To put these ratings in context, Self Portrait (1970) is the only Bob Dylan album to get just ** before Saved, other than some live albums (Allmusic shows low ratings for most of the Rolling Stones live albums also).  To this day, no one seems to understand Self Portrait – I certainly don’t.  The music seems as off-putting as the splashes of color in the cover art.  The first few times I played it, I really only enjoyed the live version of “Like a Rolling Stone”; I have heard several others since that I enjoy more.  Some years later, the opening track “All the Tired Horses” stood out, but probably only because I couldn’t discern a hint of Bob Dylan anywhere in the song. 

There is a Bob Dylan album that scores even lower in Allmusic than his Christian albums, and here I need to put on my “Under Appreciated” hat – the 1973 release Dylan yields just *.  The album is described in both Rolling Stone Record Guide and Allmusic as a collection of outtakes from Self Portrait – i.e., songs that didn’t make the cut for that head-scratcher – and that just sent chills up my spine. 

Dylan is a recent rescue from Katrina, however, and I found it surprisingly easy to listen to.  The album is entirely cover songs, many of them quite familiar; and if Dylan’s performance of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” leaves no impression at all, that is not true of the lesser known songs. 

The opening track, a traditional folk song called “Lily of the West” is beautifully performed; and the album is well worth owning for that song alone.  Personally I am at least as big a fan of Bob Dylan as a folksinger as I am of Bob Dylan as a rocker, and this song was a welcome return to the performances that I remember so well from his early albums. 

(August 2014)