Wilbert Harrison - The Best Of Wilbert Harrison

Almost 70 Tracks includes 30 Previously Unavailable Songs. It s extremely unlikely that any other 1950s R&B artist blended quite as many disparate idiomatic influences into an instantly identifiable whole as Wilbert Harrison. Wilbert s skill on a variety of instruments was a key factor in his uncommon versatility. He played rolling piano on Kansas City and several of his followups for Bobby Robinson s Harlem-based Fury Records, but he was just as likely to utilize a guitar/harmonica combination that sometimes expanded into a one-man-band setup with the addition of hi-hat. Harrison wasn t afraid to incorporate instrumentation on his recordings that registered well outside the R&B mainstream. The end result still sounded like nobody but Wilbert as he made a slew of platters over the course of a recording career that spanned more than two decades.