Bob Dylan-Good As I Been To You (1992)

Artist: Bob Dylan

Title: Good As I Been To You

Label: Columbia

Format: CD

Catalog Number: CK 53200

Year of Release: 1992

Country and Year of Edition: US 1992

Sell Price: $3.09

Sell Date: 12/31/24

Condition: VG+/VG+ hole punch in UPC

Discogs Last Sold: 1/2/25 VG+/VG+ $2.00

Low: $0.10 VG+/VG+

Median: $2.16

Average: $3.06

High: $10.00 M/M

Current low price: $1.68

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 56

Have/Want: 988/65

Where Sold: Hoover, AL

Time It Took To Sell: 13 years

Where and When Bought: used promo Sounds St. Marks NYC month of release

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B+

Sad To See It Go: No

With the Christmas day release of A Complete Unknown, it can be expected that some Bob Dylan titles would sell. Even though I found the biopic middling plus (better than the Queen one, I prefer Inside Llewyn Davis but that was fiction based on Dave Van Rock, not a biopic). I was grateful there was something to see in a small Massachusetts town that day. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie in a multiplex on Christmas day. Sure enough, somebody bought 4 later Bob CD titles that have been sitting around for a while, 3 of which I have yet to write about.

Good As I Been To You is what you might call a woodshedding album on the road to Time Out Of Mind. It might be one of the least desirable start-to-finish listens in the massive Dylan catalog. When it came out, I was excited to hear a stripped-down studio acoustic album of folk standards before he issued the MTV Unplugged album of his own material. Why did it seem like it missed the mark as something to listen to more than once or twice?

I'm going to say, for this record, it was Bob's voice. The early 90's wasn't his best. He was hitting the road hard and the shows were great, but the gravity that started coming in around World Gone Wrong in '95 leading up to Time Out Of Mind had yet to be found. Here it sounds like tossed off background music, even if the content is a scholar's wet dream. Everything here is written by Trad or his buddy Pub Dom.

The album kicks off with my favorite track from the Anthology of American Folk Music volume I got mail order in the early 80's, "Frankie & Albert." Mississippi John Hurt's version on there was simply called "Frankie." Maybe someone else had Albert in the title before that. I always thought his compadre was Johnny and on some records it was. That Frankie had a lot of friends for people to sing about. "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" gets called "Jim Jones" so maybe we shouldn't take much stock in "official" titles. "Diamond Joe" got fleshed out a bit on the Masked and Anonymous soundtrack.

The album ends with "Froggie Went A Courtin'." Everybody accused Bob of writing a children's album with Under A Red Sky, so why not give an actual children's song on a record? In between you have 11 songs that go by with a pleasant authority that remain pleasant 32 years later and were pleasant 32 years plus an eternity before.

Give 'em to Timothée Chalamet to learn.

Links For Further Review

Other Bob Dylan Titles Discussed

Bob Dylan (1962)

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)

Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

Blonde On Blonde (1966)

Nashville Skyline (1969)

New Morning (1970)

Watching The River Flow b/w Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (1971)

Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (Original Soundtrack Recording) (1973)

Planet Waves (1974)