Amidst a critical and commercial slump and rumors that he had no plans to record a new LP, CBS record execs (with Dylan’s blessing) set to making money off of their golden goose, leading to this two disc collection. The result is a truly worthwhile look at a proper genius’s full career, including cuts from just about every album he had released up to that point (excepting his debut, Times, and his critically panned Self Portrait) as well as seven unreleased tunes, including the sneering rocker Watching the River Flow and the legendary Quinn the Eskimo.

The album tracks are in no particular order, which makes for an interesting mix, especially when tracks from Freewheelin’ are juxtaposed with Nashville Skyline cuts. It sometimes plays like someone put all of his releases on shuffle and chose the first sixteen tunes that showed up, which is arguably not the best way to travel through Dylan’s career.

The collection is a bit heavy on selections from Another Side of Bob Dylan, which I haven’t heard, and which this compilation makes me wish I had. In the context of other tunes I know very well (Don’t Think Twice, Maggie’s Farm, All Along The Watchtower, A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall, etc), it’s incredibly refreshing to hear some tunes that capture the same tongue-in-cheekness as Freewheelin’ that I’ve never heard before. But it’s the five unreleased songs on side four that makes this collection notable. They include one acoustic live track from 1963, a few Nashville Skyline era country tunes, and the acoustic blues of Down In The Flood. They are fitting testaments to a true genius’s prolificacy, and they make Greatest Hits, Vol. II a fitting addition to his discography.