Recording Sessions and Release
The master take of "Positively 4th Street" was recorded on July 29, 1965, during the mid-June to early August recording sessions that produced all of the material that appeared on Dylan's 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited. The song was the last to be attempted that day, with Dylan and a variety of session musicians having already successfully recorded master takes of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" and "Tombstone Blues". The studio band on "Positively 4th Street" featured Robert Gregg (drums), Russ Savakus or Harvey Brooks (bass), Frank Owens or Paul Griffin (piano), Al Kooper (organ) and Mike Bloomfield (guitar), with the song initially being logged on the studio's official recording session documentation under the working title of "Black Dalli Rue".
Although the song was recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions, it was saved for a single-only release, eventually charting in the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic. Some early copies of the "Positively 4th Street" single were mis-pressed, with an outtake version of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" (a song that Dylan would release as his next single) appearing on the A-side in place of "Positively 4th Street". Critic Dave Marsh praised the song as "an icy hipster bitch session" with "Dylan cutting loose his barbed-wire tongue at somebody luckless enough to have crossed the path of his desires." The song would later be included on the U.S. version of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, as well as the compilation albums Masterpieces, Biograph, and The Essential Bob Dylan. It was also used in director Todd Haynes' 2007 film, I'm Not There.
In 1989 a Bristol music promoter purchased an old KB Discomatic jukebox that had once belonged to John Lennon during the mid-1960s. A copy of Dylan's "Positively 4th Street" single was found among the 41 7" singles loaded onto the machine. As a result, the song appears on the John Lennon's Jukebox compilation album, which was released to coincide with the publicity surrounding the jukebox's unveiling and a South Bank Show documentary about the jukebox.
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