The Bob Dylan Pages

Tell Ol' Bill sessions (Studio 4, Conshohock)

This is a gem for every Dylan admirer. Hear Dylan and his band struggling with the song, Tell Ol' Bill, on this bootleg recording, take by take, trying out different ways to play it, working with tempo, arrangements and key.

Who said Dylan when in studio is not a perfectionist, that he likes the authentic touch? I think I did, but it's both right and wrong. It's right, that he never uses overdubbings or combines pieces from different takes. He doesn't do that, but as you can hear from this recording he doesn't stop before he's satisfied. One notable change during the process is that the key is changed into minor which ends up being the key of the final version.

That Dylan changes the words on the fly is absolutely normal and you may even find that he forgets the right words now and then.

Strangely you can't find the lyrics or any credentials on the official Dylan pages. Elsewhere, when you search for the lyrics, you'll only find that it's 'Written by Bob Dylan'. Actually we're talking about an old traditional called Tell Old Bill, but the lyrics are Dylan's own and the song sounds nothing like any other traditional folk version you may find on YouTube.

The YouTube channel, Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, describes the sound recording as an oddity in terms of bootleg material:

"For instance, there isn't a bootleg recording of the Time Out [Of] Mind sessions, the famous Oxnard demos, or the Bromberg sessions (albeit a few tracks on the Bootleg Series Volume 8, Tell Tale Signs). Even the die-hard fans don't have them."

The recording session is from 2005 and the song is a soundtrack to the movie picture North Country. A few weeks later an almost complete bootleg of the session was circulating.

The video announces that it contains the final version as track 13 but seemingly it must has been left out probably due to copyright reasons. You will however find the final version on 'The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs [Disc 1]'.

"The film North Country is "a semi-fictionalized account of a long legal battle of group of women miners who endured a hostile work environment and numerous and continuous insults and unwanted touching when they became the first women to go work at the Eveleth Mines in Minnesota", according to the plot summary on the international movie data base.

The soundtrack contains many Dylan songs including "Lay Lady Lay", "Sweetheart Like You", "Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others)", "Paths of Victory", and of course "Girl Of The North Country". "Tell Ol' Bill" is the only original song on the soundtrack and is Dylan's first original song since the release of 2001′s Love And Theft. The song occurs several times throughout the film and refers to the character Bill White, the lawyer played by Woody Harrelson who represented the women in the lawsuit."

(soundcloud.com/rickcastronova/01-bob-dylan-tell-ol-bill).