Dylan biographer Sid Griffin have noted that , because no written records was kept of these 1967 recording sessions , " the world will have to live with the fact that it will never know exactly which Basement Tapes tune was recorded when and where " . Nonetheless , using clues such as the sound quality of different batches of songs , and where they appear on the original reels of tapes , attempts have been made to place the songs into a rough chronology and guess the locations at which they was likely recorded . Biographer Clinton Heylin place " Santa @-@ Fe " in the summer of 1967 at Big Pink . The liner notes of The Bootleg Series Volumes 1 – 3 date it in the fall of that year . Griffin list it among the probable Big Pink recordings , and in a group of songs from around July , but concede it is also " unlikely [ but ] possible " it came from the Red Room .