Secret Agent Man: The Ultimate Johnny Rivers Anthology (CD - 2006)

Liner Note Author: Dan Epstein.

Recording information: The Dougout (05/1964/05/2006).

Arranger: Johnny Rivers .

While this two-CD collection does include all but one of his Top 40 hits, it's not quite the ultimate Johnny Rivers anthology, nor is it even the best double-CD "best of" devoted to the man. That honor still belongs to Rhino's Anthology, 1964-1977, a preferable compilation if you can find it. While almost all of Rivers' big, popular hits are on disc one of Secret Agent Man, most of disc two is devoted to tracks from obscure post-1990 releases, long after Rivers had last visited the charts. That wouldn't be such a problem if these recordings were on par with those from his commercial prime, but while they're okay for the most part, very few Rivers fans would consider the cuts among his best work. To be blunt, if you added the first couple songs off of disc two (the mid-'70s hits "Help Me Rhonda" and "Swayin' to the Music (Slow Dancin')") to disc one, and cut off everything else, you could call it a single-disc best of and no one would notice that anything was missing.

There are no complaints about the 1964-1973 material on disc one, on which one hit partying update of an oldie follows another, with occasional interruptions by songs Rivers first popularized, particularly "Summer Rain," "Poor Side of Town," and "Secret Agent Man." For those who are curious, the 1991-2006 tracks that take up most of the second disc do find him in decent voice, if mostly still reliant on oldies covers. The numbers from 1991's The Memphis Sun Recordings, in fact, sound as if they could have been done in 1970, and Rivers' voice sounds only a little faded on the later recordings, though these contain a few unimpressive, laid-back reflective songs (as well as a couple 2006 recordings, "Rollin' Stone" and "Let It Rock," that make their first appearance on this compilation). All of this later stuff's presence, however, means there's no room for some reasonably interesting secondary '60s tracks that made Anthology, 1964-1977, like the 1966 Top 40 hit single "Under Your Spell Again," and some of the first covers of Jimmy Webb songs by a prominent artist. Secret Agent Man does make room, however, for his 1968 cover of Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street," perhaps because Dylan unexpectedly cited it as his favorite cover version of one of his compositions in his Chronicles autobiography. ~ Richie Unterberger minimize