3209. V.A.: The Greatest Hits of the 30s
3210. V.A.: The Greatest Hits of the 50s & 60s
3211. V.A.: The Decade of the '40s
3212. V.A.: The Decade of the '50s
3213. V.A.: 20 Fabulous No 1's of the 50's
3214. V.A.: The Best of the Gold! Vol. 2
3215. V.A.: The Best of the Gold! Vol. 4
3216. V.A.: Songs for a Summer Night
3217. V.A.: One Hit Wonders of the 50's
3218. Hachidai Nakamura: Rainy Night in Tokyo
3219. V.A.: From Italy With Love
3220. V.A.: This Is Hawaiian Music
3221. Sonny Kamahele and Mel Abe: Beautiful Hawaiian Steel Guitar
3222. V.A.: Son of Tipperary: Original Songs of World War I, Volume II
3223. V.A.: Greatest Folksingers of the 'Sixties
3224. V.A.: Let's Sing About Freedom!
3225. Ling Po•Tsin Ting•Liu Yun: The Three Smiles
3226. Earle Doud and Alen Robin: "Welcome to the LBJ Ranch!"
Mixworthy: "Danke Schoen," Wayne Newton, #3210; "Singing the Blues," Guy Mitchell,
#3214; "Heartaches by the Number," Guy Mitchell, #3215; "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu
(Volare)," Domenico Modungo, #3219; "You Were on My Mind," Ian & Sylvia; "Pack Up
Your Sorrows," Richard and Mimi Farina; and "Violets of Dawn," Eric Andersen, #3223.
The end of the pop compilations, with a couple of loose ends that are neither pop nor
compilations. #3209-#3221 is a little place I like to call Squaresville, while #3222/
3/4 amounts to a folk-gospel section I should probably be filing back with country and
blues. I'm not sure what #3225 is; it looks like it might be classical, but it's not.
#3226 is my comedy section--at least it was for a long time, and when I later added
LPs by Bill Cosby and the Firesign Theatre into the regular alphabetical section, I
never thought to move this one over. The Squaresville songs I've listed are all pret-
ty great--I mistakenly listed Ray Price's cover of "Singing the Blues" earlier, rather
than Guy Mitchell's original, so I need to go back and delete that. From Italy With
Love is a neat double put out by Capitol that I found at the Vinyl Museum not too long
before it closed down; along with familiar stuff like Dean Martin and "Nel Blu Dipin-
to Di Blu," it consists of over-the-top Italian pop hits like the ones heard in Mean
Streets. Songs for a Summer Night is the last album I'll be listing from those that I
took out of my parents' collection: a Columbia double ("24 Great Stars - 25 Wonderful
Songs") with everyone from Mitch Miller, Frankie Laine, and Patti Page to Jerry Vale,
Leslie Uggams, and the Brothers Four. It must have come out in '65 or '66--there seems
to be some vague acknowledgement in the Dion and (pre-Atlantic) Aretha Franklin cuts
that the world might be changing, but it's an album that over the years came to repre-
sent for me a symbolic dividing line between my parents' record collection and the
collection I was assembling for myself. I'm glad I decided to move it out of theirs
and into my own. If I'm remembering correctly, there were still copies racked on the
wall in Sam's third-floor junk room right up until the late '70s.
________________________________________________________________________________
3227. V.A.: The Tuneful Twenties
3228. V.A.: Leonard Feather Presents Encyclopedia of Jazz on Records: Vol. 1 - The
Twenties/Vol. 2 - The Thirties
3229. V.A.: Leonard Feather Presents Encyclopedia of Jazz on Records: Vol. 5
3230. V.A.: Big Bands Uptown, Volume 1 (1931-1943)
3231. V.A.: The Jazz Makers
3232. V.A.: Billie, Ella, Lena, Sarah
3233. V.A.: The Best of the Big Band Singers
3234. V.A.: The Great Big Band Vocalists
3235. V.A.: The Big Bands Are Back
3236. V.A.: Bluebird Sampler '88
3237. V.A.: The Bebop Boys
3238. V.A.: A Decade of Jazz Volume Two (1949-1959)
3239. V.A.: Jazz Studio 2 from Hollywood
3240. V.A.: Jam Session
3241. V.A.: Outskirts of Town
3242. V.A.: The Manhattan Jazz Septette
3243. V.A.: Jazztime U.S.A.: The Best of Bob Thiele's Classic Jam Sessions of the
1950's
3244. V.A.: Jazz at the Philharmonic in Europe
3245. V.A.: Finger Poppin' Volume One
Mixworthy: "All or Nothing at All," Frank Sinatra with Harry James and His Orchestra,
and "I'm Beginning to See the Light," Kitty Kallen with Harry James and His Orchestra,
#3233; "Skylark," Harry James with Helen Forest, #3234.
First half of jazz compilations, same old story--I'm glad I have these records, but
I'm just not the person to write anything of interest about them. The three that have
gotten the most play--which would have been many years ago, and really wasn't that
significant an amount--are The Great Big Band Vocalists (I was mistaken last entry:
this is the last of the records that came out of my parents' collection), and #3231
and #3232, which are old Columbia pressings in very good shape. I listed Maxine Sul-
livan's rendition of "Skylark" earlier, but it's a song I like enough to warrant a
second version. As I was scanning track listings, I noticed that The Big Bands Are
Back, a double with 20 songs, is ordered alphabetically by artist, almost certainly
the only record I have like that. Dates are provided for the two Harry James songs
listed above, and, reading between the lines, a story starts to emerge: the Sinatra
(August 31, 1939) must be pre-Luca Brasi, the Kitty Kallen (November 14, 1944) post-
Luca.
________________________________________________________________________________
3246. V.A.: Bethlehem's Finest Volume 3
3247. V.A.: Bethlehem's Finest Volume 4
3248. V.A.: Bethlehem's Finest Volume 5
3249. V.A.: Bethlehem's Finest Volume 6
3250. V.A.: Bethlehem's Finest Volume 11
3251. V.A.: Bethlehem's Finest Volume 12
3252. V.A.: Bethlehem's Finest Volume 13
3253. V.A.: Atlantic Jazz: West Coast
3254. V.A.: Atlantic Jazz: Soul
3255. V.A.: Atlantic Jazz: The Avant-Garde
3256. V.A.: The Impulse! Collection
3257. V.A.: The Feeling of Jazz
3258. V.A.: Fire Into Music
3259. V.A.: New Music: Second Wave
3260. V.A.: New American Music
3261. V.A.: Windham Hill Records Sampler '88
3262. V.A.: Windham Hill Records Sampler '89
3263. V.A.: Piano Two
3264. V.A.: The World of Private Music
Mixworthy: "Stolen Moments," Oliver Nelson, and "The Awakening," Ahmad Jamal, #3256;
"The Creator Has a Master Plan (Part One)," Pharoah Sanders, #3258; "Close Cover,"
Wim Mertens, #3261.
Another end-point of sorts: all that's left are 12-inches, classical, and box sets...
I got the Bethlehems for something like $1.99 at the Yonge St. A&A's, a store I've
barely mentioned in this survey. It was Toronto's second biggest retailer through the
'70s and into the '80s after (and right next door to) Sam's, but it really didn't
have any personality to speak of. I can't remember a single memorable purchase I made
there, and even though I'd almost always duck in for a few minutes after finishing at
Sam's, I'm having a hard time getting any kind of mental picture of the layout. It
was at A&A's where I got my copies of the Ramones' End of the Century and R.E.M.'s
Murmur autographed. Chances are I bought them next door at Sam's...Oliver Nelson's
"Stolen Moments" sits just below Coltrane and Kind of Blue (and alongside Bill Evans'
"Some Other Time" and not a whole lot else) as the only jazz music that I ever got
lost in as deeply as my favourite pop music. I continue to play it periodically if I
ever need to clear my head of all bad thoughts. Serenity now...I like Ahmad Jamal's
"The Awakening" because it reminds me of Vince Guaraldi's music for A Charlie Brown
Christmas, and I like Pharoah Sanders' "The Creator Has a Master Plan" because it
reminds me of "A Love Supreme." The Gun Club lopped almost 12 minutes off of the lat-
ter and renamed it "The Master Plan" for The Las Vegas Story, the most disrespectful
transgression against a pharoah this side of Victor Buono...I'm glad I took a second
to look over the two Windham Hill LPs; I'd forgotten all about "Close Cover," which I
liked to play on my CIUT show. I don't know why I decided to file new age compilations
at the end of jazz, rather than with classical. I want to make clear that I'm not sug-
gesting any kind of a connection between the two. I know how defensive Willy Ackerman
fans can get about that sort of thing.