16 Most Requested 1950's 2

16 Most Requested Songs Of The Decade: (Series) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 26, 1989)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000026SU
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #202,346 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

There were too many hits in the '50s for just one volume! Here's I Believe Frankie Lane; Stranger in Paradise Tony Bennett; Standing on the Corner The Four Lads; An Affair to Remember Vic Damone and many more! --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Collection, October 27, 2007

By 

R E Nelson "rolnel2" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 16 Most Requested 1950's 2 (Audio CD)

As with Volume I, there are no duds here. Overall a good collection with excellent sound.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Your age is important, January 9, 2007

By 

R. Barr "Roger the photographer" (NU Pine Lands) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 16 Most Requested 1950's 2 (Audio CD)

Both Vol 1 and Vol 2 are good. This is only true if you are old enough to have listened to these selections on the radio and played them on a juke box. If you are the correct age, they will bring back many happy memories.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Shoot CD Players Don't They, December 4, 2010

By 

Alfred Johnson (boston, ma) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 16 Most Requested 1950's 2 (Audio CD)

Some people ask; although I am not one of them, if there was music before 1950s classic rock `n' roll. Of course there was and I have taken some pains to establish the roots of rock back to Mississippi country blues, electric blues as they traveled north to the heartland industrial cities, jazz as it got be-bopped and took to swing, certainly rhythm and blues, north and south and rockabilly as it came out of the white small town South. What it owes little to, or at least I hope that it owes little to is that Tin Pan Alley/ Broadway show tune axis part of the American songbook. That seems to me a different trend and one that is reflected in this CD under review, The 1950s: 16 Most Requested Songs, which is really about the 16 most requested song before the rock jailbreak of the mid-1950s. Let's be clear about that.

I have along the way, in championing classic rock as the key musical form that drove the tastes of my generation, the generation of '68, contrasted that guitar-driven, drum/bass line driven sound to that of my parents' generation, the ones who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and fought World War II, and listened to swing, jitterbuggery things and swooned over big bands, swings bands, Frank Sinatra, the Andrews Sisters and The Mills Brothers, among others. In other words the music that, we of the generation of '68, heard as background music around the house as we were growing up. Buddha Swings, Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree, Rum and Coca-Cola, Paper Dolls, Tangerine, and the like. Stuff that today sounds pretty good, if still not quite something that "speaks" to me. That is not the music that is reflected in this compilation and which, I think rightly, I was ready to shoot my CD player over once I heard it as I announced in the headline.

No, this is music that reflects, okay, let's join the cultural critics' chorus here, the attempted vanilla-zation (if such a word can exist) of the Cold War Eisenhower ("I Like Ike") period when people were just trying to figure out whether the Earth would survive from one day to the next. Not a time to be rocking the boat, for sure. Once things stabilized a bit though then the mad geniuses of rock could hold sway, and while parents and authorities crabbed to high heaven about it, let that rock breakout occur and not have everything wind up going to hell in a hand basket. But this music, these 16 most requested songs were what we were stuck with before then. Sure, I listened like everyone else, everyone connected to a radio, but this stuff, little as I knew then, did not "speak" to me. And unlike some of that 1940s stuff still does not "speak" to me.

Oh, you want proof. Here is one example. On this compilation Harbor Lights is done by Sammy Kaye and his Orchestra. This was cause one for wanting to get a pistol out and start aiming. Not for the song but for the presentation. Why? Well, early in his career Elvis, while he was doing his thing for Sam Phillips' Memphis Sun Records operation, covered this song. There are a myriad of Elvis recordings during the Sun period, including compilations with outtakes and alternative recordings of this song. The worst, the absolute worst of these covers by Elvis has more life, more jump, dare I say it, more sex than the Kaye recording could ever have. And it only gets worst from there with incipient things like Frankie Lane's I Believe, Johnny Mathis' It's Not For Me To Say, and Marty Robbins' (who did some better stuff later) on A White Sports Coat (And A Pink Carnation). And you wonder why I ask whether they shoot CD players. Enough said.