They were either married or soon to be married when they recorded this early Dylan classic, which at least for many years was never released by the man himself (possibly it’s on one of the many volumes of old unreleased material that have been issued in recent years). This particular recording was very dear to my teenaged heart.
A couple of years ago I did a tribute to them, which has more information and another song or two.
I was surprised by the comment that this is only available in Dylan’s version on bootlegs, or recent official bootlegs, because I can hear it in my memory with Dylan singing, and I have only got one ancient, antiquated bootleg, none of the recent official stuff. I can hear the ‘Dylan’ version so clearly in memory that the emphases in this version sound wrong. I looked on Wiki, and it seems it is on a 1971 Bob Dylan Greatest Hits. It must be from that that I know his version.
That’s funny–and I, the one-time Dylan fanatic, have never heard it. The fact that it was on a 1971 Greatest Hits explains it: I would have assumed I had everything on it. Looking at the track list, I see several others that I had heard only on the famous Great White Wonder bootleg.
Perhaps you consciously or unconsciously disdained the greatest hits album, and so didn’t notice its exisence. The reasons for such disdain amongst aficionados are not only snobbish ones – the order is never quite right, or what used to be called ‘album continuity.’ I think my brother and I had that Greatest Hits album when we were very young, about the time it came out, almost, and before we could afford such high mindedness.
I just looked at the picture of the album cover, and I can remember it. It must be from the Concert for Bangladesh, or from a concert of the same period, wearing the same jacket.
Maybe not as strong as “disdain,” but I definitely wouldn’t have paid much if any attention. “Oh, I already have all that stuff.” Also, after two bad and one just-okay albums (Nashville Skyline, Self-Portrait, and New Morning), I wasn’t hanging on Dylan’s every word anymore.
If one started later, ie, around 1970, the direct feeling of falling off is much less. IE, if one didn’t buy the early records at the time they came out, but in a non-chronological bunch from the early 1970s on, one knew the earlier stuff was better, but the sense of decline is much less sharp, because one doesn’t so directly associate the records with their time of release, and one also could still very much have the hope that a new good one was on their way. (It was, of course, Blood on the Tracks, perhaps in a way Dylan’s best album?).
To illustrate this about time periods: I was once in a cab from Luton to Stanstead (we both missed a crucial airport bus) with a young jazz musician and said I’d seen Dr. Feelgood at the Marquee. He asked me if I’d seen the Rolling Stones at the Marquee. To him, the early 1970s and the mid 1960s were one, close together, continuum; to me, I’d have to be at least ten years older to have seen the Stones play a small club.
We once asked our father if he remembered Mussolini, and he said, ‘no, and I don’t remember Garibaldi either’. Unfair comment, in a way, since he treated us nightly to his memories of the Blitz! But it’s true that, to one who didn’t live through a period of the past, it ‘squashes together’.
Having said that, even we knew then, in 1971, that New Morning and Self-Portait were dreadful. I have always had a deep softspot for Nashville Skyline.
Um, sorry, but New Morning is the just-okay one of that group. 🙂 Nashville Skyline always sounded to me like it should have been tongue-in-cheek but wasn’t. I can sort of see how one might like it but it left me completely cold.
That’s true about time periods, and part of what makes them significant is the age one was. Just five years or so makes a big difference–hearing the Beatles for the first time at 10 years old vs. 15, for instance. Your view of Blood on the Tracks is probably an example: I know a lot of people consider that the best or at least close-to-best Dylan album, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was at least 16 or so when the big 3 (Bringing It All Back Home, Hwy 61, Blonde on Blonde) came out express that view. For me it’s only a better-than-average post-’60s Dylan album. That probably has less to do with any somewhat-objective artistic criteria than one’s age and experience at the time one heard it.
The Beatles are very different for me, because my mother and the shopgirls played them all the time in my mother’s shop in Greenwich village. I have a strong sense of their development tied to the appearance of the LPs. Dates don’t come into it – I can’t remember whether I was 8 or 9 when, on my birthday, the shopgirls played, ‘they say it’s your birthday.’
I was thinking of the difference in effect–the way adolescent experiences can imprint themselves on one, especially experiences of the arts–one is just becoming conscious of such things, or conscious of being conscious of them. If you were already accustomed to the sound of the Beatles as a child, hearing them as a teenager wouldn’t have the same effect as hearing them for the first time then.
Light On Dark Water 
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