Amazing Early 60s Box: 88 Hard-To-Find Hits / Various

With a collection of 88 songs that runs almost four hours I can hardly do my usual and comment on the individual songs, but I will take some space to comment on the Early 60's Era itself. The era actually runs through 1963 but I suppose they didn't want to up the price with a fourth disc. 1963 brought in many more girl groups and was the big year for surf music, so it was a little different anyway. Maybe Hasmick Productions will put out a set that includes '63 and the transition year of 1964.THE ERA:The Early 60's have gotten an undeservedly poor reputation, mostly from a rock press that didn't exist until later, and deserves a serious critical re-assessment. Yes, the songs were often simple and the times relaxed and innocent, but there was a great deal going on musically that was very creative. There were the Brill Building composers with their New York sound that included Carole King, Burt Bacharach, Leiber & Stoller, Doc Pomus and many others. There was the R&B of Brook Benton, Ray Charles, Etta James and Sam Cooke. Motown was just getting going. The girl group sound began with Scepter's Shirelles and eventually expanded. Pop singers, often derided, actually were mostly good singers and had great production teams behind them. This included not just female stars like Connie Francis and Brenda Lee, but guys like Bobby Rydell, Jimmy Clanton, Gene Pitney, Bobby Vee, Bryan Hyland, Bobby Darin and so many others. Most of the teen idol types could really sing. There were dance crazes, none bigger than the twist, and lost of novelty records and instrumentals. It was an intensely active scene of small labels and hustling promoters, all trying to make the top of the Billboard charts in the world of teen music.How could all this be dismissed as practically nothing? It's common for a new era to dismiss the fashions and style of a previous era and that certainly played into it. But even more so, the Early 60's seemed to be the bete noire of the early rock critics who came to prominence in the late 60's. They simply hated the whole era and wrote about it with great disdain. Most of them didn't like pop music to begin with, and even the rock'n'roll of the late 50's and early 60's sounds pop in retrospect. Also, some of them were really too old to be part of the whole early 60's Top 40 music scene. They were already into jazz or classical music and could hardly be expected to be sympathetic to a music scene for teenagers.But deeper than that, I believe, lay a strong bias. The Early 60's music scene was really aimed at girls, and the critics were all guys. Nowadays you might say they had a subconscious gender bias. Sure, everybody listened to Top 40 radio, girls and boys, and both bought records. But the music industry, whose interest has always been solely money, pitched the music mainly to the girls, who seemed to be the most active and committed part of the audience. The music was softer than the rock'n'roll of 1955-57 and there were lots of dance tunes, teen queens and good-looking boy singers. One only has to look at the panning-shots of the American Bandstand audience (not the closeups which Dick Clark arranged boy-girl-boy-girl), or the audience for 1964's T.A.M.I. Show to see the overwhelming presence of females. Beatlemania was originally created by the younger part of the female audience. The impulse of much rock criticism was to favor a harder, more boy-oriented kind of music and this predominated by the late 60's. By 1970 the rock scene was almost entirely male.THIS COLLECTION:Hasmick Productions is a British oldies-oriented label that also owns Jasmine, which goes back further into nostalgia (pre-rock'n'roll). They are much like the U.S.label, Eric, which does their own "Hard To Find" song series. Both go to great care to engineer the music and provide extensive booklets. The booklet here is 27 pages, giving information by artist rather than track and listing the tracks at the end with the U.S. Billboard chart positions (not the U.K.'s). The discs are arranged by year, 1960-1962, which keeps things sounding right. In fact, on one of the most important criteria, this collection DOES sound like the Early 60's. I have made my own discs of songs not just by year but by the weeks each song was big and 1960-62 covers 18 discs (about 520 songs) and can say that they've captured the feeling of the Early 60's here. Most of this period has a country feeling with some old 50's rock'n' roll. doo-wop, R&B and novelties and that's all here. The one thing missing is any instrumentals, which were very big then. I can only assume that they chose to keep these on their instrumental collections for some academic reason; they should have included a couple. They wisely chose many big hit songs as well as more obscure ones which keeps this from being a collection of songs that no one remembers. Sure, there are songs I would have rather seen them use, even by the artists they included and artists I'd like to see here that are missing. But that's all licensing issues and all in all they've done a great job.THE SOUND:This is controversial. It always is. Especially in oldies and classical music some people will like the sound and others wont. I'm not overly particular as I've lived through so many mediums and types of sound over the decades. As long as the sound is not compressed (boxy), muffled, or tinny I find it acceptable. You have to remember that we originally heard these songs on mono home, transistor and car radios or on mono singles played on small record players or even on furniture-like Hi-Fi's. They never sounded all that great; our imaginations filled in the sound. already have all of these songs one place or another in my collection but wanted to see what they did with them. I feel they did well and everything sounds great. The real controversial thing is that these are mostly stereo. That means some are album versions not absolutely identical to the single and some have been digitally made into stereo. Some will scoff but I don't mind. I enjoy hearing them this way.Right now this is the best Early 60's set out there and a single disc doesn't really do justice to the era. For five hours of music it's a bargain, too.

I have purchased oldies on cd for years from some of the best in the business, including DCC, Rhino, Eric, Varese Sarabande and with "remastered" compilations from the big labels. On every level, this set is a jaw dropper. The sound quality is superb on every track, and this set had 50+ songs that I did not have in pristine quality. There's an equal ratio of major/minor hits along with a helping of songs that didn't chart on a national level, and so this set accomplishes two things....Gives the buyer the best sounding versions ever of the hard to find songs they love (original 45 versions, not alternates or album versions), while introducing them to gems not heard before or perhaps that fourth or fifth hit by an artist that time seemed to have forgotten. One reviewer said something about re-recordings...These are NOT re-recordings. This set has me spoiled silly, and i am ready to purchase future compilations from the Complete 60's series ......and i hope they will cover some 70's as well. I have tried looking up the company by searching "Complete 60's" and "Hasmick Productions" (as indicated on box), but no luck. Are there any more cd sets in this series available or coming up. Buy this set, even if it costs 25 bucks. It is well worth the price it and you will be dazzled by the quality of you hear.

I’d love to give this CD 5 stars but can’t because some of the songs sound digitally reprocessed, and there’s no notation in the liner notes of which ones were digitally processed to sound stereo. The one example I’ll give here is Brian Hyland’s “Sealed With A Kiss.” Listen to the left channel guitar strum at the start and note there’s a delay along with the guitar, one which you can’t filter out. If your amp has a mono button you can hear the guitar and drums sound like they’re down in a tunnel when you “mono” the song, something not present in the 45. Kudos for cleaning up the guitar strum at the start because all the versions of this song had stylus chatter underneath the strum before since they were all taken from 45. But my ears tell me this is not true stereo and it’s not compatible with mono listening. Many other songs in this collection suffer the same malady, such as “Wonderful World” from Sam Cooke, which “tunnels” when you mono it. Would be nice if there was a notation of which songs were treated in this fashion up-front. Keep in mind, I’m a retired DJ and I was always striving to make sure anything I played back on the air for FM stereo was compatible, so I always test a song to see if it sounds as crisp in mono as in stereo, and if it doesn’t, it’s no good. Having said that, I’ll have to come back later when I have more time to go through all the songs on here and list all in which I hear this digital processing so you’ll be amply warned. As a whole this is a good collection and some of the stuff is really incredible. But I’d rather see a song be mono and be pristine rather than be made to sound stereo through some kind of digitizing.One other note to make is with one of Richard Chamberlain’s songs. “All I Have To Do Is Dream” is given here in glorious stereo, and has been available for years on CD as same. But it is the album version of the song. To my knowledge, the 45 rpm version has never been on an album and was probably never mixed for stereo. There’s a difference in backup singing on the 45 versus the album. On the 45, the singers do their part in a higher octave, and that’s the way I remember the 45 when I started DJing in the 60s. The album version is wonderful stereo but the backup singing is an octave lower. Still, it’s a great song, but it’s a stretch to say this is the 45 rpm version.BTW, my copy of the CD had to be returned and is being replaced, because the jewel case had a huge piece of plastic missing at the hinge, so when I opened it all three layers of the case came apart. Be careful when you open the package. But Amazon has no problems replacing it for me.There are so many good songs in this collection, the good outweighs the bad for sure. Just know that some of the songs are digital stereo which won’t pass the muster for someone like me. They may be fine for casual listening but since I’m a serious collector, I’ll have to keep looking for better versions.I will come back and update later when I have the replacement copy at hand so I can list the digitized songs.

Very impressive selection of songs - from 1960,61 & 62. This is a high quality product with a great mix of country, blues, and Motown; it is the beginning of pop rock.... and really the start of rock and roll fusion that emerged in the late 60's going into the 70,s. I remember these songs, but forgot how important they were, and still are to the history of modern music; it is kind of the roots of many styles. I am glad to add it to my collection and it has in filled my already diverse catalogue.. it has also reintroduced me to some great sounds and artists that I had long forgot about. It is costly, but worth every penny.

its great to hear some of those forgotten songs from the past that i have enjoyedoverall a great collection of songs an the sound quality is ( should i say again GREAT )

元々はモノラルだと思われる多くの楽曲がリアルのようなステレオで蘇っています。このレーベルは、多くの楽曲を見事に今という時代に沿ったリマスタリングで蘇らせています。かなり、こだわった方がエンジニアにいるんでしょうね・・・きっと。こうして普遍のメロディを恒久的に残していく努力を惜しまないでほしいです。

Esto es un comentario no para aquellos que tienen la fortuna de poseer este disco, sino para esos otros muchos que por casualidad se detengan un día en él y puesto que Amazon.es no ofrece información suficiente del mismo, sepan a qué atenerse. Por favor, no se lo pierdan. Estamos sin duda ante uno de los mejores discos recopilatorios de todos los tiempos. Un álbum triple en el que el primer volumen se dedica al año 1960; el segundo a 1961 y el tercero a 1962. Hubo un tiempo en que el "pop" todavía ni tan siquiera tenía nombre y aquí se estaba cociendo. Tengamos en cuenta que la salida al mercado de "Love me do" de The Beatles es el 5 de octubre de 1962. Las maravillosas 88 canciones que se ofrecen aquí están todas escritas antes del advenimiento del "pop" como tal. Y las hay de todos los estilos y con todo tipo de intérpretes. Hay rarezas y temas consagrados pero bajo la premisa que define a la nunca bastante ponderada editora ERIC RECORDS que presume de "discos hechos por coleccionistas para coleccionistas". Pocas veces gastarán de mejor manera su dinero.

Alle Songs in sehr guter Qualität aufgenommen.Leider sind sehr viele in "mono" Aber es gibt auch einige Zuckerln wie zum Beispiel die Wanda Jackson mit ihrem Hit "Let's Have a Party" und Gene Pitney mit "Town without Pity" beide Interpreten das erste mal seit mehr als 50 Jahren ihrerAufzeichnung in "STEREO"! Ich habe mir eigentlich die Box wegen der Wanda gekauft in der Hoffnung das noch einige andere Songs von ihr in "stereo" wären.Leider nicht! Beim Kauf der Box vorsichtig sein denn man verlangt verschiedene Beträge !O.P.Fischer