Artist: Cocker, Joe
Label: EMI Records
Release: 2007
Rating: 3.5/5
The charismatic old rock veteran Joe Cocker, a man whose one-of-a-kind raspy vocals have been “scaring” Mother Earth since the late sixties, is surely one of the best vocalists in rock and soul. With that trademark voice of his, over a long musical career packed with plenty of brilliantly executed covers of all sorts of songwriters, he’s won a loyal audience that still follows him devotedly after all these years. No wonder, because Cocker has everything that separates the average musicians from the legendary ones; with his unique approach he managed to shake up evergreens that had been chewed over countless times, and mostly thanks to that inimitable voice he gave them a freshness that, with songs like Unchain My Hearth and Now That The Magic Has Gone, etched him into our hearts forever.
If there’s one thing Joe Cocker doesn’t lack, it’s compilations of his greatest hits. Over the last twenty years so many of them have piled up that with the release of this latest one, L’essentiel, you can’t help but laugh a little. The cynics would surely have a thing or two to add here. Anyway, just like all its predecessors, L’essentiel serves up the usual gems of Cocker’s career, which will mostly leave his older fans short-changed, as they’ll be searching in vain for his earlier work. Like many artists whose careers split into several stylistically different periods, Cocker puts his bets on the later period, the one more familiar to a wider audience. As usual, we get his jumping from the erotic mood of Ray Charles’ You Can Leave Your Hat On to the romance of When The Night Comes, and there’s no shortage of emotionally charged numbers like Don’t You Love Me Anymore or Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word.
As a rule, no Joe Cocker “Best Of” compilation is complete without the phenomenal live version of Lennon and McCartney’s With A Little Help From My Friends, though with such a wide repertoire of hits, L’essentiel could probably have survived without it. When we get to Elton’s Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, it slowly dawns on us that we’re looking at an entirely predictable product that even the most hardcore Cocker fan can get by without. All you devoted Joe Cocker fans will undoubtedly miss plenty of his legendary tunes, and without them this compilation sadly sinks into the average of all the similar releases devoted to his eventful musical career. Still, L’essentiel makes a nice cross-section of Cocker’s legacy, and as such it works as a great starting point for any newcomers wondering what all the fuss around the old guy is about.
Lineup
Joe Cocker – vocals
Phil Grande – guitar
Dann Huff – guitar
Michael Baird – drums
Michael Boddicker – keyboards
Arthur Barrow – bass
Bob Wray – bass
Mel Collins – saxophone
Production
Joe Cocker
Track list
1.Unchain My Heart
2.You Can Leave Your Hat On
3.When The Night Comes
4.Up Where We Belong
5.Now That The Magic Has Gone
6.Don’t You Love Me Anymore
7.I Can Hear The River
8.Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
9.Shelter Me
10.Feels Like Forever
11.Night Calls
12.Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me
13.Now That You’re Gone
14.Civilezed Man
15.When A Woman Cries
16.With A Little Help From My Friends (live)
Album length: 73.50
