I'm excited about the Rolling Thunder documentary so I went back to the record he cut immediately afterwards.
Street Legal (1978)
I believe this was the first Dylan album I ever bought. It wasn't an auspicious choice but it was his latest release. This record follows his divorce from Sara and the death of Elvis Presley. The King's spirit lives on in this record's big band arrangements and heavy use of background singers. Presley's bass player Jerry Scheff plays on the album.
The album starts off gangbusters with
Changing of the Guards and
New Pony. The former rolls in like a freight train and rumbles along with biblical, mythical and autobiographical references. This is as closest approximation of the Rolling Thunder sound. New Pony follows as a dirty blues with a great gutbucket sax solo. The middle of the album is a little soft. There are times on the album where I got worn out by the horns and backup singers. They never take a song off. "Baby Stop Crying" is kind of an interesting slow jam that lacks a killer chorus and "We Better Talk This Over" has kind of a Fleetwood Mac-ish feel to it.
The best song on the album is the magnificent
Senor (Tales of Yankee Power). It's a song that grabs you from the opening couplet. I've listened to it four times since we came back from our walk. It's still too hot in SF. The Jazz Center's block party was tonight so we changed our route to avoid the worst of the crowd.
Street Legal always suffers in comparison by Blood On the Tracks and Desire. It's not quite at that pantheon level but the best songs here wouldn't sound out of place on their predecessors. And they wouldn't have so much soprano saxophone.