The Vine: June 27, 2008
Hey Sars,
I’m hoping this would be a good and hopefully fun challenge for your Vine readers.
I’ve got some old reel-to-reels that I’m converting to digital before they disintegrate. They’re recordings of an old radio show from the early ’70s, and, while the songs themselves played in the broadcasts are readily available, (and in MUCH better quality) in mp3 form, the commentary between the tracks, obviously, is not.
Making my job a lot easier is the fact that the playlists are all written out on the reel cases. However, there’s one track that (due to tape issues) I only have a tiny fragment of — which wouldn’t be any sort of problem, except that the title given by both the DJ and the writing on the box DOESN’T APPEAR TO EXIST.
And this puzzling entry is: Bob Dylan — Portrait of a Gentle Young Girl
I’m the girl that everyone goes to for music questions, this one is really making me hang my head in shame. I’ve done enough research from allmusic.com to Google to be pretty sure the track as labeled, or any close variants of such, doesn’t exist. But I’m stumped as to what it might be then…Since the DJ mentions the name before and after, I’m positive it’s not just a straight-up mix-up. (This was before the days of easy Ctrl-V cut/paste errors, and the title must have come from SOMEWHERE to be mentioned three times.)
I’ve also tried to search for B.Dyl lyrics that might contain a similar phrase one could easily assume is the title (I mean, Dylan’s got a precedent already with “Rainy Day Women 16 & 35,” which doesn’t contain the titular phrase at all, but is remembered by most as”you know, that ‘Everybody Must Get Stoned’ song”)…but no dice.There was some hope with “Cat’s In The Well”or “Ballad in Plain D,” but the music doesn’t match the clip I have.
I’ve included said clip in the hopes that someone might recognize the opening two seconds and go “OHHHHHHH, I KNOW THAT!”
So, music geeks — what is it? An “alternate” title only found on LP jackets? Something misunderstood through Dylanese garbled pronunciation?
Thank you!
The Answer, My Friends, Is Blowing In The…Vine?
Dear Something Is Happening But You Don’t Know What It Is, Do You, Mrs. Vine Author,
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to embed the file for everyone else to listen to; that’s the bad news.
Here’s the good news — I actually know the answer for once.It’s “Lay Lady Lay,” which is off the Nashville Skyline album, and that’s probably my favorite Dylan record, so I knew it right away.The titular phrase isn’t in the song (that I know of; Bob can be hard to understand at times), and I have never heard that song, or seen Dylan’s version, referred to as “Portrait of a Gentle Young Girl.”
I think that song is generally better known as a song by The Band.The Band is Dylan’s band, of course; the version most of us know is not as twangy and nasal as this one.What any of this means re: the naming provenance, I don’t know, but the song is “Lay Lady Lay.”Unmistakable.
I’ll try to embed the file here…
Dylanologists, I look forward to any naming explanations in the comments.
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult
Of course it is Lay Lady Lay.
As for the title, i don’t KNOW this, but there is a chance that the dj had recorded something from a jam situation, or something bootlegged – before Dylan recorded it for a real record- way back then when records were real records, etc.
So it could have been a working title for the song, with either Dylan or his record label changing it before official release. Just a possibility.
The phrase “lay lady lay” is in the song, though not in the clip (obviously)
“Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Whatever colors you have in your mind
I’ll show them to you and you’ll see them shine”
Wow!! I am most impressed, Sars!! Expert on grammer, cats, television, human behavior and NOW all things music! You are truly, THE (WO)MAN!!!
@Meg: The question was actually whether the phrase “portrait of a gentle young girl” was in the song. Hard to miss “lay, lady, lay” since it’s practically half the lyrics.
@mctwin: Well, one thing music. If she’d asked about Snow Patrol, I’d have been like, “Is that a division of the Mounties?” I so seldom get music questions for The Vine anyway, and it’s really random that I knew the answer to this one.
Can you name this song in three notes?
Bunting for the win!!
That’s definitely Lay, Lady, Lay. That riff is unmistakable.
Since the tapes are from the 70’s, my best guess (as someone who was working in radio form 1975 to 1983) is that the radio station owner had decreed that the song was off-limits (or the Music Director believed that he would if he heard the name) and “Portrait of a Gentle Young Girl” was either the MD’s or the DJ’s attempt at an end-run around the restriction.
Radio in the 70’s was weird that way — since the big radio conglomerates didn’t exist yet, many radio stations were owned by individuals. (Well, by companies that really were one person.) That meant the station owner was God as far as whatever rules he wanted to impose went.
Paradoxically, since that also meant that the owner was more likely to be a salesman or businessman first and only vaguely aware of the music that his station played, it was possible for the station owner to be conversant with the songs played only as names on the playlist assembled by the Music Director.
At the small station I worked at in the late 70’s, I would have been fired at the end of my airshift for playing Lay Lady Lay. I probably would have been pulled of the air and fired on the spot if I had played it *and* said the name. Case in point: I could play “Afternoon Delight” but not identify it by name.
i found a cover of it by the Mike Batt Orchestra in the UK that was apparently on an album called “Portrait of Bob Dylan” – no young girls though… but Girl of the North Country is on Nashville Skyline – a mix up?
http://tinyurl.com/62xcx8
good call on the song, Sars – that’s impressive…
Very good ears, Sars. I think I would still be clicking “play” and frowning.
I never heard The Band cover “Lay Lady Lay,” but I do have some other random version in my head that’s not Bob Dylan. Btw, The Band is/are a really interesting group in their own right–they were together for a long time before they met Zimmy.
For more information about that mysterious title, you could try asking here:
http://dylanpool.proboards99.com/index.cgi
These people know everything about Bob Dylan.
“Here’s the good news — I actually know the answer for once. It’s “Lay Lady Lay,” which is off the Nashville Skyline album, and that’s probably my favorite Dylan record, so I knew it right away. The titular phrase isn’t in the song (that I know of; Bob can be hard to understand at times), and I have never heard that song, or seen Dylan’s version, referred to as “Portrait of a Gentle Young Girl.””
It got confusing in there. It seemed like you were saying the REAL titular phrase isn’t mentioned. I got confused just like Meg. :)
Duran Duran even did a cover of Lay, Lady, Lay. Not that that helps you any in the whole “Portrait of a …” category but at least I knew what Sars was talking about when she mentioned the song title. I won’t be winning the Bob Dylan category on Jeapordy.
P.S. Could you try to get in touch with some Bob Dylan “official” site or something that is in touch with him? Maybe he could answer that question – it could have been an “alternate” title at the time?
I own that album; that cover’s pretty good, actually, but compared to the embarrassing attempt at “911 Is A Joke,” the others *all* sound pretty good.
@rabrab: After reading your comment, I looked up the lyrics to “Afternoon Delight.” I really never thought of it as having lyrics. In my mind, for some reason, it’s sung by the people on Lawrence Welk.
Well, now I’m traumatized.
I didn’t realize ‘Afternoon Delight’ was so nasty until the episode of “Arrested Development” when Michael and Maeby (uncle and niece) sing it as a duet. Uncomfortable!!
@rabrab: What a fascinating response! I’m a grad student in media & cultural studies and have never heard of that particular aspect of radio culture in that era. Thanks for the interesting info!
Definitely Lay Lady Lay.
He does have a website (bobdylan.com) with a complete lyrics archive, but a search didn’t find that phrase anywhere. And the unfortunate thing with Dylan is that he likes to change up the lyrics a lot when he’s performing. So he could very well have at one point sang lyrics similar to “portrait of a gentle young girl” at a live show, either that or weed is a helluva drug and someone botched up the song i.d. but good.
You’re right upthread. It was a way to get around the broadcast code determination that Dylan was too vulgar for family lestening, and his titles were too suggestive.
There were a lot of DJs who simply claimed on air and logged that they were playing something totally made up, sometimes they made up the artist’s name, knowing full will that the censors only checked the logs.
Afternoon Delight is a song I’m pretty sure I never ever heard before I started seeing it in TV & movies. First in “Good Will Hunting,” in which Will tells his dreams to George Plimpton’s clueless psychotherapist. Second was “Anchorman,” in an ensemble performance that I’m pretty sure is worth the price of the rental all by itself, and lastly on DVD in Arrested Development (which may have aired before Anchorman, I’m not checking).
It’s a dandy song, at once suggestively sexy and completely square (as it is a product of its times), and it’s got skyrockets.
As for Lay Lady Lay, I subscribe to the rabrab’s theory that the DJ was ducking Management, which probably had some problem with the suggestiveness of the song title. It reminds me of TMBG’s “AKA Driver,” so named because the lyric that most resembles the title, “Nyquil Driver,” not only contains a registered trademark, but also refers to the operation of heavy machinery after taking Nyquil.
Big hand on 120, little hand on E!
The version of Lay Lady Lay that I’m most familiar with is by Melanie…
Well spotted, Sars.
WOW, I’m so glad I contacted the amazing Sars and the equally stellar Vine readers.
Also, I’m terribly, terribly embarrassed, because it’s not like “Lay, Lady, Lay” is some random obscure song…I’ve heard it countless times and never would have made the connection
To be fair, though, I was so focused on trying to decipher the tune based on the given title (not the intro bar of music) that I was fairly understandably misled.
Also, while I like Dylan a lot….I kind of, um…hate… “Lay, Lady, Lay”. So it’s likely that I probably tuned it out or skipped over it as much as I could, and therefore never internalized the intro notes.
Thank you so much, Sars, and your wonderful readers, for pointing that out to me…and for shedding at least some minor insight on WHY it might have been labelled something totally different.
I didn’t mention it because my letter was already getting long enough (so I’m a talkative person…LOL) but the tapes I’m converting have a special meaning for me because the DJ in question was my dad, who passed away 16 years ago… so it’s not like I could ask him directly.
Thanks everyone for helping put together the pieces of this puzzle even a little bit.
Amy said: “Duran Duran even did a cover of Lay, Lady, Lay.”
Oh my goodness, is nothing sacred? Now *I’m* traumatized.
Thank you for that explanation, Rabrab. It makes perfect sense, but I never would have guessed.
I’m actually interested in how Rainy Day Woman is converting the reel-to-reels. I have several cassette tapes of my father reading bedtime stories(favorites from childhood, he recorded them as a gift to me when I was in my 20s). He passed away three years ago and I’d like to preserve them in a more useable format. I used to have an mp3 player with line-in, but it died and took the contents with it.
@Magoozen: I have a similar project, which is some 9-10 hours of oral history recorded to cassette by my nearly-100-years-old grandmother. (Just three more months, and she’ll be the family’s first known centenarian!)
In any case, check your computer, because it may have a line-in input on the soundcard already. I have a late-model Mac tower; between the built-in audio support and Garageband, all I need to convert the tapes is a cassette player and a cord to connect the two. I’m planning to try a Walkman-type cassette and a cord with headphone plugs on each end. Your mileage may vary, but unless your pc is stripped down or ancient, I bet there’s a useable input on there somewhere. Good luck… sounds like precious memories!
@ LAN3 – The best movie use of “Afternoon Delight” is from PCU. Jeremy Piven locks a bunch of university administrators into a dinner party with the song on repeat. Gold!
@Magoozen: What Cyntada said. The line-in jack is sometimes labeled as a microphone jack, it’s the same thing. If you want to buy the cord with headphone plugs at each end, it’s called a double-ended 3.5 mm stereo cable. You just plug one end into the Walkman’s headphone jack and the other into the computer’s line in. And I like the free Audacity software (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) for recording.
Speaking of Afternoon Delight…that *is* what Skyrockets’ nickname refers to, isn’t it? Every time I read that name on your site, I hear the song in my head.
‘Tis!
Snarkmeister: “Speaking of Afternoon Delight…that *is* what Skyrockets’ nickname refers to, isn’t it? Every time I read that name on your site, I hear the song in my head.”
Sars: “‘Tis!”
Me: Nice! Go, Sars! ;-)