The Stanley Brothers - Orange Blossom Special

The Best Of Stanley Brothers

(Mercury SMX-7108) 1970

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This is a Japanese compilation from circa 1970 which came in a gatefold sleeve and featured a lyric sheet as part of the gatefold design. Most of the tracks are taken from the Hard Times and Country Pickin' And Singin' albums, which also provides the source material for the sleeve artwork.

This seems to be one of the rarer Japanese LP compilations...

As with some of the other Mercury compilations, Little Maggie gets to appear owing to it being included on the Mercury subsidiary 'Country Oldies But Goodies' (Smash LP 27016) LP, which was licensed during the brief tie-up between the Mercury and Starday labels.

Nowadays of course, all the tracks are probably best found on the Complete Mercury Recordings 2xCD set.

If anyone is able to shed light on the different Red / Blue label print please get in touch via the Contact page!

For a far more detailed breakdown and background to these sessions, check Gary B. Reid's The Music Of The Stanley Brothers book. For page references, see the Original Release entries.

Other artwork / related images: