CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Best of Bill Cosby

compilation album by Bill Cosby

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 29, 2025
Entity authorityQ7716895 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Best of Bill Cosby (1969) is a comedy compilation album by Bill Cosby. It is his 10th comedy album and 12th overall release, including two music albums he had recorded to that point.

The album, Cosby's first compilation, presents routines taken from the comedy albums he recorded during his tenure with Warner Bros. Records, which had just been completed earlier that year. The liner notes were by David Ossman of the comedy group The Firesign Theatre.

Track listing

Some of the track titles on this album differ from those on the albums from which they were taken. Where applicable, the original titles are shown in parentheses.

Side 1

Noah: Right! – 2:05 (from Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow...Right!)

Noah: And the Neighbor – 1:43 (from ...Right!)

Noah: Me and You, Lord – 3:11 (from ...Right!)

Revenge – 5:58 (from Revenge)

The Lone Ranger – 0:55 (from I Started Out as a Child)

Old Weird Harold (9th Street Bridge) – 5:12 (from Revenge)

Side 2

Driving in San Francisco – 3:45 (from Why Is There Air?)

The Apple – 1:43 (from To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With)

Babies (Baby) – 3:49 (from Why Is There Air?)

The Water Bottle – 0:58 (from I Started Out...)

Street Football – 1:17 (from I Started Out...)

Fat Albert (Buck, Buck) – 9:05 (from Revenge)

"The Lone Ranger", as presented on this album, is a truncated (shortened) version of the original recording.

The cassette tape release of the album reverses Sides 1 and 2 of the LP in order to sequence the longer side first.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Best of Bill Cosby” as compilation album by Bill Cosby. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1969—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Best, Bill and Cosby can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as compilation album by Bill Cosby. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7716895. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1969.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Best of Bill Cosby”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Best of Bill Cosby primary sources, The Best of Bill Cosby archive and Best research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Best of Bill Cosby”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Best of Bill Cosby” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.