The Best of Jesse Winchester

wrote and recorded more than enough great songs for to fill a single-disc compilation, which means that some of them were bound to be left off. The trick was to balance the material from the brilliant first two albums with a careful selection from the subsequent five albums, each of which had its virtues. This 14-track album chooses four from , including the essential and and three from its follow-up, . There are three from , one each from , and two from . Lesser material such as could have been excised in favor of more from , but the selection is good enough to give a reasonable representation of 's seven albums, which contain some of the most impressive songwriting of the '70s. ~ William Ruhlmann