Dave Mason

In 1999, Hip-O Records, the reissue arm of Universal Music Group (UMG), issued a Dave Mason compilation called Ultimate Collection that was almost worthy of its name in the sense that it included not only tracks by Mason and his one-time group Traffic from the UMG vaults, originally released on Island Records and Blue Thumb Records, but also licensed his biggest hit from Columbia Records, the Top 20 "We Just Disagree." Six years later, Ultimate Collection is out of print (it may well be that the licensing agreement has lapsed), and Hip-O is back with a Mason entry in the discount-priced (i.e., $13.98 list) The Definitive Collection series, a sort of revised and definitely not "ultimate" version of the earlier set. The first 14 tracks, again drawn from the Island and Blue Thumb catalogs, are almost identical to the ones on Ultimate Collection, except for the substitution of the non-charting single "A Heartache, a Shadow, a Lifetime" for the singles chart entry "Satin Red and Black Velvet Woman." Four tracks have been licensed from the Columbia catalog this time, all of which were released as singles, but none of which charted. "Baby...Please" (originally heard on the 1973 LP It's Like You Never Left) is repeated from Ultimate Collection, but "We Just Disagree" is gone, along with the singles chart entry "Let It Go, Let It Flow," replaced by "Show Me Some Affection," "Every Woman," and "All Along the Watchtower," all, oddly enough, drawn from the same LP, the 1974 set Dave Mason. (Maybe Columbia parent company Sony BMG is driving a harder bargain for licensing these days.) The result is a collection that is neither "ultimate" nor "definitive." ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide