Maxine Brown - Spotlight on Maxine Brown/Greatest Hits (CD)

All Music Guide

A confusing release that seems to have tried to both sweep up rarities for the completist and offer something approximating a greatest-hits package, the result being, of course, that everyone's a bit unsatisfied. Basically, the idea was to combine all the songs from her 1965 LP Spotlight (actually largely a collection of 1963-65 singles) and her 1967 LP Greatest Hits (which duplicated five tracks from Spotlight) onto one CD, adding eight rare bonus tracks. Those additional cuts are taken from non-LP mid-'60s recordings and a couple of previously unissued items. There are two problems with that concept. The first is that no less than 15 of the 28 tracks also appear on another Kent release, the fine anthology Oh No Not My Baby: The Best of Maxine Brown, which many of the people considering buying any Brown reissue are likely to have already. The second is that this CD actually does not include "All in My Mind" and "Funny," which -- if the cover art of Greatest Hits, complete with track l...isting, reproduced on the cover of this two-fer is to be believed -- were on the original 1967 Greatest Hits LP. That's an uncommon gaffe for Ace/Kent to make, but from all appearances that's what happened. Now, certainly this is still a fine pop-soul disc from one of the best pop-soul vocalists. Of the material on Spotlight On/Greatest Hits not on that other Kent collection, it ranges from good -- the bluesy "You Upset My Soul," an odd cover of the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out," the brassy 1966 single "Anything You Do Is Alright," a nice interpretation of the pop standard "When I Fall in Love" -- to unmemorable. - Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide Read more Less