34 Track CD compilation from Sony Music, featuring Rock artists associated to the Label. Featuring Boston, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, The Doobie Brothers & Others. Nice Rock Collection.

The Doobie Brothers had two distinct phases during their 1970s peak, evolving from boogie rockers with a penchant for mellow good vibes into a smooth blue-eyed soul outfit. Subsequent reunions and decades as a successful live attraction blurred the divide between the rambling "Black Water" and funky "What a Fool Believes," the band's two number one hits on Billboard. The Doobies racked up numerous other hits in both incarnations, songs that wound up as classic rock perennials. "Listen to the Music," "Long Train Runnin'," and "China Grove" were early-'70s hits all written and sung by Tom Johnston, the guitarist who was slowly replaced as frontman by Michael McDonald, a husky-voiced keyboardist who wrote and sang "Takin' It to the Streets," "It Keeps You Runnin'," and "Minute by Minute," along with "What a Fool Believes."

Four-time Grammy-winning band The Doobie Brothers (with Michael McDonald) have teamed up with some of country music’s biggest stars for ‘Southbound’, an album of all-new recordings of the band’s classic hits. The studio lineup harkens back to the Doobie Brothers’ earliest days. Fellow singer-songwriter-guitarist-lead-vocalists Patrick Simmons and Tom Johnston continue to front the group, while multi-instrumentalist John McFee’s history with the Brothers dates back to 1978, after his stint with Southern Pacific. Michael McDonald returns to The Doobie Brothers for this project, which invites fans to once again “Listen to the Music” in a whole new way. Country stars Blake Shelton, Casey James, Charlie Worsham, Johnnyswim’s Amanda Sudano Ramirez, and Tyler Farr were among the first roster of artists choosing their favorite Doobie songs to record with the band, with selected tracks featuring special instrumental contributions from Hunter Hayes and Vince Gill. Other collaborators include Toby Keith, Brad Paisley, Zac Brown Band, Sara Evans, Chris Young, Jerrod Niemann, and Love and Theft. In choosing the album title, The Doobie Brothers’ Tom Johnston remarked, “Southbound seemed like the perfect name of this collaboration project with all these dynamic country artists. The band has a lot of roots, both musically and lyrically, from the South such as blues, country, R&B, and folk. To us it was a natural fit that it be called Southbound.”

The Doobie Brothers' third long-player was the charm, their most substantial and consistent album to date, and one that rode the charts for a year. It was also a study in contrasts, Tom Johnston's harder-edged, bolder rocking numbers balanced by Patrick Simmons' more laid-back country-rock ballad style. The leadoff track, Johnston's "Natural Thing," melded the two, opening with interlocking guitars and showcasing the band's exquisite soaring harmonies around a beautiful melody, all wrapped up in a midtempo beat – the result was somewhere midway between Allman Brothers-style virtuosity and Eagles/Crosby & Nash-type lyricism, which defined this period in the Doobies' history and gave them a well-deserved lock on the top of the charts. Next up was the punchy, catchy "Long Train Runnin'," a piece they'd been playing for years as an instrumental – a reluctant Johnston was persuaded by producer Ted Templeman to write lyrics to it and record the song, and the resulting track became the group's next hit.

This expansive box set from Rhino features all nine of the Doobie Brothers' studio albums from their original 1970s Warner Bros. run plus their 1983 Farewell Tour live album. Beginning with their 1971 self-titled debut, when the band was fronted by founding singer/guitarist Tom Johnston, through 1980's Michael McDonald-led One Step Closer, it covers their two major eras as they slowly shifted from boogie rock bar band into the soulful soft rock giants of their later years. Hits like "China Grove," "Black Water," "Takin' It to the Streets," and "What a Fool Believes" are all here as well as their first live album, which mostly features their late-period lineup with the addition of a couple of special Johnston appearances that serve as an end cap to their career. Although the Doobies would reunite again in the late '80s, their original Warner Bros. years remain their best-known period.

The deep, soulful voice of the Doobie Brothers, and one of the most popular songwriters and solo artists of the rock era.

The group's first album with Michael McDonald marked a shift to a more mellow and self-consciously soulful sound for the Doobies, not all that different from what happened to Steely Dan - whence McDonald (and Jeff Baxter) had come - between, say, Can't Buy a Thrill and Pretzel Logic. They showed an ability to expand on the lyricism of Patrick Simmons and Baxter's writing on "Wheels of Fortune," while the title track introduced McDonald's white funk sound cold to their output, successfully. Simmons' "8th Avenue Shuffle" vaguely recalled "Black Water," only with an urban theme and a more self-consciously soul sound (with extraordinarily beautiful choruses and a thick, rippling guitar break)…

The Doobie Brothers’ illustrious career is marked by a string of hits, two of which, “Sweet Maxine” and “Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me),” are included here. But Stampede offers much more. In terms of musical dexterity, the 1975 set stands as the group’s peak studio moment.
With ex-Steely Dan guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter finally a full-time member of the band, the California quintet steps up everything from the arrangements to the songwriting. The group also invited several distinguished guests along for the ride: Vocalist Maria Muldaur, soul legend Curtis Mayfield, slide guitarist Ry Cooder, and jazz hand Victor Feldman among them. The results are as good on record as they appear on paper…

The Doobie Brothers' third long-player was the charm, their most substantial and consistent album to date, and one that rode the charts for a year. It was also a study in contrasts, Tom Johnston's harder-edged, bolder rocking numbers balanced by Patrick Simmons' more laid-back country-rock ballad style. The leadoff track, Johnston's "Natural Thing," melded the two, opening with interlocking guitars and showcasing the band's exquisite soaring harmonies around a beautiful melody, all wrapped up in a midtempo beat - the result was somewhere midway between Allman Brothers-style virtuosity and Eagles/Crosby & Nash-type lyricism, which defined this period in the Doobies' history and gave them a well-deserved lock on the top of the charts…

Out on the road in the 2020s, the Doobie Brothers feature Michael McDonald, but when it comes time for the group to cut a record, the band whittles down to the trio of Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, and John McFee. Naturally, this means Liberté – the Doobies' first album of new original material since 2010's World Gone Crazy – sounds closer to a refurbished version of Toulouse Street or The Captain and Me than Takin' It to the Streets; there's no funky soft rock or smooth blue-eyed soul, just a lot of straight-ahead rock & roll. While Liberté may be old-fashioned in its aesthetic, this trio of Doobies take pains to make the album sound contemporary, dressing it in glassy production, generously adding electronic rhythms, and vaguely addressing the turmoil in the modern world. All this flair may announce Liberté as a 2021 album, but the record works because the Doobies remain dedicated to the rocking boogie they've been playing for 50 years.

Four-time Grammy Award winners and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees, The Doobie Brothers, have announced the release of their 15th full-length album, titled LIBERTÉ!

Featuring iconic songs from some of the meanest axemen to ever strap on a guitar, Pure… Guitar Heroes takes listeners on a journey through some of classic rock's greatest guitar moments…

The Doobies team up with the Memphis Horns for an even more Southern-flavored album than usual, although also a more uneven one. By this time, Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, and company had pretty well inherited the mantle and the core (and then some) of the audience left behind by Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty, with Johnston songs like "Pursuit on 53rd Street," "Down in the Track," and "Road Angel" recalling pieces like "Travelin' Band," while Simmons' "Black Water" (their first number one hit) evoked the softer side of the "swamp rock" popularized by CCR. Actually, in some respects, given the range of instruments employed here, including an autoharp (courtesy of Arlo Guthrie) and viola, the songs on the original LP's first side suffer somewhat from a sameness that makes What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits a little less interesting than the albums that preceded it.

Platinum Collection gathers 16 tracks spanning the Doobie Brothers career and includes chart-toppers like "Listen to the Music," "Minute by Minute," "Black Water," and "What a Fool Believes," mixed with lesser heard album cuts. This isn't a definitive overview by a long shot, but it's a decent sampler featuring the original recordings…

Oriental Minute is a bootleg CD by The Doobie Brothers, taken from a show in Japan at Budokan Hall in Tokyo on 22 February, 1979 and is an excellent soundboard recording, taken from an FM radio broadcast. This was part of the Doobie's Japanese tour in support of their 1978 album Minute By Minute, while the set is a nice mixture of the new and the classics. The CD was released by Grace Carry.