1 comments about Pal Joey (1980 London Cast).

1. The CD came nice and quick, but when it arrived it was rattling around in the case, as the spiral was completely broken. This could have damaged the disc, and I have had to replace the case. They should be careful not to send out broken cases.

5 comments about Girl Singer.

1. No matter the era, Rosemary Clooney remains among the great vocal stylists. Her repertoire of smooth jazz and classic pop finds the ideal showcase with "Girl Singer." This 1992 Concord Jazz recording contains some of Rosie's finest music: "Nice 'N' Easy," "Sweet Kentucky Ham," "Miss Otis Regrets" and "Straighten Up and Fly Right." The hybrid SACD resolution works wonders on a DVD/CD player. Clooney's entire catalog should be reissued in this multichannel format.



2. This is a great cd that you can play anytime, anywhere. A superb collection of songs sung with great style by Rosemary Clooney. I have this playing in my car often. It transports you from the tedious commute to a quiet club where you are treated to an exclusive performance by one of the greatest interpreters of the great American songbook. Great singer, great songs...what more can you ask for?



3. I'm proud to say that i have most of Rosies' cds. This perhaps, is not one of her better offerings. It seems that Rosie chose to use a lot of lesser known songs that are out of favor with a lot of the music world. On the well known songs Rosie did a superb job. John Oddo, her musical director, did another super job of arranging. Just maybe one of these days Rosie will break through and sing the songs we are really looking for.



4. No one interprets a song like Rosemary! She's in a class of her own and shows it in this album. I have just seen her in Concert and was literally moved to tears. Treasure this album and all the rest, for she is one of a very few artists left to make us feel the song and understand the true meaning of the lyrics. I have nearly ALL of her CDs and as long as she records, I will be there to buy, collect,enjoy and savor her beautiful voice!



5. This collection, out of the number of Rosie CDs I own, is by far the best (although all the others are wonderful, too). I never heard 'Wave' performed so well that I really liked it. A lot! The others, like 'Nice 'N Easy' and 'Straighten' Up and Fly Right' really hit the spot. Rosie is a true cabaret performer that never lets maudlin sentimentality get in the way of her delivery of her songs. She makes you want to hang out with her over a few cocktails and [talk] about anything that comes to mind.

2 comments about John Williams: The Dream Goes On (Film Score Compilation).

1. This was originally released in the U.K. under the title "The Magic of John Williams" a 78 minute long CD. That title was also released here but only 45 minutes long. This album is the rest of that plus a couple other songs. The non Star Wars tracks are superb, I don't know what it is, but the Orlando Pops orchestration fo the star wars tracks are not very good.



2. Great CD. Very good for sneak preview of his works! As I said its a late-sunday like CD. And the price is beautiful!

1 comments about Michael Feinstein Sings the Burton Lane Songbook, Vol. 1.

1. Lots of interesting song

2 comments about Hollywood Swing and Jazz: Hot Numbers from Classic MGM, Warner Brothers & RKO Films.

1. If you're a fan of "traditional jazz", you'll love this incredible collection from Turner/Rhino. If you're a fan of classic musical soundtracks, you will also find this collection essential for your music library. If you're like me, and you have a pechant for both kinds of music, you'll be in utter ecstacy with the selections here.

   The list of performers here reads like a who's who of jazz:
   DUKE ELLINGTON, COUNT BASIE, LOUIS ARMSTRONG, GERRY MULLIGAN,
   LESTER YOUNG, BENNY GOODMAN, CARMEN McRAE, FATS WALLER, the list goes on and on. What really makes this collection sizzle, are the real rarities included. Who knew Duke Ellington had recorded music for A DAY AT THE RACES with the Marx Bros.? No one! Until
   the producers here unearthed a track that had been recorded by 'Sir Duke' for that classic comedy that ended up on the cutting room floor. That's just one example of the jewels to be found here. There are several great vocal renditions, with everyone from Ethel Waters to Pearl Bailey, and you even get a whiff of Brazillian Bossa Nova Jazz with Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto doing a version of THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA that is slightly different (but just as incredible) than the famous recording.

   Then there's unreleased material from Nat "King" Cole, Billy Eckstine, and even Dorothy Dandridge. My favorite track is a swingin' rendition of "One O'Clock Jump" by Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra that almost sounds like it's going to explode!

   It's too bad that more people don't know about this album. It's one of the most creative assemblages ever released on CD. The album comes with a richly-illustrated booklet and great liner notes, too!




2. The only way to approximate this collection would be to turn on your tape recorder while these movies were showing on your TV. Even if you'd managed to do all that, you still wouldn't have the pristine sound quality that Rhino managed to get by using the source material for this collection. Let alone the out-takes that were never included in the released versions of the films.

   My favorite examples here are the Bojangles/Fats version of "Great Big Way" (which opens the collection), Ellington's uncut rendition of "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" (Marx Brothers fans take note - this is different than the hacked version that you'll hear in "Day At The Races"), and the Andre Previn selections on disk 2 - there's some wonderful soloing here, as good as the material that Benny Goodman recorded with him in the late 50's.

   Sure, there's a little hokey stuff in here too, like the Mel Torme' selection in disk 1, but it's good-natured and doesn't detract from the real gems of the collection. It's a narrowly better value than Rhino's previous movie nugget compilation, "Alive and Kickin'", and it's fair to say that if you like that one, then you'll love this CD too.

5 comments about The Mighty Hercules (1963 Television Cartoon).

1. No, this is NOT the soundtrack, nor does it contain any of the original cast voices. The actual package does not make any such claim. This is actually a "studio cast" or "second cast" album made by Golden Records in 1963.
   
   It was common practice, for one reason or another, for children's records companies like Golden to use non-soundtrack and non-original-cast versions. Sometimes it came down to money. An album selling for anywhere from 99 cents to $1.00 does not always have the budget to access the original cast (which involves studio time, talent and musician fees and sometime travel and expenses). Sometimes the soundtrack is not cleared for recordings, so it would be expensive to re-pay all the necessary fees (1951's Disney's Alice in Wonderland was never a soundtrack album until the 1990's for these reasons).
   
   But that's no consolation if you're looking for an album to bring you back to the childhood memories of THE MIGHTY HERCULES. Despite amazon's erroneous "soundtrack" listing, it does not sound at all like the series. Instead, it has the Jim Timmens modest-budget sound that dominated Golden Records of the early 60's. However, longtime Famous Studios composer Winston Sharples DID co-write the songs (including the infamous theme). There are very few Winston Sharples records. It also features New York session singers of the period, particularly Rose Marie Jun, who did countless commercial jingles as well as song demos for some of Broadway's biggest shows. She also co-starred with Streisand in "Pins and Needles."
   
   So, if you do recall the Golden Records sound of your childhood, you like the cover art, you want a rare musical score by Winston Sharples which appears nowhere else, or you want to get anything connected with this cartoon, which had little merchandise as I recall, this CD is for you.
   
   This album does feature the theme sung by the Golden Singers, and does include extra lyrics. If you want the Johnny Nash soundtrack theme, it's on "Toon Tunes:Action-Packed Anthems" on Rhino or "Television's Greatest Hits, Vol.4: Black & White Classics" on Tee Vee Toons.



2. Can only blame myself. The audio clips and buyer reviews were all there but I leaped first. "Cast Recording"? Noooo way. This is some group re-singing the songs from the original show, but completely void of the familiar, if hokey and shrill, voices and sound effects of the cartoon. The artwork that shipped with this (seems I had to supply my own CD case) seems genuine enough. I recall that Golden Records did a lot of these cheap, brightly coloured plastic 45 RPM "homages" to TV shows back in the early 60's. I recall it because the feeling of disappointment when I played this CD was completely familiar. LISTEN TO THE AUDIO CLIPS *FIRST* and decide. It will help you avoid trying to summon the mighty Hercules to dispatch the goons who put this together. O-lympiaaaaaahhhh!



3. This CD is welcome for fanatics of early 60's kiddie ersatz, but apart from the art work and some track titles has very little to offer that fans of the Mighty Hercules cartoon show from Trans-Lux will remember. Those seeking some of the lushly orchestrated music used as underscoring should look to an out-of-print Intrada CD called Creature From The Black Lagoon, devoted to the music of Hans J. Salter. The horn-laden music underscoring the scenes in which Hercules put on his magic ring and led it up to the lightning, and the heroics that followed, were all lifted from the score of the 1955 movie The Black Shield of Falworth, co-written by Salter, a suite from which -- including the "Hercules" music -- is included on the "Creature From The Black Lagoon" CD from Intrada.



4. This is not the powerful and well orchestrated music of the 60's cartoon I watched on Sunday mornings. Who was allowed to put this hoowey out?



5. Original soundtrack from the Mighty Hercules cartoon? Not even close...what a disappointment! Fans of the popular children's cartoon will feel an urge to remove (destroy) this product as soon as they hear the opening track. If you're looking for the sweeping, powerful voice of Johnny Nash, or the full orchestration that practically defined this classic, look elsewhere. What you'll find here is a milquetoast, watered-down 40's genre mishmash that even Disney would discard. If you're a Lawrence Welk fan, then this is for you; otherwise, skip this one. What a shame!

No comments about Too Jewish?.

2 comments about Dance a Little Closer (The Original Broadway Cast Recording).

1. Poor Alan Lerner. How dreadful it must have been to achieve the kind of success he did with "My Fair Lady" and spend the next 20 or more years having increasingly poor luck in creating a hit show. Part of his trouble, aside from his overwhelming neuroses, was his very bad habit of making himself the ultimate arbiter on whose shoulders the enterprise rose or fell. Someone needed to say "No" to him more often. That aside, and although "Dance a Little Closer" was a fast flop, ending its life the same night it opened (it was known as "Close a Little Faster" during previews) and while it was furthermore eputedly an UGLY show visually, the score is well worth preserving. The lyrics, as always with Lerner, are fresh, witty, bitter and celebratory all at once. As in his last collaboration with Burton Lane, the charming "Carmelina," "Dance a Little Closer" is full of terrific songs in search of a good show to which they could cling. "Another Life" is as moving as anything Lerner ever wrote, and the nightclub patter-songs are delicious. There's even an extended sequence involving a couple of male flight attendants trying to persuade a minister to marry them -- in the 1980s, people hooted at such a notion, and pilloried Lerner for musicalizing the urge. Guess that's called being ahead of your time. It's a score well worth seeking out, all tied up in Jonathan Tunick's pluperfect orchestrations.



2. This Show was the first (and only) collaboration between composer Charles Strouse, famous from his hit show "Annie", and "My fair Lady"-lyricist Allan Jay Lerner. The show was a flop .... not to say a huge one and it is a wonder that a cast recording has been made. The show did not succeed mainly - and so believed the critics too - because of the weak book, which happened to be Lerner's last show, he died not long after that.
   the score received modest praise, which is fine, because it contains some really beautiful ballads, like "There's always one.." or "Another Life", that would have deserved to be in a better show. The faster songs are quite well crafted but not at all as good as the ballads. well, the title tune is fine too, but, as one could expect: it is a slow ballad...
   After all: You should buy it, because it is worth it, not least since nearly all that Strouse writes is worth buying, and it is a show that might run out of stock......it is very much recommendable. And for those who are still not convinced: it is orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick!!

No comments about Sherlock Holmes.

No comments about Movie Box, Vol. 2.