Self Portrait Question
ANoto31106
Can't remember period album was recorded, what was going on, etc. Any
backround info will be appreciated. Also, who originally recorded Gotta
Travel On
and is Bobby singing a "self duet " on The Boxer ? Sure sounds that way.
John Howells
Here's something I wrote and posted a while back. Maybe this will be of
some help:
Self Portrait
=============
The Sessions
------------
First sessions, early May 1969:
-------------------------------
1. Take a Message to Mary
2. Blue Moon
3. Let It Be Me
4. Living the Blues
5. I Forgot More
6. Take Me As I Am
7. A Fool Such As I
8. Spanish Is the Loving Tongue
9. Folsom Prison Blues
10. Ring of Fire
Personnel:
Kenneth Buttrey (drums)
Bob Moore (bass)
Bill Pursell (piano)
Norman Blake (guitar)
Fred Carter Jr. (guitar)
Pete Drake (pedal steel guitar)
Doug Kershaw (fiddle)
June Page, Dolores Edgin, Carol Montgomery, Millie Kirkham, Dottie
Dillard (vocals, overdubbed in October or November 1969)
Second Self Portrait sessions, September-November 1969:
-------------------------------------------------------
1. It Hurts Me Too
2. The Boxer
3. Days of 49
4. In Search of Little Sadie
5. Little Sadie
6. Copper Kettle
7. Belle Isle
8. All the Tired Horses
9. Wigwam
10. Woogie Boogie
Personnel:
Charlie Daniels (guitar and dobro)
Pete Drake (pedal steel guitar)
Charlie McCoy (bass and marimba)
Fred Foster (guitar)
David Bromberg (guitar)
Bob Wilson (piano)
Kenneth Buttrey (drums)
Karl T. Himmel (drums on "Wigwam")
Third Self Portrait sessions, early 1970:
-----------------------------------------
1. Alberta No. 1
2. Alberta No. 2
3. Gotta Travel On
4. Early Morning Rain
5. Lily of the West
6. Spanish is the Loving Tongue
Personnel:
Alvin Rogers (drums)
Stu Woods (bass)
Al Kooper (guitar and keyboards)
David Bromberg (guitar)
Bubba Fowler and Ron Cornelius (guitar and dobro)
Hilda Harris, Maeretha Stewart, Albertine Robertson (vocals)
Final Self Portrait session?, March 1970:
-----------------------------------------
According to A.J. Weberman, a totally unreliable resource, Dylan played
these songs at the final Self Portrait sessions. From a listing found in
Dylan's trash can:
1. Pretty Saro
2. Balls and Stripes Rag
3. Sittin on the Dock of the Bay
4. Went to See the Gypsy
5. Universal Soldier
6. When a Man's Out of a Job
7. These Working Hands
8. Spanish Eyes
9. Woogie Boogie
Personnel unknown.
We know that "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" is one of the songs found
in Bob Johnstons's warehouse locker and due for eventual release, along
with some other songs, on a forthcoming (when?) semi-official bootleg
album that Sony is managing to block for now. The others appear to be
incorrect titles in some cases ("Pretty Saro" could be "Saro Jane" and
"Balls and Stripes Rag" could be "Little Sadie"), and the inclusion of
"Went to See the Gypsy" would indicate these sessions closely related to
the _New Morning_ sessions which happened in March. So, it appears to me
that the _Self Portrait_ and _New Morning_ sessions blend together in
some way.
=========================================================================
The Story Behind the Album
--------------------------
One of the oddest chapters in Dylan's career was the recording and
release of the legendary album _Self Portrait_, released in 1970 to
almost uniformly negative reviews. Many critics and fans thought they
were on the receiving end of a massive joke, or if not a joke then a
seriously deteriorated Dylan who had finally lost all touch with
reality. Or perhaps Dylan was just out of ideas? The lead track from the
album certainly seemed to indicate that with its repeated chorus "all
the tired horses in the sun, how am I supposed to get any riding done?",
which sounded a little like "how am I supposed to get any *writing*
done"!
Various reasons for the seemingly poor quality of the album were given,
including the idea that all the songs were scraps left over from
_Nashville Skyline_ and _New Morning_ sessions (the latter album would
be released *after* _Self Portrait_, but many of the songs on that album
featured the same musicians on many of the _Self Portrait_ songs, so he
sound would fit). Since so many of the songs on the *double album* were
apparently filler (four songs from the Isle of Wight festival,
different versions of some songs on the same album, lifeless jams,
etc.), the skimpy artistic nature of the album was clearly highlighted.
And the title of this mess was _Self Portrait_! This was supposed to
define Bob Dylan? With its cubist self portrait on the cover (the
original cover was reported in Rolling Stone at the time to be a picture
of Bob standing in the window of an abandoned tenement building - wonder
whatever happened to that picture?), and with the straight faced comical
pictures of Dylan hanging around a barnyard with chickens, the visual
impact of the album was jarring. To hear the sound inside was even more
jarring.
What follows is a sort of insider's look into the making of this
album. Rather than taking quotes from reviews, I chose to use actual
quotes from people involved in the making of the album, or those close
enough to Dylan to know what may have been going on in his mind during
this strange period.
=========================================================================
From _Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography_ by Anthony Scaduto, 1971
----------------------------------------------------------------
At the same time, Dylan had just completed another album. The reports
coming out of Columbia were too incredible: Dylan had put together an
album tentatively called _Blue Moon_, filled with his interpretations
of other artists' works, songs by Rodgers and Hart, Paul Simon, Gordon
Lightfoot, and a large number of the old traditional country and folk
things he had been doing back in Minnesota. Bob had cut a couple of
dozen songs in New York and had to discard many of them because they
simply didn't turn out well at all. He then went to Nashville for some
help from the country boys, but things were only slightly better down
there.
When the album was finally released in June, 1970, the most insane
rumors seemed to be true: Bob Dylan had put out a *product*, a
two-record set mysteriously called _Self Portrait_, filled mostly with
the works of others and some examples of Americana, produced in a style
that appeared to be almost Mantovani music, dreary enough to pipe into
elevators or corset shoppes. You laughed when you first heard it - Bob
Dylan trying to turn his nasal twang into a bass baritone, in the style
of Johnny Cash. It seemed to be a huge joke. Bob Dylan as commercial
popular songwriter and singer, a one-man Simon and Garfunkel. Or,
perhaps, the Dylan Brothers - his version of Simon's _The Boxer_, Dylan
dubbing harmony with Dylan, sounded so lame at first hearing that it
had to be a parody of Simon, except that Dylan was spending a lot of
time with Simon in New York and out on Fire Island, and parody doesn't
make sense.
...
Dylan is somewhat defensive about the _Stone_ interview, while sounding
absolutely certain about the worth of _Self Portrait_: "It's a great
album," he said to me. "There's a lot of damn good music there. People
just didn't listen at first."
notes:
------
The quote from Dylan indicates that he was surprised at the negative
response and felt at the time that the album was a genuine worthy
effort. The Rolling Stone review is worth seeking out. It features a
round table discussion between several prominent Rolling Stone critics
and pretty much trashes the album without mercy. [JH]
=========================================================================
From _No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan_
by Robert Shelton, 1986
----------------------------------------------------------
I told Dylan that _Self Portrait_ confused me. Why had he recorded
"Blue Moon"? He wouldn't be drawn out, although obviously he had been
stung by the criticism. "It was an expression," he said. He indicated
that if the album had come from Presley or The Everly Brothers, who
veered toward the middle of the road, it wouldn't have shocked so
many.
notes:
------
Again, an indication that Dylan was serious about the nature of the
album and was disappointed at the criticism. [JH]
=========================================================================
Roger McGuinn interview with Ed Ward in Rolling Stone, 1970
-----------------------------------------------------------
EW: Does the latest Dylan puzzle you any?
RM: Not at all. I understand it thoroughly.
EW: Really?
RM: Well, I'm more on the inside of it than most people because we were
supposed to work with Dylan at the time. I got a call from Clive Davis,
president of Columbia, saying, "How would you like to work with Dylan?"
and we'd previously discussed doing albums with other Columbia artists
and so I said, "Sure thing, let's get together. Just tell me when and
where." So I called Dylan and he wasn't there, but he returned the call
and said, "Did Clive Davis call you about doing an album?" and I said,
"Yeah, but I don't know what we'd do. Do you have any ideas?" and he
said, "No, I haven't thought about it myself. Maybe if you come in with
some of the old stuff and I do too that'll be all right." I think he
meant some of his old stuff, so it would be all his publishing. So I
said, "Well, the only thing we could do is go into the studio and see
what happens, right?" And I asked him if he had any material to spare
and he said no, that he was kind of hard up, that he hadn't been
writing as much as he used to and I mentioned that we all get fat and
lazy and he laughed. And we wound up the conversation by saying that
we'd be in touch with each other, nothing definite.
So we got to New York and did a couple of gigs - Felt Forum and Queens
College - and that took care of the weekend. By Monday we were still in
town, but waiting for some kind of word. Finally the guys took a 12:00
plane back to the Coast. And at 1:00 I got a call from Billie
Wallington, a friend of mine at Columbia, and she said that the session
was in Studio B at 2:30. Well, I explained to her what the situation
was, and she called Dylan and he was pissed off that we didn't have the
courtesy to sit around and wait for his phone call. Well, the crux of
it all was that Clive was supposed to come down to the show the night
before but he didn't show up, and we could have settled it all right
there. The other thing was a political thing with Bob Johnston. We'd
fired him as our producer, right, and Bob Johnston, as producer, is
responsible for notifying the musicians of the time of the session
within 12 hours. It's a union regulation. He knew where we were, but he
didn't call us and Clive didn't call us. Like I say, it was political.
What I think it would have amounted to is that we would have been
backup musicians for Dylan, like the Band, on a couple of cuts on his
new album, which he never mentioned to us. He said it could be a
separate album, the Byrds and Dylan, and I asked him what kind of
billing we'd get on it and he said well, he didn't know, but Clive
assured me that we'd be getting at least 33 percent billing on it.
I would have liked to have done it, if it had worked out at all. In
view of the circumstances, I'm just as glad that we didn't get
on...this...particular...album...that came out, because it was poorly
prepared, that's my opinion. He came into the studio prepared to use a
lot of outtakes from _Nashville Skyline_ and a lot of the Isle of Wight
stuff, which is just a remote, just a live recording rather than
anything musically good. The New York stuff, "Wigwam" and a lot of
those, are pretty good.
So I understand the album thoroughly. I understand why there are
repeats to fill time because he didn't have enough new material to do
it, why he used a lot of old folksongs that everybody's known for 10 or
12 years.
EW: Why is he claiming he wrote them?
RM: He's probably taking publishing on them as re-arrangements of
public domain material. It's a standard trick. I've done it myself. But
I usually make a few changes. "Old Blue." That's one.
notes:
------
The above is an insight into why the album may have turned out as
poorly as it did. If the original concept had been to have Dylan record
some traditionals with the Byrds, it would have been truly great, but
because of confusion and misdirection it never happened, and Dylan was
forced to rely on outtakes from _Nashville Skyline_ instead, the first
indication that this is indeed what he may have been planning in the
early stages. The mystery for me is how he could have ever thought this
would result in a decent album. [JH]
=========================================================================
Bob Dylan interview with Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone, June 1984
---------------------------------------------------------------
KL: It always seemed to me that you where sort of infallible in your
career up until _Self Portrait_ in 1970. What's the story behind that
album?
BD: At the time, I was in Woodstock, and I was getting a great degree
of notoriety for doing *nothing*. Then I had that motorcycle accident,
which put me outta commission. Then, when I woke up and caught my
senses, I realized that I was workin' for all these *leeches*. And I
didn't wanna do that. Plus, I had a family, and I just wanted to see my
*kids*.
I'd also seen that I was representing all these things that I didn't
know anything *about*. Like I was supposed to be on acid. It was all
storm-the-embassy kind of stuff - Abbie Hoffman in the streets - and
they sorta figured me as the kingpin of all that. I said, "Wait a
minute, I'm just a *musician*. So my songs are about this and that. *So
what?*" But people need a leader. People need a leader more than a
leader needs people, really. I mean, anybody can step up and be a
leader, if he's got the people there that want one. I didn't want that,
though.
But then came the big news about Woodstock, about musicians goin' up
there, and it was like a wave of insanity breakin' loose around the
house *day* and *night*. You'd come in the house and find people there,
people comin' through the *woods*, at all hours of the day and night,
knockin' on your door. It was really dark and depressing. And there was
no way to *respond* to all this, you know? It was as if they were
suckin' your very *blood* out. I said, "Now wait, these people can't be
my fans. They just *can't* be." And they kept comin'. We *had* to get
out of there.
This was just about the time of that Woodstock festival, which was the
sum total of all this bullshit. And it seemed to have something to do
with *me*, this Woodstock Nation, and everything it represented. So we
couldn't *breathe*. I couldn't get any space for myself and my family,
and there was no help, nowhere. I got very resentful about the whole
thing, and we got outta there.
We moved to New York. Lookin' back, it really was a stupid thing to
do. But there was a house available on MacDougal Street, and I always
remembered that as a nice place. So I just bought this house, sight
unseen. But it wasn't the same when we got back. The Woodstock Nation
had overtaken MacDougal Street also. There'd be crowds outside my
house. And I said, "Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just
*forget* about me. I wanna do something they *can't* possibly like,
they *can't* relate to. They'll see it, and they'll listen, and they'll
say, "Well, let's get on to the next person. He ain't sayin' it no
more. He ain't given' us what we want", you know? They'll go on to
somebody else. But the whole idea backfired. Because the album went
out there, and the people said, "*This* ain't what we want," and they
got *more* resentful. And then I did this portrait for the cover. I
mean, there was no *title* for that album. I knew somebody who had some
paints and a square canvas, and I did the cover up in about five
minutes. And I said, "Well, I'm gonna call this album _Self Portrait_."
KL: Which was duly interpreted by the press as: This is what he is...
BD: Yeah, *exactly*. And to me it was a *joke*.
KL: But why did you make it a double-album joke?
BD: Well, it wouldn't have held up as a single album - then it *really*
would've been bad, you know. I mean, if you're gonna put a lot of crap
on it, you might as well load it up!
notes:
------
By 1985 Dylan was in a revisionist mode and confessed something that I
had long suspected anyway: that the album was a deliberate joke. Perhaps
at the time he didn't really want to believe it, but by this time Dylan
was no longer interested in defending the album on its own merits and
was ready to admit that he put it out to test the limits of his fans'
credulity. [JH]
=========================================================================
From Record Collector magazine, September 1992 - "In the Studio: Al
Kooper on Dylan"
--------------------------------------------------------------------
RC: How did that [Blonde on Blonde sessions] compare with the sessions
for the next album you worked on with Bob, "Self Portrait" in 1970?
AK: I don't know what he was looking for on "Self Portrait". We'd just
go in and do 'cover' songs, all day long.
RC: Wasn't it obvious to everyone that the stuff you were cutting wasn't
up to scratch?
AK: By this time we were really good friends, so his charisma had worn
off for me. He was just this guy, you know, not some superhuman. But the
other people on the session were really excited just to be there, and so
everyone approached it with the enthusiasm they would have done if it
was a new Dylan song they were doing.
notes:
------
So, according to Kooper they were recording the cover songs all along
and nothing here to indicate that there was any actual original material
being worked on, which is contrary to what Dylan will say later on. More
on this later. [JH]
=========================================================================
From Record Collector magazine, September 1992 - "In the Studio:
Charlie McCoy on Dylan"
----------------------------------------------------------------
RC: The last album you did with Dylan was "Self Portrait". Do you have
any idea what he was trying to create out of that strange mixture of
covers and new songs?
CM: In my estimation, Bob had already decided by that point that he
wasn't going to work with Bob Johnston any more - for what reason, I
don't know. Bob Johnston brought us a tape full of demos that Dylan had
done - just guitar or piano and vocals - and on a lot of the songs,
Kenny Buttrey and I simply overdubbed drums and bass. Dylan did do a
couple of sessions here for that album, but he wasn't here for the whole
thing, by any means.
I'm not sure, actually, that "Self Portrait" was a 'mutual agreement`
project. Either Dylan told Bob to just go ahead and finish it up, by
taking those demos and patching them up; or else maybe Bob Johnston
still had to come up with some more tracks to complete his production
contract with Dylan, and he just did them off his own bat. We never knew
what the deal was.
notes:
------
Hmmm. The mystery deepens here. McCoy claims that they were really
just overdubbing acoustic demos that Bob delivered and that he was
rarely in the studio for much of the album. This makes great sense to
me, because an awful lot of the album sounds like it may have been done
in this way. Possibly the sessions that Kooper attended were different
and Bob really played in the studio with the rest of the musicians, but
I can see where songs like "It Hurts Me Too", "Alberta", and others may
have been demos with later overdubs. [JH]
=========================================================================
From Biograph notes, 1985
-------------------------
"Self Portrait", Dylan explained recently, "was a bunch of tracks that
we'd done all the time I'd gone to Nashville. We did that stuff to get a
(studio) sound. To open up we'd to two or three songs, just to get
things right and then we'd go on and do what we were going to do. And
then there was a lot of other stuff that was just on the shelf. But I
was being bootlegged at the time and a lot of stuff that was worse was
appearing on bootleg records. So I just figured I'd put all this stuff
together and put it out, my own bootleg record, so to speak. You know,
if it actually had been a bootleg record, people probably would have
sneaked around to buy it and played it for each other secretly. Also, I
wasn't going to be anybody's puppet and I figured this record would put
an end to that...I was just so fed up with all that who people thought I
was nonsense."
notes:
------
Now Dylan was revising the story once again. He now claims that the
tracks were warmups for the *real* material they were going to do.
As Paul Williams asks in _Performing Artist: the Early Years_, where is
this material? Is there a whole bunch of unknown recordings laying
around that no one knows about? It's doubtful for several reasons. First
of all, if this material exists why hasn't it been talked about by the
musicians involved in the sessions? Second, Dylan's typical "good stuff"
from the time was pretty mediocre, so I wouldn't hold out much hope for
anything better than what we hear on _Nashville Skyline_ or _New
Morning_. But this leads me to what I've suspected all along: that _Self
Portrait_ was a collection of warmups recorded during sessions for both
of those albums. The statements by Kooper and McCoy would seem to
contradict this, though. [JH]
=========================================================================
So, there you have some of the background surrounding Dylan's strangest
album. If anyone has any more quotes by people involved with the
sessions, or any other material that may shed light on what went on
during the recording of this unique album, please drop me a line!
--
John Howells
how...@netcom.com
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/ho/howells/howells.html
Robert Rini
Excellent post on Self Portrait. Great research--thanks. I'm
reminded of what Picasso once said about portraits--you never
finish a portrait, only abandon it.
B in seattle
Craig Jamieson
: Just reacquainting myself with Self Portrait ..... a couple of questions.
: backround info will be appreciated. Also, who originally recorded Gotta
: Travel On
Paul Clayton had one song that gained popularity without
re-writing. His "Gotta Travel On" as recorded on Monument
by Billy Grammer [?Gammer] was one of the three top singles
of 1959. That's according to Monument head Fred Foster as
printed on a jacket. This song was a major staple in Bob
Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue of 1976, sung by the whole group
and often the final number in the show. Bob Dylan had released
the song on Self Portrait in 1970, of course.
Many songs by Paul Clayton will catch the eye of Bob Dylan listeners,
Stackolee, Omie Wise, Delia, Pretty Polly, Botany Bay, Avondale mine
disaster, Blow ye winds, Desolation, Rolling home and perhaps the whole
of The Days of Moby Dick : Whaling and sailing songs from the days of Moby
Dick will remind them of Bob Dylan's 115th Dream which even mentions
the song Haul On The Bowline!
Craig
--
each one bendin' like its own song
an' the woven spell of Paul Clayton
entrancin' me like China's plague
unescapable
drownin' in the lungs of Edith Piaf
an' in the mystery of Marlene Dietrich
the dead poems of Eddie Freeman
love songs of Allen Ginsberg