{$James Taylor} had scored eight Top 40 hits by the fall of 1976 when {@Warner Brothers} marked the end of his contract with this compilation. One of those hits, the Top Ten gold single {&"Mockingbird,"} a duet with his wife {$Carly Simon}, was on {@Elektra Records}, part of the {@Warner} family of labels and presumably available, but it was left off. {&"Long Ago and Far Away,"} a lesser hit (though it made the Top Ten on the {\easy listening} charts), wasn't used either. In addition to the six hits -- {&"Fire and Rain,"} {&"Country Road,"} {&"You've Got a Friend,"} {&"Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,"} {&"How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),"} and {&"Shower the People"} -- that were included, the album featured a couple of less successful singles, {&"Mexico"} and {&"Walking Man,"} the album track {&"Sweet Baby James,"} and three previously unreleased recordings -- a live version of {&"Steamroller"} and newly recorded versions of {&"Something in the Way She Moves"} and {&"Carolina in My Mind,"} songs featured on {$Taylor}'s 1968 debut album, recorded for {@Apple}/{@Capitol}. The result was a reasonable collection for an artist who wasn't particularly well-defined by his singles. One got little sense of {$Taylor}'s evolution from the dour, confessional songs of his first two albums to the more conventional {\pop} songs of his sixth and seventh ones. But one did hear isolated examples of {$Taylor}'s undeniable warmth and facility for {\folk}/{\country}-tinged {\pop}. By the next summer, {$Taylor} was back in the Top Ten on {@Columbia}, and {^Greatest Hits} was out of date. But it remains a good sampler of {$Taylor}'s more popular early work. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide