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Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 (1971)
(5 votes)
Tracks (Click song title for lyrics)
- Watching The River Flow
- Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
- Lay, Lady, Lay
- Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
- I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
- All I Really Want To Do
- My Back Pages
- Maggie's Farm
- Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You
- She Belongs To Me
- All Along The Watchtower
- Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)
- Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
- A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
- If Not For You
- It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
- Tomorrow Is A Long Time
- When I Paint My Masterpiece
- I Shall Be Released
- You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
- Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood)
Album Info:
"Watching The River Flow" and "When I Paint My Masterpiece" produced by Leon Russell.
"I Shall Be Released," "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" and "Down In The Flood" recorded in October 1971 with Happy Traum on Bass, Banjo, Second Guitar and Vocal Harmony.
Comments
Brilliant record
I must've have got the album when I was 14 or 15 around 1974. And I must've listened to Lay Lady Lay a 1000 times. Still gives me goosepimples when I hear it...
Way Too Soon
At the age of 13, I did not care why "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. 2" was produced, or what albums the songs originally came from. But to me at that time, it seemed way too soon for Bob Dylan to be coming out with a "greatest hits" anything, and to me at that time, it did not even feel like a decision Bob Dylan had made. But it did not matter.
For me, a kid whose "allowance" had turned into "get it from your father" or "get it from your mother" in my post divorce world, this album simply meant that I could get all these Bob Dylan songs all at once.
I don't remember if I begged for the money or if I asked for it for Christmas, or for my 14th birthday, which was in February of 1972, but I got this album soon after I had seen it in the store. It seems like I must have listened to it thousands of times. Down the street, I turned my thirty-something-old neighbors on to it when I was supposed to be babysitting for their kids.
When I got-the-hell-out-of-dodge at the age of 18, I took this album, and all my other cherished albums, with me. By then I had earned my own money from my after school job, and had gone back and bought the original albums where many of these songs first appeared.
Every one of these songs as presented on this album is etched in my mind. Whatever other versions I heard later, these versions are the ones my virgin ears could not get enough of. I never considered this album a "compilation album" and I still don't.
In particular there is one song that I have always felt strongly about from my very first listening: "Tomorrow Is A Long Time." The version on this album is the only one I know, it is the only one I need to know. Given the hell I had already been through, and the hell I was still going through when I first heard this song, it is no wonder that it means so much to me.
For years I did not know that this song did not exist on any other album. Not many years ago I tried to find where it came from and discovered it only existed on this album (at that time at least). I have never heard any other artist's version of it.
Then I read somewhere that the "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits" albums from that time period were produced primarily to fulfill a contract. I still do not care why this album got produced. The young girl inside me holds it close to my heart, while I never get tired of listening to it.
Carol Shriver residing in NYC and Upstate New York
A Great Compilation
Due to the inclusion of songs like Watching the River Flow, Basement Tapes stuff, Tomorrow Is a Long Time, etc., this is more than a Greatest Hits compilation, and therefore to me, merits recognition in and of its own right.
Dave
Filling the gaps
This one picks up where the last Greatest Hits left off. It's even complete with some bait unavailable elsehwere. Again, you can't really argue with such a solid collection of songs, but there's nothing here from New Morning or Self-Portrait. So, why didn;t this come out in '69?
Greatest Hiuts, Vol. II
Generally, I don’t pay much attention to compilation packages. While they are a good way of introducing a neophyte to an artist, generally they don’t represent the artist’s most interesting work... namely the kind of stuff that isn’t a greatest hit. It’s through one’s flaws and failures that one really gets to know what makes someone tick. Besides, if you happen to have a different taste or sensibility than the majority, your favorite songs from an artist may have no relation to those that sold the largest number of 45s. And usually the weakest track on any compilation is the one new (or previously unreleased) track used to force the completist collector who insists on owning everything. Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. II is worth mentioning (unlike Vols. I and III) because of the four sides of vinyl, one whole half-record of new material is presented here. Besides if you add the two singles released at the same time, “George Jackson [Big Band Version]” and “Watching The River Flow” (which is also included on Greatest Hits, Vol. II) and their B-sides “George Jackson [Acoustic Version]” and “Spanish Is The Loving Tongue” and the one outtake from the “George Jackson” sessions included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3, “Wallflower”, you’ve got enough for a whole album. In fact if you put all A-sides the stuff that Leon Russell produced on one side, and all of the B-sides with the Happy Traum duets on the other, you’ve got a half-electric, half-acoustic LP much like Bringing It All Back Home. And for my money, one great (purely hypothetical) album. Why Dylan chose to spread this out over a couple of singles and a compilation is hard to say. It was in the middle of a relative dry spell for Dylan – he could’ve used a stopgap. Remember when the year and a half between Blonde On Blonde and John Wesley Harding was considered sacrilegious? Nowadays, we don’t even expect a new album from Dylan (or anybody else) for three or four years. And as compilations go it fairly interesting. Most of Bob’s actual hit hits were included on Greatest Hits, Volume I. So instead we’ve got songs like “My Back Pages” and “All Along The Watchtower”, which were hits but not for Bob, included with songs that the fans seem to really like (“Stuck Inside Mobile”, “Tom Thumb’s Blues”) that were never even released as singles. Interesting.