Dylan: Help With Tune on Karren Wallace Tape

Subject: Tune Req: Help With Tune on Karren Wallace Tape
From: GUEST,Declan Daniel
Date: 08 Apr 25 - 03:45 PM

Hello again everyone,

Does anyone know the song that Dylan sings during the 12:03-12:54 minute mark of the Karren Wallace Tape as uploaded in this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqhoO-k9o4M

Here are the lyrics I could make out: "I'm 20 years old, I'm 20 years young, / I can't go on, out on that (tough bloody?) road, / but I can't go on, / I'm 20 years old I'm 20 years young / I'll never reach 21 / ... I'm coming on home / (take with ya hills and run?)

That's all I can understand of the recording of the song. If anyone knows where this comes from I would love more information. Thank you all

Declan

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help With Tune on Karren Wallace Tape
From: Helen
Date: 08 Apr 25 - 04:42 PM

Here is the link for the song that Dylan sings on the video.

I don't know the song but someone here probably will.

Subject: RE: Dylan: Help With Tune on Karren Wallace Tape
From: Hagman
Date: 08 Apr 25 - 07:56 PM

Some detail here:
https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/9633

Subject: RE: Dylan: Help With Tune on Karren Wallace Tape
From: cnd
Date: 09 Apr 25 - 11:28 AM

The song seems to generally be called One Eyed Jacks by Dylan fans. One of the earliest references comes from Robert Shelton's No Direction Home (1984), p. 54 [link]

Only three days after Dylan had seen him, Buddy Holly was dead. Bob and his friends studied details of the tragedy. At one A.M. on February 3, 1959, a Beechcraft Bonanza, chartered in Mason City, Iowa, took off in light snow for Fargo, North Dakota. Trouble developed in minutes, probably because the twenty-one-year-old pilot couldn't cope with the weather and instruments. The left wing hit the ground first. Killed instantly were the pilot and three musicians, Holly, twenty-two; Ritchie Valens, seventeen, a Mexican-American whose biggest hit was "La Bamba"; and J. P. Richardson, twenty-four, who was called the Big Bopper. Bob's friends and family senses a pervasive charge in him. He seemed in a tremendous hurry; all the car and motorcycle accidents indicated that his time was limited. "I was burned with death all around me," Dylan said in 1965. Gretel Whitaker, a friend from the University of Minnesota, said: "We never really expected Bobby to live past twenty-one." By the time Bob was nineteen, he had written a mournful blues, passed on to me by Minneapolis friends:

The queen of his diamonds
And the jack his knave
Won't you dig my grave
With a silver spade?
And forget my name.

I'm twenty years old.
That's twenty years gone.
Can't you see me crying,
Can't you see me dying,
I'll never reach twenty-one [12]

[12] - One Eyed Jacks by Bob Dylan. Unpublished, reprinted with permission of author.

Heylin Clinton's Revolution In the Air (2009), pp. 29-30 [link], while discussing Dylan's earliest attempts at songwriting, notes that there is not a known recording in circulation, but also adds:

One song, called either "One-Eyed Jacks," according to John Bucklen, or "Twenty-One Years," could be on the complete "St. Paul Tape," in possession of one Karen Moynihan. But it seems more like the traditional "Twenty Years Old," which Dylan recorded thirty-three years later for World Gone Wrong. Until a dub of Moynihan's May 1960 home-made tape is accessed (see my Recording Sessions 1960-1994 [pp. 1, ), we are reliant solely on John Bucklen's memory for a description of this formative effort:

"He had a list of about 100 songs that he had written, and some of them were really great. I remember one that he did... It goes 'I'm twenty years old, there's twenty years gone, don't you see my cryin', don't you see my dyin', I'll never reach 21.' Another verse is: 'The Queen of his Diamonds and the Jack of his Knave, won't you dig my grave with a silver spade, and forget my name.' It was one of those tragic things that was appropriate for the time -- a backwoods blues folk song."

Another website (The FM Club) notes that the song was "recorded at Karen Wallace's apartment, St. Paul, MN, May 1960. In Ian Woodward's transcripts of the Robert Shelton interview with John Bucklen in "Isis" [Bob Dylan News magazine issue no.] 101 [February March 2002], two of the verses are given" identical to the above.

According to most fan websites (The Official Bob Dylan Fan Site and Setlist.fm, among others), Dylan is only known to have played the song publicly twice: at Wallace's house, and once in May/June 1960 at the St. Paul, Minnesota venue The Purple Onion. According to one site, there was no known circulating recording of the Purple Onion show since at least 2001 (link) and into 2021 (link); where the list ultimately originates from remains unclear.

The other recording, Wallace/Moynihan's, is only publicly available as the "armpit tape" (linked by the original poster above -- reportedly, Brian Stibal posed as an interested seller and recorded the material with a mic tucked in his armpit). It seems as if there is a full recording on a bootleg, titled "I Was So Much Older Then Vol. 2," though I've been unable to find a copy for sale or a digital recording.

The name, One Eyed Jacks, is extraneous from the verses above, likely indicative of there being more to the song. Notably, the lyrics he sang in the tape are a bit different than those published in either book. The recording sounds more to my ear like:

I'm twenty years old
That's twenty years gone
I can't go on
I know that's awfully long
But I can't go on

I'm twenty years old
That's twenty years gone
I'll (-- skip? / pop --) never reach twenty-one
Mother, mother, I'm coming on home
Can't you hear me c[ry?] --

Subject: RE: Dylan: Help With Tune on Karren Wallace Tape
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 25 - 12:48 PM

Wow, thank you so much for the goldmine of information! Lots to dig in here, now time to figure out the chords...

Thanks again cnd, cheers from Wisco

Declan

Subject: RE: Dylan: Help With Tune on Karren Wallace Tape
From: cnd
Date: 11 Apr 25 - 09:24 AM

I have found a more complete recording; it seems to originate from one of the promotional tapes Karen distributed around the country when trying to promote her tape in the 1980s. Apparently, she couldn't figure out how to properly duplicate the tape and add her desired commentary, so she played the tape over her sound system and recorded the music and her commentary indirectly. As a result, the audio fidelity is essentially as bad as, if not worse, than the armpit tape. Nonetheless, here it is, with thanks to Need Some Fun News and Magazine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180907130307/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYo5z8Kc_Nk&gl=US&hl=en

The first two examples of One Eyed Jacks start at 44 minutes in and runs through about the 47 minute mark. The first recording is much cleaner, but is also essentially the same excerpt as the armpit tape. The second version is by far the most complete version I've heard, but is unfortunately nearly inaudible: there's a secondary conversation going on over a portion of it. It can be heard again at about 1:43:00.

A fourth example can be found at 2:49:30, and a fifth at 3:01:30; both are the same recording as the first one.