The movie that Tell Ol Bill was made for is “North Country” which the New York Times called “an old-fashioned liberal weepie about truth and justice.” Like Green Mountain it lost money, but it’s losses in terms of film production were modest, and it was fairly highly acclaimed, getting a 63% approval rating as opposed to an 8% approval rating for “Gods and Generals”.

In between came Tell Ol Bill – a song I rate as one of Dylan’s two greatest works of all time.

The final song in the short sequence Can’t escape from you was for a film that was never made. The film “Gods and Generals” lost 10 million dollars for Ted Turner’s company. The first, “Cross the Green Mountain” musically returned to Dylan’s approach of the late 1960s. Having written Love and Theft in 2001, Dylan contented himself with just three songs in the next four years: all written for movies. Copies of outtakes from the Tell Ol Bill sessions appear and vanish – if the ones listed are not on line any more, just go a-searching.

This review has been revised multiple times since it was first published.

Tell me why folk song