give these guys a spotlight !!! - Capitol Collectors Series gives us this fine installment of great hits and ballads by The Lettermen. The Lettermen are definitely one of my very favorite groups from the 1960s and Capitol does great justice to them here with excellent sound quality and artwork. The album starts with The Way You Look Tonight, The Lettermen play with some of the key modulations and it works wonders for this classic love song. The Lettermen could take any song and put their own stamp on it with their incredible style, and The Way You Look Tonight is a perfect example of this. This is anything but elevator music! When I Fall In Love features The Lettermen singing very sweetly, and they harmonize to perfection as well. The musical arrangement is very lush and it complements The Lettermen very well. Great!Turn Around, Look At Me is easily a major highlight of this fine album, The Lettermen do this up right with style and grace and I m very impressed. They handle tempo changes so well and the strings help to mark the best. The theme from A Summer Place also gets a royal treatment from this fine group, they perform this classic tune with heart and soul, and just one listen proves just how great this group really was. Listen also for The Lettermen to make good on Sealed With A Kiss, this gets a faster tempo than I m used to but it still holds its own very well. Sealed With A Kiss is a highlight of this album. In addition, I Only Have Eyes For You sounds fresh and new again when these men sing it with all their hearts and soul, they croon this beautifully and the melody is very pretty. There s also a strong live medley of Goin Out Of My Head and Can t Take My Eyes Off Of You, the group enjoys a great rapport with their adoring audience. Put Your Head On My Shoulder is a very romantic tune that The Lettermen infuse with so much passion, this works well for this number. The strings also sound very good on Put Your Head On My Shoulder. Everything Is Good About You has a `60s pop music flavor to it that makes this tune shine when The Lettermen sing it, and I really like Everything Is Good About You.Oh My Love is a cover of a wonderful George Harrison tune, this would make George very proud! The album ends with a solid performance of If You Feel The Way I Do and it leaves you wanting more--excellent!The Lettermen were a wonderful, special group that moved the hearts of so many people, and their CDs still sell well today. I highly recommend this CD for their fans, and this is also a fine starter CD for people just getting to know the wonderful artistry of The Lettermen.
Sentimental supreme melodic ecstasy :) - Remember going steady? This definitely takes anyone back to high school and college when reminicing about the sixties. This sound was the consummate in romance. I love all of the physical attributes of this music. It seems so NOT fitting in the internet dating of today with myspace and facebook! :) Wow, what the youth are missing with all of the wonderful, subtle, small nuances of relationships. Too bad. Very unique. Who writes this way anymore? You know....your head on my shoulder,turn around and look at me, the way you look tonight, can t take my eyes off of you, you are soooo warm, sealed with a kiss, the torn tickets in half in Traces and Memories and it just goes on and on and on....my goodness they sure were touchy feely...weren t they? :) These guys put the eaaaaaase in easy listening. Smooth as the soda fountain sundae! All of the songs are just geat, you have, Phil Spector at the height of his talent (before now going mad) Lennon, Paul Anka etc..it just doesn t get any better for this era of music.
GREAT CD FULL OF THE LETTERMEN S HITS - This is an amazing CD and how can you not like the Lettermen. I saw them perform last year and could not believe how good they still are. I had to have one of their CD s, so after much deliberation I chose this one and love, love, love it. There are 23 songs and I have no favorite. I love them all. Get it, guys!!
Marvelous Harmonizing Trio - But Collectors Left Wanting - When putting this one together for The Capitol Collectors series producer Ron Furmanek didn t quite take into consideration the wants of the significant portion of music lovers known as completist collectors.We are that anal-retentive part of the demography who simply have to have all charted hits for selected eras, and in this instance three legitimate Top 100 hits by The Lettermen were left off in favour of one B-side and a couple of singles that failed to chart.The three missing hits from among the 20 they scored are: Where Or When which made it to # 98 Billbord Pop Hot 100 in January 1964, Hang On Sloopy which peaked at # 18 Adult Contemporary (AC)/# 93 Hot 100 in April 1970, and She Cried, which topped out at a solid # 6 AC and # 73 Hot 100 in June 1970.Why Mr. Furmanek did this, and why he included the uncharted B-side of Where Or When - [Be My Girl] - instead of the hit, which wasn t even among their best at # 98 Hot 100 in January 1964, is not explained because the insert contains no liner notes whatsoever. It does, on the other hand, provide a complete discography of the 20 selections, and there are some very nice photos of the trio from L.A. - Tony Butala, Jim Pike, and Bob Engemann - including album, EP and singles cover reproductions.Now that I got my gripes out of the way, let me hasten to add that the sound quality is excellent on the other 17 hits, all included here, beginning with their first - The Way You Look Tonight [# 3 AC/# 13 Hot 100 in the fall of 1961] to their last Hot 100, Love [# 8 AC/# 42 Hot 100 in late 1971 and written by John Lennon].For the record, they also posted another 11 Adult Contemporary hits, the last coming in 1975 (You Are My Sunshine Girl - # 28 in July), four of which also scored on the Hot 100 bubble under charts.Very popular at colleges and universities with their tight, harmonizing vocals, mostly romantic standards, they actually started out with Warner Brothers in 1960 before moving over to Capitol where, in 1961 and 1962, they put five songs into the Billboard Top 100 [tracks 1, 3, 4, 5 and 7].Shut out in 1963, and with the wonderful [and missing] Where Or When getting buried by The Beatles et al early in 1964, it looked for a time that they might have become another of the many victims of the British Invasion, as nothing else that year or in the first half of 1965 could get them back on the charts.But their obvious appeal eventually shone through when The Theme From A Summer Place rose to # 2 AC/# 16 Hot 100 in July of 1965. They then went on to rack up thirteen more [including a change in personnel in 1968 when Pike s brother Gary took over from Engemann] before a drastically-changing music scene caught up to them in the mid-1970s.Even so, The Lettermen hold the distinction of being the # 1 Adult Contemporary vocal group of the 1960s, and you only have to sample this album to see why.
Neat album - I enjoyed this album and its classic songs. This is a good recording and my favorite song is When I Fall in Love. If you like the good old-time love songs, this album is for you.