Search - Guy Mitchell :: This Is Gold

Great sides, inspired playlist. However...

Lee Hartsfeld | Central Ohio, United States | 04/02/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"However, the sound quality is astonishingly bad on approximately ten percent of the tracks, with numbers 20-25 on side two (from Guy's 1953 "Songs of the Open Spaces") being the worst, by far. You might find yourself wondering what happened to the left channel on these; alas, Disky provides no explanation for its absence. But the other transfers are very good to excellent--and, so, this 3-CD set is highly recommended. Three CDs of Guy for the price of one is a tough deal to beat.



Other incentives for grabbing this up: An ultra-smooth Guy (under his real name, Al Cernik) singing with Carmen Cavallaro and His Orchestra in 1948 ("Dream Girl"), followed by two 1949 MGM sides with the Buddy Kaye Quintet ("The Love Nest," "Don't Tell My Heart"). For these three reasons alone, we can forgive Disky any faults in the engineering department. And there are four Al Grant sides from the King label, and several pre-"Roving Kind" Columbia sides, including the dreamy "Where in the World" and Bob Merrill's masterful pop adaptation of Chopin's frequently-borrowed Opus 10, No. 3 Etude, here presented in ABAC form as "To Me You're a Song." Mitchell is magnificent on these. Mitchell is magnificent on everything here, come to think of it.



Last, but not least, the single Mitchell photo used over and over throughout the package is rather nice. A cut-price comp made golden by Guy. Buy this one!"