John Anderson - Greatest Hits

John Anderson | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B000002L6W
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #218,096 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

In the late 1980s, John Anderson found himself in the awkward position of seeing the country charts dominated by the new traditionalism, and yet he couldn't buy a hit. Anderson refused to give in, however, and he signed with the fifth company of his career, a brand new label called BNA, and threw the dice one more time. His gratifyingly successful years there have been summed up on Greatest Hits. As good as the songs are, what really makes these hits great is the combination of Anderson's rich, pure-country, baritone drawl, and the pumping swamp rhythms he adds to all his uptempo numbers. Only a handful of country stars could round 15 songs from 1992-96 as impressive as these. Unfortunately, BNA includes his remake of "Swingin'," which sounds busy and less focused than the Warner Bros. original. --Geoffrey Himes

Product Description

Here are 10 classic honky-tonk tracks from the backwoods singer including his instant classic Swingin' along with 1959; I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal; Black Sheep; Wild and Blue and more! --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Country, October 11, 2000

By 

Ricky N. "Ricky C. Nelson" (Commerce, GA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: John Anderson - Greatest Hits (Audio CD)

John Anderson has a wonderfully distinct country voice. I owned this tape several years ago, and played it so much that it broke. I was glad to find it from amazon.com. I love every song on this cassette. There are classics like "Swingin'", "I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal", "1959", and "Black Sheep of the Family", which I consider one of the 10 best country songs ever recorded. For fans of pure country, this tape is a must!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars John's early classic hits, August 8, 2005

By 

Peter Durward Harris "Pete the music fan" (Leicester England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: John Anderson - Greatest Hits (Audio CD)

For reasons only Amazon knows, the pages for John's original greatest hits album on Warner (covering the early eighties) and his later greatest hits album for BNA (covering the nineties comeback) are linked, so reviews for either album are listed under both. This review refers to the earlier Warner collection though I plan to expand the review eventually to cover the comeback hits if I can't persuade Amazon to de-link the pages (I've tried before and failed) - in that unlikely event, I'll do a separate review and remove this paragraph from here.

With a voice and musical style that has echoes of, but which is distinct from, Merle Haggard, John Anderson burst on to the country music scene in 1980. He was a regular country hit-maker for much of the eighties but faded towards the end of that decade. He made a successful comeback on a different record label in the nineties.

I quickly became a huge fan of John's music. His debut album was a classic, featuring songs such as 1959, She just started liking cheating songs and (best of all) Your lying blue eyes. All of them became top twenty hits in the country charts. Bigger hits came later including some on this collection but those first three hits are (to my ears) as good as anything else that he ever recorded.

Among those bigger hits are Swinging (the biggest hit John ever had - it crossed over to the American pop charts), I'm just an old chunk of coal, Would you catch a falling star and Black sheep. Later eighties hits can be found on volume 2.

If you love the music of Merle Haggard and George Jones, you'll surely enjoy listening to John Anderson. And if you only buy one collection of John's music, the original Greatest Hits - the one on Warner - is the one to go for until and unless a more comprehensive collection appears. If you enjoy this collection and want to hear more, go for volume 2 or the BNA collection or both.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Instant classic., March 9, 2000

By 

Music 4 Life (NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: John Anderson - Greatest Hits [BNA] (Audio CD)

A tape full of unbelievably cool songs (ok, so maybe the redone "Swingin'" should've been left off) by a guy whose voice is wonderfully unique. Why it took me so long to pick up on his music is beyond me, but now I have his whole discography (thanks in part to Ebay) and will NEVER LET IT GO! He puts heart & soul into music like no one else. He's the greatest, and this CD proves why.