Customer Reviews

Instrumental Gems of the Fifties

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

 

 

A truly amazing collection of wonderful music from the pre-rock days! This album has it all: Frank Chacksfields "Ebb tide" (1953), Nelson Riddle's Lisbon Antigua (#1 in 1956) and there's even the immortal, enchanting "April in Portugal" (#1 in 1955). Not to mention Percy Faith's "Delicado" - what a delicious toe-tapper it still is! Makes me go back to the days when really enjoyable music became big hits. OK, I'm pushing 60, so I'm prejudiced. But for a guy my age, this collection is priceless. If you're part of the post-war generation, don't hesitate, buy this CD. You won't regret it, instead, you will play it over and over. Yeah, it's true, they don't make hits like this anymore...

These disks capture - with the original artists - the heart of the music that warmed me in the 50's. The selections - held in the fairly consistent mood that was popular instrumentals of the 50's yield over an hour of timetravel listening to the songs as they were first played. I'll be sending these out to folks for Christmas this year. These are meant to be shared.

As a couple of other reviewers state, this CD set has a couple of items that I wouldn't call "instrumental." One, Percy Faith/Felicia Sanders on "The Song from Moulin Rouge," happens to be one of my all-time favorites, and the other, Billy Vaughn/Ken Nordine on "The Shifting Whispering Sands," is a fiendishly hard to find piece, especially if you are looking for the whole thing (it ran about twice as long as a typical '50s hit!) so I have to forgive the producers for their lapses.



Some of the songs on here overlap another CD I reviewed earlier, "Big Hits of the '50s," and I'd rather not have the overlap, but this is something hard to avoid these days. And it has some truly hard to find pieces (like the abovementioned "Shifting Whispering Sands," and the Dick Hyman version of "Moritat," which sounds totally different from the versions appearing under the name of "Mack the Knife"), so that even with that overlap, I'm glad I have both CDs in my collection.



Anyone who likes the pre-rock'n'roll era's music is sure to find some favorites on here. There are a couple of pieces where I'd consider that the version on this CD set is not the top version (It has Ralph Marterie's version of "Skokiaan" rather than the Bulowayo Sweet Rhythms Band's, and certainly Les Baxter's is not the definitive version of "Unchained Melody" -- but if you are stressing instrumentals, Baxter's would be the one you'd select, of course). But even in those cases, the versions did make the charts as well as the top versions, so they can be accepted. And over all, this is a nice set to listen to.



All in all, considering all the pieces I've mentioned, as well as the last Big Band pieces to chart (the '50s are certainly after the Big Band era, but Jimmy Dorsey had a hit with "So Rare" as late as the middle of the decade! And it's on this set.) This is a great collection.

These two discs contain forty of the best records from an era that was about to be forever spoiled by "Rock n Roll".

My husband and I have been married 50 years and our daughter wanted to make a DVD of our life and the music that we had. Our song when we were going together was "Young Love" by Sonny James. I was thrilled to death when we found it and she set it to our DVD with all the pictures. We used many of the songs as they were of our "era". Thank you so very much....it was fantastic.

Someone should tell the people who put this CD set to look up the word Instrumental. It does not mean singing.

The people who be this CD out,should look up the word INTRUMENTAL.
If this word means singing. You have a CD set. Without the vocals this two CD set should have been out as a single CD.