By Tony Attwood

This to me sounds close to being one of those songs that Bob Dylan throws away and which most of the rest of the world would give up everything they own to be able to claim to have written.

The trouble is the electric piano part and vocal is so badly recorded as to make listening to the song really hard going. And then as we are really getting into it, it just suddenly stops.

Maybe the tape ran out, but one thing is sure Bob’s ideas certainly didn’t.

1. Discs 2 and 3 of Bob Dylan (featuring Johnny Cash) – Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15 are centered around Dylan’s collaborations with American music icon Johnny Cash including the much sought-after Columbia Studio A sessions and on-stage performances at the Ryman Auditorium (May 1, 1969) for the recording of the premiere episode of The Johnny Cash Show.
2. Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Beyond Here Lies Nothin': The Collection - Bob Dylan on AllMusic.
3. Quick like a flash is a song written by Bob Dylan in his notebook to which Jim James added music. It is part of the New Basement Tapes collection. It has been suggested that “Quick Like a Flash” (only found on the deluxe edition) sounds like it is ready to roll as a soundtrack a Tarantino opening credit sequence in the near future.
4. Lyric video for Bob Dylan’s “Tell Me That It Isn’t True (Take 2)” from Travellin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 15 Listen to Bob Dylan: Rolling Thunder Apparel Collection has Arrived.

Tragically we only have one version and this is it. Someone, somewhere, needs to get hold of this, work it, complete it and release because it really is a terrific piece of work which tries out playing minor chords against the major that is expected to give a really odd effect.

Composer: Bob Dylan Lyrics Well, it's always been my nature to take chances My right hand drawing back while my left hand advances Where the current is strong and the monkey dances To the tune of a concertina Blood dryin' in my yellow hair as I go from shore to shore I know what it is that has drawn me to your door But whatever it could be.

Looked at written down the sequence is simple, but the way Dylan works the melody around it and then clashes those minors and majors makes it something else. Try it on a piano; it is fun.

Ab, Gb Db Ab; Db E Ab

Middle section Db Ab Db Eb

As for the lyrics the writer of the haiku says

My conclusion is that the words that I yanked out of this after playing it a dozen times are about as deep as the song itself. That’s fine. It was meant to be a fun time, not a writer’s retreat.

The piece starts with an instrumental verse as the band pick up the idea and then the lyrics igo something like this…

And that is it, it stops part way through a verse, and we have no more.

OK I realise that no one else at all has picked this is a proto masterpiece, but I suspect that is because of the quality of the recording and the mishmash of the start and the sudden end, but really, this song is something special and had Dylan remembered it we’d all be screaming like mad when he played it at a gig.

As the writer of the Haiku’s says, the Basement Tape time “was meant to be a fun time, not a writer’s retreat,” and yes this is fun time, but the guys happened to strike gold, probably without knowing it (given they didn’t come back to it.)

I can say that if I was still in a band, I’d make this part of the repertoire at once. It is a great song, and of all the songs that I have found on the Basement which I didn’t know before, this is one of a small collection that really stand out to me.

Fortunately for me, although my memory of events, people’s names, people’s faces and everything like that is rubbish, my musical memory doesn’t falter and I can hear this in my head whenever I want, with all the awfulness of the recording cleared out.

What a find! What a piece of bluesy rock n roll!

What else is on the site?

You’ll find an index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.

New Bob Dylan

The index to the 500+ songs reviewed is now on a new page of its own. You will find it here. It contains links to reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.

We also now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews

By Tony Attwood

“The Buffalo Skinners” (also known as “On the trail of of the buffalo) is one of the most popular of all the American traditional songs. It has been widely sung, widely recorded, and like everything in the folk song index, it exists in a huge variety versions. And if that were not enough reason to expect that Bob Dylan knew the song, and found it worthy of performing (which he did) Woody Guthrie recorded it

It is also a song that has been adopted by singers and collectors and there is evidence that the song existed at least from the very earliest days of the 20th century (Jack Thorp included it in his collection of cowboy songs published in 1908). It probably existed for quite a long time before that.

Dylan played a version of the song in 1961 and a recording of that gig still exist, and then suddenly in 1988 he introduced it into his Never Ending Tour performances, playing it 44 times before dropping it in 1991.

And what this has to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis is that Dylan took the song and the style of presentation as the basis for that song which he recorded in 1963 for Broadside under the name ‘Blind Boy Grunt’.

It has since been argued that when Dylan said that he had written a song about the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was speaking not of “Hard Rain” as many people assumed at the time, but about “Cuban Missile Crisis.

So back to the crisis, which occurred in October 1962. The “Cuban missile crisis,” gripped the whole world and John F. Kennedy gambled the entire future of the world by effectively threatening war on the USSR if the missiles based in Cuba were not removed. The USSR denied everything.

On October 16 President Kennedy was given photographic evidence of the missile bases in Cuba suggesting clearly a capability of the option of a nuclear attack on mainland USA. The USA contemplated the invasion of Cuba and mobilisation began with the President appearing on TV advising the nation of the danger, and a naval blockade around Cuba being put in place to prevent more missiles being delivered.

Quite possibly the reason I am able to sit here today and write this (rather than sitting in a cave in a continuing nuclear winter) is that President Khrushchev ordered the fleet of the USSR not to attempt to land in Cuba and the dismantling of the missile sites. In return the USA agreed not to invade Cuba.

I was 16 at the time, and of course my little commentary above is written from an English perspective. For our purposes here the exact details of the events are not what is relevant but rather the perception at the time of many people is what I wish to draw on. Dylan’s response to it all was not “Hard Rain” (although that is what the commentary on the song at the time suggested) but “Cuban Missile Crisis.”

As Dylan has said several times since, “hard rain” was not the fallout of nuclear bombs but rather the pellets of poison are the lies that are propagated by the media.

So setting aside “Hard Rain”, and returning to “Cuban Missile Crisis” it is curious that a song such as “Buffalo Skinners” should be the foundation of “Cuban Missile Crisis” although listening to that opening line that rises from the major chord to the minor, one can see at once what gripped Bob and convinced him to use that song.

Certainly there was nothing in the lyrics of the original that would have drawn him to this song as the basis for his Cuban Missile Crisis song…

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Come round you old time cowboys, and listen to my song
Please do not grow weary, I will not detain you long
Concerning some young cowboy, who did agree to go
Spend the summer pleasantly on the trail of the buffalo.

Here’s the link to Trail of the Buffolo

And now here is Bob’s reworking and turning it into Cuban Missile Crisis. There’s a fair amount of getting ready and deciding on the key at the start – Bob actually gets going on 30 seconds, so you can jump forward if you don’t want all the extras at the start.

These lyrics were provided by the always excellent “Dylanchords” website.

But less you haven’t heard the original, and you are driven to think that the buffalo song is a romantic tale of hardy men taming the beasts out in the wild, it might be worth considering the original a little further, for those men who are persuaded to work on the trail of the buffalo end up killing the organiser of the expedition after he refuses to pay them.

As Justanothertune.com reports in its analysis of the original song, “The “romanticization of the West” was a recent development, the “mythical cowboy” a new cultural icon. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, popular dime novels, Theodore Roosevelt’s Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (1896), Frederic Remington’s paintings, Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian (1902) and the very first Western movie The Great Train Robbery (1903) all had their share in the creation of this “mythic West” that is now such an important part of American popular culture.”

Dylan’s “Cuban Missile Crisis” reflects a modern version of the song take us back to the original reality.

What else is on the site

1: Over 460 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology. We’ve taken the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also produced overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.

4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link

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5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

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6: You might also like:A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines and our articles on various writers’ lists of Dylan’s ten greatest songs.

And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews

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