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Can’t wait for that massive 11-CD/1-DVD box set, Take a Look: Aretha Franklin Complete on Columbia?  Or maybe you’re just looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift?

Either way, Legacy may have the disc for you. Next Tuesday, February 1, will see the under-the-radar release of Aretha Franklin’s The Great American Songbook from Columbia/Legacy, compiling 18 of the tracks from that massive box set on one CD. Oddly, this release features the same cover art as the upcoming box, not due for release until March 22. (The decision to release a “highlights” package before the box itself is unusual, but is likely a product of the label’s desire to have “Great American Songbook” product in time for the February 14 holiday when it’s frequently a major seller to casual fans. It is not being marketed as a highlights disc, per se.)

The Great American Songbook‘s tracks encompass standards written by Cole Porter (“Love for Sale”), Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael (“Skylark”), Irving Berlin (“How Deep is the Ocean?”) and even Hank Williams (“Cold, Cold Heart”). All are, of course, drawn from Franklin’s pre-Atlantic period at Columbia; hopefully the upcoming box will grant this era some long-deserved recognition. The soon-to-be Queen is in stellar vocal form throughout; as eminent jazz critic Will Friedwald astutely pointed out, “the only sin of the Columbia sides is that they sound nothing like the records that eventually made Franklin famous.”

Is this set worth picking up? Hit the jump for one answer, plus the track lineup and discographical information!

The Great American Songbook seems hardly necessary for those who plan to purchase Take a Look. But there will undoubtedly be those fans of Franklin who aren’t seeking 12 discs of pre-Atlantic Aretha. Perhaps those fans will take a chance on this single-disc distillation; they’ll then discover a rich collection of indelible interpretations of great American standards. Aretha positively puts Rod Stewart to shame, whose similarly-titled The Best of the Great American Songbook also streets on February 1. Franklin is quite simply one of the quintessential American vocalists, and these tracks make it abundantly clear that her artistry didn’t begin the day Tom Dowd and Jerry Wexler took her down to Muscle Shoals. Take a listen to her eminently powerful recordings of the spiritually-tinged “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and “God Bless the Child” and you might just feel that they belong in your Franklin collection alongside her reinventions of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Let It Be.” On the other hand, “Love for Sale” definitively shows that Franklin could be quite earthy in her Columbia days, too. Franklin’s versatility, even at this early stage, is evident whether she’s tackling the country of Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart” or the jazz of Billy Strayhorn’s “My Little Brown Book.”

“Trouble in Mind” and “Love for Sale” are presented in previously-unissued mixes, which will also be heard on the forthcoming box set.  All tracks have been remastered from the original tapes by Mark Wilder.

If The Great American Songbook is for you, it can be pre-ordered here. (It shouldn’t be confused with a 14-track collection of the same title available as MP3s from Amazon.com; there is some overlap in the track listing but it is otherwise not the same compilation.)

Aretha Franklin, The Great American Songbook (Columbia/Legacy 88697 83468-2, 2011)

1. My Little Brown Book
2. Trouble in Mind (Mark Wilder Remix)
3. Try a Little Tenderness
4. It Ain’t Necessarily So
5. How Deep is the Ocean
6. Cold, Cold Heart
7. Love for Sale (Mark Wilder Remix)
8. How Glad I Am
9. Skylark
10. This Bitter Earth
11. Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive
12. What a Diff’rence a Day Made
13. Only the Lonely
14. Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody
15. God Bless the Child
16. Say It Isn’t So
17. Are You Sure
18. That Lucky Old Sun

Track 1 recorded 1963, first released on The Queen in Waiting (Columbia/Legacy C2K 85696, 2002)
Tracks 2 and 7 from Yeah!!! In Person with Her Quartet (Columbia 9151, 1965). Newly remixed by Mark Wilder.
Tracks 3, 5 and 15 from The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin (Columbia 8676, 1962)
Tracks 4 and 17 from Aretha with the Ray Bryant Combo (Columbia 8412, 1961)
Tracks 6, 10 and 12 from Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington (Columbia 8963, 1964)
Track 8 from Runnin’ Out of Fools (Columbia 9081, 1964)
Tracks 9 and 16 from Laughing on the Outside (Columbia 8879, 1963)
Tracks 11, 14 and 18 from The Electrifying Aretha Franklin (Columbia 8561, 1962)
Track 13 recorded 1964, first released on Soft and Beautiful (Columbia 9776, 1969)