The Tradition Continues

The Japanese have always done a good job with their vinyl re-releases of Perry's recordings and the tradition continues with compact disc. This compilation is an American style jumbled up collection of songs having no particular theme. The set opens with Perry's 1973 Nashville song "And I Love You So" and is followed by his 1945 recording of "Till the End of Time" which is about as out of context as one could possibly get. It's very strange that this is the album BMG chooses to import for distribution in North America while Japan releases so many of Perry's original full length albums for their own domestic market but unavailable over here. Apart from the opening song, the rest are presented in chronological order from "Till the End of Time" in 1945 to Perry's remarkable recording of "The Wind Beneath My Wings" recorded in 1987. This collection included Perry's unreleased version of "Unchained Melody" and the rarely re-released version of "Carnival" from Perry's 1963 album "The Songs I Love" whereas the most common re-release of this song is "Manha de Carnival" from his 1966 "Lightly Latin" album. Unlike their American counterparts, the Japanese are quite honest with their releases. All songs you would expect to be in stereo are released that way. The only exception here is "Catch a Falling Star" which is monaural only whereas in recent years it has been available in binaural stereo . . . but the Japanese can surely be forgiven for this. ( the stereo version is available in Time-Life's Your Hit Parade Series "1958" )