Search - Frankie Yankovic :: Best of Frankie Yankovic

Old treasures available again

Bill Smythe | Chicago | 08/08/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Because these tracks come from Sony, the current owner of the original Columbia masters, there is no deterioration of sound quality compared to the original vinyls. Some tracks come from 45- or 78-rpm singles from the 1940s and 1950s; others originally appeared on LPs. There are some goodies here. Smile Sweetheart Smile and You Are My Sunshine, for example, are superior to versions recorded later. Also included is the definitive version of Cafe Polka, from the 1957 album Frankie Yankovic's TV Polkas -- the version with tons of reverb, where the bass player goes wild during the non-vocal sections. Only three tracks are stereo -- Sony has had the good sense not to "stereo" the monophonic originals. This is a re-release which, for a change, I can recommend heartily. I still wish, of course, that Sony would choose to re-release COMPLETE versions of all the original LPs. I would like to see, for starters, the four albums Polka Night, TV Polkas, Polkas in Hi-Fi, and Polka Hop available as a two-CD set, at a reasonable price, with the tracks in the same order as originally. That's too much to hope for, I suppose.

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