There is a Bob Dylan album that scores even lower in Allmusic, and here I need to put on my “Under Appreciated” hat – the 1973 release Dylan yields just *.  Allmusic mentions that this LP is “[c]ommonly regarded as the worst album in Bob Dylan’s catalog”.  The album is described in both Rolling Stone Record Guide and Allmusic as a collection of outtakes from Self Portrait – i.e., songs that didn’t make the cut for that head-scratcher – and that just sent chills up my spine.  As I recall, it was also the last release on Columbia Records before Bob Dylan jumped ship to Asylum Records; and record companies are often spiteful in such cases, untold millions of dollars of earnings for the corporation notwithstanding. 

Dylan is a recent rescue from Katrina, however, and I found it surprisingly easy to listen to.  The album is entirely cover songs, many of them quite familiar; and if Dylan’s performance of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” leaves no impression at all, that is not true of the lesser known songs. 

The opening track, a traditional folk song called “Lily of the West” is beautifully performed; and the album is well worth owning for that song alone.  Personally I am at least as big a fan of Bob Dylan as a folksinger as I am of Bob Dylan as a rocker, and this song was a welcome return to the performances that I remember so well from his early albums. 

(August 2014)