Encore! suffers from the absence of the kind of signature performance (e.g., "Any Day Now" or "I Keep Forgetting") that galvanizes
Chuck Jackson's other early-'60s dates for Wand -- the opener, "Tell Him I'm Not Home," a stinging tale of romantic rejection, was the record's biggest hit and its brightest moment, complete with a powerful backing vocal courtesy of
Doris Troy. But like so many LPs in the pre-
Beatles era, there's a surplus of filler that renders
Encore! unnecessary for all but
Chuck Jackson completists -- his attempts to overcompensate for the lackluster material result in several absurdly dramatic performances likely to grate on the ears of most listeners. [
Encore! was later reissued on CD via the British label Kent as part of a two-fer alongside its follow-up,
Mr. Everything.]