Collection [Original recording remastered]

Bonnie Raitt | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 28, 1990)
• Original Release Date: July 10, 1990
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B000002LLP
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,061 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #91 in Music > Rock > Singer-Songwriters

Track Listings

1. Finest Lovin' Man

2. Give It Up Or Let Me Go

3. Women Be Wise

4. Under The Falling Sky

5. Love Me Like A Man

6. Love Has No Pride

7. I Feel The Same

8. Guilty

9. Angel From Montgomery

10. What Is Success

11. My First Night Alone Without You

12. Sugar Mama

13. Louise

14. About To Make Me Leave Home

15. Runaway

16. The Glow

17. (Goin') Wild For You Baby

18. Willya Wontcha

19. True Love Is Hard To Find

20. No Way To Treat A Lady

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

When Bonnie Raitt collected four Grammies for her 1989 multiplatinum breakthrough Nick of Time, it offered sweet justification for fans that had followed her through years of great recordings but plenty of hard luck in terms of commercial success. The Bonnie Raitt Collection shows why those fans were right all along. From the early blues-mama stylings of "Give It Up or Let Me Go" and "Love Me Like a Man" to the increased pop sophistication she brought to songs like her funky reworking of Del Shannon's "Runaway" and Bryan Adams's straight-ahead rocker "No Way to Treat a Lady," the set offers a worthwhile sampling of the decade and a half she spent recording for the Warner Bros. label. Of special note are a pair of live recordings; a previously unreleased version of "Women Be Wise," featuring one of Raitt's primary mentors, Sippie Wallace; and a duet with John Prine on "Angel from Montgomery" that first appeared on the Grammy-winning Tribute to Steve Goodman. If you only recently discovered Raitt, this collection will help you decide which of her earlier works to sample next. --Daniel Durchholz

Product Description

20 songs

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 20 songs from the blues guitar queen's first 20 years., January 12, 2003

By 

Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Collection (Audio CD)

Hearing Bonnie Raitt's music, you'd swear her roots were somewhere in the Mississippi Delta - not, of all places, Southern California. And indeed, the red-haired, freckled daughter of Broadway star John Raitt ("Oklahoma!") fit in badly with the crowd of teenagers who listened to the Beach Boys and other representatives of the so-called "California music," went to the beach and learned how to surf; whereas Bonnie "didn't get tanned and ... lived in the canyon," as she recalls in her biography written by Mark Bego, "Just in the Nick of Time." But by that time, she had already found solace in music: "That was my saving grace. I just sat in my room and played my guitar," she remembers. One day she heard a Newport Folk Festival recording entitled "Blues at Newport '63," featuring John Lee Hooker, John Hammond, Brownie McGee, Mississippi John Hurt and other members of the blues's all-time elite. And Bonnie was hooked: "I tell you, once you get exposed to the blues, you can't get enough."

Thus, it was only natural that she would soon be found more frequently in the Cambridge, MA, blues and jazz clubs than in the hallowed halls of Radcliffe College, where she had enrolled to master in African studies. Before long she had an agent, and began to open for her idols Junior Wells, Arthur Crudup, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker and ultimately her mentor, Sippie Wallace, and met singer-songwriters and future soulmates Jackson Browne and James Taylor. In 1971 she was offered her first recording contract. And from her self-titled debut to 2002's "Silver Lining," her over three decades-long career is one of the most amazing examples of personal growth, combined with stellar musicianship and an active voice for society's victims and underprivileged and again and again, for women's rights; even if it would take the music industry until 1989's triple Grammies for the Capitol Records release "Nick of Time" to officially recognize Bonnie Raitt's achievements.

This collection, released shortly after her Grammy-winning album, chronicles all stages of her career until then, drawing on the nine albums she had released on Warner Records before changing labels. It features all-time classics such as "Give It Up or Let Me Go," "Love Me Like a Man," "Willya Wontcha," "Love Has No Pride" (one of her earliest signature songs), her intensely personal interpretation of Randy Newman's "Guilty" (which still cuts so close that she doesn't perform it live as regularly as other songs), the Tex-Mex ballad "Louise," her Al Green-inflected version of Jackson Browne's "Runaway," her hard-driving recording of Bryan Adams's "No Way to Treat a Lady" ("I sing a lot of songs for women who've 'had it,' and this is a powerful dose of that feeling," she comments on the album's liner notes), a rare 1976 live duet with Sippie Wallace on her mentor's "Women Be Wise," and an the Grammy-winning 1985 live duet with John Prine on "Angel From Montgomery," written by Prine but now a signature song for Bonnie Raitt as much as for him.

Much more than a "best of," this is a very personal collection of songs by the singer whose very first female role model was "Gunsmoke"'s red-headed, independent Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake); who learned to successfully compete with boys and men from early childhood on ("I just couldn't stand the way girls got the second best of everything," she recalls in "Nick of Time"), and who now donates the revenue from sales of her signature model Fender Strat to her own project for inner city girls. It amply showcases her feeling for the blues and her extraordinary talent as a guitar player: she is one of the few women who have mastered the bottleneck guitar, a feat she achieved even before her first recording contract, and her slide guitar skills are matched (if that) by only the best in the business.

Bonnie Raitt is rightfully considered part of the all-time elite of blues musicians, and recognized as a peer by the artists she once admired from afar. This album contains excellent examples of her cooperation with many of those artists, who appear on her records again and again - the list almost reads like a blues and rock music "who is who." There are, for example, Junior Wells (harp on "Finest Lovin' Man"), Freebo ([fretless] bass on almost every track and tuba on "Give It Up or Let Me Go"), A.C. Reed (sax on "Finest Lovin' Man"), John Payne (sax on "Give It Up or Let Me Go"), T.J. Tindall (e-guitar on "Under the Falling Sky"), Paul Butterfield (harp on "Under the Falling Sky"), Lowell George (slide guitar on "I Feel the Same" and "Guilty"), Bill Payne (keyboards on "I Feel the Same," "Guilty," "(Goin') Wild for You Baby" and "No Way to Treat a Lady"), Steve Gadd (drums on "What Is Success"), Will McFarlane (e-guitar on "My First Night Alone Without You," "Sugar Mama" and "Runaway"), John Hall (e-guitar on "My First Night Without You" and "Sugar Mama") Jai Winding (keyboards on "My First Night Alone Without You" and "Sugar Mama"), Joe and Jeff Porcaro (percussion on "Sugar Mama"), Norton Buffalo (harp on "Runaway"), Rosemary Butler (backing vocals on "Runaway" and "No Way to Treat a Lady") Waddy Wachtel (e-guitar on "(Goin') Wild for You Baby"), Bob Glaub (bass on "(Goin') Wild for You Baby"), Ricky Fataar (drums/percussion on "Willya Wontcha"), Michael Landau (guitar solo on "No Way to Treat a Lady"), Nathan East (bass on "No Way to Treat a Lady") and countless others.

Intimidated by her mother's skill as a pianist, Bonnie Raitt exchanged keys for steel strings when she was barely eight years old. She later did return to the piano, though, and even if she may not be Martha Argerich (or, for that matter, Marjorie Haydock Raitt), her true gift shines through even there. But even if she had never learned to play anything but guitar ... listening to this album, I doubt we would seriously be missing anything.

Also recommended:

Road Tested

Give It Up

Fundamental

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The minority vote: doesn't do justice to her earlier work, March 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Collection (Audio CD)

I'm obviously in the minority here if everyone else gave this CD a five star review, but I just don't think it's a great compilation of her work with Warner Bros. Granted, Raitt supposedly compiled it herself, so it's very unlikely it was picked without care. However, this was the first disc I checked out after her trio of Don Was-produced albums for Capitol, and later one when I explored her Warner albums in their entirety, I felt like this CD shortchanged them.

A single disc compilation of her Warner work is ideal, though, because after three solid albums, it became wildly uneven. Furthermore, many songs were done far better live (check out "Write Me a Few of Your Lines/Kokomo Blues"; the version on the current Capitol live album is great, but so is her mid-70's live interpretations), so mixing it up would make it even better. To this CD's credit, it does just that, including two excellent live cuts. However, there are still some glaring omissions, and a handful of cuts here that don't reflect her best work. The cuts from "The Glow" show how mismatched she was with Asher's production (so mismatched, I would've considered excluding the album altogether; a better choice may have been to use live versions), and "No Way To Treat A Lady" feels too mechanical, too manufactured, something that plagued most of the other cuts from the same album. "Runaway" may have been her only 'hit' until "Nick Of Time," but it's not a good reinterpretation of a classic. Meanwhile, "Too Long At The Fair," "Cry Like A Rainstorm," "Write Me a Few of Your Lines/Kokomo Blues," "Run Like A Thief," and "River of Tears" are missing; all of these are GREAT recordings, not to mention great performances vocally, and have some excellent guitar work.

This CD isn't bad for what it is and has some great tracks, but as a whole, it doesn't showcase her best work with the label.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Above average collection of BONNIE, BONNIE, BONNIE, June 3, 1998

By 

Casey Stewart "kcfoxy: accept no substitute" (San Joaquin Delta) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Collection (Audio CD)

No one is ever totally satisfied with "Best of" collections, but this one is definately on the mark as having a very well thought-out selection representing a fairly wide sampling of Bonnie. I'm happy to see many selections of what, IMHO, Bonnie Raitt does best: sing the blues.

What's interesting, are the inclusion of some duets, with songwriter/singers of some classics: Women Be Wise with the incomparable Sippy Wallace comes to mind. The duet with John Prine on Angel From Montgomery gives you the feel of a live concert when "surprise" guests would stroll on-stage for a jam.

For those of you who wondered all those years, "What's the fuss?" THIS IS IT! Together, in one CD, Under the Falling Sky, I Feel the Same and My First Night Alone Without You. Ear candy of the finest kind!