Were you just teasing us before Paul??? Or purposely lowering our expectations to make the news sound even better???

Brilliant news for both releases.

Although I have them already, Im loving the reissue of the classic albums with additional material so New Tricks is a welcome sight ( and who doesn't love that cover?).

Does make you wonder which album they will reissue next if this is a commitment to continuing.....start speculating now!!

It will be interesting to get a bit more detail for the The Among My Souvenirs collection. Dates, sources etc

Of course this is very simple but as a community, if we want these releases to continue, we must purchase.

This is fantastic news...

As Kevin says, the "Among My Souvenirs" release will probably be the more interesting of the two, but it's great to see "New Tricks" getting the full "DeLuxe" treatment.

As for speculation about any possible future releases, the press "blurb" seems to make it clear that there won't be any more 50s material, so hopefully they might look to plugging a couple of gaps in the "Official CD Release" list from later in Bing's career - "Hey Jude, Hey Bing", "Bingo Viejo" and - a particular favourite of mine - "Bing 'n' Basie", with a remastered verion of, "If I Had a Hammer".

In any event, the up-coming releases are very welcome, and a fitting way to mark the 40th anniversary of Bing's passing.

Sincere thanks to all concerned.

Here are the track details for New Tricks:

New Tricks: 60th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
(Original album, remastered)
1. Alabamy Bound
2. When I Take My Sugar to Tea
3. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
4. Georgia on My Mind
5. I'm Confessin' (That I Love You)
6. If I Could Be With You
7. Avalon
8. Chinatown, My Chinatown
9. You're Driving Me Crazy
10. On the Alamo
11. Chicago
12. Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise
Bonus Content:
13. Rain
14. Church Bells
15. I'll Remember Today
16. My How the Time Goes By
17. Chee Chee-oo Chee (Sang the Little Bird)
18. Surprise
19. All the Time
20. Gigi
21. Tammy
22. Big D (with Lindsay Crosby) Take 2
23. Allegheny Moon (with Lindsay Crosby)
24. More Than You Know

Archiefit wrote:

 But can anyone tell me what is UMe???  

Now with the rather odd announcement that this is last '50's release, does this mean we won't see the release of a disc I've been waiting eons for, "Holiday In Europe"?  Though, maybe this was an early '60's album 

UMe stands for Universal Music Enterprises, within Universal Music Group and yes, "Holiday In Europe" does fall into the 1960s. 
I too was a little perplexed about the the 50s reference. I can only assume that they imply that there is nothing left in the stockpile that is considered commercially exploitable, even though there is some untapped radio material from the Chesterfield and GE shows. 

I was hoping for at least a Deluxe Edition of Bing: A Musical Anthology before they abandoned the 50's. I have it numerous times but a new edition would sit well on the shelf amongst the other new additions.

But as the 50's studio output was covered so recently in the Through The Years series, maybe they are thinking better to reissue less available material for better sales, and therefore the 60's is the place to tap.

Of course speculation is fine but going by recent release schedules for these releases we do potentially have another 14 months to wait on any future output beyond the current two.

Both are now ready for pre-order on amazon.com. No sign on UK counterpart yet. Hopefully they get a UK release. Fairly certain last time I had to buy via a US seller and finally recieved them in  the January.

Archiefit wrote:

Now with the rather odd announcement that this is last '50's release, does this mean we won't see the release of a disc I've been waiting eons for, "Holiday In Europe"?  Though, maybe this was an early '60's album, it's still one that is LONG overdue for a CD release and a lot more needed than yet more extremely old radio recordings of Bing as are in the new Souvenirs release.  I'd much rather buy Holiday.. than many of the poorly chosen cuts on the Souvenirs release. 

ALSO, WHEN will the Crosby company EVER release more Christmas Bing TV specials or even non-Christmas Bing TV specials??   If they are incapable of imagining what they can possiby release, let me help out.  How about the complete collection of Bing's TV sitcom????  A one season show that would easily fit in a single DVD case.   It's been more than 10 years since they've released ANY DVDs of Bing TV shows, so many Bing TV specials, so much to choose from, and SO MANY that have NOT been released yet, it's a crime.   Why is this all bottled up in vaults and not released to people who are still alive to buy it???? 

"Holiday In Europe" was released in 1961, so I assume there's still hope for that one to get the Deluxe treatment (assuming these new releases sell well enough for Ume to warrant it).

As far as why BCE have not released more of Bing's TV specials or even his TV sitcom, the only reason I can think of are music clearances, which is the primary reason that many more variety shows have not been released commercially, such as the "Dean Martin Show" and the recent "Jackie Gleason" show, released in truncated versions. Even the recent "Tonight Show: From the Vault" series had certain music sequences removed due to music rights clearances. It seems that either disc trading or YouTube is the only way to view these shows, unfortunately.

In better news, I just pre-ordered both discs through Amazon. I'm looking forward to December!
 

I think CC and UMe have filled many gaps in our collections - and this pair of releases seems to be another winner.

An official tape-mastered "Autobiography" set would have been nice, but I wonder if UMe even has tapes for this album. If they ever get around to do "Holiday In Europe", they will hopefully fill it up with all the extant alternates - and not with previously available Buddy Cole tracks. This makes the yet-to-be-re-issued list of studio material pretty short - with "Bingo Viejo", "Hey Jude, Hey Bing" and the Longines recordings remaining.

paulmock wrote:

Plus, who REALLY knows what precious masters were lost in that huge fire years ago at Universal Studios. No one has ever "come clean" with what was lost.

There were rumours, denials, counter rumours and fears ranging from everything lost to nothing lost!
Who knows, and who knows what to believe.
But in Bing's case there are many "clean" copies, if not original masters circulating, so it is possible that his material was at least in part protected from total disaster.




 

Ron Field wrote:

How much are the new CD's?

Amazon.com are quoting $19.98 and $10.98 for pre orders.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st_date-desc-rank?keywords=bing+crosby&rh=n%3A5174%2Ck%3Abing+crosby&qid=1508868233&sort=date-desc-rank

So this is great news but at the same time DARN!

I have really expanded my Crosby collection from a couple of albums to maybe a couple of dozen over the last 12 months! One of the albums I bought were a Twofer on CD of this New Tricks and Fine Old Chestnuts... and now I wonder if I'll need to buy both again