Best of Cris Williamson

Albumbeschreibung

When they come to compile albums of their artists' career highlights, record companies often rely on the record charts to guide their selections, and those albums are usually called Greatest Hits. But then there are those artists who, despite enjoying enough success to justify the release of a compilation, have not placed records in the charts. In those cases, the choice of material is more subjective, and the albums tend to be called The Best of.... Cris Williamson is arguably the most important artist to come out of the women's music movement, and her songs have meant a lot to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of listeners. But she hasn't had any "hits" in the conventional sense. In 1983, Olivia Records, her label, looked back over her 12-year career of five studio albums (not including her three juvenile efforts from the 1960s) -- Cris Williamson (1971), The Changer and the Changed (1975), Live Dream (1978), Strange Paradise (1980), and Blue Rider (1982) -- and the live collection Meg/Cris at Carnegie Hall (1983), and came up with Portrait, a 12-track, 44-minute LP. Since then, Williamson has released two new solo albums, Prairie Fire (1985) and Wolf Moon (1987), a holiday album, Snow Angel (1985), and a duo album, Country Blessed (1989), with Teresa Trull. More important, the CD era has taken hold, and Olivia has been assembling best-of albums for its major artists (Meg Christian, Margie Adam) for the CD market with similar packaging under the logo "Women's Music Classics." The 17-track, 70-minute Williamson edition repeats only five songs from Portrait, even though it adds only five tracks from the more recent albums (one of which, "Lullabye," featured on Snow Angel, is actually an old song originally heard on Live Dream). Somebody, then, has re-thought what constitutes Williamson's best. For example, the three songs from Blue Rider featured on Portrait ("What Good Does It Do Me Now," "Heart to Heart," and the title song) have been dropped, and the songs "Surrender Dorothy" and "Like an Island Rising" from that album have been included instead. Newly included are "Waiting" from Cris Williamson; "Sister" and "Hurts Like the Devil" from The Changer and the Changed; "Live Wire" from Strange Paradise; and "Soaring" (also originally on Live Dream) from Meg/Cris at Carnegie Hall (while "Come Hell or High Water" and "Texas Ruby Red" from that album have been dropped). Also missing is the abbreviated version of "Song of the Soul," a song acknowledged in the liner notes as one "church choirs sing...each week." The overall effect is to create a weaker collection than Portrait. The choices from the 1971-1983 period are less impressive, and Williamson's later albums, particularly Wolf Moon, are shortchanged. (Particularly for this reason, it's hard to imagine that Williamson herself sanctioned the collection.) Also, the album fails in a basic purpose of compilations, to trace the artist's musical development. Williamson's music certainly changed between 1971 and 1989, and it is stylistically eclectic, ranging from acoustic piano arrangements to elaborate pop/rock synthesizer-dominated tracks. But almost invariably, the compiler here has opted for quiet piano ballads. That may be some people's idea of the best of Cris Williamson, and it may be endorsed by her label, but many fans will find it inadequate.
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo