[title]Mitch Ryder Sings the Hits[/title] has much better balance than What Now My Love, the album which yielded his last and least-potent of six Top 30 singles. Detroit rockers covering the Supremes' Motown smash Come See About Me seemed to be in vogue - Mark Farner and Don Brewer's excellent version showed up on Monumental Funk - and Ryder does the song justice as well, the two blue-eyed soul copies fun and worthy of comparison. There's only one Bob Crewe original on this collection of covers, and that tune, Peaches on a Cherry Tree, is combined to good effect with Leiber & Stoller's Ruby Baby, an R&B hit for the Drifters in the '50s, a post-Belmonts smash for Dion in 1963. The music has that extra something that eluded the What Now My Love album, a little more intensity on songs like Let Your Lovelight Shine, and the pop/blues version of Rufus Thomas' 1963 hit Walking the Dog. Crewe mixes vibes in with the earthy keyboard/guitar sound, and it's just great. (The CD has) his trademark open-mouth howl on the cover, as it is on All Mitch Ryder Hits and What Now My Love. It's a distinctive voice and sound on these recordings, more refined even than Devil With a Blue Dress On and Sock It to Me Baby. Bob Crewe certainly had the magic, and it is all over tracks like Allen Toussaint's I Like It Like That as well as Sticks and Stones. Ryder even takes on James Brown with very credible renditions of Please, Please, Please and I Got You, and revitalizes the Bing Crosby/Ray Charles classic You Are My Sunshine with a uniquely identifiable arrangement that only Ryder could give it. Mitch Ryder Sings the Hits doesn't get the attention it deserves, but is a solid effort from start to finish and makes for a good party record. 1. Let Your Lovelight Shine
2. Walking The Dog
3. Sticks And Stones
4. I Like It Like That
5. Please, Please, Please
6. Ruby Baby / Peaches On A Cherry Tree
7. Come See About Me
8. Walk On By
9. Stubborn Kind Of Fellow
10. You Are My Sunshine
11. I Got You
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00110YOAK/?tag=imwan-20
