Charles Brown had a recording career which spanned more than fifty years, and included numerous hits, first with Johnny Moore's Three Blazers and then as a solo artist. His style of singing and playing piano was very influential in the 1940s and 1950s. The recordings featured on this CD are from Brown's tenure with King - where he had his final chart entry with his first release for King, "Please Come Home For Christmas." Brown's sound is both timeless and instantly recognizable on these recordings, most heard in stereo here for the first time.

With Charles Brown's elegant piano style and a smooth voice that made him sound a little bit like a gruffer Nat King Cole, Brown's jazz-tinged blues (or is it blues-tinged jazz?) is the perfect music for unwinding after a bleary-eyed night on the town. This set, in spite of its claims, isn't really "the very best" from Brown, since it contains none of his classic Aladdin recordings from the late '40s and early '50s, but is comprised instead of sides he cut for Ohio's King Records in the early '60s, including the 1960 holiday hit "Please Come Home for Christmas" (the version here of Brown's other holiday hit, "Merry Christmas Baby," is not the classic 1947 recording but a stereo remake). Not having the Aladdin material doesn't make this a bad collection (Brown was too professional to ever make a bad recording), but it also doesn't make it particularly essential. ~ Steve Leggett

Genre:

• Blues

Labels:

• Collectables Records

Music Categories:

• Blues: Texas / West Coast

Product Groupings:

• Clearance CDs
• Collectables Records - Audio CDs

Product Series:

• Very Best Of King/Federal/DeLuxe Records