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In general, this CD does a good job of delivering a number of seminal classic country hits of the 1950's. To my ear, the transfer to CD is well-done, as is usually the case with products from Time-Life. Particularly haunting is Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart". In this track, one can hear the plaintive qualities of Hank's voice and lyrics much more clearly than in the original recording played on home equipment of the era. My only disappointment with this CD is that a number of the recordings are not truly the original recordings. This is primarily true of those songs originally recorded by RCA, and would include the numbers by Don Gibson, Eddy Arnold, Hank Snow. I had hoped to hear the original hit recordings, but that's not what is on this CD. Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing in advance (short of listening to the disk) what you're getting, and so for me, this was a gamble that I lost, at least with regard to the RCA recordings. [RCA made a practice of having their artists come back into the studio years after the original hit recordings, in order to re-record the original songs in the then-newly-developed stereo and "high-fidelity" processes. In doing so, however, different musicians were used on the accompaniment; arrangements were modified and updated; and the original artists had developed different interpretations of the original song. For those of us who had heard and loved the original versions, it's often a disappointment to hear the "updated" versions; in my opinion, it's halfway to listening to the original hits performed by Mantovani or 101 Strings. The original RCA versions are still out there, in at least some cases, to be discovered and enjoyed; but it's usually difficult to know what you're buying merely from looking at the package.] I'm happy to report that, at least to my ear, the recordings on this CD by non-RCA artists appear to all be original versions.Read full review
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