Home | Songs By Year | Songs from 1961
You're No Good (Jesse Fuller song)
Buy You're No Good (Jesse Fuller song) now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the song. And once you've experienced the song, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
"'You're No Good'" is a song by Jesse Fuller that appeared as the first track on Bob Dylan's eponymous debut album, released on November 20, 1961. Dylan learnt the song directly from Fuller in Denver; Fuller's own recorded version was not released until May 13, 1963, on his album 'San Francisco Bay Blues'. The song concerns the narrator's difficult relationship with a woman, and concludes with the narrator wanting to "lay down and die". Dylans version is more uptempo than Fuller's, and has some changes to the lyrics. 'Bob Dylan' received a generally negative critical reception on release, although some later critics have praised the album and its opening track.
Jesse Fuller version
Jesse Fuller (18961976) was a one-man band musician, and inventor of the fotdella. His best-known song is "San Francisco Bay Blues", which was recorded by Ramblin' Jack Elliot and Donovan. "You're No Good", written and performed by Fuller was released on his album 'San Francisco Bay Blues' on the "Prestige Folklore" label on May 13, 1963. The album was later reissued on Stateside Records (1966). Fuller sings, and plays guitar, harmonica, kazoo, washboard and fotdella on the album. Paul A. Rothchild is billed as "supervisor" on the album's back cover.
Author Spencer Leigh refers to "You're No Good" as "very close" to "San Francisco Bay Blues". The song outlines the narrator's difficult relationship with a woman who has "got the ways of a devil sleeping in a lion's den". The narrator claims that despite him supporting her when she was in poverty, she now gives his money to another man. The song concludes with the narrator wanting to "lay down and die". According to liner notes by Joe Boyd, Fuller experienced troubled personal relationships before meeting his wife. The notes claim that "Despite his vagabond ways, Jesse was always quite frugal and relatively conservative and women who drank and caroused until the early hours never got along well with Jesse."
Bob Dylan version
Background and recording
Bob Dylan had seen Fuller perform at the Exodus coffee club in Denver in 1959, and learned "You're No Good" from him personally. It was the first song Dylan recorded at his initial session, on November 20, 1961, for his debut album 'Bob Dylan', which was released by Columbia on March 19, 1962. He recorded eight takes at Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York City, four of them complete whilst the others were false starts. The fifth take was used as the opening track for the album. Dylan sings, and plays guitar and harmonica on the song. The album was produced by John H. Hammond, and engineered by George Knuerr and Pete Dauria. Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin, who had access to unreleased tapes of the sessions, wrote that "from the first take, Hammond Sr is all at sea." Scholar Todd Harvey, however, interprets the session tapes as evidence that "corroborate[s] ... Hammond's suggestion that Dylan took a few minutes to adjust to the recording process." After one of the takes of "You're No Good", Hammond asked Dylan to play the song again ""'cause we were fixing the balance as you were going on". Dylan wanted to use a spoken introduction, about a cowboy in Connecticut, to the song, but this was abandoned after interruptions, and later abandoned.Dylan's version is faster than Fuller's, and has some lyrical changes from the original, for example omitting the lyric that the woman addressed in the song could "make a preacher lay his bible down". Fuller was acknowledged on the liner notes by "Stacey Williams" (a pseudonym for Robert Shelton), which note that Dylan "learned [the song] from Jesse Fuller the West Coast blues singer". The track was wrongly listed on the label of some American pressings and the British LP as "She's No Good". Dylan gave a performance, which was recorded, at Eve and Mac Mackenzie's home in New York on November 23, 1961. His set included both "You're No Good" and Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues". As of 2022, Dylan has never played the song live in a public concert. Fuller's own album release of the song was over a year after Dylan's.
Critic Shelton called the track "a nonsense song of the beleaguered male running down the offending female in his life." Author John Nogowski described it as "addressed to a woman Dylan says he loves but cannot quite figure out why".
Paul Williams felt that "You're No Good" one of several songs on the album to "give hints of Dylan's rock and roll sensibilities". Williams commented that despite Dylan being a philanderer, he did not portray that on the album: "about the only sexy line on the album is 'when you get a crazy notion [of] jumping all over me' [in "You're No Good"]". Harvey thinks that the song was chosen as the album opener "because it was upbeat and funnya good opener."
Reception
According to Michael Gray in 'The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia', 'Bob Dylan' was an album "few people liked and that didn't sell", and led to Columbia seeking to drop Dylan. However, Gray gives a positive assessment, arguing that the "speed, energy and attack" of Dylan's vocal and instrumental performances "show how fresh and excellently 'unprofessional he was". In a negative album review in 'The Pittsburgh Press', William Allan referred to Dylan's "singing (sic)" and mentions "You're No Good" as one of several songs on the record that "[don't] have a publisher or seem likely to have"Neil Spencer gave the song a rating of 3/5 stars in an Uncut magazine Dylan supplement in 2015, writing that all the songs on 'Bob Dylan' "were treated to a lot of yelping, stuttering harmonica and none too special guitar playing". Nogowski calls the album track an "energetic performance" but rates it only at "C+". Robert Shelton wrote about the song in his biography, 'No Direction Home, The Life and Music of Bob Dylan':
Jeff Hanna of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band said in a 2022 interview that he had been a fan of Dylan since the first album and, regarding "You're No Good", that Dylan "sings the heck out of that one."
Notes
References
'Bibliography'
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
'Citations'
Buy You're No Good (Jesse Fuller song) now from Amazon
<-- Return to songs from 1961