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4.0 out of 5 stars
Fills the void to some extent, September 9, 2009
This review is from: 25 greatest hits (Audio CD)
Though CD reissues have been around for more than 25 years, somewhat inexplicitly little has been available for the music of Carl Carlton. Perhaps the erratic releases, label-switching and stylistic turnabouts made his catalog more of a challenge to reissue. So when a career-spanning, multi-label compilation CD comes along, it is something of an event.
In this collection from the somewhat mysterious and hard-to-trace Black Tulip label are gathered together all of Carlton's top-100 pop-charting tunes from his first, "Competition Ain't Nothin' " in the late `60's (as by Little Carl Carlton), to his final appearance on the pop charts in 1981 with "She's a Bad Mama Jama". His biggest hit by far, the song that took him furthest into mainstream pop stylistically and in many ways became his signature song, "Everlasting Love", leads off this set. The remaining tunes included are his other charting and non-charting singles and a selection of album cuts. All told, though hardly a complete telling, the generous 25 tracks here represent a decent anthology of Carlton's recorded works.
While understandably not of original master quality and while discernable variation exists, sound quality here is surprising good overall. Most of the tracks (1,5-6,8,11-21) are stereo with the remainder in mono. The insert provides no more than the track listing so as with other labels of this type, the recordings themselves are the only find here.
Given the relative dearth of CD's available for Carlton's musical output, this decent collection of his music fills a long-standing void in the music collector's library.
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