My road dawg, Tony, and I were doing our basic trot around Lake Merritt a couple of months back, dishing Lady Soul and her tired, coy, air-brushed "autobiography"," and T-Dogg brought up Aretha's work for Columbia. I said I had heard it once or twice, saw her on Merv Griffin a few times in those days, but he began raving about "Today I Sing the Blues," "This Bitter Earth" and "Skylark." He was so enthusiastic and convincing, that when I ran into this 2 disc box set with 39 choice cuts from those pre-Atlantic years at Amoeba in Berkeley, I bit. What I found in the clumsy ol-skool box set packaging is a treasure trove of simply magnificent recordings, ranging from standards ("Drinking Again," "Impossible," "Misty") to r&b hits of the day covered by Miss Ree ("Walk On By," a sad, sad "Every Little Bit Hurts") and her own decent r&b chart hits ("Runnin' Out of Fools," "Cry Like A Baby"). A couple of these, "Lee Cross" and "Take It Like You Give It," are just footsteps away from the breakthrough work she did shortly thereafter on Atlantic, which has overshadowed these incredible sides. "Land of Dreams" is simply beautiful, "Won't Be Long" tears the roof off, "Love for Sale" re-defines that classic riff. Boy, am I glad I listened to Tony!

Althought official story said that Aretha Franklin suddenly blossomed when she left "Columbia",I love her early recordings.The voice was always there,piano playing was always there,its just influence of her then-husband-manager that drowns down a bit the whole picture,as he clearly had ambition to make his wife a night club ballad singer.For that reason I usualy skip the first CD on this collection,which is overproduced and Aretha doesn't sound comfortable on standards,but I prefer second CD which shows her rhytm & blues potential.It shows that her work for "Atlantic" was just a natural progression,there would never be "Respect" if she did not already have "Wont Be Long" or "Soulville" or "Lee Cross".

In 1961 (Oh by the way I love the cover photo of a very beautiful young Aretha) In 1961 before the constant array of hits started to flow at Atlantic records Aretha had a top R&B hit on the national charts. It's one of those classic pieces of soul music- In fact it's one of the best soul ballads of the early 60's. The long forgotten "Operation Heartbreak". This is the only cd available that contains this classic featuring a youthful sounding Aretha. Al Issacs in the early to mid 90's in Birmingham,Alabama on WATV used to play this classic on his Saturday blues show. Some had heard it for the first time but the response to the song was always phenomenal. I now feature this classic on my Dr.Blues and Boogie show that I'm trying diligently to get syndicated.

Columbia records has, on occassion, been always a bit on the defensive whenever the subject of her glorious work on the Atlantic label is discussed in any of the former label's compilations. This one does exactly that. In one instance, one track is being compared to one of aretha's hits on atlantic, suggesting that had she stayed with her former label, great things would have come...nevermind languishing for nearly 7 years...

However, I do agree that some of her best work for Columbia is presented here and in remastered and remixed form. One may even suspect that the engineers went straight for the original master tapes because some tracks like "lee cross" and "won't be long" are longer in duration than the previously available versions. My only disappointment is the audio quality where there was too much noise reduction giving the tracks a "filtered" sound. For someone (like me) who has been raised on analog and is used to noise as both a natural part of recordings and thus a natural part of the listening experience, this makes for an unpleasant one.

If i were to talk about the songs in the cd per se, this is one great buy, but given my issue with the way it was remastered, i'd say caveat emptor.

This was an amazing collection of jazz standards as interpreted by the amazingly soulful vocal standards of the Queen herself miss Aretha Franklin. A must for Jazz and Soul music lovers, beautifuly orchestrated and recorded. A definite 5 stars!!!