Greatest Hits (The Association album)

Greatest Hits is the first compilation album by The Association, released in 1968 by Warner Bros. Records. The album peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It has sold more than 2 million copies in the U.S. alone, making it the group's biggest seller.

The collection combines hit singles along with some of the group's best album tracks. The autobiographical tune "Six Man Band", written by Terry Kirkman, was a new song which was also released as a single at about the same time as the album. Surprisingly, the album does not include the single "Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies", which charted at #35 in late 1966.

Track listing

Side 1

1. "The Time It Is Today" (Russ Giguere) – 2:19
2. "Everything That Touches You" (Terry Kirkman) – 3:22 (#10)
3. "Like Always" (Bob Alcivar, Tony Ortega, Larry Ramos) – 3:08
4. "Never My Love" (Don Addrisi, Dick Addrisi) – 3:10 (#2, 2:49 edit)
5. "Requiem For The Masses" (Terry Kirkman) – 4:06 (#100, 3:49 edit ["B" side of "Never My Love"])
6. "Along Comes Mary" (Tandyn Almer) – 2:49 (#7)

Side 2

1. "Enter The Young" (Terry Kirkman) – 2:45 (re-recorded version of the song from their first album And Then... Along Comes the Association)
2. "No Fair At All" (Jim Yester) – 2:37 (#51) (single version with additional vocals)
3. "Time For Livin'" (Don Addrisi, Dick Addrisi) – 2:48 (#39)
4. "We Love" (Ted Bluechel) – 2:25 (originally titled "We Love Us")
5. "Cherish" (Terry Kirkman) – 3:27 (#1)
6. "Windy" (Ruthann Friedman) – 2:56 (#1)
7. "Six Man Band" (Terry Kirkman) - 2:12 (#47)

Numbers shown in parentheses indicate peak chart positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

Additional information

Some recordings on this album employed the Haeco-CSG system. This was a short-lived technology that was intended to make stereo recordings compatible with mono turntables. The unfortunate side effect of this processing was that it caused a smearing of the phantom center channel information and led to records that had degraded sound quality in both mono and stereo. Other albums by The Association do not use the Haeco-CSG process.

The CD version of this album was produced from the same processed stereo master tape copy which was used on its vinyl release, so the Haeco-CSG encoding is still intact. Most of the recordings from this album can be heard without artificial processing on the 2 CD collection "Just the Right Sound; The Association Anthology" released in 2002 by Rhino Records.

Charts