Donna Summer - Live And CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

While the Once upon a Time material is more than adequate, it's side two that really shows Summer at her grandest–as an old-fashioned soul singer out of early Sixties Motown, with tips of the hat to straight pop and blues. Whenever she gets away from the strictures of disco, she can be quite extraordinary. She moves easily from the bouncy wit of "Only One Man" to the raunchy blues funk of "Some of These Days," and redeems even the high-class kitsch of "The Way We Were" with an all-out torchsinger's passion that easily surpasses Barbra Streisand's rather mannered original.

Though the hits are exiled to side three, they come across fairly well (especially the sweeping, irresistible "Last Dance"). The exception, of course, is "Love to Love You, Baby," a tune that caused snickers when first released. Now, mercifully reduced to three minutes, it just sounds embarrassing. Side four is a big studio-production number, "MacArthur Park Suite," that contains an interminable discofied version of the Jimmy Webb song as well as some new material, all of which is pretty ghastly. Like "Love to Love You, Baby," it too seems a relic of some other time–a time that one hopes will soon be forgotten should Donna Summer continue to develop the enormous potential as a pop stylist she displays so often on Live and More. (RS 280)

TOM CARSON