Let Me Choose Life/Yarbrough Country

This set combines Glenn Yarbrough's second (Yarbrough Country) and third (Let Me Choose Life) albums for Warners after he left RCA in 1968, and pairing the two on a single disc actually enriches both, creating a kind of variety that neither really had on its own. Yarbrough Country was a half-hearted and probably misguided attempt to place the singer in a country context, and while it featured credible versions of Gordon Lightfoot's "Ribbon of Darkness," Bob Dylan's "Walkin' Down the Line," Bryan Davies' "Wisconsin," and Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'," nobody mistook it for George Jones. "Let Me Choose Life" leans in a more orchestrated direction, but it doesn't truthfully sound that much different than its immediate predecessor (both albums were released in 1969), although it's difficult to imagine the version of Laura Nyro's "Goodbye Girl" included here appearing on Yarbrough Country. Again, paired like this, these albums seem to breathe a little better, and whatever gentle twists Warners applied to Yarbrough's style through his run with the label, it still all comes back to his voice, and that trademark high and clear tenor is front and center on both of these albums. ~ Steve Leggett