Conway Twitty

Spanning his first hit "Make Believe" to early-'80s singles such as "Tight Fittin' Jeans," Conway Twitty's 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection does a decent job of presenting his career highlights in a dozen songs. "Hello Darlin'," "You've Never Been This Far Before," and "After the Fire Is Gone" are some of the other highlights from this somewhat abbreviated collection; The #1s Collection provides a far deeper look into Twitty's body of work, but this album will probably satisfy most casual fans.

For those who lack the cash or incentive to invest in Bear Family's mammoth eight-CD Rock 'N' Roll Years box set, this two-CD, 40-song overview of Conway Twitty's 1958-1963 MGM sides is a fine summary of his early career. Nearly all his Top Hundred chart hits are here, as are numerous flops, B-sides, and LP tracks. It's true that these were the most rock-oriented years of Twitty's long career, and also that many of these sides are derivative of early Elvis Presley……..

In 2000 MCA Nashville released an excellent Conway Twitty hits collection, The #1 Hits Collection, which compiled a whopping 33 chart-toppers. It was a nice listen, illustrating precisely why Twitty is such a legend. Then came 25 Number Ones in 2004, which was essentially a scaled-down, more economical single-disc version of its double-disc predecessor. And then, since MCA is wont to repackage Twitty's back catalog ad infinitum, along came Gold in 2006. This double-disc, 40-song collection is yet another entry in the ideal Twitty compilation sweepstakes, and while its predecessors were plenty satisfactory, this one just may be the most satisfactory one yet.

20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn is an excellent overview of the two singers' work together during the 1970s, containing 12 of their Top Ten country duets (five of which topped the country charts). It was an incredible run that made Twitty and Lynn the most commercially successful country duet partners of all time, in spite of the fact that they were never romantically linked (a rarity in the world of male-female country duets). Digitally remastered sound and liner notes by Todd Everett cinch this as a package well worth picking up.

Conway Twitty was a country singer who scored 55 No. 1 hits over the long expanse of his career.