(FORTUNE Magazine) – Sammy Davis Jr. Yes I Can! The Sammy Davis Jr. Story Rhino

Record companies, eager to tap the public's demand for all things retro, are slapping together box sets--kitchen-sink collections of every band from ABBA to ZZ Top. Problem is, most of them stink. The exception: Rhino's Yes I Can! ($59.98), a four-CD, 91-song revelation. Don't be put off by the dated cover photo of Sammy in front of the legendary Sands casino, sporting a white corduroy suit and fire-engine-red turtleneck. The brassy and buttery numbers inside allow the crooner to emerge from the shadow of his swizzle-shtick pallies Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. In fact, the first sounds you hear (on disk one, song one's "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile") are the frenzied tap-happy feet of the man who started as a vaudeville showstopper at age 3. Later, it's Davis' cool-cat takes on such standards as "That Old Black Magic" and "The Birth of the Blues" that glisten and will be new to anyone who knows him only from "Candyman." Yes I Can! isn't just a great collection of music, it's a redefinition, and perhaps a reemergence, of an artist who'd sadly been sent to a kitsch dustbin. I'd say that those box-set-crazy record execs could learn a lot from Sammy Davis Jr. But then again, who couldn't?

--Chris Nashawaty