Don Cherry

Picking up where their previous compilation Love Is Just Around the Corner left off, Sony Music Special Products' Cherry Picked rounds up ten highlights from Don Cherry's mid-'50s work for Columbia Records. Common sense would dictate that the hit singles missing from Love would be here, but common sense would be wrong. Instead, Cherry Picked contains string-drenched pop artifacts of the time, and several attempts to break Cherry to the burgeoning rock & roll market -- usually in the form of white-bread, orchestrated covers of Everly Brothers songs like "Take a Message to Mary" and "Let It Be Me," or other country/rock tunes from the likes of Dallas Frazier ("There Goes My Everything") and Bill Anderson ("The Tip of My Fingers"). Consequently, the collection feels a bit odd, since it has neither the traditional pop material Cherry excelled at, nor his hits. Nevertheless, it does have several fine moments, and given its budget price and the lack of Cherry recordings on the market, it should be of interest to fans of the vocalist or pre-rock '50s pop. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide