Sony's
Super Hits designation is the overall title for a series of budget-priced compilations containing the biggest hits by its recording artists, but it is not a phrase to be taken literally, especially in this case.
Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes didn't actually have any hits, super or otherwise, during their 1976-1978 tenure on Sony-owned Epic Records. But
Super Hits selects ten memorable tracks from their three commercially released studio albums,
I Don't Want to Go Home,
This Time It's for Real, and
Hearts of Stone, plus one track from their promotional album, Live at the Bottom Line. (This track, "You Mean So Much to Me," featuring
Ronnie Spector, is mislabeled in the annotations as being from
I Don't Want to Go Home, but it is the same live track heard on the 1992 full-length, full-priced compilation The Best of Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes.) All the songs were written by
Bruce Springsteen and/or Steven Van Zandt, both early supporters of the band, among them the
Springsteen standard "The Fever."
Southside Johnny's Epic material remains his best recorded work, all of it worthwhile listening. This album presents an inexpensive way of hearing the highlights of it. ~ William Ruhlmann