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86 of 87 found the following review helpful:
 Cooke's Hit's Packages with only the main course. Feb 17, 2000
By Dean Martin Dent
There are only two Sam Cooke compilations which I would say are comprehensive.First is the 3-record set The One And Only Sam Cooke,a mail order album by Candlelight Music(with a blue RCA label) from 1974.The second was The Man And His Music his first CD-era compilation which included the full-lenghth version of A Change Is Gonna Come.Unfortunatly these two are out of print(if any one can give me information on how to get a copy of The One And Only...please Email me).This new hits collection is an essential because the tracks are remastered,bringing out the clarity in the instrumentation(especially the strings and french horn on Cupid)and also the inclusion, for the first time in the digital era,Frankie & Johnny,Send Me Some Lovin'(a Little Richard cover),and That's It-I Quit-I'm Movin'On.Unfortunatly,the omission of Another Saturday Night,Ain't That Good News,When A Boy Falls In Love,Good Times and of course the transcending A Change Is Gonna Come, shows like other Cooke hits that a two disc set or a box set is the only way to truly represent this man's body of work.As long as you have the man's beautiful voice on any digitally encoded piece of aluminum,any Sam Cooke is essential.
26 of 26 found the following review helpful:
 Good News, Bad News Jul 13, 2000
By Steve Vrana
With 1986's The Man And His Music out of print, the release of Greatest Hits is a case of good news, bad news.Good News: It updates and expands on the CD version of 1962's The Best Of by adding eight more tracks. You get early minor hits like "You Were Made for Me" and "Love You Most of All" (both from 1958). You also get later hits like "Send Me Some Lovin'," "Frankie and Johnny" (yes, it's on the CD, even though it's not listed by Amazon) and "The Little Red Rooster" all Top 20 hits from 1963. You even get his final Top 40 hit, "Sugar Dumpling," which was released posthumously in 1965. Bad News: Unlike The Man And His Music, Greatest Hits completely ignores Cooke's gospel music and even more dumbfounding is the omission of "Another Saturday Night," "Shake" (his last two Top Ten hits) and the socially conscious "A Change Is Gonna Come." [Who was asleep at the switch when that decision was made?] Fortunately, I still have my cassette version of The Man And His Music, but until that title gets re-released, Greatest Hits is the current best alternative. RECOMMENDED
22 of 25 found the following review helpful:
Almost all of his classics Mar 23, 2000
By Leonard Fleisig
"Len"
You can never really go wrong with a Sam Cooke album. This is no exception.The CD contains a good number of his 'hits'. Cooke works for just about any mood I happpen to be in. I often get in my car, pop in this CD, click on "Bring It On Home To Me" and just keep playing that song over and over. For you trivia buffs out there - that's Lou Rawls doing the harmony with Cooke on this track. You Send Me, Wonderful World, Twistin the NIght Away - work well for those upbeat moments. All in all - a CD worth buying.
11 of 13 found the following review helpful:
Super soul Nov 24, 2001
By Zub
"Zubenelgenubi"
Cooke, often acknowledged as the definitive soul singer, gets some of his catalog back on CD with this generous single-disc collection. This piece is packed with his Keen and RCA hits up to 1964 but having had 31 charted pop singles up to that point, by necessity some of the lower-charting sides are not here. The major disappointment though, is the lack of any of Cooke's material after 1963. Unfortunately, his catalog for that post-1963 material was in the hands of ABKCO music that, at the time of this production, stubbornly refused to license anything to anyone else.
Nevertheless, for as far as it can go, this is an excellent compilation of this magnificent soul singer's recordings. The mastering has been vastly improved over past attempts at this material with many of the tracks in true stereo, the remainder (1-3,5,8) in mono. By far, this represents the best single-disc presentation of this soul icon's musical career to come along so far.
8 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 Sam Cooke's Greatest Hits Jan 28, 2002
By New-York City Historian
"Chris Belena"
How can you have a "Sam Cooke's Greatest Hits" and omit "Another Saturday Night"? The omission of that one song for the inclusion of songs like "Red Rooster" and "Frankie and Johnny" is the reason that I gave this 3 stars. Those songs were not chart-busters like "Another Saturday Night." Just a bad choice by RCA. It just shows that the companies want to you go and buy the greatest hits and the "other cd" that contains that one song that should have been on it to begin with! It is all about money and marketing.
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