With 25 tracks and a running time of over 70 minutes, this Glen Campbell compilation lives up to its name, as long as you believe that Campbell's best consists of his pop singles hits. Nineteen of the 21 recordings he placed in the Billboard Hot 100 for Capitol Records are included. (The missing are "Can You Fool" [number 38] and "Oh Happy Day" [number 40].) Of course, Campbell was an even bigger country star than he was a pop star, but this collection focuses on the tracks that became pop crossover hits. Twenty-four of his 39 singles to reach the Top 40 on Billboard's country chart are included. Among the 15 not included are such Top Ten entries as "Bonaparte's Retreat" and "Manhattan Kansas," which failed to cross over pop. The one track on the album that made neither chart is Campbell's version of Jimmy Webb's "Highwayman," cut before it became a number one country hit for the quartet of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson, later dubbed "the Highwaymen" after the record. The album's sequencing pushes Campbell's biggest hits and best-remembered recordings -- "Rhinestone Cowboy," "Galveston," "Wichita Lineman," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Gentle on My Mind," and "Southern Nights" -- up to the front, thus satisfying the desires of more casual fans. Country fans and those who have a deeper interest in the singer may find the result inadequate, but if you only want to have one Glen Campbell album in your collection, this is it. ~ William Ruhlmann
Though often remembered as little more than an amusing relic of AM radio or "that guy who sings 'Rhinestone Cowboy,'" Glen Campbell is known to astute music fans as a pioneer of country/pop crossover music and an ace guitar picker who played on hundreds of classic hits by everyone from The Beach Boys to Elvis Presley. In addition, Campbell was a bona fide TV and movie star, who acted alongside John Wayne in TRUE GRIT and hosted a hit variety show that featured artists as diverse as Cream and Johnny Cash. As multitalented as Campbell is, however, his greatest contribution to popular culture is the string of masterful late '60s hits contained on ALL THE BEST. Culled from Capitol's remastered versions of Campbell's classic early albums, this record stands as the artist's definitive "best of" collection.
All of the singer's best-known tracks are here in their original versions, and they are a joy to hear. Campbell lends his virtuoso picking and gloriously melancholy vocals to masterful songs by icons John D. Loudermilk, Allen Toussaint and, most notably, Jimmy Webb, the author of "Galveston," Witchita Lineman," and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix." Never quite country and never quite rock, the tracks on ALL THE BEST seem to exist in a world all their own, standing as towering achievements of mainstream pop music writing, production and performance minimize