Album: New Morning
Recorded: June 1970 to August 1970
Released: October 1970
Songs / length: 12 / 35:21
To my mind, New Morning is the pick of the four records that Dylan recorded in 1969 and 1970 (including 1973 release, Dylan, the only studio album over which he had no artistic control – see next blog). Coming hot on the heels of his previous release, Self Portrait, New Morning sounds to me like a conscious effort on Dylan's part to recapture some of the experimental spirit of his mid-60s work, widening his Americana project to envelop gospel and jazz too. Dylan himself plays the piano and organ on many tracks, while Al Kooper also features tickling the ivories, along with the scat singing of Maeretha Stewart on If Dogs Run Free. This jazz number was recorded in one improvised take, with Stewart bouncing off Dylan's pre-written lyrics and Kooper's keyboard riffs. Stewart also features elsewhere on the album as a back-up singer, along with the rest of an all-girl chorus.
On the back of the vinyl edition is a photo by Len Siegler from 1962 of a young Dylan with Victoria Spivey, a blues singer and songwriter who co-owned the Brooklyn-based label Spivey Records. Dylan had provided harmonica accompaniment and back-up vocals for Big Joe Williams in March 1962, and this photo is taken from those sessions. Dylan wrote in Chronicles that he "knew that this photo would be on the cover before I recorded the songs. Maybe I was even making this record because I had the cover in mind and needed something to go into the sleeve."
Dylan also reveals in Chronicles that some of the early songs were written in response to a request from poet Archibald MacLeish to write music for a play of his. Dylan at first agreed, but then decided not to collaborate, and the songs he'd written like Father of Night and the title track New Morning became the basis for the album. As for production credits, Nashville legend Bob Johnston – who also worked with Dylan on JWH, Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait – has his name on the back sleeve, but Kooper claims to have produced the record (even though Johnston disagreed). In fact, it sounds like Dylan took most of the key decisions, including rejecting Kooper's overdubs and dropping songs like Ballad of Ira Hayes, Spanish Is The Loving Tongue and Mr Bojangles (which all ended up on 1973 release, Dylan).
Dylan also re-recorded several tracks without Kooper in August 1970, including the wonderful album opener, If Not For You. The song is a great example of the warmer tone of Dylan's 1969 and 1970 work, and an earlier unreleased take of the song was recorded with George Harrison in May 1970 in New York. Harrison liked the song so much that he recorded his own version later that year for his crowning solo achievement, All Things Must Pass. Dylan and Harrison also rehearsed the song together for the Concert for Bangladesh in summer 1971, but decided not to play it live.
Another towering musical figure from the 60s, David Crosby, is associated with the second track on the album, Day of the Locusts. In June 1970, Crosby accompanied Dylan and his wife to a ceremony at Princeton university, where Dylan was presented with an honorary doctorate in music. In Chronicles, Dylan recalls that after "whispering and mumbling my way through the ceremony, I was handed the scroll. We piled back into the big Buick and drove away. It had been a strange day. Bunch of dickheads on auto-stroke, Crosby said." In light of this incident, Dylan's reticence about receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature is all a little clearer. In the song, the man whose "head was explodin'" was likely Crosby, high on something or the other, while the line stating that he "sure was glad to get out of there alive" refers to the embarrassment and paranoia he felt during the ceremony and also the 17-year cicada infestation that was afflicting Princeton at the time.
In its reference to the "black hills of Dakota", Day of the Locusts also reveals Dylan's yearning to return to the Midwest of his childhood, while songs like Time Passes Slowly, Went To See The Gipsy (about Elvis? Who knows? I do know the outtake of this song is better) and Winterlude summon up his Minnesota roots. It sounds at times like Dylan is lauding the new-found, rural-based stability in his life, and at others like he doesn't quite believe in the dream. The picture he paints of domestic bliss on Sign on the Window is almost too good to be true: "Build me a cabin in Utah / Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout / Have a bunch of kids who call me Pa". Though I'm not so keen on the album's two closing songs, there's plenty of good material on the second side of the LP too, especially the title track and The Man In Me. The latter makes a memorably appearance on the soundtrack of one of my favourite films, The Big Leboswki.
Album rating: B+
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