The Best Of Procol Harum
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Album Summary
The Best Of Procol Harum landed in 1972 on Chrysalis Records, arriving as a loving and long-overdue tribute to one of Britain's most soulful and sophisticated rock outfits. Assembled under the creative guidance of the band's core songwriting partnership — the incomparable Gary Brooker on the keys and melodies, and the poetic Keith Reid painting the words — this compilation drew from the deepest wells of Procol Harum's preceding studio catalog to present a portrait of a band that had never once compromised its artistic vision. From their seismic 1967 debut through the salt-sprayed grandeur of their later work, the album was curated to show the world just how far this band had traveled, and how much beauty they had left behind on the road.
Reception
- The compilation performed solidly on the UK charts, riding the wave of Procol Harum's deeply loyal fanbase and their continuing strong presence on British radio.
- Critics received the collection warmly, recognizing it as a well-constructed and emotionally resonant introduction to the band's most enduring and artistically significant recordings.
- The album drew a new generation of listeners into the Procol Harum fold, proving that the band's catalog held up magnificently when placed under the unforgiving light of a best-of retrospective.
Significance
- This compilation stands as one of the finest documents of baroque rock ever pressed to vinyl, capturing Procol Harum's rare and irreplaceable gift for weaving classical orchestral sensibility into the raw emotional fabric of rock and roll.
- By gathering tracks that spanned the band's evolution from the haunting chamber-pop of their earliest days to the expansive progressive architecture of their later albums, the record made an undeniable case for Procol Harum as one of the most compositionally ambitious acts the British rock scene ever produced.
- The presence of A Whiter Shade Of Pale alongside deep cuts like A Salty Dog and Conquistador reaffirmed that Procol Harum's genius was never a one-song phenomenon — it was a sustained, album-length, career-long commitment to elevating rock music into something that could genuinely move the soul.
Samples
- A Whiter Shade Of Pale — one of the most recognized and widely sampled tracks in rock history, its Bach-influenced organ figure and melodic framework have been interpolated and referenced across decades of popular music production.
Tracklist
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A1 A Whiter Shade Of Pale —
4:08
-
A2 Lime Street Blues —
3:01
-
A3 Homburg —
3:56
-
A4 (In The Wee Small Hours Of) Sixpence —
3:00
-
A5 Quite Rightly So —
3:37
-
A6 Shine On Brightly —
3:30
-
B1 A Salty Dog 55
4:36
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B2 Long Gone Geek —
3:10
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B3 Whisky Train —
4:28
-
B4 Simple Sister 151
5:47
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B5 Conquistador 134
4:16
Artist Details
Procol Harum are the magnificent British rock outfit that came together in London back in 1967, blending classical influences, blues, and psychedelic rock into something so rich and layered it sounded like nothing else on the radio — their debut single A Whiter Shade of Pale hit the world like a thunderbolt and became one of the best-selling singles in history, with that haunting Bach-inspired organ line wrapping around Gary Brooker's soulful voice like smoke in a candlelit room. They carried that signature sound — sometimes called symphonic rock or art rock — through albums like Shine On Brightly and A Salty Dog, earning a devoted following who understood that this band was doing something deeper than the pop charts could contain. Their legacy lives on as a cornerstone of progressive and classical rock, proving that when you marry the grandeur of the concert hall with the grit of rock and roll, you create music that time simply cannot touch.
