Search - Spike Jones :: Essential Collection

Two and a half hours of Spike Jones

Ted Hering | Redding, CA USA | 01/27/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This double-CD set contains 50 tracks, representing Spike's output from 1941 to 1947. Most of the tracks (40) are from Spike's RCA Victor records; the rest (10) are from military-issue "V-Discs." You'll find Spike's biggest hits, and some very obscure stuff as well (such as the weak "My Pretty Girl"). Curiously, two of the songs are duplicated from disc #1 to disc #2.



I'm amazed at how the noise from the original 78 rpm records has been totally removed. The trade-off is that sometimes the sound is a bit bassy, or even "hollow" (like an MP3 file with a low sample rate). On the other hand, some of the other tracks are very good. (This is probably the best master of "Chloe" I've heard.) But here's a good decision: None of the tracks have ADDED any sound to the original recordings, such as reverberation or "stereo" effect.



The album notes are brief, perhaps rehashed from Wikipedia. But the song credits (soloists and composers) are thorough.



The band picture on the front cover was taken in 1957, 10 years after the latest recording session in this set.

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