Love Songs and great Bluegrass Melodies

This is one outstanding album with two CDs. I just discovered ALABAMA for myself a little over a year ago and I never thought I would be listening to this type of music but I got hooked. "Touch Me When We're Dancing," "You've Got the Touch" and "Face to Face" are great love songs performed with great feeling and emotion. "Song of the South" has a great "Bluegrass" sound to it. "Mountain Music" just brings me home wherever I may be. For the record, I recommend this one. It is well worth the price.

A non-fan's appraisal

I like country, but I'll confess I've never really been an Alabama fan. My wife however was a big enough fan to get this collection, so I decided to give it a 2nd listen. A band that hit the top of the country charts 41 times between 1977 and 2002 must be doing something right, right?



Having given these 39 songs (2 of them of unreleased tracks so it's not really fair to critique them as harshly..the band themselves had thought they weren't up to snuff..) an honest second hearing, my opinion isn't shaken a whole lot.



There are some great spots amid the collection, notably "Tennessee River" which is probably as close as the band ever flirted with southern rock on the charts, "Mountain Music" (which ironically doesn't have very much in common with the bluegrass it celebrates, save a VERY short fiddle solo...I think the gentleman who says they edited the songs for this collection is correct.), and "If You're Gonna Play in Texas" (which tips its hats to traditional country. Again, the fiddle solo seems to have been shortchanged.) "Close Enough to Perfect" is a tender love song and "Lady Down on Love" focuses on love's end. "Closer you Get" and "Reckless" are uptempo Charmers. "In Pictures" is a look at divorce from the side of the non-custodial father. It's truly touching.



But there are 2 big problems with this much Alabama in one place:



1) It points out how little risk they took lyrically and musically. "Workmanlike" is a very apt description for their work. Over and over, you can hear how they worked a "formula" to get hits. Do one about faithful wives. Do one about being from the country and/or the South. Do one about hardworking folks.



2) You can see the downward spiral. Notice that "Reckless" and "In Pictures" are the only ones I gave high marks to on the 2nd disc. The others are 3 star material (solidly mediocre) and below.



It's not that Alabama is downright bad..it's only rarely that the material here really stinks. It's just bland..played back to back to back, it's sometimes hard to tell which is which. Sadly, Alabama's lasting contribution to country music is probably going to be as part of the "Urban Cowboy" phenomenon that blurred the lines between country and pop.

Alabama is great. Edited versions of songs aren't great.

When Alabama first came out, they were one of the few country acts to not only have a string of hit singles, but also have albums that you could listen and enjoy nearly every song. So many compilations have been issued featuring Alabama's best, but this is the first to encompass their entire career. I've always enjoyed Alabama, especially their early releases. What I don't enjoy is buying a $25 CD set and getting cut-up edited versions of songs. For instance, half the fiddle solo is cut out of "Dixieland Delight", the drum solo is cut out of "Mountain Music" and those are just a couple examples. I wish RCA would release a compilation featuring the versions that are on the original albums. That's how I remember the songs, that's how I want to hear them today.