The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie is a compilation album taken from her first six albums with Vanguard Records

Vanguard Records

Vanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary...

. Originally issued as a double-LP set after the financial disaster of Illuminations

Illuminations (Buffy Sainte-Marie album)

Illuminations, released in 1969, was the sixth album by Buffy Sainte-Marie. Though most of the tracks did away with the backing she had used on her previous two albums, Illuminations had a completely different sound from anything she had previously done...

, the album contains material from all her previous albums but curiously not one track unavailable elsewhere at the time of its release. The compilation was a very modest chart success, returning her to the Top 200

Billboard 200

The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...

 after the failure of Illuminations

Illuminations (Buffy Sainte-Marie album)

Illuminations, released in 1969, was the sixth album by Buffy Sainte-Marie. Though most of the tracks did away with the backing she had used on her previous two albums, Illuminations had a completely different sound from anything she had previously done...

, from which it does however extract five tracks.

Because Many a Mile

Many a Mile

Many a Mile is Buffy Sainte-Marie's second album, released in 1965.Though originally released on Vanguard Records, it was never reissued on CD when the rest of Sainte-Marie's catalog for that label came out in the late 1990s...

has been issued on compact disc

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 only in Italy, and Illuminations

Illuminations (Buffy Sainte-Marie album)

Illuminations, released in 1969, was the sixth album by Buffy Sainte-Marie. Though most of the tracks did away with the backing she had used on her previous two albums, Illuminations had a completely different sound from anything she had previously done...

and Fire & Fleet & Candlelight

Fire & Fleet & Candlelight

Fire & Fleet & Candlelight was the fourth album by Cree singer and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie.More than its predecessor Little Wheel Spin and Spin, it marked a significant departure from the simple folk songs of her first two albums...

were not issued on CD until many years after The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie became her first-ever release on CD in 1990, the compilation has always been of considerable value despite containing no hits except the extremely minor #98 "I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again" (which actually only reached even that position after being re-released after "Soldier Blue"). An abbreviated single-LP version was also released in 1972 with the catalogue number Vanguard 73113.

Track listing

All tracks composed by Buffy Sainte-Marie except where indicated.

1. "Soulful Shade of Blue"⁵ - 2:14
2. "Summer Boy"⁴ - 2:39
3. "Universal Soldier"¹ - 2:15
4. "Better to Find Out for Yourself"⁶ - 2:12
5. "Cod'ine"¹ - 5:01
6. "He's a Keeper of the Fire"⁶ - 2:58
7. "Take My Hand for a While"⁵ - 2:30
8. "Ground Hog"² (Traditional) - 2:13
9. "The Circle Game"⁴ (Joni Mitchell
   Joni Mitchell
   Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...
   
   ) - 2:51
10. "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying"³ - 6:49
11. "Many a Mile"² (Patrick Sky
    Patrick Sky
    Patrick Sky is a musician, singer and songwriter of Irish and Native American ancestry...
    
    ) - 2:42
12. "Until It's Time for You to Go"² - 2:27
13. "Rolling Log Blues"³ - 3:28
14. "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot"⁶ (poem by Leonard Cohen
    Leonard Cohen
    Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
    
    /music by Buffy Sainte-Marie) - 4:46
15. "Guess Who I Saw in Paris"⁶ - 2:25
16. "Piney Wood Hills"⁵ - 3:04
17. "Now That the Buffalo's Gone"¹ - 2:45
18. "Cripple Creek"¹ - 1:45
19. "I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again"⁵ - 2:57
20. "The Vampire"⁶ - 2:05
21. "Little Wheel Spin and Spin"³ - 2:26
22. "Winter Boy"³ - 2:10
23. "Los Pescadores"² - 2:01
24. "Sometimes When I Get to Thinking"³ - 2:59

• ¹ - From It's My Way!
• ² - From Many a Mile
• ³ - From Little Wheel Spin and Spin
• ⁴ - From Fire & Fleet & Candlelight
• ⁵ - From I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again
• ⁶ - From Illuminations

Charts

Billboard (North America)

Year	Chart	Peak Position
1970	Pop Albums	142