You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

Stay right where you are.
Your bride's coming. Genghis Khan
Has other problems.

I don't know how to describe this song, which Dylan and the Band recorded during the 1967 Basement Tapes sessions. Here are the lyrics, which are a masterpiece of sweet and weird at the same time. The lyrics will have to do.

Clouds so swift
Rain won’t lift
Gate won’t close
Railings froze
Get your mind off wintertime
You ain’t goin’ nowhere
Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day
My bride’s gonna come
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!

I don’t care
How many letters they sent
Morning came and morning went
Pick up your money
And pack up your tent
You ain’t goin’ nowhere
Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day
My bride’s gonna come
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!

Buy me a flute
And a gun that shoots
Tailgates and substitutes
Strap yourself
To the tree with roots
You ain’t goin’ nowhere
Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day
My bride’s gonna come
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!

Genghis Khan
He could not keep
All his kings
Supplied with sleep
We’ll climb that hill no matter how steep
When we get up to it
Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day
My bride’s gonna come
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!

Tiny Montgomery

Better grease that pig
Because the king of the drunks
Is coming to party.

The nickname “Tiny” usually is applied to someone who is large, so I’m assuming that the “Tiny Montgomery” of this 1967 Basement Tapes song is a big drunkard who’s coming to town and one of his friends is announcing to a bunch of people in San Francisco (or maybe Frisco, Texas) that Tiny’s coming to town to shake things up and have a good time. The lyrics on this song, like many of the Basement Tapes songs, veer toward silliness and comedy. The names, especially, evoke images of old-time bars and bruisers and knuckleheads:

Tiny’s coming to Frisco.
He’s gonna “shake that thing” when he gets there, which will give every boy and girl a bang.
Skinny Moo and Half-Track Frank are about to get out of the joint. 
There’s a buzzard and crow in here too. Tell them Tiny says hello.
“Scratch your dad, do that bird, suck that pig and bring it on home. Pick that drip and bake that dough. Tell ‘em all that Tiny says hello.”
He squeezes too. “Watch out, Lester, take it, Lou.”
Tell the monks and the CIO that Tiny says hello.
Now grease that pig, and sing praise. Go on out and gas that dog. Trick on in, honk that stink, take it on down and watch it grow…”
Tell the three-legged man and the hot-lipped hoe that Tiny says hello

Tears of Rage

Family grieves about
A daughter whom they raised right,
But turns out wrong instead.

"Tears of Rage" is one of those songs that Dylanologists love to pore over and extol. And you know, it's probably worth it in this case. This three-verse dirge for a wayward daughter -- or maybe a wayward country -- that has resisted or ignored all attempts to give it a good upbringing, and has most decidedly gone bad. Some see in this song a scolding of the United States, brought up on high ideals and a dream, ripping itself apart over a useless war, betrayal of those ideals, and an obsession with the enrichment of wealth.

Verse 1: They carried her in their arms on Independence Day, but now she throws them aside. What kind of daughter would do that to her doting father? "Tears of rage, tears of grief, Why must I always be the thief? Come to me now, you know we're so alone, and life is brief."
Verse 2: They gave her instructions and wrote her name in the sand (like the shifting sands of time), but she saw it as only a convenient place for her to stand. When she discovered that there were no true people, no true ideals, they stood around and watched and thought she was just acting like a child.
Verse 3: It didn't hurt, they didn't notice, when she filled her head with false instruction. "And now the heart is filled with gold as though it was a purse, but oh what kind of love is this that goes from bad to worse?"

Odds and Ends

Baby I don't love you.
You don't love me. You just pour
Some juice on my head.

"Odds and Ends" is the first song on the 1975 album "The Basement Tapes," a sort of greatest hits collection of overdubbed songs from the 1967 Basement Tapes sessions by Bob Dylan and the Band. They were never meant to be released, but Robbie Robertson of the Band pulled some of the better, or at least more complete ones together, overdubbed them with other instruments, added some later songs by the Band, and released this double LP, in part to meet demand from fans who wanted to know what these bootlegs were of more than a hundred songs floating around from Dylan's time in Woodstock while he recovered from his motorcycle accident. Like many of the songs, it sounds like nonsense, but contains horse-sense homilies straight from the woods and fields and the Farmer's Almanac. I included the 1975 cut as well as the two takes from volume 11 of the Bootleg Series, which contains the complete and original (not overdubbed) songs from the 1967 sessions. I suspect that the 1975 version is the same as the #2 take below, and is an identical mix, but I don't know as I'm not an audiophile.

I plan it all and I take my place (It's "I stand in awe and I shake my face" on the album)
You break your promise all over the place
You promised to love me, but what do I see
Just you comin’ and spillin’ juice over me
Odds and ends, odds and ends
Lost time is not found again

Now, you take your file and you bend my head
I never can remember anything that you said
You promised to love me, but what do I know
You’re always spillin’ juice on me like you got someplace to go
Odds and ends, odds and ends
Lost time is not found again

Now, I’ve had enough, my box is clean
You know what I’m sayin’ and you know what I mean
From now on you’d best get on someone else
While you’re doin’ it, keep that juice to yourself
Odds and ends, odds and ends
Lost time is not found again

Don't Ya Tell Henry

Cows, chickens, me and
You say it: "Don't tell Henry --
Apple's got your fly."

Your guess on what "Apple's got your fly" means is as good as mine. I tried to focus on the message and who's delivering it.

Verse 1: Bob goes to the river to "see who's born," which, I'm assuming, means people who've just been baptized and born again. The chicken tells him the cryptic message about what not to share with Henry.

Verse 2: Bob goes to the corner to look around. He says it's 10:30, but then refuses to stand by his estimate of the time. He runs into the woman he loves, who shares with him the cryptic message about what not to share with Henry.

Verse 3: Bob goes to the beanery at 12:30 to look around and see himself. He is distracted by a horse and a donkey, and then looks for a cow. He finds several, all of whom share with him the cryptic message about what not to share with Henry. 

Verse 4: Bob goes to the pumphouse one night, again, just to look around. He looks for a tree, then goes upstairs and sees himself, and receives the cryptic message about what not to share with Henry.

Henry makes no appearance in the song. You can find the song without much looking, however. It shows up on the 1975 album "The Basement Tapes," and on volume 11 of the Bootleg Series. Levon Helm of the Band sings.

Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood)

Bob warns his woman

About a flood and suggests

That they leave, or else.

It's hard to capture the spirit of "Crash on the Levee," one of Bob Dylan's stranger songs from the 1960s. Its main appearances in his catalogue are in the 1975 album "The Basement Tapes," which was taken from the 1967 Saugerties recordings, as well as a different arrangement added to the end of the 1971 album "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II." It's a quirky song based, in part, on the "James Alley Blues" of many years earlier, particularly the line about "sugar for sugar and salt for salt, if you go down in the flood it's gonna be your fault." That echo aside, it's one of the most creative and original blues songs that Dylan wrote, and is filled with the same kind of concrete-yet-mystical imagery that gives his music from the late 1960s such a rural, but spooky air. Generally, it goes like this:

1. Floodwaters will overflow the levee. Whatever you do, including rocking the joint and going to Williams Point, won't help much. If you do that, you'll lose your best friend and will have to find a new one. (I've always assumed that Bob's the best friend)

2. You can't "move" Bob, presumably change his mind about escaping the flood. If you go into the flood, it's your own fault. Cue the line about the best friend again.

3. You need to pack up and leave because this is going to be the meanest flood ever. It's king for king and queen for queen, as Bob notes. And then the best friend routine again.

Here's a chuggy version from a live performance with the Band. It's not a swampy-creepy as the album versions, but it's fun.

Clothes Line Saga

Neighbor tells family

The vice president’s gone mad.

They keep doing chores.

"Clothes Line Saga" might be the craziest of the Basement Tapes songs, and it is certainly the most emblematic of that summer of '67. Dylan tells the story of a family doing chores on a cold day in late January. There's some light, slightly abusive banter between family members, the kind of low-level hum of annoyance that families get when winter cabin fever sets in.

Day 1:

1. They bring clothes in.

2. Mama picks up a book, papa asks what it is, mama says "What do you care?"

3. The clothes must be wet still, so they hang them back on the line.

Day 2:

1. Everyone's chief concern upon waking is seeing if the clothes have dried.

2. Dogs bark. Neighbor passes.

3. Neighbor is grinning. He tells mama that the vice president went mad downtown the night before.

4. Mama says, well, that's just the way it goes. The neighbor says we'll have to forget.

5. Mama asks Bob if the clothes are wet.

6. Bob touches his shirt, but the neighbor interrupts his mission. The neighbor wants to know if some of the clothes are Bob's and if he helps out with the chores. Bob tells him "some of them, not all of them" and "sometime, not all the time."

7. Papa tells Bob that mama wants him to come in and bring the clothes.

8. Bob meets mama inside and they shut all the doors.

I can't say whether there's supposed to be some deeper meaning here. The laconic pace and the deadpan, straightforward delivery of the words indicate to me that the song is about nothing more than it claims to be, though various people have suggested anti-war statements regarding Vietnam and the White House, as well as some kind of strange answer to the Ode to Billy Joe. I like it more as an absurd, Luis Bunuel-style short film that's about clothes, neighbors and a family. It fits right in with the strange picture of Ruritania that so much of the rest of the Basement Tapes delivers in that old-timey, weird spooky way that it does.

And here's a delightful cover by a guy Phil J. Gray in his room, wearing a sombrero.

Apple Suckling Tree

We’re under a tree.

An old man is in a boat,

And my wife's with me.

I confess: I don't know what on earth this song is about. I fell back on the old Reuters rule: tell the reader what you see. I think that Dylan and the Band played this twice at most in Saugerties at the Big Pink house or somewhere in that area. (My Dylan recording arcana knowledge is less than you might think it is) It's one of the songs that first attracted me to the Basement Tapes recordings, but it's all feeling and no lyric, in a way. Each version has significantly different but equally nonsensical lyrics. I drew on both.

Sample:

I push him back and I stand in line, Oh yeah!

Then I push my lady and stand in line, Oh yeah!

Then I push my lady and stand in line

I get on board like a two-eyed time, Oh yeah!

And

Old man down like a county hook, my man

Old man down like a county hook, my man

pull man down a county hook

[Something something something] take a look

Pull him down in a county hook, my man.

A Fool Such As I

Sometimes you find fools

Who let their hearts get broken.

I am such a fool.

There are two commercially released recordings of Bob Dylan's performance of this delightful song, first popularized by country singer and proud Nova Scotian Hank Snow. The first to be released was on the 1973 album "Dylan." Columbia Records put the album out without Dylan's permission after the singer dropped his label in favor of a deal with David Gaffen's Asylum Records. Dylan returned to Columbia to release "Blood on the Tracks" and "Dylan" dropped from sight for a long time, the victim of fan disdain for saccharine overdubs and indifferent performances of these cover songs from recording sessions a few years earlier.

I like the album. It's not a coherent artistic vision unless you count a series of slapdash standards, folk songs and pop covers that the artist never intended to release as a unified idea, but I like the Dylan sound from "John Wesley Harding" in 1967 through to "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" in 1973. I'm no production expert, but there's a warm country-rock muffled sound from the combination of Nashville musicians and what I guess is the recording technology of the time that reminds me of when I was a little boy and everyone ate granola and wore a lot of denim while going camping and white-water rafting. You could call it the diffusion of hippie culture into the wider world of the middle class. I call it sweet.

Dylan's other recording of the song comes from 1967 The Basement Tapes sessions that were available on bootleg recordings for a long time and were more recently released in "The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete." It doesn't bounce around like the Dylan version, and Bob sings in a kind of talky way that nearly comes off as smart-ass irony. It makes me laugh more than it makes me cry, but the man still can bring the emotion in a way that makes the song sound new and different from Hank Snow, Elvis Presley, Jo Stafford and other singers who have covered it.

 

Clothes Line Saga (revised)

Chore time, chez Dylan.
Bob hangs wash, talks to some guy,
Goes back in the house.

All-American Boy

"All American."
It means you join a band
And contract VD.

Clothesline Saga

Here's a bizarre tale:
Bob hangs wash, talks to some guy,
Goes back in the house.