Classic Masters: A Taste of Honey

Capitol records recognized that Universal had a good thing going on with their 20th Century Masters series, realizing that it was a perfect way to offer new greatest-hits collections in a classy, eye-catching fashion. Fortunately, they also learned from the mistakes of Universal (who took a while to get off the ground with their initial volumes of the series) and began rivaling the overall quality of latter-day volumes of 20th Century Masters with the initial volumes of their own series, Classic Masters. Case in point is Taste of Honey's edition of the series. What's nice about it is that it does its job cleanly and stylishly, offering all of the group's hits, along with selected highlights, in 12 crisply remastered tracks. Yes, some fans could want a more thorough compilation, but they would have to be serious listeners. For the majority of listeners, though, this delivers everything they need in a very good greatest-hits package — and it's quite representative of the rest of this fine line.