Customer Reviews

Very Best of

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If you are expecting to hear the same recordings you heard as a teenager in the 1950s, this is not the CD you want.

Guess I should have checked this one more closely-not the original recordings. Although the sound is better, these renditions sound like a modern performance he might have done in Las Vegas backed up by a casino band. I feel like I got ripped off on this one

The cover on this MCA disc says "Eddie's first CD". Perhaps for them it was, but it contains remakes of some of Eddie's early hits at a later time in his career. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Here he feels free to give more of an interpretation of the songs which I enjoyed. His voice is somwhat deeper but he can still belt out the high notes and at times he does his (in)famous Jolson "imitation". What I missed most was the Hugo Winterhalter Orchestral accompanyments. The unnamed orchestra on this CD is adequate, but nowhere near the great arrangements of the original--especially on "Wish You were Here". If you can pick up a used copy of this CD as I did for the songs I did not have in my collection, you get your money's worth. Otherwise stick to the original versions of the hits which are available from RCA and Taragon. They really show why Eddie Fisher was the most popular male singer of the early 1950's.

This CD is identified as Eddie Fisher's first CD and as other reviewers have noted that may have caused some confusion as these songs are not the original versions he did in the 50s. In the early 1960s Randy Wood of Dot Records won a bidding contest for Fisher's services, getting him to leave RCA, though Eddie would eventually return there. Wood had him rerecord his big hits for an LP entitled When I Was Young, and those recordings account for 7 of the cuts on this CD, including such wonderful hits as Oh, My Papa, Lady of Spain, Wish You Were Here and Any Time. The originals are, not surprisingly, available on an RCA CD called Eddie Fisher - All Time Greatest Hits, Vol. I, though no Vol. 2 was ever done.

The balance of the songs are from 2 other Dot LPs, Eddie Fisher Today and Young and Foolish, and are Eddie's initial recorded efforts of those songs. From the Today LP are Call Me Irresponsible, If I Loved You, Try to Remember and Sunrise, Sunset. Only the title song comes from the Young and Foolish LP. All the songs are superb. Eddie's recording of Call Me Irresponsible easily betters the big hit recording from Jack Jones, and Fisher's Sunrise, Sunset has become the standard of this so frequently recorded tune. And his Young and Foolish is really impressive with wonderful orchestral backing.

As for those 7 Fifties hits, one can hear how Eddie's voice lowered a bit from the original recordings, but they are no less impressive and perhaps in some cases, especially Lady of Spain, these cuts may be even better than their original versions. This is a terrific CD well worth having, and both the RCA and Dot versions of Eddie's colossal 50's hits deserve to be in your Fisher collection.

When these songs were recorded Eddie Fisher was in peak voice. No, Oh My Papa and others are NOT the originals but these recodings sound equal or better. There are simply no finer recordings available by anyone of Try To Remember and If I Loved You. Sample them and see for yourself. I wish they had locked Eddie Fisher in a room when he could sing like this and forced him to record five more albums. He never sounded better.