There's a nice Charlie Rich collection that pulls his best work together from many labels.
Not all of his best work. The Smash sessions from 1965 & 1966 with Jerry Kennedy producing were his favorite recordings. They were reissued on LP as Fully Realized, and made it to CD as The Complete Smash Sessionsbut unfortunately it doesn't seem to in print. Some of them are on the multi-label retrospective, but the single best track, "I Can't Go On", isn't. WTF? "I Can't Even Drink It Away" and "Memphis and Arkansas Bridge" from Boss Man are sorely missed, too.
Stupidest comment from the CounterPunch article (which I enjoyed; thanks for the link, hayden), courtesy of Susan Davis, re: Muddy Waters' Fathers and Sons "On a relisten, it's just awful. But even Duck Dunn's right-on-the-beat drumming can't ruin the joy of hearing Muddy Waters in fabulous voice, singing some of his biggest hits." Okay, I don't have the album so I'll have to trust AMG that Sam Lay was the dummer. Yep, I'll trust AMG and the fact that Duck Dunn was a bassist. Ay yi yi. It's not bad enough that she goes out of her way to make a snide comment and gets the wrong guy, but the implication is that it's the "sons" who are the problem. And while you can certainly argue that, the drummer, Sam Lay, was one of the "fathers": he was one of the main session players at Chess, the drummer for Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter. Why do I let things like this bother me? And more important why do I burden you nice people with my whining? Sorry.
Anyway, tomorrow I'll have more to say about the CounterPunch lists, including: 1) my top 25 culled from their top 25s (too hard to narrow it down otherwise) 2) albums I was surprised but delighted to see on the lists 3) more comments I either loved or hated and 4) how Dave Marsh picked my least favorite albums of four of my favorite artists for his list. Night, all.