AMG Review of I'm So Good That I Don't Have to Brag!

Bruce Eder
All Music Guide

In October of 1965, Shel Silverstein, who was one of Chicago's more notable artistic luminaries, got Chess Records to record him live over two nights at Mother Blues. The result was one of the most delightful albums of its decade, and the probably best record ever cut by any white artist by Chess Records (now there's a real distinction). I'm So Good That I Don't Have to Brag is an extraordinary document, a strange and compelling body of white folk, country, and, most especially, blues -- not blues played by a white man, but blues as it exists in some strange alternate universe where the music was invented by whites. Silverstein wasn't even as good a singer as Bob Dylan, and he had no particular fixation on a specific style of music -- but he sang from the heart and he made up in honesty and instinct (especially where words and their meaning were concerned) what he lacked in actual vocal ability. The resulting album is a beautiful, piercingly funny, savagely satirical musical statement, mostly about sex -- Little Walter is aboard on blues harp for four numbers, and a pre-Spanky & Our Gang Malcolm Hale is playing guitar with Silverstein, but the focus has got to be that voice, raw, whiny, and sincere (or is he?). Among the better of the songs premiered here are "I Can't Touch the Sun," "The Mermaid," and "Plastic," several of which became popular in the hands of performers as varied as Glenn Yarborough and the Serendipity Singers, and "Yowsah!," which anticipated Silverstein's subsequent composition, "A Boy Named Sue." One of the more obscure records in the Chess/"Cadet" catalog, I'm So Good That I Don't Have to Brag (even the name is a send-up of a typical Chicago blues title) was reissued in 2000 by England's Edsel Records.