"You're No Good" is a song by Jesse Fuller that appeared as the opening track on Bob Dylan's eponymous debut album (1962).
His best-known song is "San Francisco Bay Blues", which he released on his debut album Working on the Railroad (1954).
[1] "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.
"[2] Bob Dylan had seen Fuller perform at the Exodus coffee club in Denver in 1959,[6] and learned "You're No Good" from him personally.
[7][9] He recorded eight takes at Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York City, four of them complete whilst the others were false starts.
[5] Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin, who had access to unreleased tapes of the sessions,[11] wrote that "from the first take, Hammond Sr is all at sea".
[12] 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".
This idea was abandoned after interruptions to early takes when Hammond complained that Dylan was popping the "p" sound in the word "planes".
[18] Paul Williams felt that "You're No Good" was one of several songs on the album to "give hints of Dylan's rock and roll sensibilities".
[8] 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".
As Dylan gets into the song, the broadness of his put-on comes forward, culminating in a couple of vocal riffs that suggest Elliott at his slyest.