The Very Best Of

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No wonder Bettye Swann is beloved by soul connoisseurs: she walked the fine line separating uptown elegance and Southern grit, a skill that's marvelous but not especially commercial. Swann had one major hit -- "Make Me Yours," an R&B chart-topper in 1967 which also crossed over to 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 -- and she racked up a few other R&B hits over the next six years ("Don't Touch Me" went to 14 in 1969, "Victim of a Foolish Heart" peaked at 16 in 1971), but she always remained on the cusp of success without ever really achieving stardom. Ace's 2015 collection, The Very Best of Bettye Swann 1964-1975, is the first-ever compilation to chronicle the entirety of her career, opening with nine selections from her pivotal Money recordings, then stopping for her Capitol sessions of 1969, and concluding with her Atlantic recordings, which were documented in their entirety on Real Gone's 2014 double-disc set. That collection provides one of a handful of rarities here -- these are primarily new remixes, usually of the Money material -- but this isn't a collection for the hardcore, it's a disc constructed to tell Swann's story and make a case for her talents. At that it is superb, illustrating the range and depth of her material, with nearly every single seeming like a smash hit that never happened. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine