All I Really Want to Do/Sonny Side [Import, Original recording remastered]

Cher | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 2, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import, Original recording remastered
• Label: Bgo
• ASIN: B0007ZB39U
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,537 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. All I Really Want to Do

2. I Go to Sleep

3. Needles and Pins

4. Don't Think Twice

5. She Thinks I Still Care

6. Dream Baby

7. The Bells of Rhymney

8. Girl Don't Come

9. See See Rider

10. Come and Stay With Me

11. Cry Myself to Sleep

12. Blowin' in the Wind

13. Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

14. Elusive Butterfly

15. Where Do You Go

16. Our Day Will Come

17. The Girl from Ipanema

18. It's Not Unusual

19. Like a Rolling Stone

20. Time

See all 24 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Digitally remastered collection of 2 original albums on a single CD. These are Cher's first two solo albums for Liberty Records from 1965 and 1966. As one half of the duo of Sonny & Cher with husband Sonny Bono in the `1960s, Sonny was intelligent enough to know that Cher deserved her own solo singing career without a comic foil. These recordings started the ball rolling and offer strong material in the form of hits ("All I Really Want To Do", "Needles & Pins", that Sonny himself wrote, "Bang Bang") and pop cover versions. These songs also served as repertoire for the Bono's popular nightclub act that sustained them to the end of the decade.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent collection of songs, June 25, 2005

By 

Charles - Music Lover (Phoenix, AZ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All I Really Want to Do/Sonny Side (Audio CD)

Cher's first two albums for Imperial Records are reissued together on this remastered CD. Sonny produced these recordings using Phil Spector's famed wall of sound production techniques and the results are endurably memorable. The remastered sound highlights the solid musicianship (which sometimes sounded ramshackle on vinyl) and Cher's great vocals. The songs are classics, written by Bob Dylan, Jackie DeShannon, Sonny Bono, and Pete Seeger, among many others. Don't miss out on this great CD!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's "Time", June 27, 2007

By 

grooverider "artie" (Toluca Lake LA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: All I Really Want to Do/Sonny Side (Audio CD)

"The Sonny Side of Cher" was the best of her early solo albums, indeed, her best album next to "Stars". Sonny Bono really knew what kind of a singer he was working with. Sonny utilized the legendary New Orleans musician, Harold Battiste and the talents of musicians that although, not the Motown Funk Brothers, were top notch, incredible musicians where the rhythm section "smoked"! In hindsight it seems so surprising to hear where these songs came from: Edith Piaf!!!(Milord), the 1927 musical production "Showboat" by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein (Old Man River), Antonio Carlos Jobim (The Girl From Ipanema), Tom Jones!!!(It's Not Unusual, one of my favorites), Ruby & The Romantics (Our Day Will Come-another fave), just what was Sonny thinking?! Even "world music" influences (Bang, Bang) and somehow it all works, I don't know how or if any contemporary artist could manage an album like this, male or female. No record company would EVER ok an album that had this kind of range and I'm not sure what that says about this album and the current state of music but I know I will treasure it for what it is, my hats off to both Sonny (as producer) and, of course, Cher(still going strong, who knew?). An album of it's time, indeed.
"All I Really Want To Do", released in 1965, was Cher's first solo album and it contains some gems: "I Go To Sleep", "Dream Baby" (heavily influenced by Phil Spector, who Sonny worked with), "Cry Myself to Sleep". I VERY much appreciate Sonny's acknowledgement of the musicians who played on the album by listing them. I don't believe that was common practice in 1965 but it was informative to know people like Julius Wechter, Mike Rubini, Lyle Ritz and Gene Estes, among others, were the wonderful players. Cher recorded this album at the legendary Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. An essential CD that documents the beginnings of the recording career of the one-of-a-kind Cher.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Spoilt by artless mastering, December 23, 2007

By 

Laurence Upton (Wilts, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All I Really Want to Do/Sonny Side (Audio CD)

This CD presents the first 2 CDs by Chér, both produced by Sonny Bono following his estrangement from Phil Spector. Using the same Hollywood studio and engineers and as many of the same production techniques as he could approximate, Sonny Bono's attempts at replicating the sound of his erstwhile boss were rudimentary and low-budget, lacking, for example, strings, horns or even backing singers. Nevertheless, they and the contemporary recordings by Sonny and Chér (I Got You Babe was recorded towards the end of the sessions for Chér's first album) have considerable charm and achieved great commercial success, sparked by the success of the lead single, Bob Dylan's All I Really Want To Do, which outsold the rival version by the Byrds in America in 1965. In my opinion, Chér's best work was that which she did with Sonny in the sixties.

This should have provided a welcome opportunity for me to replace my much loved but long lost vinyl copies, but I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it because so many of the tracks have been artlessly truncated by the re-mastering engineer, often losing between ten and twenty-five seconds. This is a reprehensible practice and quite needless since with a program time of 65:35 there remains almost fifteen minutes of capacity on the disc to accommodate full-length versions of every track. Unfortunately there is currently no CD alternative for acquiring these full albums, though all but three tracks (all dropped from the second album) appear on The Best of Cher: The Imperial Recordings 1965-1968 2CD, which from the sleeve details appears to have consistently longer track times; so this would seem to be the better value purchase, unless you must own her covers of Ferlin Husky's Time, Edith Piaf's Milord or Charles Aznavour's A Young Girl.