Procol Harum - "Greatest Hits Vol. 1" (1978) Album Description:

This Pickwick LP is the kind of record you spot half-buried in a bargain crate, looking a little too ordinary to be dangerous. Then you drop the needle and that organ line rolls in—slow, foggy, almost church-like—and the room changes shape. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" still does that. Annoyingly effective, decades later.

Let’s clean up the timeline first, because the original text blurs it: this specific issue, Pickwick Records SHM 956, is a UK compilation commonly listed as 1978. The songs themselves are a postcard from Procol Harum’s earlier run (1967–1969), which is why those years keep clinging to the album like cigarette smoke to a winter coat.

Pickwick didn’t do precious. Pickwick did available. Licensed from Cube Records Ltd, pressed to get these tracks back out in the wild, and sold to people who wanted the hit without taking out a second mortgage for imports. That “Made in England” tag is less a romantic flourish and more a blunt little stamp of origin: this thing was made to be played, not worshipped.

The collector-grade detail you don’t mention (but should): some listings note that tracks A1 and B2 are flagged as electronically created stereo. Translation: a budget-era attempt to widen mono sources for stereo systems. Sometimes it’s harmless. Sometimes it’s a weird, phasey halo. Either way, it’s part of the artifact—like ring wear and slightly over-ambitious liner notes.

Side One stays almost polite: "A Whiter Shade of Pale" opens the door, then "Quite Rightly So", "The Milk of Human Kindness", and "Wish Me Well" keep you in that sharply dressed late-’60s space where the piano has manners but the lyrics don’t. It’s not “progressive rock” as a textbook genre label. It’s more like baroque pop got bored and wandered into an R&B club, trying not to spill its drink.

Side Two is where the suit jacket comes off. "The Devil Came From Kansas" bites harder, and "Conquistador" does that grand, marching drama Procol could summon without sounding like they were auditioning for theatre class. Fun footnote: that song kept haunting the band’s story—years later, a live version would make real noise in the US charts. Not bad for a track that started life as part of the early catalogue.

My practical use for this LP is simple: it’s a fast way to summon the band’s atmosphere without committing to the whole discography. One side for the haze, one side for the bite. And if someone tells you compilations are “less authentic,” you can nod politely while the organ swells up again and proves them wrong in real time.

References

If you want a band-approved, career-spanning “definitive” anthology, this isn’t it. It’s a budget-comp time capsule that still lands the punch when the needle hits the groove. Sometimes the cheap door is the one that opens into the best room.