Customer Reviews

Complete Marches of John Philip Sousa

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A very nice collection, with crisp performances. It is, however, not complete. There is at least one march, The Wedding March," missing, and it is one that is VERY hard to find. Perhaps the set should be called "The Almost, But Not Quite Complete, Sort Of, Marches....."

As other reviewers have mentioned, this isn't quite complete. All of the grand marches, dirges, and (understandably as this was recorded in the 1950s) unavailable-at-the-time marches are missing. Some non-marches have been substituted, confusing the issue. However, this is the largest and most readily available compilation that goes beyond the "greatest hits" sets that so permeate the CD bins. (There IS a truly complete set, but it's only available in Japan, and for whatever reason, it's not being mass-imported to the States at the moment. Go figure.)
For now, I would recommend this to someone who has not purchased a lot of other Sousa CDs so as to avoid the inevitable overlap. You won't have everything, but there's a lot to enjoy here.

As of April 2009, this is the most complete collection of Sousa marches available in America. A more complete collection is available in Japan, but it is very difficult to find and import. As such, this is the recourse most people will have for Sousa marches.

The title of this box set is misleading. Unfortunately, the collection is not complete. Neither is it limited solely to marches. Sousa wrote 136 marches; this set contains only 116 tracks. Moreover, three of the included tracks are not marches. Therefore, twenty-three marches are omitted from this collection. They are:

1. Columbia's Pride
2. Foshay Tower Washington Memorial
3. Golden Star
4. Homeward Bound
5. Honoured Dead
6. In Memoriam (Pres. Garfield's Funeral)
7. Library of Congress
8. Old Ironsides
9. Pan Americans
10. Phoenix
11. Pres. Garfield's Inauguration
12. Pride of Pittsburgh
13. Quilting Party
14. Recognition
15. Review
16. Royal Trumpets
17. Royal Welch Fusiliers No. 1 (1929) -- Not to be confused with the Royal Welch Fusiliers No. 2 (1930). The second of the two is often simply referred to as "Royal Welch Fusiliers"--though there are two such marches. This collection includes the second of the two.
18. Salutation
19. Universal Peace
20. USAAC (U.S. Army Air Corps)
21. March [Untitled, 1930]
22. Wedding
23. Wildcats (Salute to Kansas) -- Not to be confused with "The Kansas Wildcats"

As mentioned, three pieces included in this collection are not marches. They are:
1. Pushing On
2. We Are Coming
3. When the Boys Come Sailing Home

(The Amazon track list incorrectly states that this set contains "Matt Morgan's Living Pictures" instead of "Pushing On". However, the list of realaudio sample tracks is correct.)

The quality of the recordings (digitally cleaned/remastered from the original LPs) is excellent, for the most part. There are better versions of some of these marches available on CDs here and there, but for the vast majority of these marches, this collection is the best version available at the date of this review.

Listeners looking for a truly complete collection of Sousa marches will be disappointed at the missing twenty-three marches; nevertheless, the high quality and the fact that most of Sousa's marches are included here means that this collection is the best available outside of Asia. Four out of five stars.

Hi
This album also lacks The Honored Dead
Bob Morecook

These are mostly decent renditions of a huge assortment of Sousa marches--though I must say they do tend to sound a bit routine, after listening for a not-so-long while. The biggest problem with this recording, though, resides in the conjunction of two shortcomings: not surprisingly, the sonics are quite variable, ranging from fair to very good (probably reflecting different producers, or sound engineers, or recording equipment, across time); this wouldn't be such a drawback were it not for the second shortcoming--specifically, the fact that the compilers of the set apparently tried to disguise the sonic variability by indiscriminately mixing the selections together! Thus, the listener is treated to three or four tracks with fairly good sonics, then is suddenly confronted with a sonically substandard recording--which sounds worse than ever, owing to the contrast with what came before! It would've been vastly preferable had this set been compiled by date of recording, so that the sonics would sound fairly uniform across more than just a few tracks .... Or if not by that mode, then at least by SOME method, for goodness sakes; for, as it is, I can't detect any: the individual marches are arranged in no apparent order whatsoever across the five discs--neither by date of recording, nor by date of composition, nor even alphabetically! It feels quite as though the producer cast all of the titles into a hat, then pulled them out, one-by-one, and burned the performances to disc in the resulting, purely serendipitous, "order". And the result feels like, and indeed is, a mish-mash. No wonder the set is out of production! Walking Frog, you really ought to've planned better.