of another Rodney Dangerfield.

Storyteller takes one giant step toward changing that state of affairs. It's far from perfect – for starters, the credits don't list the recording dates, the albums of origin, the musicians on each track or whether the songs were solo efforts or done with one of Stewart's various bands. But that's somehow only appropriate, considering the imperfect nature of Stewart's career. Over the course of four CDs or four cassettes, Storyteller performs a valuable service by separating the wheat from the chaff in Stewart's wildly erratic oeuvre, including just enough of the chaff to give an accurate sense of his frustrating career.

The early material on the chronologically organized Storyteller paints a vivid portrait of the artist as a cocky, prodigiously gifted young man. Listen to the rare recording of the young Rod the Mod going at Sonny Boy Williamson's "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" or Sam Cooke's "Shake," which, as Stewart admits in his charmingly self-deprecating liner notes, shows him desperately trying to sound like Otis Redding. You hear a tyro with vocal chops nearly as undeniable as the soul forefathers of whom he's so enamored. And by the time of his work with the Jeff Beck Group, Stewart was more than a talented mimic; he was breaking ground of his own.

Stewart's strongest period came when he was able to alternate the folkish grace of his early solo albums with the loose but lovable slop rock he was making with his mates in the Faces. "Handbags and Gladrags," "Gasoline Alley," "Maggie May," "Mandolin Wind" and "You Wear It Well" are noteworthy examples of the former: timeless, haunting music similar in its importance to the work being done by North American storytellers like Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson. And while the Faces records may have been less significant, there was often inspirational lift within their drunken madness, as one listen to "Stay With Me" proves.

Now comes the hard part. In his liner notes, Robert Palmer (the critic, not the singer) rises to Rod's defense: "The nature of Stewart's work – the kind of artist he is – keeps getting overshadowed by that larger-than-life public persona. Lurking just behind the fun-loving, boys-night-out façade is an artist who is both gifted and complex." True enough, but too often that playboy persona overshadowed the music simply be