Any Day Now

It took until 1968 for Joan Baez to finally release an entire album of Bob Dylan songs. Recorded in Nashville (where Dylan had recorded several of his '60s albums with some of the same musicians), Any Day Now takes a country-folk look at his songs. "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word" is the lone song here not to eventually appear on a Dylan album. Some tracks are songs Dylan had written with The Band in West Saugerties, N.Y., in 1967 ("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "Tears of Rage," "I Shall Be Released") from what became frequently bootlegged and released as The Basement Tapes or appeared on The Band's Music from Big Pink. Other songs ("Drifter's Escape," "I Pity the Poor Immigrant," "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," "Dear Landlord") are from John Wesley Harding, Dylan's most recent album at the time. A few older underrated tunes ("North Country Blues," "Boots of Spanish Leather," "Restless Farewell") and a few obscurities ("Walls of Red Wing," "Walkin' Down the Line") make this a smart and unorthodox look at the most infamous songwriter of the '60s. This reissue adds two live cuts, "Blowin' in the Wind" and "It Ain't Me, Babe."