Best Blue Note Album in the World Ever

 (6 customer reviews)

Though I've never been a big jazz fan, the intriguing title as well as the fact that I found this in the local library served to inspired me to give it a go. Basically I'd say that this is truly a great collection of vintage jazz from the Blue Note label. Whether it's the "greatest ever" I really couldn't say, but definitely top-notch in my book. Some of the highlight classics are Horace Silver's "Song For My Father", Herbie Hancocks's "Watermelon Man" and Jimmy Smith's "Back At the Chicken Shack" as well as a couple of excellent vocals by Cassandra Wilson and Lou Rawls. The only clunker is a ridiculous acapella by Bobby McFerrin called "Thinkin' About Your Body". Even if you somehow liked "Don't Worry, Be Happy", this one is sure to turn off all but the most fanatical McFerrin fan. In a nutshell, two thumbs up (As long as you skip over the McFerrin track)!

There are not many CDs like this in the world. A lot of the albums from which these songs are taken would be worth the purchase price of the whole album just because of the one song.

"Watermelon Man" for example is Herbie Hancock's most memorable song and one could never go wrong buying a whole Herbie Hancock album. Ditto for Horace Silver ("Song For My Father").

So, these are all songs from groundbreaking albums that have stood the test of time. What more could you want in a compilation CD?

(One more thing that is good-- though trivial-- is that the CD has a track listing printed on the CD itself if you are not a person that likes to keep CD covers. I'm not.)

This CD is even worth the purchase price NEW.

Blue Note's got the artists, so this album is a logical extension of their catalog. Many of these artists and songs are classics in their own right and deserve attention. For myself, I have a tendency to use these "best of" compendiums to find something I think I would like to buy, which I then usually do go out and get. Eventually, I no longer have to return to the "best of" collection, but this one I do. Sometimes you just don't want to hear all Herbie Hancock or Kenny Burrell, in which case, it's nice to use this compilation to get a "dose" and then move on. I especially like "Cantaloop", which does a jazz classic with some funky cutovers and mixing to make a modern jazz/rap classic. Very neat. Serious jazz listeners will not have much use for this collection, but casual jazz fans and those who want to keep the size of their CD collection within reason will certainly get a lot of play out of this.