Sam Cooke had a voice like clover honey, and he was as ingenious a businessman as he was an artist--carefully treading the line between smooth pop and deep R&B to bring both audiences to him, as well as together. Disc 1 of this set compiles his 1957-1959 recordings for the Keen label, which had tamed the former gospel tiger into a sweet, wry songwriter with a taste for crooning standards and a signature yodel that marked every song as his property. The second and third discs do the same for his RCA career's singles and album tracks, which, for all their orchestrated slickness, left an indelible mark on soul and even rock (compare "That's It, I Quit, I'm Movin' On" to Elvis Costello's "Blame It On Cain"!). Lastly, there's a disc with two complete albums from Cooke's stylistic poles: Night Beat (after-hours cool soul) and Live at the Harlem Square Club (Cooke as hard-hollering crowd mover). As a survey of the middle period of Cooke's career, this set is totally solid; be advised, though, that it skips over both his early years shouting gospel with the Soul Stirrers and the classic recordings from the last year or so of his life--which include hits such as "Shake" and "A Change Is Gonna Come" that are still, flabbergastingly, out of print. --Douglas Wolk