“Got to give him my all.” Another missing Bob Dylan composition found

“On The Tracks” magazine issue number 23, published in the summer of 2002 had an interview with Regina McCrary by the editor in which she states that she recorded this song with Dylan around 1981, and that she has a tape of it.

In the interview she says.

“I wrote it — actually Bob helped me write it… (We) were on the bus headed to another city… and I got stuck and I couldn’t go any further with the song. I just couldn’t, it was like the song needed something else and I didn’t know where to take it.

“So I went up front on the bus and Bob was sitting there and I asked him would he listen to it, and he said ‘Yeah!'” So I started singing the words… and then I said, ‘But right here, I mean, I’m stuck, I don’t know where to go with it!’

“So Bob took the pencil and pad and he wrote the bridge to the song, and it was awesome. As I was singing Spooner Oldham sat with an acoustic guitar and kind of played chords to match what I was singing and Bob Dylan came up with the chords to the bridge, how he thought it should go, and he put the lyrics to it….”

Thus it seems, Dylan contributed lyrics, chords and melody.

If you listen to the recording above then the passage that is being referred to would be at 2 mins 13 secs to 2 mins 33 secs.  It certainly is a distinctive part of the music.  What happens then however is a sudden jump up a semi-tone to a new key for the repeat of the original music, which to me sounds horrible.  Indeed I think most classically trained musicians find that tactic an awful wrench.  A sort of “what to do when you have absolutely run out of anything to do”.

I can’t think of any occasion where Dylan does a semitone rise, so if the story is true and Bob did write the bridge I think we can safely say the wrench up to the new key is not part of his input.  It is just the bridge.

I can’t find a copy of the lyrics on line, and as ever I hesitate to get involved in lyric decoding since the results are usually laughable.  I’ll leave that to anyone with a few minutes to spare.

Anyway the story continues…

“Later Bob Dylan, Tim Drummond, Jim Keltner, Spooner Oldham, Smitty… went in the studio that Bob used to have in Santa Monica… and we did a rough demo of it.”

It was also reported in 2007 that Bob Dylan and Regina McCrary would be recording a duet of this song for her solo album “I Made A Vow” but that has not appeared.

The article on Dylan’s suggested input in the song concludes, “Now officially released in a version by the McCrary Sisters including Regina on their album “Our Journey”, released in the USA on their own McCrary Sisters label in Oct 2010. The song was copyrighted with BMI in 2010 by Bob Dylan and Regina Avonette McCrary, Gina Mac Publishing Co.”  That album opens with “Blowing in the Wind”.