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Bob Dylan, Bootleg

My favourite Bob Dylan bootleg from 1973: The Pat Garrett sessions

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Pat-garrett-sessions

My favourite Bob Dylan bootleg  from 1973: The Pat Garrett sessions

“Even by the standards of Dylan bootlegs, this is one for the obsessives”
– Richie Unterberger (allmusic)

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid is the twelfth studio album and first soundtrack album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 13, 1973 by Columbia Records for the Sam Peckinpah film, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Dylan himself appeared in the film as the character “Alias”. The soundtrack consists primarily of instrumental music and was inspired by the movie itself.

The Pat Garrett sessions has also been released under other names, Lucky Luke, Blood on the saddle and Peco’s Blues. I think the “release”, The Pat Garrett sessions sounds best. So hit Google, people, and find it.

lucky luke  Peco's Blues

Dylan’s first session for the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack was on January 20, 1973 at CBS Discos Studios in Mexico City. The only song from that day that was included on the album was “Billy 7”; also recorded were multiple other takes of “Billy”, and the outtakes “Under Turkey”, “Billy Surrenders”, “And He’s Killed Me Too”, “Goodbye Holly” and “Pecos Blues”. The following month, Dylan recorded two days at Burbank Studios in Burbank, California. The rest of the album’s songs were recorded, as well as the outtakes “Sweet Armarillo” and “Rock Me Mama”

This bootleg is a collection of Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid outtakes. It has good to great sound quality and features a haunting instrumental ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, several great and very different takes of Billy, the fabulous ‘Rock Me Mama’, and loads of studio banter (for us obsessives), including Bob asking the band to help him create a great song (‘Billy Surrenders’) right on the spot. It’s so great to get a little window into that world. To see the development of a song like Billy is fascinating to witness.

It may be a bootleg for the obsessives but so is the original Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid album. I love them both.

Highlights:

Tom Turkey(TurkeyII)(Billy) a slow bluesy build-up to a fine version of Billy, Billy 4, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (instrumental), Sweet Amarillo, Billy 7 (song6, disc2) but I think there are so many good tracks here that I usually just put on the whole set and runs through it.

Other entries in this series:

My favourite Bob Dylan bootlegs

The Burbank sessions yielded a few spontaneous recordings, including a jam titled “Sweet Amarillo” and a simple, improvised song titled “Rock Me Mama.” Although neither were seriously considered for the soundtrack (as they were born more out of leisure than actual work), they were eventually completed and recorded by the Nashville band Old Crow Medicine Show; “Wagon Wheel” was released in 2004 (and subsequently covered by many other artists, including Darius Rucker) and “Sweet Amarillo” was released in 2014, so check out the stories behind these songs:

The Roots of Wagon Wheel aka Rock Me Mama
The Roots of Sweet Amarillo

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Bob Dylan, Country, folk, Sound, The Best Songs

The Roots of Wagon Wheel aka Rock Me Mama

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Bob Dylan In 'Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid'

Rock Me Mama/Wagon Wheel is a song originally sketched by Bob Dylan and later completed by Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. Old Crow Medicine Show’s version was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in April 2013.

It is a big hit for Darius Rucker this year and nominated for a CMT award.

dr

The chorus and melody for the song comes from a demo recorded by Bob Dylan during the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid sessions.It is part of the famous bootleg Peco’s Blues, the Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid Sessions.

Peco's Blues

He started work on the soundtrack for Pat Garret on January 20th, 1973 in Mexico City. The next month he moved over to Burbank, California and was joined by Roger McGuinn, drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Terry Paul. The sessions gave us Dylan’s big hit Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, after finishing that classic they ran through 2 versions of Rock Me Mama.

It was never finished, and they probably forgot all about Rock Me Mama . The sessions got out as bootlegs and that’s how Keith Secor got to hear it.

Peco's Blues (BACK)

Dylan had left the song as an unfinished sketch, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show wrote verses for the song around Dylan’s original chorus. Secor’s additional lyrics transformed “Rock Me Mama” into “Wagon Wheel”. Secor has stated the song is partially autobiographical.

As Chris ‘Critter’ Fuqua of Old Crow told theislandpacket.com in May this year:
“ I’d gotten a Bob Dylan bootleg in like ninth grade and I let Ketch listen to it, and he wrote the verses because Bob kind of mumbles them and that was it. We’ve been playing that song since we were like 17, and it’s funny because we’ve never met Dylan, but the song is technically co-written by Bob Dylan. What’s great about “Wagon Wheel” is that it has grown organically. The popularity of it was all based on word of mouth. There was no radio airplay for it. We made a music video for it, but it wasn’t “November Rain” or anything. No one was like, “Oh my God, what’s this video about?” And 16 years later, it went gold, then Darius Rucker cut it.”

ocms

Keith Secor:
“It’d be my pleasure to dispel the myth and rumor about the song Wagon Wheel, or “Rock Me Mama” as Bob Dylan himself called the song when he recorded it down in Mexico in 1972 for the soundtrack of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. This song was not released, and it was not finished either, this is a demo of a practice session of him, Rob Stoner, and a couple of gals doing the chorus over and over again while the bass player learns the bass line. That’s what I heard on a German bootleg about nine years ago in high school. And I wrote the lyrics to the song because I loved the chorus so much and I sung it in my head for maybe a year straight, and then just penned what I penned, which is something of an autobiographical story about just wanting to get outta town, gettin outta school, and just wanting to go play music. It’s sort of autobiographical like that. But yeah, it’s sort of a Bob Dylan co-write with about 25 years inbetween.”

He works in the folk tradition that Dylan is definitely a part of, getting parts of melodies and lyrics and adding your own verses. He got the year wrong, it was in 1973.The version that he heard was probably the second version of the song, as he describes the chorus.
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