Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits is a 1967 compilation album of songs by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Released on March 27, 1967, by Columbia Records, it was a stopgap between Dylan's studio albums Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding, during which time he had retreated from the public eye to recover from a motorcycle accident.
It was Dylan's first compilation, containing every
Greatest Hits presented Dylan's first appearance on records after his praised Blonde on Blonde double-LP of May 1966 and his motorcycle accident of that summer. With no activity by Dylan since the end of his recent world tour, and no new recordings on the immediate horizon (the sessions that would in part be released in June 1975 as The Basement Tapes were still months away), Columbia wanted new product to continue to capitalize on Dylan's commercial appeal, so released Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, the label's first Dylan compilation.
Greatest Hits serves as Dylan's de facto singles collection for the 1960s. With the exception of "
, and in 1965 Dylan's original recording made it to No. 9 as a single release in the United Kingdom.
In 1965 a truncated rock and roll version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" had been a No. 1 hit for
Billboard Top 40 in 1965 and 1966. "Positively 4th Street" was the only single of the collection not released on a long-playing album, having been recorded during the sessions for Highway 61 Revisited. Despite charting in both the US and UK, the 1965 standalone single "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?
" was not included in the compilation.
When this album was remastered for its 1999 issue on compact disc 30 years later, a slightly longer alternative mix of "Positively 4th Street" was substituted for the original single version. In 2003, this album was released along with Dylan's two other greatest hits compilations in one four-disc boxed set, as Greatest Hits Volumes I–III.
An audiophile version of the album was released in August 2012, mastered by Steve Hoffman for the Audio Fidelity label as a 24-kt gold-plated CD. This disc is a limited edition of 5,000 individually numbered copies.[2] Like the 1999 remaster, this CD contains a longer version of "Positively 4th Street."
The cover photograph used on the cover of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits was taken by
Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 was selected for Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II, a compilation Dylan had much more control over.[citation needed]John Berg, senior art director at Columbia Records, recognized that a backlit image such as Scherman's would work because of Dylan's distinctive profile and hairstyle.[citation needed
] It was his design, as well as Scherman's photo, that won the Grammy.
Track listing
Original release
All tracks are written by Bob Dylan. Chart positions are from Billboard Hot 100. In most cases the LP featured album versions in place of singles if such were not identical to single mixes
Subtitled "Nobody sings Dylan like Dylan", this version was compiled in 1966. Only half of the 12 songs are also on the U.S. release. Songs from Blonde on Blonde are missing altogether.
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
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