The Essential Tony Bennett (A Retrospective)

About The Essential Tony Bennett (A Retrospective)

The Essential Tony Bennett is a two-CD compilation album by Tony Bennett, released in 2002. The collection is part of a series of Essential sets released by Columbia Records and was created in collaboration with RPM Records and Legacy Recordings. The compilation includes material from throughout Bennett's career with Columbia, with no recordings after 1970 and before 1986 as Bennett was with other labels or unsigned altogether during that fallow period of his career. The 12-page foldout CD insert contains songwriting, arranging, and producing credits for each track, as well as recording dates and chart positions attained if any. It also contains large photographs of Bennett in the recording studio from early and late periods in his career, as well as thumbnail-sized images of all the albums covers from Bennett's Columbia catalog, in chronological order. AllMusic describes The Essential Tony Bennett as "an excellent, exhaustive retrospective of a lengthy, hit-filled career at Columbia. ... Bennett surely recorded more great material than can fit on a two-disc, 40-track collection, but this contains the cream of the crop and it's hard to imagine a collection like this being executed better than this." more »