Today's Tune: Bob Dylan And Johnny Cash - Girl From The North Country

Bob Dylan’s Next Bootleg Series May Spotlight 1967–1969 Nashville Recordings

By Andy Greene
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bob-dylan-bootleg-series-update-nashville-849134/
June 18, 2019


Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash

The 14-disc companion set to Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story just arrived in stores, but Dylan’s team is already looking ahead to their next archival project. “We’re thinking about possibly doing Bob’s work in Nashville from John Wesley Harding through the Johnny Cash sessions as the next Bootleg Series,” says a source close to the Bob Dylan camp. “The outtakes from that period have never been heard.”

The exact period they are looking at begins with the three days it took to record John Wesley Harding in October of November 1967 and continues with the eight days it took to record Nashville Skyline in February 1969. Of special interest to Dylan collectors is the fifth day of the Nashville Skyline sessions on February 18th, 1969, when Dylan was joined in the studio by Johnny Cash. Their re-working of “Girl From the North Country” appears on Nashville Skyline, but much of what was recorded that day has never leaked out. That includes a duet on the Dylan-penned “Wanted Man,” which Cash played at San Quentin just one week after the session. They also played “Matchbox,” “Mystery Train,” “You Are My Sunshine,” “Ring of Fire,” “Careless Love,” “Big River” and several others.

Unlike recent Bootleg Series packages that compiled every song in the vaults from key albums Blood on the Tracks, The Basement Tapes, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, this new set will only contain select tracks from the sessions. “I think we did repeat versions of songs to death on The Cutting Edge,” says the source. “We’re trying to find one really good takes of each song. The giant dumps of everything like we’ve done in recent years really aren’t my preference. I like stuff that is more curated.”

Plans beyond this Nashville 1967–1969 set aren’t quite clear, but a Time Out of Mind package is definitely in the pipeline. “We still want to do that,” says the source. “If there are still people putting out physical records for [the album’s] 25th anniversary in 2022, we’ll possibly release it then.”

Many recent Bootleg Series sets have been released due to a quirk in European copyright law that says that any recording not released 50 years after it was created automatically enters the public domain. That may lead to some sort of digital release of concert recordings from Bob Dylan and the Band’s reunion tour in 1974 before the copyright expires in 2024, though a big box is unlikely. “Do people really want that?” asks the source. “We can do a copyright protection, but Before the Flood is a pretty good record. I don’t think it warrants more than that.”

Recordings from Dylan’s earliest folk concerts before he signed to Columbia Records in 1961 have been compiled for a possible Bootleg Series, though there is no great urgency to get it out. “We’ve thought about that for a long time,” says the source. “We collected a lot of early tapes, but fans don’t seem interested in the early stuff. I’ve always found that period really interesting, but I guess a lot of people don’t. We’ll do something, though, because we’ve got all these great things that people haven’t heard, but I think the interest is pretty minimal.”

There’s also been thought given to a set chronicling the sessions for 1983’s Infidels and 1985’s Empire Burlesque. “We do think about it,” says the source. “The Infidels stuff is great, though it needs remixing because it has a very 1980s drum sound. With Empire Burlesque, the tracks didn’t get finished right. The stuff with the Heartbreakers is great, but they tried to make the rest of it sound contemporary and I don’t know if that really works, so I don’t know. We’re thinking about it.”

“The other thing is we want to do a thing of just another collection of stray tracks,” says the source. “It won’t be as interesting as the first Bootleg Series in 1991, but there’s a lot of movie tracks, one-off tracks and things like that are hard to find. I’d like to do another one of those before the Bootleg Series hangs up its box.”

The thought of the Bootleg Series “hanging up its box” may sound horrifying to Dylan fans since there are so many areas of his career that the sets haven’t touched on yet, but it may become a reality at some point in the next few years. “I don’t think we do it post-physical,” says the source, meaning after the market for physical releases completely vanishes. “I don’t think there’s a reason to do it when that happens. I think we’d give up on it. Doing the beautiful package that we put together can only be supported not by streaming, but by physical purchases. The last one sold well, but the places to buy them are going away. You either buy them on Amazon or our website or your local indie record store. It’s just hard.”

Dylan’s core catalog is available on Spotify and Apple Music in full, but Bootleg Series releases are usually posted in incomplete form. “If I could get them to maybe give us a different Bootleg section, that might be different,” says the source. “We’ve been thinking a lot about this. Two years from now, who will listen to [the gospel-years set] Trouble No More? How will they find it? And so we may talk to Spotify and Apple Music about doing a special Bootleg Series section. We’re thinking about it.”

Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, R.I.P: Triple Murderer Who Fooled Hollywood

(With the release of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review box set I thought it prudent to present another angle on the subject of Mr. Dylan's song "Hurricane" - jtf)


By Larry Elder
https://www.creators.com/read/larry-elder/04/14/rubin-hurricane-carter-rip-triple-murderer-who-fooled-hollywood
April 24, 2014


Hurricane Carter with Denzel Washington (Reuters)

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter has died. Sympathetic obituaries say things like "wrongfully convicted" or "exonerated." But the black middleweight-title-contending boxer was neither.

Carter, in 1966, murdered three people. But Hollywood later made a movie, "Hurricane," in which Denzel Washington brilliantly portrayed Carter as a wrongfully convicted near-saint, hounded mercilessly by a determined, racist detective. Excellent moviemaking, but it adds more sludge to the widely held notion of the "racist criminal justice system" that supposedly "warehouses" black males for no reason other than wrong place, wrong time, wrong skin.

So, what really happened that night in Paterson, N.J., when three people were shot and killed? Why did Carter get prosecuted? Was Carter, as the media continue to say, an "innocent man" who was "wrongfully convicted"? Did the courts "exonerate" him?

In the film, Carter possesses near-sterling integrity, character pure and even noble. It shows Carter losing his middleweight title fight to champion Joey Giardello. The apparently bigoted judges gave the decision to Giardello, though the movie shows Carter pummeling him in the latter rounds.

One summer night in 1966, two black men burst into a bar in Paterson and killed three whites. In the movie, the police arrested Carter for virtually no reason. No physical evidence linked him to the crime. An evil detective, obsessed with nabbing Carter, spearheaded this travesty of justice, and Carter was convicted — twice.

Now the facts. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was a self-admitted street thug, having spent several years in juvenile detention for muggings. On the eve of his 1964 middleweight title fight, he bragged in the Saturday Evening Post about his savagery: "I stuck a man with my knife. I stabbed him everywhere but the bottom of his feet." Carter also said he and a friend "used to get up and put our guns in our pockets. ... Then we'd go out in the streets and start fighting — anybody, everybody. We used to shoot at folks." While briefly out of prison and awaiting his second trial, Carter viciously beat the woman who had worked tirelessly to free him after the first conviction.

No evidence linking Carter to the crime?

One murder victim survived long enough to provide a sketch artist with a description. This never made it into the trial because authorities failed to obtain a "deathbed declaration" since they thought the victim would survive. She did not, and without the declaration, her testimony was not entered.

But the victim, Hazel Tanis, a 56-year-old waitress and soon-to-be grandmother, was shot four times with a .38 caliber and once with a shotgun. The New York Times wrote: "Her daughter, Barbara Burns, stayed with her for 28 days as she struggled to survive, her midsection shredded by bullets. ... Ms. Burns re-enacted her mother's begging for mercy on the bar floor: 'Why are you doing this? I'm a mother. These are innocent people.' (Co-defendant) John Artis hesitated, and Carter said: 'Finish her. Finish her.' With fresh fury, she recalled her mother's words: 'You don't look a man in the eyes and plead for your life and forget what he looks like.'''

An eyewitness ID'd the killers and their getaway car. Within minutes, the police apprehended Carter driving a car that matched the description. According to New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine, police found two bullet shells in Carter's car, shells that fit the weapons used in the shootings.

During the first trial, Carter presented several "alibi" witnesses, who placed Carter elsewhere at the time of the crime. During the second trial, however, many of Carter's "alibi" witnesses changed their testimony, stating that Carter had bribed them.

In the movie, a Carter defender states that two "all white" juries found Carter guilty. False. The second jury contained two blacks.

Although not mentioned in the movie, Carter publicly claimed he passed a lie detector test. Not so, says Jim DeSimone, son of the now deceased out-to-get-Carter detective portrayed in the film. DeSimone says that Carter flunked a lie detector test. Moreover, the authorities offered Carter, on the eve of the second trial, a chance to take a second test. Pass it, they said, and we drop the charges. Carter refused.

Did the boxing judges steal the middleweight title from Carter in an act of racism?

His opponent, Giardello, shown handed a victory he did not deserve, sued the movie for defamation. He received a settlement, including changes in the film. At his death in 2008, a Los Angeles Times obituary read: "Most contemporary observers and boxing historians agree (the Carter fight) was a hard-fought contest won by Giardello.

Finally, was Carter "exonerated"?

Judge Lee Sarokin set aside Carter's second conviction after nine years. He ruled that the prosecution erred in advancing a motive theory not, according to the judge, supported by the evidence. The prosecution, noting that Carter had already served 19 years and that several witnesses were then deceased, declined to try him a third time. That is not "exoneration."

Don't think there will be a sequel.

Larry Elder is a best-selling author and radio talk-show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an "Elderado," visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on Twitter @larryelder. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Bob Dylan and Hurricane Carter (Ken Regan)

Related:

Media missed the real story of the late Hurricane Carter-

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2014/04/spare_us_the_lies_about_the_late_hurricane_carter_mulshine.html

Today's Tune: Bob Dylan "Hard Rain" [Full Song] 1975 | Netflix

Bob Dylan’s Glam Hootenanny: Returning to Rolling Thunder

By Jon Pareles
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/arts/music/bob-dylan-rolling-thunder-revue.html?mc=aud_dev&ad_name={{ad.name}}&adset_name={{adset.name}}&campaign_id={{campaign.id}}&ad-keywords=auddevgate&subid1=TAFI&fbclid=IwAR0cCZKRgRBl27DYX5sd_br8qmzHUcqF7fkOvgl3EAJiuitntfMwLOfZagg&dclid=CO7j49P1hOMCFUPJ4wcdYIUBWQ
June 5, 2019

How distant the mid-1970s seem now. They were unkempt, hairy, hedonistic, improvisational, analog, inefficient — anything but neatly calculated and Instagram-ready. Post-psychedelic and pre-AIDS, they were a continuation of the idealistic, natural 1960s, yet they were also an immediate precursor to the polymorphous, synthetic, role-playing disco era. The bitterness of Vietnam and Watergate lingered; hippie utopianism was giving way to a more selfish search for individual satisfaction. Things were still scruffy, but not quite so communal.

The Rolling Thunder Revue, concocted by Bob Dylan, was precisely a manifestation of its era. Starting in Plymouth, Mass., where the colonial Pilgrims landed, it wandered the northeastern United States and Canada from fall into winter of 1975: a brief peregrination. In Dylan’s public career, which is now well into its sixth decade, it stands as his most peculiar tour of all.

Two new projects revisit the Rolling Thunder Revue in extensive detail. “The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings” is a 14-CD, 148-track boxed set of music from the tour’s rehearsals and performances, vastly expanding the two dozen songs released on a 2002 collection, “The Bootleg Series Volume 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue.” And on June 12, Netflix premieres “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese.” It’s a not-quite-documentary that mixes 1975 tour footage (which was shot for the 1978 film “Renaldo and Clara”) and latter-day interviews with Dylan, Joan Baez and other Rolling Thunder participants, along with some fictional characters.

Both the boxed set and the film sprawl proudly and unpredictably, just as the Revue itself did. And both projects traffic in revelation and put-on, sometimes simultaneously. Onstage in 1975, introducing a then-new song called “Isis” that traces improbable adventures, Dylan claimed, “This is a true story. Actually, they’re all true.”

The Revue’s initial plan was to play spur-of-the-moment, out-of-the-way bookings — a Mah-jongg parlor, a Native American reservation — and shows at small halls that were announced on short notice, with printed fliers and radio ads: no internet then. (For a second, more conventional tour in 1976, the Revue outgrew that approach; both the boxed set and film stick to the initial Revue.) The concerts themselves rambled through their multi-performer bills, often stretching to three or four hours, taking on local guests at whim.

Someday there ought to be a reissue of a full-length, single-night Rolling Thunder Revue concert recording, opening acts and all. The new box is not that. It collects only Dylan’s own appearances — rehearsals, five professionally recorded shows and a final disc of rarities and outliers, like the piano-pounding “Simple Twist of Fate” recorded at the Mah-jongg Parlor in Falmouth, Mass.

The Revue presented itself as an informal hootenanny, but it was a self-conscious one. With a film crew in tow, the shows were also intended to provide material for the amorphous “Renaldo and Clara,” a film that ran nearly four hours when it was released in 1978 and met with near-universal derision. With a script credited to Dylan and the playwright Sam Shepard, “Renaldo and Clara” jumbled documentary and staged scenes, and it scrambled identities; Dylan is billed as Renaldo while the rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins plays “Bob Dylan.”

Dylan started the Rolling Thunder Revue tour singing in a mask, and for most of it he performed in whiteface, a kind of mask itself. Recalling the Revue in the film decades later, Dylan says, “When somebody’s wearing a mask, he’s going to tell the truth. When he’s not wearing a mask, it’s highly unlikely.” When he says that, he’s not wearing a mask.

Pragmatically speaking, virtually all of the peak moments of the new set were collected on the well-chosen 2002 “Live in 1975” set. Yet Dylan completists will likely cherish newly unveiled rehearsal tapes that include a tantalizing, previously unreleased minute-long fragment of a vanished song, a hymn-like tribute to a woman named “Gwenevere.” Dylan scholars can tabulate Dylan’s continual tweaks to lyrics in songs like “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” and, in rehearsals, “She Belongs to Me.”

For those willing to dig in, the new box also makes clear how consistently impassioned Dylan’s Rolling Thunder performances were. The songs were rehearsed but never routine; they changed tempos and attitudes from night to night. Along the way, they grew more dramatic, more forceful and more jocular, all at once.

Bob Dylan, Mick Ronson and Bobby Neuwirth in Toronto, 1975 (Getty Images)

A year before Rolling Thunder, Dylan had played his first full tour since 1966, reuniting with the Band for a triumphant sequel to the tour that had drawn boos from die-hard folkies when he went electric. By 1974, no one was booing. The Band had established its own indelible catalog of earthy, mysterious Americana, and Dylan had clearly won every bygone battle against folky purism. Their shared tour was a victory lap, but it was also a sure thing, a standard mid-70s tour by major stars: two months playing impersonal arenas in major markets. Rolling Thunder would be something else — a deliberate glance back for an experiment going forward.

As early as 1964, with “My Back Pages,” Dylan explicitly repudiated the topical protest songs he wrote during his folk-revival ascent. From the mid-1960s onward he had plugged in to the blues, veered into country, made contrarian easy-listening tracks on “Self-Portrait” and hinted at gospel on “New Morning.” After touring with the Band, he recorded one of his unquestioned masterpieces, “Blood on the Tracks,” exploring lost love and perpetual restlessness in skeletal arrangements. But then, with the Rolling Thunder Revue, he decided to reconnect with what he had left behind.

He gathered Greenwich Village folk revival and Beat Generation figures who had been his early 1960s mentors and peers: Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Bob Neuwirth and the poet Allen Ginsberg, who appears in the film as a philosophical sage. The film catches a prelude to the tour with Dylan and Baez singing at Gerdes Folk City in Greenwich Village, where Dylan had made his reputation back in 1961. But it was 1975; also shown performing there was Patti Smith.

It turned out Dylan wasn’t done with topical protest songs, either. He had an angry new one, “Hurricane,” which decried the triple murder conviction of the boxer Rubin (Hurricane) Carter as a racist injustice; Carter was eventually freed in 1985. The boxed set includes multiple renditions of “Hurricane,” and Dylan gives his all to every one. (One of the film’s comic peaks has Dylan making an unannounced visit to CBS Records executives to discuss releasing “Hurricane” immediately.) Dylan’s set list for the Revue also revived a topical song from the 1960s: “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” another furious reflection on race, class and murder.

In late 1975, Dylan had already recorded — but not yet released — “Desire,” his album featuring songwriting collaborations with the theater director Jacques Levy, including “Hurricane” and other taut, picaresque story-songs about love, trust and death, like “Isis” and “Romance in Durango,” that Rolling Thunder audiences would be hearing for the first time. The album also included “Sara,” a desperate, mournful, arguably autobiographical love song to his wife; she filed for divorce in 1977.

The music on “Desire” drew on both Dylan’s mid-1960s folk-rock and the wheezy authority of the Band, crucially topping the arrangements with Scarlet Rivera’s wailing violin solos and countermelodies: teasing from a distance, spiraling in on him, darting away and returning like a hint of temptation. The story goes that Rivera joined the band by pure happenstance: Dylan was driving through downtown Manhattan and spotted her on the street, carrying her violin, and invited her to audition.

Dylan and his musical director, the bassist Rob Stoner, assembled the rest of the Rolling Thunder band, called Guam; some of its members, including T Bone Burnett, would go on to form the Alpha Band. The Revue also took on Roger McGuinn from the Byrds, Mick Ronson from David Bowie’s Spiders from Mars band, the singer Ronee Blakley and, joining up partway through the tour, Joni Mitchell. In group-sing Rolling Thunder concert finales, Mitchell cheekily adds a verse of Canadian geography to “This Land Is Your Land.” (The film also captures a luminous Mitchell playing “Coyote,” from “Hejira,” in Gordon Lightfoot’s home as McGuinn and Dylan strum along.)

The Woody Guthrie finales — and the presence on the bill of Guthrie’s disciple, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott — invoked folk-revival nostalgia. So did a nightly Rolling Thunder segment of Dylan duets with Baez, harmonizing at one microphone and echoing their 1965 British tour together, when they had a romance. “You’re a lovely couple!” an audience member yelled during a Boston Music Hall show in 1975. “Don’t make myths,” Baez retorts. “A couple of what?”

Sharing songs, rolling through small towns and gathering attention by word-of-mouth, the Revue cultivated an old-timey, medicine-show aura that carried over to its staging — though its mix-and-match, cameo-laden lineups were also oddly similar to current hip-hop shows. But in 1975, after Dylan had headlined arenas, the tour was just as much a superstar’s expensive whim. The Revue was also a psychological experiment: What would happen with all these artistic sensibilities in close quarters?

Scorsese’s film touches on some of the tensions. There were ego battles between performers contending to sing alongside Dylan; there was sexual intrigue. There were mini-dramas of access and status; in the film, Baez recalls disguising herself as Dylan, wearing painted-on facial hair and a flower-topped hat like his pulled low, and finding out how people acted around him. Steven Soles, a guitarist in the band, recalls the atmosphere as “like the court of Henry VIII,” including the possibility of getting beheaded.

The film also points up the mixed agendas for performers, chroniclers, hangers-on and of course Dylan himself. He is shown in 1975, sometimes driving the band’s Winnebago down the road and, decades later, reflecting enigmatically on the Revue, detailing some recollections and shrugging off others. His utterances, past and recent, are typically guarded and oblique. Observers at the time compared Dylan’s whiteface and certain plot points in “Renaldo and Clara” to the 1945 French film “Les Enfants du Paradis,” but in the Scorsese film, Dylan says he got the idea for whiteface from — welcome to the 1970s — Kiss.

No matter what the source was for the greasepaint, the Rolling Thunder Revue was as theatrical as it was organic. Dylan wasn’t the only one wearing makeup; other Revue performers did, too, like folkies testing glam rock. Rivera is shown onstage with a snake painted on her forehead. “Mr. Tambourine Man gives us the opportunity to be whoever we wish to be,” she told the camera in 1975. And although Dylan was playing in smaller rooms than he had a year earlier, his gestures were larger. He had been encouraged, by both Levy and Patti Smith, to be more physically expressive onstage — face, hands, stances — especially in songs where he wasn’t holding a guitar. And even in small rooms, he was playing it big. While the changing song he performed solo each night was an occasion for nuance and suspense, with the band behind him he worked up to a full-throated bellow.

Ever the trickster, Dylan in the Rolling Thunder Revue was many things: folk singer, songwriter, rock star, bandleader, protester, actor, ringmaster, caballero, hero, joker. But from the music on the recordings, and the performances captured onstage, one thing is clear. At the Rolling Thunder Revue, behind the mask of whiteface, his eyes were ablaze.

Bob Dylan’s ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’: See Trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Netflix Doc

By Daniel Kreps

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bob-dylan-rolling-thunder-revue-trailer-martin-scorsese-netflix-doc-843743/

June 3, 2019

Netflix released the first trailer for Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, Martin Scorsese’s documentary about Dylan’s legendary 1975 jaunt. The film, which arrives on the streaming service and select theaters on June 12th, accompanies the release of the massive 14-disc Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings.

Scorsese’s documentary – the second time the renowned filmmaker has focused his camera on the singer, following 2005’s No Direction Home – will also feature Dylan’s first on-camera interview in over a decade.

“It wasn’t a success, not if you measure success in terms of profit,” Dylan says of the tour in the trailer. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Or finding anything. Life is about creating yourself.”

“Setting out across a 1975 America exhausted politically, economically and socially, a busload of musicians—assembled by Bob Dylan—hits the road in search of new creative horizons. The resulting tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue, would reveal a Dylan rarely seen: playful, mask-wearing, intense, expansive, rejuvenated,” Netflix said of the film.

“Masterfully capturing both an icon and a nation in transition, director Martin Scorsese tells the tale using footage that was abandoned for decades, now gorgeously restored, taking viewers into the heart of a freewheeling, electrifying musical gamble. Inspired by Dylan’s own restless spirit, Scorsese performs some breathtaking sleight of hand, summoning nostalgic fantasists, boxers, magicians, starlets and testifiers of all stripes, and exploding the boundaries of what makes a conventional documentary.”

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story also features some of the tour’s participants, including Joan Baez, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Sam Shepard and Allen Ginsberg.

On Friday, June 7th, Dylan will release his Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings; so far, the archival set has unearthed an unreleased rehearsal version of “One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below).” The 14-disc collection also features five complete shows from the 1975 tour along with rarities and rehearsals.

It Shall Be Released: Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue Revived On New Box Set, Netflix Film

By Joe Marchese

https://theseconddisc.com/2019/04/it-shall-be-released-bob-dylans-rolling-thunder-revue-revived-on-new-box-set-netflix-film/?fbclid=IwAR2pNtDBpqcrKd7lbL0ipg57i_eeRVL9IDap22g2TRhhY1WEatZ7T4PH3lk

April 30, 2019

Fourteen years after his seminal documentary No Direction Home, director Martin Scorsese is returning to the life and music of Bob Dylan with a new concert film celebrating one of the Bard of Hibbing’s most electrifying tours. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese debuts June 12 on Netflix. The new film shines a spotlight on Dylan’s unforgettable adventures with an amazing cast of characters on the road during his 1975-1976 tour.  It will also screen in theaters in London, Paris, Washington, D.C., Nashville, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Dallas, L.A., Houston, Portland, Tulsa, Tempe, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Bologna,  and Sydney.

Needless to say, Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings won’t be letting the occasion of the documentary go unnoticed…and now we can finally share the confirmed details.  On June 7, the labels will premiere The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, a remarkable new 14-CD box set that promises to be the ultimate chronicle of the initial leg of Dylan’s legendary Rolling Thunder Revue from the autumn of 1975.

The box includes five professionally recorded sets from the tour, plus rehearsals and a bonus disc of rare performances – for a total of 148 tracks, more than 100 of which are previously unreleased. These include tracks which ended up in Dylan’s lost film Renaldo and Clara (and all four cuts from the 4 Songs from Renaldo and Clara EP). The set kicks off with three discs of rehearsals, including two from New York and one from the Seacrest Motel in Falmouth, Massachusetts. It then launches into the five full shows from Worcester, Cambridge, Boston, and finally, Montreal. The 12-track bonus disc captures rarities including covers of “The Tracks of My Tears” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart” as well as performances captured in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, Montreal, and New York City between October and December 1975.

The first leg of the tour encompassed just 30 shows in intimate venues. Dylan was joined for these incendiary concerts by a handpicked band of musicians and singers dubbed Guam, including Bob Neuwirth, Scarlet Rivera, T-Bone Burnett, Steven Soles, Mick Ronson, David Mansfield, Rob Stoner, Howie Wyeth, and Luther Rix. In the freewheeling spirit of the Rolling Thunder Revue, various performers joined the proceedings, such as Ronee Blakley, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Allen Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Roger McGuinn. Baez, whose participation in the tour drew a tremendous amount of media attention, can be heard on “Tears of Rage,” “I Shall Be Released,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Wild Mountain Thyme,” “Mama, You Been on My Mind,” “Dark as a Dungeon,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “Never Let Me Go,” “The Water Is Wide,” and “This Land Is Your Land.” McGuinn is present on “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and “This Land Is Your Land.” The bonus disc features guest appearances by Eric Andersen and Robbie Robertson, among others.

The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordingsincludes a 52-page booklet of rare and unseen photos and liner notes by novelist/musician Wesley Stace, better known under the Dylan-inspired moniker of John Wesley Harding. (Visit him on Facebook here!) The CD box set will also be joined by a reissue of the long out-of-print 3-LP edition of The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue.  The 3-LP set was originally released in 2003 by Classic Records; that edition now commands high prices on the secondary market.  Legacy’s slipcased reissue has the discs housed in printed inner sleeves alongside a a 64-page booklet and a download code. (Note that Bootleg Vol. 5 presented a composite show drawn from the Worcester, Boston, Cambridge, and Montreal shows now being released in full; accordingly, all of the tracks on theBootleg volume are included on the 14-CD set.)  There is no dedicated “highlights” version of The Rolling Thunder Revue: The Live 1975 Recordings as such a set already exists in the form of Bootleg Vol. 5.

BobDylan.com is offering a limited-edition bundle including the box set, a Rolling Thunder Revue-emblazoned luggage tag (fashioned after those given to artists and crew on the tour), and a 12×18 movie poster for Netflix’s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese.  The bundle is strictly limited to 1,500 units worldwide and available at this link.

Additionally, Legacy has released a new single to promote the box: “One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) (Seacrest Motel Rehearsal).” There appear to be two different performances released. While the version on Spotify, iTunes, and other download/streaming services is apparently recorded before a live audience, the version posted on Bob Dylan’s official YouTube page is an altogether unique performance sans audience applause at the end. You can hear both at the links below:

Official Music Video from Bob Dylan’s YouTube channel here:

Look for both The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings and the LP reissue of The Bootleg Series Vol. 5 on June 7 from Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings. See below for the full track listing and pre-order links for this rip-roaring tribute to one of the most memorable rock tours of all time!

Bob Dylan, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings (Columbia/Legacy, 2019)

Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

# included in the film Renaldo and Clara (1978)
~ released on 4 Songs From Renaldo and Clara EP (Columbia AS 422, 1978)
^ released on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue(Columbia C2K 87047, 2002)
* included in the film Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019)
+ incomplete

Discs 1-2: October 19, 1975 – S.I.R. Rehearsals, New York, NY

1. Rake and Ramblin’ Boy * +
2. Romance in Durango * +
3. Rita May *
4. I Want You # +
5. Love Minus Zero/No Limit * +
6. She Belongs to Me * +
7. Joey +
8. Isis
9. Hollywood Angel +
10. People Get Ready # ~
11. What Will You Do When Jesus Comes? #
12. Spanish Is the Loving Tongue
13. The Ballad of Ira Hayes
14. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) *
15. Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You
16. This Land Is Your Land
17. Dark as a Dungeon *

1. She Belongs to Me #
2. A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall
3. Isis
4. This Wheel’s on Fire/Hurricane/All Along the Watchtower
5. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)
6. If You See Her, Say Hello
7. One Too Many Mornings #
8. Gwenevere +
9. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts +
10. Patty’s Gone to Laredo #
11. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

Disc 3: October 29, 1975 – Seacrest Motel Rehearsals, Falmouth, MA

1. Tears of Rage
2. I Shall Be Released
3. Easy and Slow
4. Ballad of a Thin Man
5. Hurricane
6. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)
7. Just Like a Woman
8. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door

Discs 4-5: November 19, 1975 – Memorial Auditorium, Worcester, MA

1. When I Paint My Masterpiece
2. It Ain’t Me, Babe
3. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
4. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry
5. Romance in Durango
6. Isis
7. Blowin’ in the Wind
8. Wild Mountain Thyme
9. Mama, You Been on My Mind
10. Dark as a Dungeon
11. I Shall Be Released

1. Tangled Up in Blue
2. Oh, Sister
3. Hurricane ^ *
4. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)
5. Sara
6. Just Like a Woman
7. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
8. This Land Is Your Land

Discs 6-7: November 20, 1975 – Harvard Square Theater, Cambridge, MA

1. When I Paint My Masterpiece
2. It Ain’t Me, Babe # ~ ^
3. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
4. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry *
5. Romance in Durango ^ *
6. Isis
7. Blowin’ in the Wind *
8. Wild Mountain Thyme
9. Mama, You Been on My Mind ^
10. Dark as a Dungeon
11. I Shall Be Released

1. Simple Twist of Fate ^ *
2. Oh, Sister
3. Hurricane
4. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)
5. Sara
6. Just Like a Woman #
7. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door # ^
8. This Land Is Your Land

Discs 8-9: November 21, 1975 – Afternoon – Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA

1. When I Paint My Masterpiece
2. It Ain’t Me, Babe
3. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
4. A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall
5. Romance in Durango
6. Isis
7. The Times They Are a-Changin’
8. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
9. Mama, You Been on My Mind
10. Never Let Me Go
11. I Shall Be Released ^

1. Mr. Tambourine Man ^
2. Oh, Sister
3. Hurricane
4. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)
5. Sara ^
6. Just Like a Woman
7. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
8. This Land Is Your Land

Discs 10-11: November 21, 1975 – Evening – Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA

1. When I Paint My Masterpiece
2. It Ain’t Me, Babe
3. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll ^
4. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry # ^
5. Romance in Durango
6. Isis ^
7. Blowin’ in the Wind ^
8. The Water Is Wide ^
9. Mama, You Been on My Mind
10. Dark as a Dungeon
11. I Shall Be Released

1. I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
2. Tangled Up in Blue # ^
3. Oh, Sister ^
4. Hurricane
5. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) ^
6. Sara
7. Just Like a Woman ^
8. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
9. This Land Is Your Land

Discs 12-13: December 4, 1975 – Forum de Montreal, Montreal, Canada

1. When I Paint My Masterpiece
2. It Ain’t Me, Babe
3. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll *
4. Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You ^
5. A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall # ^ *
6. Romance in Durango #
7. Isis # ~
8. Blowin’ in the Wind
9. Dark as a Dungeon
10. Mama, You Been on My Mind
11. Never Let Me Go # ~
12. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine *
13. I Shall Be Released

1. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue ^
2. Love Minus Zero/No Limit ^
3. Tangled Up in Blue
4. Oh, Sister
5. Hurricane
6. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) # *
7. Sara #
8. Just Like a Woman
9. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
10. This Land Is Your Land

Disc 14: Bonus Disc – Rare Performances

1. One Too Many Mornings (October 24 – Gerdes Folk City, New York City, New York) *
2. Simple Twist of Fate (October 28 – Mahjong Parlor, Falmouth, MA) *
3. Isis (November 2 – Technical University, Lowell, MA)
4. With God on Our Side (November 4 – Afternoon – Civic Center, Providence, RI)
5. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (November 4 – Evening – Civic Center, Providence, RI)
6. Radio advertisement for Niagara Falls, NY shows
7. The Ballad of Ira Hayes (November 16 – Tuscarora Reservation, NY) *
8. Your Cheatin’ Heart (November 23) *
9. Fourth Time Around (November 26 – Civic Center, Augusta, Maine)
10. The Tracks of My Tears (December 3 – Chateau Champlain, Montreal Canada)
11. Jesse James (December 5 – Montreal Stables, Montreal, Canada)
12. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (December 8 – “Night of the Hurricane,” Madison Square Garden, New York, NY)

Bob Dylan, December 1975 (Bettmann/Getty Images)

On Discs 1-13:
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, piano, harmonica
Joan Baez – vocals and guitar on “Tears of Rage,” “I Shall Be Released,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Wild Mountain Thyme,” “Mama, You Been on My Mind,” “Dark as a Dungeon,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “Never Let Me Go,” “The Water Is Wide,” and “This Land Is Your Land”
Roger McGuinn – guitar and vocals on “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and 
”This Land Is Your Land”
Guam: 
Bobby Neuwirth – guitar, vocals
; Scarlet Rivera – violin
; T Bone J. Henry Burnett – guitar, vocals; 
Steven Soles – guitar, vocals
; Mick Ronson – guitar
; David Mansfield – steel guitar, mandolin, violin, dobro; 
Rob Stoner – bass, vocals
; Howie Wyeth – drums, piano
; Luther Rix – drums, percussion, congas
; Ronee Blakley – vocals
; Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – vocals, guitar
; Allen Ginsberg – vocals, finger cymbals; 
Joni Mitchell – vocals

On Disc 14:
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, piano, harmonica
Joan Baez – vocals (2)
Rob Stoner – bass (2)
Eric Andersen, Arlen Roth – guitars (2)
Guam (3, 10, 12)
Larry Keegan – vocals (8)
Robbie Robertson – guitar (12)

Bob Dylan, The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue [3LP Vinyl Box](Columbia/Legacy/Classic C2K 87047-1, 2003 – reissued Columbia/Legacy, 2019) (Amazon U.S./ Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Disc 1, Side 1:

1. Tonight I’ll Be Staying Her With You
2. It Ain’t Me, Babe
3. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Disc 1, Side 2:

1. The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
2. Romance In Durango
3. Isis

Disc 2, Side 1:

1. Mr. Tambourine Man
2. Simple Twist Of Fate
3. Blowin’ In The Wind
4. Mama, You Been On My Mind

Disc 2, Side 2:

1. I Shall Be Released
2. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
3. Love Minus Zero/No Limit
4. Tangled Up In Blue

Disc 3, Side 1:

1. The Water Is Wide
2. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
3. Oh, Sister
4. Hurricane

Disc 3, Side 2:

1. One More Cup Of Coffee
2. Sara
3. Just Like A Woman
4. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door