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1 of 1- ModernBingFan0377
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Bing Sings The Johnny Mercer Songbook
I have just bought this album along with So Rare on CD, and I am very impressed with the song book album. I find the 30s recordings both Decca and Radio performances sounding as good as they do, with the highlight being Day In, Day Out. The 40s selections seem pretty standard, although still good.
I find the 50s selections to be the best in this collection. The fidelity is great and you get some very touching performances from Bing. You get his radio versions of Autumn Leaves and When The World Was Young which are, to me, some of his greatest performances on any song. I would buy just the 50s tracks for the 11 dollar price, and I would be happy. This is a great release, and as someone who bought the Irving Berlin Songbook digitally, I vastly prefer this Johnny Mercer collection, although the Berlin one is still great. I hope we get another songbook album release sometime on the quality of the 3 songbooks from the BCE archives rereleases.
What do you all think of this release?
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- ModernBingFan0377
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Re: Bing Sings The Johnny Mercer Songbook
Interesting thing I noticed about the 3 KMH tracks in this release, they seem to have recorded at a different speed than they were transferred in. I sped the 3 tracks up by 4 percent in Audacity and they all sounded much more like Bing's voice in the respective years they were recorded. His voice on the songs on the official release seem too low.
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Thread Starter- Malcolm Macfarlane
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Re: Bing Sings The Johnny Mercer Songbook
I have found that many of the Kraft songs from the Rice tapes need speeding up by 4%.
- ModernBingFan0377
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Re: Bing Sings The Johnny Mercer Songbook
That makes me wonder what source the Archive used when remastering the KMH recordings, I can tell that the ones on So Rare and Among My Souvenirs need to sped up, and I need to check the Irving Berlin Songbook as well. I didn’t ever realize it in the So Rare and Among My Souvenirs releases as I don’t listen to them as much, but as the Johnny Mercer Songbook has become a favorite listen of mine I realized the KMH recordings sounded a bit lower pitched.
Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven.
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Thread Starter