The Ultimate Motown Collection

It might be titled The Ultimate Motown Collection, and certainly it's the most comprehensive Jimmy Ruffin CD compilation to hit the market, with two discs and 48 tracks, a dozen of them previously unreleased. It still doesn't have everything he did for the label, and the absence of no less than four of the 11 tracks that appeared on the best previous Ruffin CD comp (20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Jimmy Ruffin) testifies to the variance of taste among those responsible for assembling these anthologies. Still, it'll satisfy both those looking for an overall Ruffin best-of and Motown collectors who want more depth and a higher concentration of rarities, though the 20th Century Masters comp is still the recommended first choice, especially if you're on a budget. Of course, Ruffin's only Top 20 pop hits, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted and the less celebrated I've Passed This Way Before, are both here, as are his three 1970 U K. Top Ten chart entries Farewell Is a Lonely Sound,It's Wonderful to Be Loved You, and I'll Say Forever My Love.Disc one has 26 tracks taken from his 1967-1974 albums, using the 45 Mix versions of 11 cuts (including all of the aforementioned hits) and ten songs from his U K-only LPs Jimmy Ruffin...Forever (1970) and I've Passed This Way Before (1974, though the material on it that hadn't been previously issued was taken from the vaults). Decent as these are, taken together they do confirm Ruffin's standing as one of Motown's second-stringers, probably doomed to relative obscurity if not for the huge success of What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.