Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great hit collection by a zesty singer, July 27, 2002
This a GREAT CD for both young people just interested in great American singing and Clooney as well as for Clooney's longtime fans. Anyone who has liked or just discovered that he/she likes Rosemary Clooney will play a lot of it over and over. It is not a mere nostalgia piece. Most of it holds up quite well. In fact, you could call it The Good, the Bad (in the modern sense as "GREAT") and the ugly (as in "UGLY.").
The CD, comprised of 16-pristine 1950s recordings, contains Clooney's biggest commercial hits from Columbia and a few bonuses. It artfully displays not only the commercial Clooney who could take a silly song shoved down her talented throat and turn it into a hit -- but foreshadows the later critically acclaimed Comeback Clooney, whose career was tragically cut short by her death from cancer. Here are a few of the songs that fall into categories such as:--The GOOD: "This Ole House" still holds up as a lively FUN novelty number. `Come On-A-My-House'' is the silly 1951 song Clooney balked at recording until Columbia honcho Mitch Miller threatened to fire her. So she recorded it, it was a huge hit and made her a star. She makes it good with her verve and humor punching every silly word.
--The GREAT: `Mangos', a wonderful, beautiful tune where each word and note is given pizzazz, sensuality and humor. In "Tenderly" and "Hey There" she displayed her respect for lyrics and notes. In "Mambo Italiano' Clooney's zest, turns a zippy song into a throatily erotic and good humored classic worth several listenings. When she ends it with a
"That's-a-nice!" and the all-male chorus gives a final "UHHH!" we agree. In "Sophisticated Lady' With the Duke Ellington orchestra she shows the potential realized in later years. Special treat: a super show-biz sounding version of Cole Porter's
"From This Moment On," previously unreleased in the US -- with a great smash ending.
--The UGLY: No question. " Botch-A-Me'. Clooney is very enthusiastic doing this entry in her best-selling Italian novelty song series forced on her by Columbia's Miller. But the song's truly excruciating lyrics (and tune) make you suspect she's really thinking: "I can't believe I'm singing this
..." This CD deserves five stars due to its great variety (literally something for everyone), orchestrations, production quality...and ALMOST deserves a star (or two!) taken off for the pain inflicted on listeners by Botch-A-Me...but let's not blame that on Rosey! If you're just discovering Clooney due to news stories about her recent death (and her relation to a certain popular actor) this CD will delight you enough so that you'll want to order her more recent, critically acclaimed CDs.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The elegant and dramatic vocal phrasings of Rosemary Clooney, April 24, 2003
"16 Biggest Hits" is a misnomer as a title because these are not, literally, the 16 biggest hits in the music career of Rosemary Clooney. Two of her Top 10 hits, "Beautiful Brown Eyes" and "The Night Before Christmas Song," are not included, which proves the point. But it is still a solid collection with a couple of tracks you might not have in your music library that would well be worth the adding. My top choice would be the duet "Sisters," the Irving Berlin song from the classical holiday film "White Christmas," which Rosemary sings with her sister Betty Clooney. These songs are taken from her successful years recording for Columbia in teh 1950s after leaving the Tony Pastor Orchestra (and her sister) but before switching to RCA Victor in 1957. Included on the play list are all four of her Number 1 singles, "Come on-a My House," "Half as Much," "Hey There," and "This Ole House." There is also the Oscar winning song "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening," recorded with Harry James and His Orchestra as well as "Sophisticated Lady," done with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra. The main thing here is that these are all songs that show the strengths of Rosemary Clooney as a lyric interpreter of song. With her it is the phrasing more than the singing. For that reason I have always enjoyed listening to Clooney sing rather than watching her in a film, because the drama was always in the singing and not the way she looked (invariably cool, calm, and collected). This is one of the reasons why, like Frank Sinatra, she could continue to sing effectively for audiences even after her voice started to decline.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Early fifties pop, October 30, 2004
Rosemary's music of the early fifties reflected the times in which they were recorded, featuring some truly brilliant songs culled from a variety of sources interspersed with the occasional silly song..
The set includes five of Rosemary's seven UK hits, the omissions being Man and Where will the baby's dimple be, but neither of them matter in a collection like this. The five UK hits included here are This ole house, Mambo Italiano (both number hits), Half as much, Hey there (both top five hits) and Mangos (a minor hit). This ole house, the song most readily identified with Rosemary by UK fans, returned to the very top of the UK charts when revived by rock'n'roll revivalist Shakin' Stevens in 1981.
In America, Rosemary had many more hits but although this is an American compilation, some big hits are omitted to make way for less obvious but welcome recordings. The really big hits are all here including the number one hits Come on a my house, This ole house, Hey there and Half as much, together with the number two hit Botch-a-me, a novelty song that really doesn't stand the test of time well but the public must have loved it at the time to take it that high.
The biggest omission is a Christmas song that made the top ten, but I'm happy with that. I love Christmas music but I prefer it to be kept separate from other recordings, especially where the singer has recorded enough Christmas songs to fill at least half a CD. This particular recording is on Rosemary's CD, Songs from White Christmas and other yuletide favorites. The next biggest hit missing is Beautiful brown eyes, which almost made the top ten on Billboard, peaking at eleven. It might have made the top ten in another American chart. While this omission is more of a disappointment, it can be found on the more recent compilation Country Rose. That set includes twenty-one tracks from the early fifties, drawing on Rosemary's country-influenced recordings. This ole house and Half as much (both of which were originally country songs) are also to be found on that set, but they are the only duplicates. So you can rectify those two omissions by purchasing Songs from White Christmas and Country Rose.
Rosemary eventually became a highly respected jazz singer and clues to her later success can be found here via the inclusion of her covers of In the cool cool cool of the evening, Sophisticated lady and Blues in the night. But mainly, this is about Rosemary's early pop hits.
While this is not a definitive hits collection, the essential hits British and American hits are all here so it's a good starting point. If you wish to explore Rosemary's music from this period further, there are plenty of other CD's available, a couple of which I've mentioned.
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