The cover photograph for the 1975 album was taken by designer and photographer Reid Miles in the basement of a Los Angeles YMCA.
In Big Pink, they recorded around a hundred songs with Bob Dylan from June to October 1967, and a selections of these recordings were released in 1975 on the album The Basement Tapes.
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After submitting a set of excerpts from the The Basement Tapes that Davis found unsatisfactory, Dylan returned to the studio in September 1971 to recut several Basement songs, with Happy Traum providing backup.
Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes is a book by music critic Greil Marcus about the creation and cultural importance of The Basement Tapes, a series of recordings made by Bob Dylan in 1967 in collaboration with The Hawks, who would subsequently become known as The Band.
A Creem magazine reader's poll in 1975 included the album among the top five "Best Reissues" of 1975, placing fourth, behind two Rolling Stones compilations, Made in the Shade and Metamorphosis, and Bob Dylan's The Basement Tapes.
On September 24, 1971, Dylan re-recorded three songs from the Basement Tapes sessions for inclusion on his Greatest Hits Vol. II album—"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "I Shall Be Released," and "Down in the Flood"—with Happy Traum playing bass, banjo and electric guitar, as well as providing vocal harmony.