Bob Dylan - I Ain't Got No Home - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

I must say, I'm fairly surprised I'm able to make this album of Bob Dylan's stray tracks in 1968 and 1969, because I didn't think he had enough non-album songs to make up a full album. But after some digging I came up with just enough for a short album, so here we go.

Dylan was an extremely prolific songwriter for most of the 1960s. But he later explained that songs used to come to him with ease, and then around 1968 they stopped coming, and he had to force himself to write more. You can see that lack of productivity by the fact that he pretty much didn't do anything in 1968. (The album "John Wesley Harding" was released at the very end of 1967.) His 1969 album, "Nashville Skyline," was only 27 minutes long.

So it's not surprising that most of the songs here are covers. The first three come from a very rare concert appearance he made in January 1968. His musical hero Woody Guthrie had died a few months earlier, and he played three of Guthrie's songs at a tribute concert.

The next song, "I'd Have You Anytime," is co-written and co-sung with George Harrison, in late 1968. A different version with just Harrison would go on Harrison's 1970 album "All Things Must Pass." Dylan and Harrison also wrote and played another song together at the same time, "Nowhere to Go," but the only publicly known recordings of them doing it sound horrible, so I didn't include that.

"Western Road," "Wanted Man," and "Running" are originals that didn't get released until archival albums decades later. "Wanted Man" was given to Johnny Cash at the time, and his version is fairly well known.

"(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I," "Living the Blues," and "Take Me as I Am (Or Let Me Go)" were released on the official albums "Self Portrait," released in 1970, and "Dylan," released in 1973. However, these particular songs were recorded in 1969. These two albums are some of the most criticized albums of his entire career. Personally, I think that criticism is justified, and there are only some good songs here and there on both of them. So I've taken the best and moved them to where they're more chronologically fitting. In 1969, Dylan's voice drastically changed. (I think of it as his "Lay, Lady, Lay" voice.) Then, in 1970, it changed again. So the few songs that made "Self Portrait" and "Dylan" that were recorded in 1969 belong with other songs he did from 1969.

"Good Old Mountain Dew" is a duet between Dylan and country legend Johnny Cash. Actually, they did a full album's worth of duets together, but only one duet, "Girl from the North Country," made it onto Dylan's "Nashville Skyline" album. I could have included more of their duets here, but frankly, a lot of them aren't that good. On many of them, they're just fumbling through songs, trying to find musical common ground. I picked what I considered the best and most realized performances. Weirdly, most of their duets have been officially released, but this one has not.

Finally, "Wild Mountain Thyme," comes from his 1969 concert at the Isle of Wight. I put a version of this song on an earlier Dylan stray tracks album, but that was him doing it in a duet with Joan Baez, and this is just Dylan alone. "Minstrel Boy" come from that concert too. It's a Dylan original, but note that a different version of it was also included on my "More Basement Tapes" collection from 1967.

01 I Ain't Got No Home (Bob Dylan & the Band)
02 Dear Mrs. Roosevelt (Bob Dylan & the Band)
03 Grand Coulee Dam (Bob Dylan & the Band)
04 I'd Have You Anytime (George Harrison & Bob Dylan)
05 Western Road (Bob Dylan)
06 Wanted Man (Bob Dylan)
07 Mountain Dew (Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash)
08 Running (Bob Dylan)
09 [Now and Then There's] A Fool Such as I (Bob Dylan)
10 Living the Blues (Bob Dylan)
11 Take Me as I Am [Or Let Me Go] (Bob Dylan)
12 Wild Mountain Thyme (Bob Dylan & the Band)
13 Minstrel Boy (Bob Dylan & the Band)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15106694/BobD_1968-1969_IAintGotNoHme_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses a photo of Dylan near his Woodstock home in 1968.