The seventies
Smokey Lynx | Toledo, OH United States | 02/05/2007
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Santo Farina's wonderful touch and tone on non pedal steel guitar is here, but these seventies era S+J records have no swinging small combo work like their earlier album versions of material like Caravan , Canadian Sunset, All Night Diner etc. Just like the cover photo where the artists are pictured a fair distance from the camera, the sound of the recordings seems a little pushed to the background and wider . Where's Johnny ? I can hardly hear his nicely comped block chord work on a lot of these songs. There's some nice ballad things here , especially the song Ruby , which Santo really shines on . A fan of the Farinas will want this ...but casual listeners will want to stick to the import CD best of's . Better yet are the original Canadian-American label vinyl albums from the fifties and early sixties as the original masters have been lost and the best of collections are mastered from the vinyl anyway"