At Their Very Best [Import]

At Their Very Best [Import]

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
They were Originally Sir Cliff Richard's Backing Band, but Struck Out on their Own in 1960 and Had a their First Hit with the Song "Apache". While They were Misconstrued as England's Answer to the Ventures Because their Recordings were Instrumental, They were Quite Musically Different from the Famed Americans. Here Are 20 of their Best Recordings.

Tracks:

My Girl - Smokey Robinson, The Temptations
Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)
Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)
I'm Gonna Make You Love Me - Diana Ross, The Supremes, The Temptations
Get Ready
Treat Her Like a Lady
Papa Was a Rollin' Stone
I Can't Get Next to You
Take a Look Around
Cloud Nine
I Second That Emotion - Diana Ross, The Supremes, The Temptations
Beauty Is Only Skin Deep
(I Know) I'm Losing You
Ain't Too Proud to Beg
You're My Everything
Why (Must We Fall in Love) - Diana Ross, The Supremes, The Temptations
Psychedelic Shack
Superstar (Remember How You Got Where You Are?)
It's Growing
I Wish It Would Rain
Way You Do the Things You Do

Tracks:

I'm Here
I'll Be in Trouble
Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)
Since I Lost My Baby
My Baby
Don't Look Back
All I Need
(Loneliness Made Me Realize) It's You That I Need
Runaway Child, Running Wild
This Is My Promise
Please Return Your Love to Me
Standing on the Top, Pt. 1
Shakey Ground - Rick James, The Temptations
Power
Selfish Reasons
Night and Day
Some Enchanted Evening
Stay
I'm Here [Remix]

Album Description

21 track collection of their greatest hits with a bonus CD featuring 19 tracks from their newer repertroire. 40 tracks in all including, 'My Girl', 'Just My Imagination' and 'Ball Of Confusion'. Double slimline jewel case. 2001 release.

Album Details

Their 20 greatest hits are on the first disc of this newly remastered package. CD2 is a bonus disc with singles from their more recent repertoire. 'I'm Here' is featured in the Mel Gibson movie 'What Women Want'.

Customer Reviews:

Curate's Egg.......2005-03-28

A 2CD retrospective of mostly singles, some in album-length versions, and for once nearly always in stereo. The mono tracks, from 1964-1969, are Ain't Too Proud To Beg, You're My Everything, The Way You Do The Things You Do, Since I Lost My Baby, Run Away Child, Running Wild (single version) and Please Return Your Love To Me, and as usual there is no indication of this for the prospective purchaser. This is especially frustrating since stereo versions of all of these have been available and most have turned up before in stereo on budget compilations.

The collection is drawn exclusively from Motown's Gordy-label recordings (they also made 2 albums for Atlantic in 1977-1978) and begins in 1964, after they had spent two struggling years on the label, with Eddie Kendricks mostly singing lead and Smokey Robinson writing and producing some of his best material. It might have been interesting to have heard something from their earlier work, unfamiliar to me, but perhaps it wasn't considered the Temptations at their very best.

After David Ruffin joined the group in 1963 he gradually began to take over the lead vocal duties, with hits such as the magnificent My Girl and I Wish It Would Rain, though Eddie Kendricks continued occasionally to front songs such as the beautiful Just My Imagination in 1971. David Ruffin too was supplanted, as he became more difficult to work with, by Dennis Edwards from the Contours, who led most of the Norman Whitfield-produced records of the turn of the decade, culminating in the masterpiece Papa Was A Rollin' Stone in 1972.

Disc 1 is drawn from this period with one exception, and includes three 1968 collaborations with Diana Ross and the Supremes, but there are altogether 11 tracks from between 1975 and 2000, including the funky and rather good Shakey Ground from 1975, but showing how hard it is to continually renew the spark that seemed to come so easily at other times, with shifting line ups and producers not helping.

A song like Don't Look Back, a 1965 B-side later covered by Peter Tosh and Mick Jagger, is infinitely superior to a later A-side such as the discofied, synthesizer-led, Rick James-produced Standing On The Top from 1982.

Stay, taken from the 1998 album Phoenix Rising, actually samples the bass-line and guitar riff from the original My Girl, but is a mediocre song by comparison. The removal of most of these latter day efforts would have left a stronger single CD or, if replaced with material from their glory days, a far better double, as they clearly do not on the whole represent them at their best.

Two of their lead singers, David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, plus the tenor Paul Williams and Melvyn Douglas, their trademark bass and occasional lead vocalist, have all sadly passed on and by 1995 only tenor harmony singer Otis Williams was left from the original and early line ups of Motown's must successful group.

Mastering is pretty good with the exception of the most recent track, I'm Here, which has buzzy background distortion - ironically it comes from an album called Ear-Resistible - and My Girl is slightly truncated. All in all, a curate's egg but a brave attempt at an overview of an extensive career

Worth Every Penny.......2001-06-03

Definitely their very best. The only collection I know of that contains all the hits, from every era, all the way up to their latest album. Excellent sound. Not in chronological order. Much better than any of the U.S. collections.

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