Ever the bearer of bad news, I’d like to alert BPB readers to another rock ‘n roll fatality: This time it’s Merl Saunders, who passed away last Friday at the age of 74. Complications from a stroke sidelined him in 2002, effectively ending a remarkable career that included luminous collaborations with Miles Davis, B.B. King, Mike Bloomfield, and Jerry Garcia. His keyboard stylings combined an earthy rhythm-and-blues approach with a jazz aesthetic and, in the early 90s, a surprisingly unregrettable foray into New Age-style fusion.

For anyone interested in the remarkable, decades-long, “let’s make David Grisman jealous” collaboration between Saunders and Garcia, check out the Legion of Mary sessions and the Keystone concerts. Of special note: Saunders’ fat, swirly Hammond on Dylan’s “Positively Fourth Street” (below, from the Keystone). Troppo largo, perhaps, but a textural improvement over the already lovely Kooper-era original.

NPR Music reports that Columbia is releasing Tell Tale Signs—Volume 8 of the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series—on October 7. (Click here for full streaming audio.) The new two-disc album chronicles a period of resurgence for the poet laureate of rock ‘n roll, involving several excellent bands, lots of lovely wordplay, and a tasteful minimum of proselytization.

Previous entries in the (thoroughly official and hardly bootleg) series include the 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (Judas, anyone?), Live 1975 (which documents the Rolling Thunder Tour), and the soundtrack from Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home.

So what’s new in this iteration? Much over which to rejoice, in fact. Besides offering a far crisper sound than any of the previous seven volumes, Tell Tale Signs features solid alt-takes from Oh, Mercy (”Most of the Time” and “Everything Is Broken,” especially), some fun David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley collaborations, two (two!) versions of “Mississippi” (a neat little unreleased tune left in the wake of Time Out of Mind), and a jivin’ live version of “Cocaine Blues.”

Listen below to “Dreamin’ of You,” the pre-release single also available for free download here.

Bob Dylan, “Dreamin’ of You”:

Photo courtesy of JL2003