Dylan performed the song live for the first time at Shapiro Gymnasium in Waltham, Massachusetts, on November 22, 1975. This live version from the Rolling Thunder Revue was released on The Bootleg Series Volume 5: Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue in 2002. Since then, he has performed the tune nearly 150 times.
COVERS
Among artists who have covered “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” include Cher (3614 Jackson Highway, 1969), Ricky Nelson (In Concert: The Troubadour, 1969, 1970), Ben E. King (Rough Edges, 1970), Tina Turner (Tina Turns the Country On!, 1974), and Jeff Beck (Original Album Classics, 2008). It has also been performed onstage by the Black Crowes.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
For the live version of the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975, Dylan changed much of the text of this song and even the harmony on the bridge.
Self
Portrait
All The Tired Horses
Alberta #1
I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know
Days Of 49
Early Mornin’ Rain
In Search Of Little Sadie
Let It Be Me
Little Sadie
Woogie Boogie
Belle Isle
Living The Blues
Like A Rolling Stone*
Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight)
Gotta Travel On
Blue Moon
The Boxer
Quinn The Eskimo
(The Mighty Quinn)*
Take Me As I Am (Or Let Me Go)
Take A Message To Mary
It Hurts Me Too
Minstrel Boy
She Belongs To Me*
Wigwam
Alberta #2
OUTTAKES
Spanish Is The Loving Tongue
A Fool Such As I
Running
Ring Of Fire
Folsom Prison Blues
Pretty Saro
Dock Of The Bay
Went To See The Gypsy
Universal Soldier
When A Fellow’s Out Of A Job
These Hands
Thirsty Boots
Tattle O’Day
Railroad Bill
House Carpenter
This Evening So Soon
Annie’s Going To Sing Her Song
Time Passes Slowly
Alberta
Little Moses
Come A Little Bit Closer
Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies
My Previous Life
DATE OF RELEASE:
June 8, 1970
on Columbia Records
(REFERENCE COLUMBIA C2XUMBIAER)
Self Portrait:
Where Dylan Became a Crooner
The Album
Barely three weeks after Nashville Skyline came out, Bob Dylan went back into the studio to record his tenth album, a double vinyl record, the second double album of his career (after Blonde on Blonde). When it appeared on the market on June 8, 1970, everyone was stunned. If Dylan wanted to go against the grain of his public, this was the way to do it. This was basically what he said to Rolling Stone in 1984, as he evoked his return to Greenwich Village after the Woodstock Festival: “The Woodstock Nation had overtaken MacDougal Street too. 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.’”92
If the songwriter wanted to shock and provoke, he succeeded in doing it! As soon as Self Portrait appeared, it caused misunderstanding, anger, and even rejection. Robert Christgau said, “I don’t know anyone, even vociferous supporters of this album, who plays more than one side at a time. I don’t listen to it at all.” And Greil Marcus was much more drastic, as he wrote in Rolling Stone, “What is this shit?”93
Why was there such opposition? Certainly because the break with Dylan’s past was spectacular. Although John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline were surprising, as compared to the brilliant albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, they were nevertheless records by Dylan—written, composed, and sung by Dylan. Self Portrait seemed to these critics like the work of an artist they did not know, who had betrayed the ideals of the counterculture to sink into the delights of mainstream music with syrupy and conventional arrangements. In his book Chronicles, Dylan says, “Journalists began asking in print, ‘Whatever happened to the old him?’ They could go to hell, too. Stories were printed about me trying to find myself, that I was on some eternal search, that I was suffering some kind of internal torment. It all sounded good to me. I released one album (a double one) where I just threw everything I could think of at the wall and whatever stuck, released it, and then went back and scooped up everything that didn’t stick and released that, too.”1
The First Americana Record
This musical melting pot is exactly what bothered the critics. Dylan’s voice had once again softened (except for a few exceptions) since the Nashville Skyline sessions, to the point that a listener could reasonably wonder if the great singer of “Like a Rolling Stone” was not contemplating trying to imitate Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley in his Las Vegas days. More surprising still was that out of the twenty studio recordings, only four had been written by Dylan. The other sixteen songs were traditional tunes arranged by him or pop and easy listening standards, such as “Blue Moon” by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers or “Let It Be Me,” an adaptation of the French hit “Je t’appartiens” by Gilbert Bécaud and Pierre Delanoë. There were, however, two remarkable exceptions, “Early Morning Rain” by Gordon Lightfoot and “The Boxer” by Paul Simon. Finally, what about the arrangements? A large orchestra with strings expressed Dylan’s definite intention to destroy his image of himself as a protest folksinger, as well as to explore new musical territory. Charles Perry wrote, “We know Dylan was the Rimbaud of his generation; it seems he’s found his Abyssinia.”7 Record World magazine wrote, “The revolution is over. Bob Dylan sings ‘Blue Moon’ to Mr. Jones.” Self Portrait also included four live songs recorded with the Band during the Isle of Wight Festival on August 31, 1969: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn),” “Minstrel Boy,” and “She Belongs to Me.”
Unlike the critics, the public generally liked Self Portrait. Dylan’s tenth work was number 4 in the United States before becoming a gold record, and number 1 in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, opinions have evolved over the years. Today this double album is considered to have real artistic merit. First of all, there is the desire to exalt the America of the pioneers, especially in “Days of 49” and “Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight),” and also in a way with “All the Tired Horses” and “Wigwam,” which sounded very Western. Lastly, with the two versions of “Alberta” and the version of “It Hurts Me Too,” Dylan showed that he had not cut off his folk and blues roots. Self Portrait could even appear as one of the first Americana records, a mix of folk, country, rock, and blues growing out of American cultural roots, which became popular on the radio in the nineties as a reaction to overcalibrated musical formats.
The Album Cover
Dylan: “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.”92 The painting is naïve, a bit like a Chagall. It was not the first time Dylan tried painting, since the Band was indebted to him for the painting that appeared on the cover of their first album, the masterpiece Music from Big Pink (1968). Inside the gatefold cover, there were photographs, some taken in the studio, others in the country or at the Isle of Wight Festival on August 31, 1969.
The Recording
The album was produced by the great Bob Johnston. This was his fifth record with Dylan since 1965. Johnston remembered the day when the songwriter came to ask him for his opinion on recording songs by other artists. “Dylan came in and said, ‘What do you think
about recording other people’s songs?’… I thought it would be great for him… if that’s what he wanted to do. He came in the studio with old books and Bibles and started recording.”94
The Self Portrait sessions were carried out in three steps, spread over twelve months. On April 24 and 26 and on May 3, 1969, Dylan recorded a dozen songs in Nashville with basically the same corps of musicians as on Nashville Skyline. Then the sessions began again eleven months later, from March 3 to 5, 1970, but in New York this time. Nearly forty songs were worked on with other musicians, including Al Kooper, who returned in the grand style of Highway 61 Revisited. Finally, a third and final session was spent doing seven overdubs once again in Nashville between March 11 and April 3, 1970. This exasperated Johnston, who up to then had done his utmost to avoid resorting to overdubbing. No less than twenty songs were completed this way. The results nevertheless thrilled Johnston, as he said, “I loved the album, but naturally it got knocked… But sit down and listen to it. Don’t listen to it like, ‘Well this is the new Dylan album.’ Just listen to what happened. It’s a wonderful album.”94
What was specific about these overdubs was that, apart from the involvement of country-rock musicians like Charlie McCoy or Charlie Daniels, the recordings included an orchestra of sixteen musicians directed by arranger Bill Walker, who had been the musical director of the Johnny Cash Show on ABC, as well as three female choir members. Details are provided on the musicians participating in various sessions in each song’s description.
Technical Details
Self Portrait was one of the most complex recordings by Dylan, at least at the technical level. For instance, the first songs recorded in eight tracks in Nashville (in April and May 1969) were used as the basis for future overdubs, and this had been planned from the start of the project. When Dylan returned to the studio a year later, in March 1970, in order to complete his album, he carried on the production at Columbia Studios in New York. The master tapes of the recent New York recordings (once again eight tracks) were then brought to Nashville by Charlie Daniels in person. Thirty-two mixes were done in stereo, of which some were transferred to a sixteen-track tape recorder, plus the original eight-track tapes. Now the overdubs could begin. The results of all this work ended up as Self Portrait.
The sound engineers who were involved in the thirteen sessions of the album were Neil Wilburn in Nashville (who had already worked on Nashville Skyline), Don Puluse (who also recorded, among others, Al Kooper, Chicago, Billy Joel, Jaco Pastorius, and Miles Davis) and Doug Pomeroy in New York, as well as Glynn Johns on the four songs from the Isle of Wight Festival.
The Instruments
Dylan, who had put his harmonica on the shelf since Nashville Skyline—on which he had only played it on one song—brought it back here to play it in three songs: “Alberta #1” and “#2” and “Early Morning Rain,” all in C. The studio photos show him playing an acoustic Martin 00-18 guitar. It may be that he also used other guitars, but there is no evidence of this.
SOUND ENGINEER
Glynn Johns, one of the rare sound engineers whose résumé included recording the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin, reconnected with Bob Dylan for the Real Live album, which he produced during Dylan’s 1984 European tour.
All The Tired Horses
Bob Dylan / 3:13
Musicians (New York)
Bob Dylan: guitar
Al Kooper: guitar, organ (?)
David Bromberg: guitar
Hilda Harris, Albertine Robinson, and Maeretha Stewart: chorus
Musicians (Nashville)
Bob Moore: bass (?)
Billy Walker: conductor and arrangement
Rex Peer, Dennis A. Good, and Frank C. Smith: trombones
William Pursell: piano
Gene A. Mullins: baritone horn
Martha McCrory and Byron T. Bach: cello
Gary Van Osdale: viola
Solie I. Fott: violin, viola
Lilian V. Hunt, Sheldon Kurland, Martin Katahn, Marvin D. Chantry, Brenton B. Banks, George Binkley, and Barry McDonald: violins
Recording Studios
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio B, New York: March 5, 1970; Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville: March 11 and 17, 1970
Technical Team
Producer: Bob Johnston
Sound Engineers (New York): Don Puluse and Doug Pommery
Sound Engineer (Nashville): Neil Wilburn
Genesis and Lyrics
Right from the opening of Self Portrait, Bob Dylan seems to enjoy covering his tracks. “All the Tired Horses” is only made up of two sentences that are repeated over and over again for some three minutes by a female choir. Dylan was absent, either in singing, on guitar, or on piano. What is meant by “All the tired horses in the sun / How’m I supposed to get any ridin’ done?” The songwriter is probably addressing his public, comparing himself to a burned-out old horse who only wants to rest. In Christopher Ricks’s book Dylan’s Visions of Sin, he states that the first definition of “in the sun” in the Oxford English Dictionary is “freed from any responsibility or burden.”
Production
There is a reason why “All the Tired Horses” opens the album. If Dylan wanted to surprise us, he achieved his goal. It is the first song of his career, not counting the instrumentals, in which he does not sing; a female choir with gospel tones replaces him. This choir, which starts with a fade-in and disappears with a fade-out, gives the listener the strange feeling of an almost surreal apparition. What was curious was that at the time of John Wesley Harding, the songwriter avoided the exaggeration of psychedelic records, which were too ambitious for his taste. Apparently, this was no longer the case. Like the Beatles, who had just released “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” or “I Need Your Lovin’” by Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford (1962), Dylan reduced his text down to two simple sentences. He wanted listeners to understand and respect his artistic vision, no matter how different is might be.
The recording of “All the Tired Horses” was done in several stages, as were most of the songs on Self Portrait. One session took place in New York on March 5, 1970 (a recording of which one can hear on The Bootleg Series Volume 10: Another Self Portrait [1969–1971]). The chorus, made up of Hilda Harris, Albertine Robinson, and Maeretha Stewart, was accompanied by two acoustic guitars (played by either Dylan, David Bromberg, or Al Kooper). After this the tapes were sent to Nashville for the overdubs that began on March 11 with the addition of an organ (Kooper?) and a bass. The musicians were not clearly identified. The choruses were copied over several times in order to lengthen the song.
ON A SOUNDTRACK
“All the Tired Horses” is in Blow (2001), a police movie by Ted Demme with Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz.
Alberta #1, Alberta #2
Traditional / Arrangements Bob Dylan / 2:58 and 3:14
Musicians (New York)
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Al Kooper: guitar, piano (?)
David Bromberg: dobro
Stu Woods: bass
Alvin Rogers: drums
Hilda Harris, Albertine Robinson, and Maeretha Stewart: chorus
Musicians (Nashville)
Charlie Daniels: guitar
Kenny Buttrey: drums (?)
Recording Studios
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio B, New York: March 5, 1970; Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville: March 11 and April 3, 1970
Technical Team
Producer: Bob Johnston
Sound Engineers (New York): Don Puluse and Doug Pomeroy
Sound Engineer (Nashville): Neil Wilburn
Genesis and Lyrics
According to ethnomusicologist Mary Wheeler, who transcribed a large number of ballads and blues songs in the first half of twentieth century, “Alberta” was originally a steamboat work song sung on the paddle boats plying the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The folk and blues musician Leadbelly recorded the song in four versions in the 1930s and 1940s,
opening the way for a large number of performers, including Bob Wilson, Burl Ives, Chad Mitchell, Odetta, Doc Watson, and even Eric Clapton, who performed the song on his famous Unplugged live album, released in 1992.
Production
Bob Dylan may have heard “Alberta” during his first visits to the clubs of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. One thing is certain: he was so strongly attracted to this lowdown blues song that he recorded three versions of it during the sessions for Self Portrait, two of which were kept for the same album. Each version was a success. It may be noted that since his discovery by Robert Johnson, Dylan had the blues at his fingertips. “Alberta #1” has a triple rhythm and is reminiscent of “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” and “Corrina, Corrina.” It distinguishes itself with an electric guitar solo, played by Al Kooper (or possibly by Charlie Daniels). Dylan sings in a casual tone with lots of feeling and plays some very good harmonica parts. The overdubs made in Nashville are not very clear. As mentioned previously, Kenny Buttrey may have played drums, but this is not verified.
“Alberta #2” is structurally better defined in a binary rhythm. The piano part is clearer and probably played by Al Kooper (as mentioned for “Alberta #3” in the booklet for The Bootleg Series Volume 10: Another Self Portrait). In both versions the dobro is played by David Bromberg and the female chorus reinforces the “roots” aspect of the music. “Alberta #2” concludes Self Portrait.
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 43