Columbia Studio A Nashville, TN

On Feb. 17-18, 1969, Bob Dylan settled in with Johnny Cash and his band for two days of loose sessions at CBS Studios in Nashville which ultimately produced just one released track, “Girl from the North Country” on “Nashville Skyline.”

Additional material from these sessions was released in 2019 via Dylan’s “Travelin’ Thru” Bootleg Series Vol. 15: 1967-1969 (with another three tracks devoted to Dylan’s three-song appearance on the debut June 7, 1969 episode of Cash’s ABC variety show).

Here are some excerpts from a review of “Travelin’ Thru” by Chris Morris that appeared on variety.com in Oct. 2019:

The main event on “Travelin’ Thru” is definitely a generous and finally authorized sampling of Dylan and Cash’s joint sessions of Feb. 17-18, 1969. The less than monumental results of these get-togethers will not surprise any of the hardcore Dylan fans who have heard various bootlegs drawn from these dates, which have appeared for the last several decades.

It is apparent from the get-go that Johnston — who, thanks to his outspoken, maverick style, had recently been demoted by Columbia from head of the label’s Nashville operations to producer-at-large, working with both Cash and Dylan — took a hands-off approach to what might have been a real summit meeting with some actual in-studio direction and something resembling a prepared repertoire.

In Scorsese’s 2005 documentary “No Direction Home,” the producer opines, “Bob Dylan can do whatever the f— he wants to,” and that was the way things rolled here. This laissez-faire style may have been dictated somewhat by the decision to use Cash’s touring unit, which at that time included the singer’s old Sun labelmate Carl Perkins on guitar, instead of the resourceful and highly flexible sessionmen who usually backed Dylan when he recorded in town. In the end, only the Dylan-Cash remake of the former’s 1963 tune “Girl From the North Country” reached anything like completion, and it was used to lead off “Nashville Skyline.”

If you have ever been fortunate enough to sit around in a living room while some talented musicians kicked around some songs they all know, you have an idea of what the rest of the Dylan-Cash collaborations sound like. The only difference is that in this case, tape was kept rolling. Nothing is ever truly finished; lyrics are forgotten, fumbled, or (cf. the interminable “Careless Love”) sometimes made up on the spot. Cash, who appears to be in the driver’s seat in terms of song selection and musical direction, often calls out to Johnston for a copy of the lyrics to a tune; it would appear they were seldom delivered.

The material is not entirely devoid of interest. One track familiar from the bootlegs remains revealing: a simultaneous reading, with each man singing his own song, of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and Cash’s “Understand Your Man,” both first recorded in 1963 and both lifted wholesale from folksinger Paul Clayton’s “Who Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I’m Gone.” After the track breaks down, Cash notes, “The phrasing comes out just right ‘cause we both stole it from the same song.” A version of Cash’s beautiful “I Still Miss Someone,” while not entirely successful, shows what might have been possible if arrangements had been crafted to accommodate the singers’ very different ranges.

But for the most part, the recordings veer uncertainly and incompletely through busted-up renditions of Dylan and Cash hits; hillbilly standards like Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s “Mountain Dew” and medleys of old Jimmie Rodgers hits; Sun-era material like Perkins’ “Matchbox” and Elvis’ “Mystery Train” and “That’s All Right, Mama”; and Cash-mooted gospel material (“Amen,” “Just a Closer Walk With Thee”). In the end, this musical meeting must be chalked up as a missed opportunity of historic proportions.

In May 1969, Dylan recorded in Nashville for what is, to date, the last time. Two days after he taped his three songs for Cash’s TV show (two solo numbers and a “Girl From the North Country” duet), he re-entered the studio to cut a pair of Cash songs that ultimately went unused on the 1970 grab bag “Self Portrait”: a slinky funk version of “Ring of Fire” and a country blues-inspired stab at “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Any of you wish you could have been at these sessions that began 55 years ago today?