, and includes the original artwork by Dutch cartoonist and illustrator Peter Pontiac and original lyric booklet. All housed in an unmarked white sleeve, as can be expected for an illegally marketed product (even now, it's banned from sale in discogs). It's a collector's item, even though the contents are not the valuable rarities they once were: Dylan has recently been making his legendary archive of unreleased recordings available at an incredible rate: his official Bootleg Series is reaching now number 14, not mentioning unnumbered releases like Live At The Gaslight 1962 and various other copyright-free demos and live recordings from 1961-1962, all now available in superior quality. No, I bought it thinking about what it represented at the time of its release. Remember, Dylan retired from the public eye after his motorcycle accident in 1966. Up to then, people were looking forward to his next record as if he was a prophet pointing the way. When the psychedelic revolution came, instead of leading, he disappeared into a cabin with The Hawks (later renamed The Band) to make a bunch of recordings he initially left on the shelf, while the two albums he released in 1967 (John Wesley Harding) and 1969 (Nashville Skyline) were acoustic folk and country in stark contrast to what he had been doing before his accident and what his fans expected (and wanted) to hear. Which is when, in July 1969, rock's very first bootleg album appeared. It became known as the Great White Wonder because it was released in an unmarked white sleeve. Later editions came stamped with the title but still no artist name on. About half of it consisted of acoustic demos and solo recordings made in a Minnesota hotel room in December 1961. But what really blew people's minds were the new songs he had recorded with The Band at the Woodstock cabin in '67, and which were arguably superior to his recent LP's. Immediately other artists fell on this songwriting treasure trove: The Byrds, Jullie Driscoll, Joan Baez, Manfred Mann, and -of course- his co-conspirators The Band recorded their own hit versions many years before Dylan's own emerged (as The Basement Tapes, in 1975). GWW was quickly followed by other Dylan bootlegs, including Stealin', John Birch Society Blues and Isle of Wight Live. Drawing from all of these sources and released almost simultaneously, albeit in The Netherlands only, Daddy Rolling Stone must have been Europe's first introduction not only to these songs, but to music bootlegs in general.

LP1 contains Dylan solo acoustic demos and live recordings, while LP2 features The Band. No information is given other than the titles, but by comparing with what has been released elsewhere one can make an educated guess about the origin of these recordings. For example "Rocks & Gravel" (heavily borrowed from bluesman Mance Lipscomb) and "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" are known to have been recorded during the Freewheelin' sessions (1962) but left out of the album at the last moment. The former has officialy resurfaced in the True Detective series soundtrack, and the latter in Dylan's Bootleg Series Volumes 1 - 3, as has the talking blues "John Birch Society Blues", recorded live at Carnegie Hall at 1963 - provided of course it's the same version. A lot of the other acoustic tunes on LP1 come from the heavily bootlegged Minneapolis Party Tape, recorded in 1961 at the apartment of his activist/actress friend, Bonnie Beecher. These include the traditional "Wade in the Water" and "Stealin'", Brownie Mc Ghee's "In The Evening", Woody Guthrie's "Ramblin' 'Round", and the wonderful "I Was Young When I Left Home" (later included in The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack). Revd. Gary Davies' "Cocaine", Lord Buckley's "Black Cross" and the talking blues "Hezekiah Jones" were probably recorded at The Gaslight café in 1962 (the whole concert was officially released in 2005, initially only available to buy at... Starbucks). Two songs ("Cocaine","New Orleans Rag") are cut short, signifying that they have been lifted off another bootleg, Stealin', where they were also edited. Unlike the stark solo performances on disc 1, the songs on disc 2 are very familiar: recorded with the help of The Band at that Woodstock cabin, they include some of Dylan's best known songs, then appearing for the first time. 

The lyric booklet

The poetry is as excellent as ever, while the music draws from all kinds of American tradition: folk, blues, soul, country and rock. The performances here may not be as fleshed out as the ones appearing in the official release but they still sound full, with The Band all playing with gusto and singing together with Dylan. His great song of hope and redemption "I Shall Be Released", sung from a prisoner's perspective, has a gospel feel. "Open The Door Homer" is warm folk rock, "Tears Of Rage" a soulful ballad, and "Please Mrs. Henry" a drunken bawdy tune. "Nothing Was Delivered" sports some bluesy piano and guitar, while the mystical "This Wheel's on Fire" is dominated by Garth Hudson's churchy organ. All of the songs have a singalong campfire quality to them, which is even more evident in the more country-ish "You Ain't Going Nowhere" and "Too Much of Nothing". The sound quality is generally below par, but otherwise the versions here do not depart too much from the ones officially released later. Three songs probably come from Dylan and The Band's live appearence in the Isle Of Wight festival in '69: the traditional ballads "Wild Mountain Thyme" and "Minstrel Boy", and a band version of Dylan's "To Ramona", originally a solo number from his '64 album Another Side Of Bob Dylan. Such was the quality of these unreleased songs that they were immediately snatched by other artists who had hits with them, but the importance of them appearing out of nowhere in an unmarked sleeve to be sold under the counter in '69 is easy to forget now that they've been available in better form for decades. As a testament to that age, bootlegs like this and Great White Wonder remain valuable and worth spending the extra penny to add in one's collection.

***** for I Shall Be Released
**** for Let Me Die in My Footsteps, I Was Young When I Left Home, Tears of Rage, Please Mrs. Henry, Open the Door Homer, Nothing Was Delivered, This Wheel's on Fire, You Ain't Going Nowhere, Wild Mountain Thyme, Minstrel Boy
*** for Rocks & Gravel, John Birch Society Blues, Stealin', Wade in the Water, In the Evening, Cocaine, Ramblin' 'Round, Black Cross, To Ramona
** for Hezekiah Jones, New Orleans Rag