Chile Stamp Album

Albert Hammond has been writing hit songs for over fifty years. This is not to just to say that it has been fifty years since his first hit. This is to say that there has not been a single decade in which Albert has not written multiple hits songs since he scored his first hit with “Little Arrows” at the age of 24. His songs have been responsible for the sale of over 360 million records worldwide including over 30 chart-topping hits. Many of his most beloved songs, like “The Air That I Breathe” and “When I Need You,” have become hits multiple times with various artists, decade after decade.

This 25-song compilation doesn't contain exact recording dates, but it can be safely assumed that most or all of this was cut between 1947-1951; about half appeared on singles from that period, while some showed up on a 1963 Crown album (although they were obviously done much earlier), and others weren't released until Ace LP collections in the 1980s. (There's also a previously unissued "Happy Birthday," cut for Modern's Jules Bihari's birthday.) Regardless of the specifics, it's early jump blues from the stage at which it was in transition from jazz to R&B, leaning in some cases closer to jazz than R&B. That may be why Phillips was pretty much a forgotten case by the mid-'50s…