Manfred Mann The Best of

An R&B band that only played pop to get on the charts, Manfred Mann ranked among the most adept British Invasion acts in both styles. The fact that their range encompassed jazz as well as rhythm & blues, coupled with some elements of their appearance and presentation – co-founder/keyboardist Manfred Mann's bearded, bespectacled presence – also made the Manfreds more of a thinking person's band than a cute, cuddly, outfit like the Beatles, or sexual provocateurs in the manner of the Rolling Stones. Yet, their approach to R&B was as valid as that of the Stones, equally compelling and often more sophisticated. They charted an impressive number of singles from 1964 through 1969, and developed a large, loyal international fandom that lingers to this day.

An R&B band that only played pop to get on the charts, Manfred Mann ranked among the most adept British Invasion acts in both styles. The fact that their range encompassed jazz as well as rhythm & blues, coupled with some elements of their appearance and presentation – co-founder/keyboardist Manfred Mann's bearded, bespectacled presence – also made the Manfreds more of a thinking person's band than a cute, cuddly, outfit like the Beatles, or sexual provocateurs in the manner of the Rolling Stones. Yet, their approach to R&B was as valid as that of the Stones, equally compelling and often more sophisticated. They charted an impressive number of singles from 1964 through 1969, and developed a large, loyal international fandom that lingers to this day.

This double-CD replaces EMI's Best Of anthology (1992) as the collection of choice for their British Invasion years due to its slightly more extensive length (34 tracks), including most of the tracks on the previous compilation…

A double-disc Manfred Mann hits set that adds a third disc for some DVD material, The Evolution of Manfred Mann surveys the entire career of one of British rock & roll's tightest and most energetic units. The first disc is '60s and early-'70s material, nearly all with classic Paul Jones vocals, while the second picks up the story with Manfred Mann's Earth Band and their series of, well, earthier recordings during the mid-to-late '70s (although the compilation extends well into the '90s).

A double-disc Manfred Mann hits set that adds a third disc for some DVD material, The Evolution of Manfred Mann surveys the entire career of one of British rock & roll's tightest and most energetic units. The first disc is '60s and early-'70s material, nearly all with classic Paul Jones vocals, while the second picks up the story with Manfred Mann's Earth Band and their series of, well, earthier recordings during the mid-to-late '70s (although the compilation extends well into the '90s).

This is one of nearly a dozen anthologies of Manfred Mann's music that cover their EMI period, and the 25 songs here make it the biggest of them. Additionally, there is an 11-minute interview with the band here, dating from December of 1964, that has never before appeared on record in the United States. The hits are all here, sometimes in more than one version, along with a cross-section of album tracks and B-sides, and it all sounds very good, though EMI's recent 24-bit remasterings of the band's original British LPs are much more impressive. But this CD misses being "definitive" because it leaves out some key B-sides to their early singles and overlooks the contents of several top-selling British EPs. The truth be told, no single CD, even one 73 minutes long, would be adequate to the task of defining this group's history or sound, even just covering the years 1963-66.

18 hits including Mighty Quinn, Ha Ha the Clown, the Vicar's Daughter, I Wanna Be Rich and more. This is the definitive compilation covering the Mike D'Abo era. This compilation is book-ended by two Bob Dylan songs (Mighty Quinn, Just like a woman), both of which were among the seven top ten UK hits that Manfred Mann clocked up with Mike D'Abo as lead singer between 1966 and 1969 following the departure of the original lead singer, Paul Jones.

Remakes can be atrocious wastes of wax: subpar carbon copy re-treads dressed up as calculated idolatry, or deconstructionist reconfigurations basking in the laziness of lyrics already written. However, two of the greatest rewrites in history belong to Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The treatments of Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded By the Light" and "For You" included here create a wholly unique variation on the stark, earthy originals by flipping the tracks and exposing the soft, white underbelly, then piling on excessive musical ornamentation like a master filmmaker visualizing a novel, blowing the inspiration at the nucleus into a bowdlerized paronomasia of sonic perfection.

18 hits including Mighty Quinn, Ha Ha the Clown, the Vicar's Daughter, I Wanna Be Rich and more. This is the definitive compilation covering the Mike D'Abo era. This compilation is book-ended by two Bob Dylan songs (Mighty Quinn, Just like a woman), both of which were among the seven top ten UK hits that Manfred Mann clocked up with Mike D'Abo as lead singer between 1966 and 1969 following the departure of the original lead singer, Paul Jones.