Bob Dylan: "Good As I Been To You" Song-By-Song Discussion

I would tend to agree that "You're Gonna Quit Me" is a pretty generic blues. I think it worked better as an opening song in 1993 than it does on this album. It is the song that gives us the title and I recall reading one commentator's interpretation that the sentiment of the song was perhaps addressed by Bob to his audience. Mind you that same commentator suggested that Bob might have been contemplating packing it all in and that is why the album ended with the sentiment "if you want anymore you can sing it yourself" so obviously not much faith need go into such ideas but I always found that an interesting interpretation.

 

I think I read the very same review, because you just rang a bell in my memory (the part about the last line indicating retirement, or at least retirement from composing).

Considering the fact that the NET was going strong with no end in sight in 1992, I didn't think much of the theory that Dylan was sending the uber-fans secret messages. However, 1992 was also the year of the weird "He was famous long ago" "breakdowns" - Dylan's odd proclivity for not being able to make it through that line in "Desolation Row", or the line right after it, without a major change in volume or a long walk to the back of the stage after. I thought it was all bunk until I listened to performance after performance back to back, and I don't know if there was "fire", but there wasn't certainly "smoke" (He did struggle with the line, or get quiet, or stop singing entirely right around it, multiple times.) Does Bob worry so much about being famous and not having his fans abandon him?

 

In early 1992, Bob had had a couple of rough years. His secret wife left him and he seemed to favour the bottle as a result and it affected performances, the Grammys 1991 won no fans and nor did Letterman’s Tenth Anniversary in early 1992. When I saw him in late 1991 at the Fox in Detroit, he could probably see empty seats so he might have had some fear.

 

I enjoy all the bluesy numbers on this album. They seem to be particularly in Dylan's comfort zone at this time. I know a lot of people like "Hard Times," and I can see why--it's a great song--but the vocal sounds a wee bit too strangled for me to really love it.

 

I agree. I remember the Letterman anniversary being one of the first times I had actually seen Dylan and it took forever for me to get over that. Dana Carvey played him on SNL around this time also and his parody wasn’t too far off from the real thing.

 

Track 12 - "Diamond Joe"

Another one that was never performed live.

Dylan's source? Well, his old buddy Ramblin' Jack Elliott seems to be the logical choice. Here's Jack performing the song at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival (a performance Dylan was likely present for).



To complicate matters a bit, Dylan performed a different song called "Diamond Joe" for "Masked and Anonymous":

Bob Dylan - Diamond Joe

The original source for this one: Diamond Joe: Complete Charlie Butler version

This version of "Diamond Joe" was in Jerry Garcia's repertoire, and is one of the many songs they had in common ("Two Soldiers" from "World Gone Wrong" being another).

 

Track 13 - "Froggie Went A-Courtin'"

The track:


Another song that Dylan has never performed live.

Why this song? Here's a theory: In 1990 Dylan dedicated "Under the Red Sky" to "Gabby Goo Goo", in retrospect identified as (likely) his secret daughter, who was 4 at the time. That dedication may have explained the nursery rhyme quality of a number of the songs ("There was a little boy, and there was a little girl", "1 by1, they followed the sun", "Wiggle wiggle wiggle 'til the moon is blue"). In 1991, Dylan went to war with a drum machine to record the children's standard, "This Old Man": This old man Children's Song Bob Dylan

So it was not the slightest bit out of character for Dylan to include a children's song on "GAIBTY", particularly one with a dark underside (the carnage at the wedding no bleaker than the little boy and little girl being baked in a pie in "Under the Red Sky").

This song is a good 400 years old, and Dylan's potential sources are endless. Woody Guthrie's version (surprisingly, in the case of Dylan) is NOT the influential version:
Woody Guthrie - Froggie Went a Courtin'

I'm fairly certain the first time I ever heard this song (a bit of it anyway) was in an episode of "The Partridge Family" when I was 7! It also featured prominently in a Tom & Jerry cartoon, via the variant title "Crambone". (Tom and Jerry - Crambone )

Another likely candidate for Dylan's influential version, that is clearly not: Doc Watson, from 1966: Doc Watson - Froggie Went A-Courtin'

My best bet: Pete Seeger (1962): Pete Seeger-Frog Went A-Courting

Seeger's snake can't help but me remind of the snake who shows up at the end of "Man Gave Names to All the Animals" (another Dylan composition with the structure of a children's song)

 

@RayS thank you for starting this thread. I didn’t discover it until you were pretty far into the album, and so wasn’t able to add much. I really love this record - whenever I’m in a certain mood, GAIBTY hits the spot. “Froggie Went A-Courtin” is one of my favorites, along with “Arthur McBride.” I enjoy World Gone Wrong a lot also, and think that collectively, these are the two most underrated records Dylan’s made.

The songs on this album remind me of this quote from Dylan’s ‘66 Playboy interview:

“Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes about from legends, Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. There's nobody that's going to kill traditional music. All these songs about roses growing out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels - they're not going to die.”

And they never have.

 

I definitely agree that the choice of “Froggy Went A-Courtin’” has to do with Desiree, Bob’s secret daughter. I agree you can hear her influence on Under The Red Sky with its nursery rhyme references. It was around this time that Bob did “This Old Man” for a children’s record and was apparently considering a children’s record of his own.
“Froggy Went A-Courtin” was also part of the Harry Smith anthology which was the Bible of the folk revival. Me, I don’t mind it. It’s interesting to hear Bob singing something so unserious. Of course, that article I referenced earlier (probably from On The Tracks) made me think twice about the final two lines and the possibility that perhaps Bob had had enough. I’m glad that was untrue.

 

I love this song and this performance of it. Perfect conclusion to the record.

It's a great song. Not meant to be taken seriously, although it is in it's way serious. I suppose the big pleasure of it is in how it carries something serious so lightly--like a frog carrying a sword and pistol. It's a version of an old topos: the arrival of death at the feast. In this version, the little childhood utopia of all the cute animals working together to celebrate a cross-species wedding is shattered when the invitation list gets a little too wide and the predator arrives (we can only tolerate so much difference; violence is always haunting the edges of civilized life), and then the frog tries to get away down to his native water, and he's gobbled up, too! In this particular version of the song, that final bit of nature red in tooth and claw is preceded by the awkward dance of the cow and the disgusting gluttony of the tick and the snake (funny, but also a set of little steps ratcheting up the disorder).

Serious, but not sung seriously. The final verse completes it perfectly, weighing what happened and putting it in proper context. There's cornbread on the shelf (a little piece, so a left-over; there was more than enough for the main meal, and now we get to snack on some more), so the singer knows he's about to eat; he's not under threat of being eaten. Civilized life is intact and working (grain is being grown and milled and baked into cakes), and so he can keep making up verses if he likes or stop singing and eat if he likes. If you don't like, you can sing yourself. There's not likely to be a fight over who should sing or who'll get the food. We do know that the cat is out there somewhere, but we don't have to worry about that--at least not just now. There's food and song and we can take pleasure in what we know about life (our fantasies and the way realities mark their limits). Dylan's tone is just right. He's enjoying himself, especially on the rhythmic play of the final line of each verse, but there's also a little weariness, a little matter-of-fact cynicism, and acceptance.

Uh huh.

L.

 

I think you're right that Seeger's is the source--at least of the lyric Dylan uses (his performance of the song is different, embedded in a sense of old traditions of performance rather than an invitation to a kid's sing along). I wonder why he left out "Dr. Fly?" He follows Seeger pretty closely otherwise.

L.

 

The "14th track" from "Good As I Been to You", was left unreleased until it appeared on the soundtrack of "Natural Born Killers" in 1994.

"You Belong To Me"

A homemade edit that eliminates the film dialogue laid over the end of the song:



The original release, dialogue intact:

Natural Born Killers Soundtrack (You belong to me)

To me, this is another outstanding performance, but I can understand the choice of leaving it off of the album. The song dates from early 1050s, making it decades and often centuries younger than its "GAIBTY" brethren.

Jo Stafford's hit 1952 version: 1952 HITS ARCHIVE: You Belong To Me - Jo Stafford (her original #1 version)

The Duprees' 1962 cover is the one that (I believe) resonates more with people of my generation (baby boomers, that is): The Duprees - You belong to me

I'm biased, of course, but listening to these two singers with great pipes belt out this song, and then hearing Dylan's nasal, partially-ravaged (with more ravage to come) voice ... makes me think of what a great interpreter of others' songs Dylan is. The intimacy he adds to the song, the way his vocal is simultaneously understated but emotionally intense ... he nails this song and leaves me with no desire to ever hear the more over-the-top versions ever again.

 

I agree that Bob Dylan's interpretations of songs written by others shows what a great singer he is. Before anyone stampedes this thread to tell me that someone whose voice bothers so many people cannot be considered a great singer, then I submit that these covers show what a great vocalist Bob Dylan is. You can't have such brilliant (albeit idiosyncratic) phrasing and that not be the case. I see GAIBTY (along with its sequel World Gone Wrong) as Bob getting back in touch with his musical roots and reconnecting with the music that inspired him in the first place. And I think that was an important step in the process that led to Time Out Of Mind.

 

I wish he had included “You Belong To Me” (without the dialogue, of course) on World Gone Wrong. I think it could have fit well, as a contrast to the bluesier material deployed there.

 

I've been listening to as many pre-"Good as I been..." versions of "Froggy" as I can find, and it's remarkable how few of them are any good. Some, like Burl Ives', are good as kiddie songs, and others like Jimmy Rogers' and this terrific rave-up by the Flat Duo Jets:



are fun novelties, but I haven't heard a single version that actually tries to give the song its due both of lightness and serious implication the way Dylan's does. And it's not just performance choices. Most of the other lyric selections going back to the early 20th century fail to give the narrative the sort of subtle force that Dylan's lyric selections lend his version (a slightly altered take on the lyrics Pete Seeger chose for his sing-along record). I think the biggest influence on how Dylan sings the song might be this version of a completely different set of lyrics using the same tune by Blind Willie McTell:

Hillbilly Willie's Blues

Feels to me like Dylan mashed-up a slightly slower, weightier approach to the music with Seeger's lyric selection.

For what it's worth it's a very old song. First referred to in a 16th Century Scottish political tract and the first published version of the lyric was in 1611. Lots of different tunes have been used over the years, too, many of them, like the one on the Harry Smith anthology, with lots of space for strings of nonsense syllables (and it's amazing how many different strings have been used). I like Dylan's simpler, "uh-huhs." They nod at each step in the story in just the right way.

L.

 

If nothing else, the Blind Willie McTell song clicks the light on in my head that "Froggie Went A-Courtin'" shares its tune with "Crawdad Hole"! ("Duh", says the rest of the human race.)



I came across one source that suggested "Froggie", in this song, was a use of the pejorative term for a Frenchman, but another source claims that it didn't come into use until the 1900s, long after "Froggie" was written. Hmmm.

 

The derogatory or sometimes affectionate use of "frog" for a French person actually goes back to the 17th Century (it was also used for Dutch people). The song seems to be even older than that, however, although we don't have any printed versions older than 1611. I came across some speculation about the song originally being a satirical allegory about a possible marriage between a Scottish queen and a French prince or between Queen Elizabeth I and the Duke of Anjou, but none of that seemed very convincing to me. There's a book published in the 1980s called Folk Songs of the Catskills by a folklorist named Norman Cazden that apparently has a long chapter about the song's history and versions, but I've only seen excerpts from that chapter on online so far, and they weren't all that helpful as far as tracing where Seeger got his version of the lyrics (even though Seeger wrote a Foreward for the book, which I also haven't seen). If I get hold of a copy, I'll see what it has to say.

You get a line. I'll get a pole.....

It'll take some sophisticated fishing in a hole much bigger than even Youtube to figure out what got fused into Dylan's version of the song!

L.

 

Yes, I'd definitely be interested in whatever you come across!

 

Now that we've finished "GAIBTY" proper, and it's lone straggler track (no alternate takes from these sessions have surfaced, legally or otherwise), as promised, we're going backwards in time a small bit to the June 1992 sessions with David Bromberg.

After a major creative spurt that resulted in the composing of "Oh Mercy" (and a number of other songs that would make their way on to "Under the Red Sky", "Bootleg Series 1-3" and "Greatest Hits 3"), the well started to run dry again. Dylan put together enough new songs to fill out "Under the Red Sky" and that seemed to be that. So as he looked to follow up "Under the Red Sky" (or "Bootleg Series 1-3" if you choose to include archival releases in the chronology), he apparently decided that an album of covers was the way to go - a mix of traditionals and some contemporary songs. (Sound familiar?) To make the "Self Portrait" connection complete, he decided to have David Bromberg produce the sessions.

The sessions ran for 3 days (June 3-5, 1992) in Chicago. Apparently at least an album's worth of material wound up in the can. A short time later (July), Dylan struck upon the idea of breaking up the full band performances with solo acoustic songs, which he began recording in his garage studio. Dylan recorded 14 such tracks, and eventually decided to release 13 of them as a cohesive album, dropping the Bromberg material entirely.

Two of the Bromberg tracks ("Duncan and Brady", "Miss the Mississippi") came out on "Tell Tale Signs". Three more circulate (and can be found on YouTube, we'll get to them).

Michael Gray's "The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia" lists 30 songs attempted during the sessions. Some are obviously complete, some may have been warm-ups or other partial takes. Gray's list (courtesy Skipping Reels Of Rhyme: David Bromberg Sessions )

1. Hey Joe (maybe a warm up/fragment, or not recorded at all?)
2. Mobile Line
3. Just Because
4. Field Of Stone (Would You Lay With Me)
5. Annie's Song
6. Jugband Song
7. Rock Me Baby
8. Send Me To The 'lectric Chair
9. Gotta Do My Time
10. Su Su's Got A Mohawk
11. Northeast Texas Woman
12. Sail On
13. Can't Lose What You Never Had
14. World Of Fools
15. Everybody's Crying Mercy
16. Tennessee Blues
17. Summer Wages
18. Casey Jones
19. Morning Blues
20. Young Westley
21. The Lady Came From Baltimore
22. New Lee Highway Blues
23. Rise Again
24. Duncan & Brady
25. The Main Street Moan
26. Nobody's Fault But Mine
27. Miss The Mississippi & You
28. Sloppy Drunk
29. Kaatskill Serenade
30. Polly Vaughn

Here's Dylan's one-off live performance of "Hey Joe" from about a month later (7-12-92). Definitely nothing to write home about on the vocal front, IMO:

 

Two of the Bromberg session performances were apparently with a full gospel choir.

Although Heylin lists it as "I'll Rise Again" (traditional), I'll venture a guess that this one is "Rise Again", the contemporary Christian song that Dylan performed in concert in 1980 (finally released on the "Trouble No More" box). Of course there COULD be a traditional called "I'll Rise Again", but I had no luck in finding one that would seem to fit the bill.

Bob Dylan - Rise Again

"Nobody's Fault But Mine" is the other choir song. There's a one-off "Dylan performance" of the song (11-19-80, San Francisco), but it's sung by guest performer Maria Muldaur (who released her version of the song that same year) as part of the series of guests (Santana, Garcia, McGuinn) Dylan had during his residency at the Fox Warfield.

I assume Dylan opted for the set of lyrics that refer to having a "Bible in my home" rather than "A monkey on my back" (a la Led Zeppelin).

A potential influential version:

Of course it all goes back to Blind Willie Johnson: Nobody's Fault But Mine - Blind Willie Johnson

Dylan with a full gospel choir ... could be awesome, could be a train wreck. I'd sure like to hear 'em though.

 

While it doesn't really pertain to song by song discussion - Dylan had really done some guitar practice before laying this down - probably his best instrumental performances on record. Having been to a number of 1992 shows earlier in the year (including those where Dylan 'broke down' during DR's "famous long ago"...I can't say I really picked up on it initially but other hardcore fans discussed it at the time after the shows)...I wasn't expecting such robust and focussed instrumental performances as I heard here. Great arrangements and some great technical playing too - playing and singing together, I remember playing this over and over at the time to learn some of the tracks on acoustic myself...I don't think he pushed himself this hard technically ever again. Even WGR doesn't have the same level of technical prowess on acoustic...I still find this the standout aspect of this record. Was he trying to prove himself to himself again?

 

My feeling is that by the time Dylan reintroduced traditionals into his regular concert rotation (1988) his tendency was to treat them with much greater reverence than his own compositions. So while there was always a good chance that he'd brutalize "New Morning" or sing unintelligible gibberish for half of "Gotta Serve Somebody", he'd rarely/never deliver a half-hearted "Barbara Allen", "Wagoner's Lad" or "Lakes of Pontchartrain". I think that spilled over into "GAIBTY" - he was fully committed, including his guitar playing, which he surely devoted practice/preparation time to.

 

"The Lady Came From Baltimore" is another of the listed titles from the Bromberg sessions that has seen live performance (3 times in 1994).



This song, written by Tim Hardin, dates from 1967. Its appeal to Dylan is clear - listening to his performance and reading the lyrics, this song could date from the 1800s!

Lady came from Baltimore
All she wore was lace
She didn't know that I was poor
She never saw my place
I was there to steal her money
Take her rings and run
Then I fell in love with the lady
Got away with none

The lady's name was Susan Moore
Her daddy read the law
She didn't know that I was poor
And lived outside the law

Her daddy said, I was a thief
And didn't marry her for love
I was Susan's true belief
Married her for love

I was there to steal her money
To take her rings and run
Then I fell in love with the lady
Got away with none

The house she lived in had a wall
To keep the robbers out
She'd never stop to think at all
If that's what I'm about

I was there to steal her money
To take her rings and run
Then I fell in love with the lady
Got away with none

Hardin's original: Tim Hardin - Lady Came From Baltimore

Joan Baez, Johnny Cash (Johnny Cash - The Lady Came From Baltimore ), and Ricky Nelson (Ricky Nelson～The Lady Came from Baltimore -SlideShow ) all covered the song well before Dylan.

 

Beautiful song, and that live performance is lovely. I've never heard the Bromberg session version.

I wonder if Susan knew Miss Mary Jane?

But maybe they lived in different neighbourhoods....

L.