Album Review: Van Morrison – ‘The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3’

By Jeff Swindoll Jul 11, 2007, 22:26 GMT

Navigating Van Morrison\'s extensive catalog since 1993 is a formidable task even diehard fans might not want to attempt. The Irish icon has flirted with blues, jazz, country, pop, Celtic, and his own style of indescribable into-the-mystic spiritually-oriented poetic folk on his numerous releases, making for quite a thorny culling assignment. So the EMI brass were probably ecstatic when the singer took the job himself. He weeds through a dozen ...more

Van the Man has been rocking since 1964 at least (well, probably from his birth in 1945) when he wrote the hit ‘Gloria’ for the group Them.  He left the group a time later and has had a successful solo career since. 

This third volume of his greatest hits collects some familiar tunes along with unreleased, live, and remix performances in this two-disc set.  The previously unreleased include “Cry for Home” with Tom Jones and “Tupelo Honey” with Bobby Bland.  Morrison also duets with John Lee Hooker (a great version of  “Gloria”), Georgie Fame, The Chieftains, Ray Charles, B. B. King, and Carl Perkins on this compilation. 

The live side of things features “Help Me” (with Junior Wells), “Lonely Avenue/4 O’clock in the Morning” (with Jimmy Witherspoon, Candy Dulfer, and James Hunter), to name a few.  There’s also a remix of “The Healing Game” and “Back on Top.” 

This album is truly a nice collection of both Morrison’s solo versions and a great cavalcade of guest performers as well as live and remixed performances.    What I always like about these sorts of things is that they offer an instant collection for the performer being “bested of.” 

You really can’t go wrong in both purchasing an instant collection, but you also can’t go wrong in that Morrison is a powerful performer and a pleasure to listen to.  Heck, you just can’t go wrong – buy it up.

‘The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3’ is now available at Amazon. Visit the music database for more information.