Sonny & Cher - The Singles + (2000)

Fifty songs spread among two CDs, various attributed to Cher, Sonny & Cher, and even "Caesar & Cleo," through which we trace the evolution of this duo from a doo wop-influenced pop team into folk-rock and protest mavens, to the media's reigning early-'70s pop/rock team. The sound is very good, and the range of music is almost dizzying, as the influence of Phil Spector wafts in and out over the recordings, and the duo turns its talents toward just about every sound that was selling at the time. There's a huge amount of good music here, much of it familiar from other collections, including "Sunny," "I Feel Something in the Air," and "All I Really Want to Do" -- other notable cuts, apart from such solo Sonny Bono stuff as "The Revolution Kind" and "Laugh at Me," include Cher's renditions of "Alfie" and "Needles and Pins" and her first, failed, "comeback" attempt, "Classified 1A." One only wishes that the producers could have worked in "I Hate to Sleep Alone" from the same period as the latter song. The annotation is a bit sketchy, but as a collection of 50 songs costing less than 20 dollars, it's difficult to complain too loudly about the lack of frills.