Given Columbia's considerable financial and promotional muscle at that time, Davis was hoping to build on an impressive run of crossover success he'd experienced at Dakar. Things looked promising when his first Columbia 45, 'Give It Up (Turn It Loose)' – the opening cut of this new collection – peaked at #2 in Billboard's R&B charts and cracked the pop Top 40. But after that and for a variety of reasons, success in the Stateside pop charts proved extremely elusive for the silky-voiced soul man from Greenwood, Mississippi.

Even so, Davis racked up a raft of classy American R&B smashes, all of which are included in the chronological order of their release on this superb 14-track collection (a couple of strong flipsides are included here for good measure as well). Although during his Columbia tenure, the disco inferno was stoking up to an intensity that would consume a lot of R&B acts, for the most part Davis made music that resisted the mirror ball trend and stuck to traditional soul values (the one out-and-out disco track on this collection is Get On Up (Disco), though it owes more to Southern funk than the sounds emanating from New York's Studio 54).

Though he was comfortable with uptempo material, Davis's true metier was as a romantic balladeer who appealed to female record buyers. There are some fine examples of his ballad work on this Columbia collection – like the sweetly sensual 'Close To You,' the mid-tempo confessional knee-trembler 'I Get Carried Away,' plus three succulent nocturnal slow jams, 'In The Mood' (this writer's favourite tune by Davis on Columbia), 'Heart Failure,' and 'Be With Me.' For those soul fans unfamiliar with Tyrone Davis's Columbia canon, this compilation offers an excellent introduction - and with any luck it will prompt a full reissue programme of the singer's Columbia LPs.