Bob Dylan - Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid - Alternate Version (1973)

The flood of Bob Dylan albums continues. We're starting to move a little deeper into the 1970s.

After the 1970 album "New Morning," Dylan wouldn't release another proper studio album until 1974's "Planet Waves." But in 1973, he had a prominent acting role in the movie "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," and he released a soundtrack for it containing all original songs. This wasn't considered a proper Dylan album though, because a majority of the songs were instrumentals, and of course Dylan is most famous for his lyrics. It did contain the hit "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." But it seems most fans got the hit and ignored the rest of the album.

I've tried to spice up the album some by adding five more vocal tracks and removing one instrumental track. This changes the nature of the album to something closer to a typical Dylan album with lots of singing and lyrics, though it still has a large instrumental element. 

One of the added songs was not part of the movie project. In 1973, Dylan helped Doug Sahm with the album "Doug Sahm and Band." He mostly had a background role, playing guitar and harmonica on some songs. But the cover song "Blues Stay Away with Me" is a duet between Dylan and Sahm. Its musical vibe fits right in with the other songs on this soundtrack, and it's also from 1973, so I added it.

The other four songs with vocals are actually unreleased outtakes from the "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" recording sessions. This is surprising to me, because they're generally better than the songs that were included on the soundtrack. These songs are: "Rock Me Mama (Wagon Wheel)," "Sweet Amarillo," "Goodbye Holly," and "Tom Turkey."

The biggest surprise is "Rock Me Mama (Wagon Wheel)." This is a rough sketch of a song with Dylan just singing sounds instead of actual words during the verse parts, because he hadn't written the words. Apparently it was left off the soundtrack because he never finished it. However, it was finished off by the Old Crow Medicine Show, with Dylan getting half of the songwriting credit. It was released by that group in 2004, and has improbably gone on to sell millions and become a folk music standard. Apparently, it's the only Dylan original to hit number one on the US (country) charts. It's covered so much to the point of being overplayed that some country music clubs actually put up "No Wagon Wheel Zone" signs. No bad for a song where the original is still an unreleased outtake!

Note that a problem with Dylan's version of  "Rock Me Mama (Wagon Wheel)" is that he quietly sung through parts of it. But I used the sound editing program Spleeter to boost his vocals on those parts. The song also broke down in the middle and then resumed. I edited that too, creating one continuous version. 

Furthermore, the song "Sweet Amarillo" began in the middle of a vocal chorus. Clearly, someone didn't turn the recorder on in time, or the bootlegger didn't get a full version of it. So I patched in a section from later in the song to fill in the rest of the chorus.

The one instrumental I removed is "Cantina Theme (Workin' for the Law)." It's pretty much just the same chord changes over and over without soloing or much variation. So I felt the album is stronger without it.

This still isn't a lost masterpiece on the part with "Blood on the Tracks." But if you've overlooked this album due to its marginal reputation, you should give it a listen. Not only does it have a bunch of nice Dylan originals with his voice and lyrics, but even his instrumentals are pretty good, and the whole thing has a nice mellow vibe to it.

01 Main Title Theme [Billy] [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)
02 Rock Me Mama [Wagon Wheel] [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
03 Billy 1 (Bob Dylan)
04 Bunkhouse Theme [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)
05 Billy 4 (Bob Dylan)
06 Sweet Amarillo [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
07 River Theme [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)
08 Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)
09 Billy 7 (Bob Dylan)
10 Blues Stay Away from Me (Doug Sahm & Bob Dylan)
11 Turkey Chase [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)
12 Goodbye Holly (Bob Dylan)
13 Tom Turkey (Bob Dylan)
14 Final Theme [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109350/BobD_1973_PatGrrettandBillytheKidAlternate_atse.zip.html

The official album cover is basically just the album title in very large, black letters, on a white background. That seemed boring to me. So I used a still of Dylan from the movie as the main image. Then I added the text from the official cover, but in white instead of black.