01/20/07
COLLECTORS CHOICE (www.ccmusic.com)
SAMMY DAVIS JR./Starring (749); Sings Just for Lovers (748): At 27 years old, Davis already had 25 years in show biz under his belt when he made his first two albums. By the time you get to “Hey There” on the first album, you knew this was the mainstreaming of an artist that was bubbling under for one seriously long time. The second album was cast in the style of the day, Davis covering main pop hits but putting his own stamp on them. Recording philosophies were simply different 50 years ago. With energy and thunder to spare, Davis literally burst on the scene with these two albums and made a mark that would spark a legacy. Well worth revisiting even if it’s an artifact from well before your time.
JERRY BUTLER/Ice Man Cometh-Ice on Ice: He left the Impressions, created the Iceman persona and hooked up with what would become the creme of Philly as a way of separating himself sonically from the Chicago sound he was so much a part of. The result was two albums that were killers, plain and simple. With a bunch of songs that would be classics for him and others, this is essential sixties soul/r&b that was groundbreaking them and still fresh sounding now. These are must have sides for any R&B fan.
750
DIONNE WARWICK/Presenting (751); Anyone Who Had a Heart (752); Make Way For (753); Sensitive Sound of (754); Here I Am (755); In Paris (756); Here Where There is Love (757); On Stage and In the Movies (758); Magic of Believing (759); Love at First Sight (760): The amazing thing about 8 of the ten records in this series is that they’ve never been on cd before (actually none of these has been on cd before, but the first 8 are prime Warwick, recorded when she and Bacharach and David were the Tinker to Evers to Chance of pop, even in the face of Beatles). Right from the start, you knew they were on to something but it wasn’t until their third album, “Make Way For” that they completely hit it out of the park. That set even has “Close to You” almost a decade before Carpenters brought it home. No wonder Warwick sued Bacharach/David when they split up, she never got this kind of love again until Clive Davis put his personal stamp on her comeback. With the exception of “Magic of Believing” which was the gospel album she had the star power to break stride with and “Love at First Sight” which was her parting album for Warners recorded as the disco era was dawning, the original Scepter sides are uniformly killers. It’s clearly time to replace those patchy hits anthologies of Warwick’s Specter years with the scratchy sound and trade up to these album statements that have been cleaned up and remastered to really bring out the 3 minute masterpieces Bacharach was dropping like popcorn. If all it took was someone to put in the time remastering the original tapes, it’s criminal these were sitting in the vaults for so long.
Volume 30/Number 81
January 20, 2007
MIDWEST RECORD
830 W. Route 22 #144
Lake Zurich, IL., 60047
CHRIS SPECTOR, Editor and Publisher
(c)2007 Midwest Record