A few belated favorites for Dylan's 75th

Bob Dylan’s wealth of songs is almost incalculable. On his 75th birthday, he’s still touring and recording constantly, although time has worn his voice into a deep rasp. To make the occasion, I picked out some favorite tracks. Most come from compilations or never received proper releases. Some did.  But that’s the brilliant thing about Bob Dylan – his outtakes are often superior to other artist’s best takes.

I’ll Keep it With Mine 
Harmonica and galloping piano are all Dylan needs on this soulful song he never intended to release. A longtime favorite from the career-spanning Biograph, I’ll Keep It With Mine. Dylan’s skeletal piano cut lets the incisive lyrics shine.

Worthy cover versions: Nico, The Fairport Convention – for never receiving a proper release, a number of artists have interpreted this song. Start with this pair.

Desolation Row
Dylan always cuts loose in his longer songs. The closer to Highway 61 Revisited is a sublime lyrical extravaganza. The Spanish-sounding guitar that accompanies his poetic folk ballad. His imagery hits peak richness. Everyone knows or knew an Ophelia like the one conjured here. Most of us would relish a chance to spy Einstein disguised as Robin Hood. But watch out for the superhuman crew, and don’t get between Ezra Pound and T.S Elliot. The last verse is a kiss-off like few others “I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name”).

Worthy cover version: The Grateful Dead – they even titled their collection of the excellent Dylan covers, Postcards of the Hanging, from Desolation Row’s first lyric.

 If You See Her, Say Hello 
Haunting and painful, this is the saddest of Dylan songs, a lament for a lost love that has left the speaker wounded. There’s no acrimony, just a recognition that the former love was right to leave. Take your pick of versions from Blood on the Tracks or the Bootleg Series – either will make you ache along with the narrator.

Positively 4th Street 
Fewer streets are meaner than this one. The lyrics fit anyone who’s ever been caught at the wrong moment by someone they can’t stand. The music sounds downright jubilant, while the lyrics tear down someone cut from the same cloth as Holden Caulfield’s phonies.

Tomorrow is Such a Long Time 
Dylan’s lyric growth is evident on this acoustic take from 1962 (other versions exist, but it’s hard to improve upon the Witmark Demos version). It’s full of the longing embedded in other love songs, but here it is raw and exposed.

Worthy cover versions: Elvis Presley and Sandy Denny – they couldn’t be less alike. Elvis makes the song his own, while Denny turns it into an English country-rock ballad. Both are great.

Highlands 
The longest song in his entire catalog is a maze of rhyming verse with a lengthy stop at a Boston restaurant, a conversation with the waitress and musings on life and where it leads. I could pick a half-dozen amazing verses and lines (“can’t tell the difference between a real blond and a fake”) but this one pierces me the most: “The sun is beginning to shine on me/But it’s not like the sun that used to be/The party’s over and there’s less and less to say/ I got new eyes, everything looks far away.”

Forever Young 
Dylan cut this money times with The Band, but nothing tops the rough acoustic version from Biograph. You could almost picture Bob sitting at the end of one of his children’s beds, playing it as a lullaby. After my brother died, I played this song while looking through the photo essay my mom hired a videographer to compile. It synced up pretty well, pumping a little optimism into a sad time. It’s an uplifting moment like few others in the Dylan canon.

Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) 
Senor might be the only thing I can salvage from Street Legal, a 1978 album recorded with a bigger rock band and female backing vocalists. Some sharp but bizarre lyrics power this number. It’s a slow-burner, a story-song with some odd instruments that somehow works.

Superior cover version: Willie Nelson and Calexico – Sometimes Dylan needs an interpreter to cut to a song’s core. On the soundtrack to I'm Not There (all Dylan covers, with too many good ones to mention here), Willie and the Arizona band deftly push Senor deeper into the Southwest, with a mariachi horns and a verse sung in Spanish.

Farewell 
This good-bye to a love is less biting than Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright but even more somber. I knew it from a performance on the radio program Studs Terkel’s Wax Museum in 1962. An adapted folk song, the Coen Brothers also chose it to close out Inside Llewyn Davis. For all its sadness, there’s promise of another day, even if it's too distant to see.