Memories of You

This seven-CD set would rate even higher, if only it weren't for the same problems that mar the preceding Bear Family volume, covering the early years of Rosemary Clooney's career. She had one of the great voices of 1950s pop and jazz music, and when she's doing jazz -- as with Duke Ellington here, on the material off of the Blue Rose album -- or the sophisticated pop that makes up most of her set on the live album from the London Palladium, she's beyond compare: playful, seductive, and totally beguiling musically. And there are other worthwhile tracks here, various singles and B-sides that require no explanation or excuses, and are worth their weight in gold -- and certainly worth what Bear Family asks for this set. But at the time, in the mid-'50s, Columbia Records and pop A&R chief Mitch Miller weren't content with Clooney doing good music -- not when she had a knack for appealing to the public with all kinds of silly novelty songs that sold even better. And so a little too much of this box is made up of novelty tunes, plus various recordings of children's songs -- which are charming, but also an acquired taste -- and Christmas songs, to be able to recommend it on an unqualified basis, despite the worth of everything else, plus the killer sound and the beautiful hardcover book that comes with it. Ironically, for the first few years after it was released, this was the best selling of Bear Family's three Clooney boxes, because of the presence of the complete songs from Blue Rose, which was unavailable any other way on CD until 2003 -- and it's still the only way to get the complete Palladium live album on CD. But purchasers should be aware that there's a huge difference in the nature of the music on at least half of this collection from what one gets on those two classic releases and the best of her singles. ~ Bruce Eder|