Randy Foley's Collection
Bob Dylan ??/??/1939
Ten Of Swords, Various, MN
| Source | SBD/Vinyl |
| Media | CDR 10 discs |
| Notes | (49:25)/(51:08)/(48:37)/(50:57)/(45:26)/(50:04)/(48:50)/(49:00)/(48:08)/(47:03) [see J-Card Comment for background info] |
| J-Card Comment | Ten of Swords is a ten-album set of Dylan material from 1961-1966. Released in the summer of 1985, shortly before the release of Biograph later that autumn, several rock journalists declared Ten of Swords to be the more important release. Below are a 1986 Rolling Stone article which prompted a hostile reaction from Columbia, an excerpt from Clinton Heylin’s book “Bootleg,” and the track list and recording information. * * * Rolling Stone #471, April 10, 1986 ●Bootleg Bob Dylan Set Creates a Stir; CBS Not Amused Following the success of Biograph, an illegal boxed set of Bob Dylan recordings has begun to turn up in record stores around the country, creating quite a stir among Dylan fans. The ten-record bootleg set, called Ten of Swords after a card in the Tarot deck, contains material Dylan recorded between 1961 and 1966. Selling for as much as eighty dollars, Ten of Swords is a fascinating--and for collectors, indispensable--companion to the seven official Dylan albums released during that same time period. The collection’s 138 tracks (118 different songs, more than eight hours of material) include numerous gems. A few highlights: the entire 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert [now known to be May 17th 1966 Manchester], one of Dylan’s greatest performances; revealing out-takes from the seminal Bringin' It All Back Home and Highway 61 sessions; and a nearly eight-minute poem, “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,” from a concert at Carnegie Hall. Equally important, the pressings are of good quality, with, for the most part, little surface noise. The recordings have been professionally packaged in chronological order, and the box includes a well-written sixteen-page booklet providing detailed notes on the material. As might be expected, Columbia, Dylan’s label, is not too pleased about the appearance of Ten of Swords. “We put on warning not only the people who have put this project together, but retailers, who can be made to pay a severe penalty for carrying this album,” said CBS spokesman Robert Altshuler. “We’re pursuing the perpetrators of this crime, and we’ll track them down and drag them into court.” Dylan himself, in the liner notes to Biograph, said: “The bootleg records, those are outrageous.... You’re sitting and strumming in a motel, you don’t think anybody’s there... and then it appears on a bootleg record. With a cover that’s got a picture of you that was taken from underneath your bed and it’s got a strip-tease title and it costs thirty dollars. Amazing. Then you wonder why most artists feel so paranoid.” * * * The following excerpt is from Clinton Heylin’s “Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry” (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). “Richard” is the name of the bootlegger responsible for Ten of Swords. ●Richard’s most famous collection generated the sort of controversy that nearly put him in the clink. CBS had been planning a five-album boxed set of Dylan’s work since 1983 but had twice shelved the project when, in the spring of 1985, Richard decided to do his own boxed set. Richard preferred his Dylan vintage, which meant 1961-66, and he devised a ten-album set that incorporated all the circulating studio out-takes for Mr D’s pre-accident bootleg sources--the Minneapolis Hotel tape, the second Gaslight tape and Albert Hall 66--all in one lavish boxed set. Taking his liner notes from Paul Cable’s book on Dylan’s unreleased recordings, Richard put out the set dubbed Ten of Swords, at the end of the summer, on Tarantula Records. The reaction to what was--save for the exemplary quality of his source tapes and the conceptual integrity of the set--really a rather humdrum release, particularly when compared with some of the Dylan releases then coming out of Europe, was nothing short of astonishing. Richard: I never really liked Dylan bootlegs, and I hardly owned any. I always thought they were a hodgepodge, I didn’t like the way they mixed up eras.... I wanted to do it chronologically. I stole that stuff from Paul Cable’s book..., I re-edited his stuff. I tried to put in bits of humour here and there, cos I thought that he was incredibly dry, but basically said what he said.... I knew about [CBS’s] Biograph [set] and I thought it was never gonna come out. That’s what the word was. [But] there is virtually nothing on Biograph that’s on Ten of Swords and in the few cases where it is, Columbia edited their tapes..., they edited it unnecessarily for that album, so the real company botched it up .... When Ten of Swords was done I had six done in one place and four done in another, to split the work and try to get it all done at once. Otherwise it would’ve taken longer to get made. It was fortunate for Richard that the problems of putting together the set required the services of two plants. When Biograph was finally released in the autumn of 1985, several journalists seized upon Ten of Swords as the more important release. When Cameron Crowe, who had actually been responsible for the booklet that accompanied the Biograph set, gave Ten of Swords a rave write-up, along with Rolling Stone and an entire clan of sixties-relic rock journalists, Columbia reacted with ill-considered venom. Temporarily withdrawing its advertising from Rolling Stone, Columbia claimed the magazine was endorsing an illegal product. The LA Times proceeded to remind Columbia of a 1969 press release from the time of the appearance of the Great White Wonder. According to Columbia, Great White Wonder was “an abuse of the integrity of a great artist..., crassly depriving [Bob Dylan] of the opportunity to perfect his performances to the point where he believes in their integrity and validity.” Six years later, Columbia released The Basement Tapes officially, presumably no longer of the opinion that it was “an abuse of the integrity of a great artist.” Ten of Swords also served to highlight that the seventeen unreleased cuts on CBS’s $50 boxed set were another form of extortion from an official record company. CBS decided they were going to nail the bastard bootlegger who had sent such yolk in their direction. Richard: [Ten of Swords] was scary, because Walter Yentnikoff seemed so sure that Columbia would track down the perpetrator(s) and they nearly pulled all their advertising from Rolling Stone and they had that battle going on. That was funny, cos I hate Rolling Stone and I was glad that they were being hassled by something I had done..., but I was scared because the heat was on...; friends of mine sent really huge newspaper articles from all over the country, half-page articles and stuff. That thing got really famous and I goes, “This is good and this is bad,” and it sold out really fast for a ten-record set that was really expensive.... [But] there was no way I was ever going to make it again, even though there was a huge demand. Thankfully, it never occurred to the FBI that the set might have been pressed at two or more plants, or that its impressive packaging might provide them with their best lead. When they did the rounds of usual suspects, they predictably came up blank. “Eric Bristow:” I went into my pressing plant right after Ten of Swords, and the guy who owned the pressing plant called me into his office, which was unusual. I was a bit worried, cos I used to just deal with the foreman..., and he says, “Have we got any Bob Dylan here?” and I went “Yeahhh...?” and he goes, “It’s not a ten-record set, is it?” “No...” and he goes, “Oh...” So I say, “Why?” and he says, “Because we had some FBI guys in here asking about a thing called Ten of Swords...,” I said, “It wasn’t me....” He says, “Do you know who did it?” I said, “Yeah.” “Did he do it here?” “He might have!” Deke [a collector]: The really funny thing about that whole affair is the box itself. It can only be made by one company in the whole United States--a place that manufactures boxes for kid’s toys. |
| Trades Allowed | Yes Traded from: Pete Baker |
| Ratings | Sound: A |
Owned by Randy Foley
· Last Updated May 23, 2023
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