1961-1962 Marty Paich Sessions

I can't add much to the other reviews, but I'm writing to comment that the fidelity is excellent on this release even though the label is obscure. Sounds like they found some very good tape sources. Sammy is in excellent voice throughout these sessions and the musicianship is stellar. You can't go wrong when you combine Marty Paich with top West Coast jazz musicians who also did a lot of session work for other projects.Finally, they did not skimp on the liner notes. They are informative and there are some nice photos. Highly recommended for fans of Sammy Davis Jr. and West Coast jazz players.

*The following review contains speculations about the product, and the assumptions made about the source material for music presented here are strictly that, assumptions and speculation, and cannot be confirmed unless the company who produced the CD comes out and says so themselves. Please treat this as speculation and not fact.*The 50 year-copyright expiration rule in the UK has finally opened access for Sammy Davis Jr.'s early "Reprise Records" output to begin being reissued in various outlets by various companies. Earlier this year we got a less extensive Sammy/Marty Paich CD by a different company because of the expiration, and now we've been given a wonderful expansion in the form of this wonderful new 2-CD collection.I'm going to begin with the positives of this set, as there are definitely many to consider!To start with: the music. This era presents Sammy in arguably his best voice, and represents the best/most artistic of his output for Reprise records. 4.5 full albums are presented on this CD: "The Wham of Sam", "Sammy Belts the Best of Broadway", "What Kind of Fool Am I? and Other Show Stoppers", "As Long As She Needs Me", and the 2nd side of "The Sammy Davis Jr. All-Star Spectacular", the songs without impressions.These tracks are some of the finest Sammy ever recorded, his phrasing brilliant and his voice in terrific form. This is very much helped by the brilliant arrangements of Marty Paich (and the other fine arrangers included here), and for the price the CD is to get all these albums in one? It's hard to pass up.The packaging of the CD looks amazing. The design is great, and the 20 page booklet is a delight, with extensive biographies of both Davis and Paich, reviews of the albums presented, lots of photographs, session material, and more! A lot of care seemed to be put into making sure it looked as good as it possibly could, and I was very pleased with the final product.The sound quality: for the most part all but 5 tracks sound great (more on that below). These remastering sound about the same as the ones used in the Collector's Choice reissues of the albums which varied at times so some tracks sound better than others, but for the most part its a good listening experience.Overall positives? Great price for 4.5 fantastic albums, mostly good quality, and a great design and packaging.Now onto the negatives...The first negative may have just been a personal error, but, the plastic holding the jewel case together became completely cracked and the CD casing fell apart very shortly after opening. I don't know if it was cheap plastic, if something had already shifted by the time I received it from shipping, I'm not sure. I have a 2nd copy on the way so hopefully I'll have an answer to that soon.The second negative: The 5 aforementioned "lesser quality" tracks.If you noticed some of the marketing for this CD made a point of mentioning the 4 tracks that have never been issued on CD before...if you're familiar with the CDs that have come from the 50-year copyright expiration in the UK you know most of them seem to use previously made masters of songs from previously released CDs or digital files (I, again, cannot confirm that is what is used here). All but those 4 tracks have prior masters available so, if they did indeed use previously remastered versions (which again I cannot confirm), they didn't have any versions of those tracks from their original master tapes.As such, it sounds as though (AGAIN, I canNOT confirm this) vinyl transfers were made for these 4 tracks (plus "Something's Coming" which suffers from some crackling and needle distortion it seems). Now for the most part the tracks sound fine, but there's a notable quality difference between the previously released tracks and this track. In particular, "A Kiss For Christmas" sounds very, very poor. It sounds like too much noise reduction was applied and the source file must have been poor to begin with. "One More Time" was recorded with terrible sound to begin with, so the version here sounds accurate to the original recording. The final two, "The Fool I Used to Be" and "Everybody Calls Me Joe" sound absolutely fine.I must note that this is not a huge detractor of the product if it is indeed what they did, again just speculation, this is common for many Sammy CDs released nowadays, but I feel it deserves to be mentioned that it doesn't SEEM like these came from original master tapes.Final verdict:Do I recommend this CD?Yes absolutely!All negatives aside, this is a great, extensive collection of some of the best recorded output of Sammy's entire career on records. And to have it all on 2CDs for a very reasonable price? I highly recommend it. Plus, you do at least get digital copies of those 4 hard to find singles regardless of their sound quality.The sad truth is: this is the only way we're likely to get releases of this material anymore, so if we must accept the occasional poor sounding track, or if they must only exist because of the 50-year copyright rule, so be it. There deserves to be new Sammy releases and as long as the company is putting care into the product, as much as they can at least, they deserve to be supported.I look forward to the future Sammy releases we get from the UK if they have the same care used here, theres some great material that can finally be reissued!

Sammy is one of my favorites - and this is one of his best CD collections. Two CDs. Every song is great. It is a more consistent and subtle collection of music as compared with some Sammy Davis Jr. albums. Very listenable all the way through - every song. I especially like the arrangements - creative, subtle (as I said), and well done. Five stars.

What do you need to know is it has the track Candyman. And this recording is much much more than a snack!

Great collection of Sammy with a terrific west coast band of top studio jazz men.Highly recommended.

love it thanks!

At my age I'm hard on my way of becoming the man who has everything, and since one rare artist was yet conspicuously missing from my collection, I recently bought an older Sepia CD featuring Sammy Davis, admittedly after first having my interest aroused by a newspaper article on how Davis had outshone Sinatra during a Dutch tour in the eighties. I hithertofore had given Sammy Davis a miss thinking that he was a bit of an also-ran, lifting on Ol' Blue Eyes' coat tails, a good all round entertainer with an unquenchable penchant for clowning and impersonating ("Tourette's Syndrome set to music", Will Friedwald said of his antics), but not much else. The Sepia CD, containing two complete albums from the mid-to-late fifties, openend my eyes, so when at German online seller JPC I saw this attractively priced twofer, the order button was pressed and voilà, two days later this little gem fell on my doormat. And oh my word, how could I never before have noticed how great a singer this diminutive guy was! Just randomly picking some tracks on disc I was hit like a ton of bricks by Climb Every Mountain, which towards the end had me in tears, my family looking on in mild surprise. And Marty Paich, no slouch himself, had me in stitches with his spoof on Guy Lombardo in Back in Your Own Backyard. And so this collection abounds with delightful surprises. True, when Davis cuts loose, ragging the scale and doing his Tourette-bit, he easily gets on one's nerves, but these instances are rare here. I trust Paich and a sensible producer must have seen to that.A fellow reviewer on Amazon.com had some caveats concerning production standards on some of the tracks (the singles and one promo-single), but these are truly minor quibbles. We are talking about recordings of 55-year vintage, so not all may be as perfect as we have come to expect of modern productions (and even then balance etc. may not always be the bee's knees). It is obviously a work of love, with high-quality booklet and photos, complete discographical info, extensive liner notes, even the original liner notes, where available, of the original Reprise LPs. To get, at this price, 2.5 hours' worth of one of America's greatest singers of the Great American Songbook at the apex of his game, is a wonderful surprise for a man who thought he had seen and heard almost everything. Thanks, Sammy, for putting me straight.