This is a great and very memorable hits collection of her solo work while still very much part of the successful duo Sonny and Cher.
Included are her sixties standards that we all and love of hers like "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and "You Better Sit Down Kids". The original "Alfie" is a special treat. Also the covers like "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me" and "All I Really Want To Do" are almost better than the originals due to her young and aspiring vocals in these productions.
The only problem lies in the fact that the tracks are a bit old and not of the best quality. Not the most complex productions either but very pleasant showcase for Cher's voice.
Hopefully this review will be read by someone that will pick up this CD and enjoy her ealry masterpieces. I'm honored to be the first to write a review of this album and hope I can help it sales even a small bit.
If you're ever nostalgic for very early Cher ('65-'67, say), it's hard to beat this inexpensive collection. There's only one track, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," that appears to have been recorded much later than those very earliest years--and that's a cover of a song that nonetheless hearkens back to that era, since Dusty Springfield's hit version was released in the spring of '66.
So consider this something of a time capsule--and one that shows a somewhat less show bizzy, less iconic (but perhaps more innocent) Cher, a Cher who was already famous but not really a superstar. Of course, this was the era when she was mainly known as Sonny's better half and her parallel solo career seemed like something of an afterthought (although I imagine she was later glad to have actaully established her studio cred as a solo artist that early on). Still it's not insignificant that her first solo HIT, a version of Bob Dylan's "All I Really Want to Do," is recorded as if it were a Sonny & Cher duet. Yeah, that's her doing the "Sonny" lines, but it's really a spot on imitation.
That song also leant Cher (and, by extension, Sonny and Cher) a certain folk rock credibility that they might not have otherwise have so readily achieved. The Bonos were part of the LA scene that produced the Byrds and--a bit later--the Mamas and the Papas, but while Sonny certainly tried his hand at writing socially conscious songs in a somewhat folk-ish vein, he was mainly a popster, schooled in Phil Spector's college of musical knowledge. He was also possessed of a somewhat adolescent sense of melodrama and teen romanticism that worked to his advantage on songs like "I Got You Babe" and "Just You." But some of the songs he gave to Cher to record as a solo artist could be viewed as being a bit heavy handed.
I mean, "Bang Bang" is a camp classic, but it is hardly COOL in the same sense that "All I Really Want to Do" was. There's no irony, no (relatively) sophisticated word play and no distancing of self from subject matter. There was, however, a stab or two at Dylanesque "poeticism," in turns of phrase like "Seasons came and changed the time..." and the bridge "Music played and people sang, just for me the church bells rang." Still "Bang Bang" was Cher's biggest '60s hit, and something of a formula was born. Sonny had a certain talent for crafting hit songs like "Where Do You Go" and "You Better Sit Down Kids" that touched on "serious" subjects (teenage alienation, divorce) in a way that the adolescent audience could identify with and buy into.
And Cher had enough of a sense of the ironic that she could such Schlockmeister opuses off fairly well. Her distinctive vocal style was big and brassy but not especially polished. You could say it was THE quintessential mid-60s pop voice. She could do a credible version of Bacharach's "Alfie" and then turn around and do a folkish take on Jackie DeShannon's "Come And Stay With Me," ( a hit of the era for Marianne Faithfull). I've heard Cher spoken of somewhat negatively as someone who "bulls her way" through her songs. One could argue that's that not always a bad thing. Most of the time she pulled it off, and if singers with more technique or range like Dionne Warwick ("Alfie") or Dusty Springfield ("You Don't Have to Say...") recorded versions of those tunes that their fans would call definitive, Cher's fanbase could still make their own case for preferring her versions. Me, I'm surprised that her take on the latter song is as understated as it is. Why she didn't pull out all the stops on that number--especially at the melodramatic end-- is a mystery to me. The song just begs for a Cher-like bleat.
My new favorite Cher track, however, is her take on Bobby Hebb's "Sunny." Now if anyone was going to cover that song, it had to be Cher, right? But aside from the "Sunny/Sonny" connection, it turns out to be an almost ideal tune for Cher the song stylist (as opposed to Cher the pop icon, I guess). She lacks Hebb's vocal suppleness, but her phrasing is spot on, sincere but not hokey. It's a gentler song than some of the others associated with her. No histrionics, but some careful vocal shading...makes for a fine track.
It's also a bit less muddy in the production than some of the other numbers included here. This is one of those CDs that reminds us how music of that era was recorded with AM radio in mind. I played on my car CD player the other day and found that the arrangements just fell apart. On my computer--which approximates monaural about as well as you can get these days--it sounds just fine. Oh, well, whaddya gonna do? And "where do you go?"
