Van Morrison - Down by the Riverside - Non-Album Tracks (1973)

I have all sorts of interesting alternate Van Morrison albums to post here. I'll start with one of the more interesting ones, because I'll bet you didn't know that he planned to record an album of other people's country songs in the early 1970s.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it, in the entry about the 1971 "Tupelo Honey" album:

"Prior to the "Tupelo Honey" recording sessions, Morrison had recorded demo tracks in Woodstock for an upcoming country and western album. Some of the tracks planned for "Tupelo Honey" did appear on the album, but other more traditional country songs like "The Wild Side of Life," "Crying Time," and "Banks of the Ohio" were abandoned."

Reading this intrigued me.  I did a little more research and found out he toyed with doing an all-covers country album from around 1971 to 1973. Unfortunately, only three studio takes of such songs have made it to the public (one as a bonus track for "Tupelo Honey" and two on bootlegs). However, from 1971 to 1973 he covered a fair number of country songs in concert. So I've taken the best recordings I could find and edited out the crowd noise as best I could. 

Undoubtedly one could do much better with whatever may be hiding in Morrison's private archives. For instance, I couldn't find any versions of two of the songs mentioned above ("Crying Time" and "Banks of the Ohio.") But for the most part, the sound and performances are pretty good. Luckily, the songs I found total 39 minutes in length, which is an ideal album length for that era.

All of the songs here come from 1971 or 1973, and all of them are covers. I figure his country album could have come out in 1973. There are lots of bootlegs of his 1974 concerts, but his covers of country songs essentially stopped down that year.

Note that some of the songs here don't sound that much like country. For instance, "Dead or Alive" sounds a lot more like the upbeat soul music Morrison was known for at the time. But these songs all have country origins. For instance, "Dead or Alive" was written by Woody Guthrie in the 1940s.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 Down by the Riverside (Van Morrison)
02 Let It Be Me (Van Morrison)
03 Jambalaya [On the Bayou] (Van Morrison)
04 The Wild Side of Life (Van Morrison)
05 Tennessee Waltz (Van Morrison)
06 More and More (Van Morrison)
07 Hey, Good Lookin' (Van Morrison)
08 Dead or Alive (Van Morrison)
09 [There'll Be Bluebirds Over] The White Cliffs of Dover (Van Morrison)
10 Goodnight Irene (Van Morrison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15257262/VanMrsn_1973_DwnbyRiversde_atse.zip.html

For the cover, I used a photo of him with his girlfriend and dog, which was taken from the photo shoot that resulted in the cover for his 1974 album "Veedon Fleece."