Doobie Brothers The Doobie Brothers

There have been plenty of single-disc Doobie Brothers collections released over the years. There have been two-part vinyl Best of the Doobies, there have been budget-line collections, and there have been OK overviews as well as excellent generous discs with all the big hits. There's even been a comprehensive four-disc box, but what there hasn't been is a double-disc set – something that falls between the conciseness of 2001's terrific Greatest Hits (the first CD to contain all the big hits on one CD) and 1999's four-disc Long Train Runnin' 1970-2000. That's what 2007's The Very Best of the Doobie Brothers is, a double-disc helping of the Doobies' biggest songs from "Listen to the Music" to "The Doctor."

The Doobies team up with the Memphis Horns for an even more Southern-flavored album than usual, although also a more uneven one. By this time, Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, and company had pretty well inherited the mantle and the core (and then some) of the audience left behind by Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty, with Johnston songs like "Pursuit on 53rd Street," "Down in the Track," and "Road Angel" recalling pieces like "Travelin' Band," while Simmons' "Black Water" (their first number one hit) evoked the softer side of the "swamp rock" popularized by CCR. Actually, in some respects, given the range of instruments employed here, including an autoharp (courtesy of Arlo Guthrie) and viola, the songs on the original LP's first side suffer somewhat from a sameness that makes What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits a little less interesting than the albums that preceded it.

Farewell Tour is the first live album by American rock band The Doobie Brothers, released in 1983. It documents the group's 1982 Farewell Tour and is a double album set. By the early 1980s, the Doobie Brothers had evolved from the guitar-boogie sound under original band frontman Tom Johnston to a soulful keyboard-driven AOR sound under Michael McDonald. Despite the many personnel changes in the group, Patrick Simmons remained from the original incarnation of the group. In 1982, Simmons decided to retire from the group after years of constant touring and recording. When the band decided to break up in light of his impending departure, Simmons encouraged the group to make one last tour during the summer of 1982 as a way of thanking the group's loyal fanbase.

It's a Doobie delight as members of the veteran group's different eras convene for Rockin' Down the Highway, a 20-song concert recorded in '96 mainly in New York…

The Doobie Brothers had two distinct phases during their 1970s peak, evolving from boogie rockers with a penchant for mellow good vibes into a smooth blue-eyed soul outfit. Subsequent reunions and decades as a successful live attraction blurred the divide between the rambling "Black Water" and funky "What a Fool Believes," the band's two number one hits on Billboard. The Doobies racked up numerous other hits in both incarnations, songs that wound up as classic rock perennials. "Listen to the Music," "Long Train Runnin'," and "China Grove" were early-'70s hits all written and sung by Tom Johnston, the guitarist who was slowly replaced as frontman by Michael McDonald, a husky-voiced keyboardist who wrote and sang "Takin' It to the Streets," "It Keeps You Runnin'," and "Minute by Minute," along with "What a Fool Believes."

With Tom Johnston gone from the lineup because of health problems, this is where the "new" Doobie Brothers really make their debut, with a richly soulful sound throughout and emphasis on horns and Michael McDonald's piano more than on Patrick Simmons' or Jeff Baxter's guitars…