Over the Rainbow: 24 Greatest Hits

Unlike most film stars, maintained a healthy career as a recording artist separate from her duties at the film studios. Of course, many of the songs she recorded were ones she also performed in her films. But , which had unusually close ties to Hollywood and Broadway, recorded her regularly from 1936 to 1947, and she scored a series of record hits for the label, beginning with her signature song, in 1939. The 90 masters she recorded for have been reissued often over the years, of course, but this 20-track compilation can claim to be, as the press release accompanying it notes, the first full-length, front-line (i.e., full-price) single CD compilation of the recordings. Included are all of 's hits of the first half of the '40s as measured on magazine's best-seller charts of the period: the '20s song she sang in ; the 1917 song she sang with in the film of the same name; from a duet with ; and . Also included are her customized version of which brought her attention in which she used to audition at in 1935; and three songs from . The result is a reasonable selection of highlights of the material, though one must question the inclusion of two alternate takes (of and ). A single-disc best-of is not the place to include inferior, if interesting, rarities. ~ William Ruhlmann