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Original drawing and handwritten lyric fragment, entitled “Blues in E (for Ellen),” accomplished by Bob Dylan in black and blue ink on a lined 6 x 9 notebook sheet. The playful composition depicts Ellen Bernstein seated beneath or beside a hair dryer, with Dylan surrounding the scene with speech balloons and a brief blues lyric beginning, “I’m a smoked salmon, baby,” and ending with the absurdist phrase, “Vasoline feels like glue.” Several words and phrases are crossed out and replaced in blue ink, offering a charming miniature example of Dylan’s instinctive habit of revising even the most casual lines. In fine condition.
The drawing dates to Dylan’s relationship with Bernstein during the creation of Blood on the Tracks. Bernstein—then Columbia Records’ West Coast director of A&R—recalled that Dylan sketched her while she sat drying her hair, without her realizing that he was drawing. He then added the brief “Blues in E (for Ellen)” lyric above the image. She later observed that, even in this lighthearted personal sketch, Dylan could not resist editing and refining the words as he wrote them.
The image is at once intimate and whimsical: Bernstein appears in profile, seated in a chair, while Dylan transforms the domestic scene into a loose, dreamlike cartoon filled with shaded forms and comic annotations. The combination of private humor and spontaneous songwriting provides a rare glimpse of Dylan at ease during one of the most creatively fertile periods of his career.
Consigned directly by Ellen Bernstein Ziffren, who met Dylan in 1974 and worked closely with him while he composed and recorded Blood on the Tracks. Bernstein occupies a singular place in the album's history as the woman who inspired “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” Details from her life and time with Dylan entered the song directly: she was born in Ashtabula, Ohio, was preparing to travel to Honolulu, and had identified Queen Anne’s lace for him during a walk near his Minnesota farm. Her presence in the lyric gives this affectionate drawing added resonance as a rare visual portrait of the song’s subject, made by Dylan during the same intensely creative period.
Accompanied by a letter of provenance from Ellen Ziffren.
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