Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 10/25/1990
Run Time: 42:31
James Taylor had scored eight Top 40 hits by the fall of 1976 when
Warner Brothers marked the end of his contract with this compilation. One of those hits, the Top Ten gold single
"Mockingbird," a duet with his wife
Carly Simon, was on
Elektra Records, part of the
Warner family of labels and presumably available, but it was left off.
"Long Ago and Far Away," a lesser hit (though it made the Top Ten on the
easy listening charts), wasn't used either. In addition to the six hits --
"Fire and Rain," "Country Road," "You've Got a Friend," "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight," "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)," and
"Shower the People" -- that were included, the album featured a couple of less successful singles,
"Mexico" and
"Walking Man," the album track
"Sweet Baby James," and three previously unreleased recordings -- a live version of
"Steamroller" and newly recorded versions of
"Something in the Way She Moves" and
"Carolina in My Mind," songs featured on
Taylor's 1968 debut album, recorded for
Apple/
Capitol. The result was a reasonable collection for an artist who wasn't particularly well-defined by his singles. One got little sense of
Taylor's evolution from the dour, confessional songs of his first two albums to the more conventional
pop songs of his sixth and seventh ones. But one did hear isolated examples of
Taylor's undeniable warmth and facility for
folk/
country-tinged
pop. By the next summer,
Taylor was back in the Top Ten on
Columbia, and
Greatest Hits was out of date. But it remains a good sampler of
Taylor's more popular early work.
~William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
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