America's Greatest Hits 1959

Loved this collection..what we were dancing to in the 11th grade of high school and part of the senior year.Rmember all of these hit songs..had them on 45 rpm records and spend a lot of time playing them at home, sock hops,proms and at cook outs. All of these American's Greatest Hits Sets are wonderful.

This series (I have 4 of these sets of 4 CDs each) has really nice sound (especially on high end headphones) and some rare gems. They sound superior to the Time Life CDs.

I recently discovered Acrobat Records when I saw on Amazon (and subsequently bought) their CD of Billboard's first Top 100 (from 1955), which I enjoyed. I discovered subsequently that Acrobat has released many chart-related records, mainly British hits (Acrobat is based in Britain) but also some American. This compilation contains all the records that made Billboard's Top 10 (of their Hot 100) from the first to the last week of 1959 (including some holdovers from 1958). Conveniently, this adds up to exactly 100 records. As someone who loves popular music and has enjoyed following record charts, I'm thrilled that Acrobat has such compilations that cover comprehensively the top 100 or so records of the year. (Acrobat does this for the other years between 1955 and 1962, as well. For the early 50's, they have twenty-five cuts per CD.) These compilations include an entertaining and informative booklet documenting each hit. My one disappointment is that, while the sound quality of most of the songs are good, a relatively few of them are in stereo. Stereo started being used commercially in 1958, and while it's true that most of the 45's of the time were released in mono, many of these recordings have stereo versions. There are some stereo recordings here -- "Alvin's Harmonica," "Frankie," and "What'd I Say," among others (the latter sounds especially good in stereo) -- but the great majority of the songs are in mono. Such hits of the year like "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Mack the Knife," and "Broken-Hearted Melody" are really enhanced in the stereo versions. I don't know if there was an issue of cost here, but the lack of stereo versions has caused me to give this collection a four-star rating, as opposed to a five-star one. Still, this is a worthy and enjoyable collection.

I now have 1958-1962 and my wife and I are thoroughly enjoying the set. We are looking at picking up some of the earlier ones. Thank you.

Present for my husband. He loves it. Great seller and product was as advertised.

Great as expected

Good collection, good sound, but, being a British product, you need to know that the songs are going to be the version released in the UK. And, in at least two cases (so far), they're different. In the Battle of New Orleans, the "bloody British in the town of New Orleans" the word "rebel" is substituted for "British," and throughout the song, and in Beep Beep, the Cadillac becomes a limousine, and the Nash becomes a "bubble car." Apparently brand names weren't allowed in songs by the BBC. A minor nuisance, but (for me) a nuisance nonetheless.

nothing better than the 50's&60's

ショボくてディスクが取りにくい。ディスクを取るのに結構力がいる。気遣いの無い製品だと感じました。

This review is from: America's Greatest Hits 1956 (Audio CD)This is a massive series I believe all Billboard hits in the top ten in each set which starts with this year 1955 and continues for each year up to 1962. I was less that 10 years old when the first two volumes of these sets were recorded so there are many songs I don't remember hearing.so the first set 1955 is probably the weakest for me. It is interesting to see the change in music during even this short period. This 1956 set contains the beginnings of rock & roll on the charts as opposed to only a couple of such songs in the 1955 set which would qualify as rock n roll. And by the time you get to 1962 it is mostly all rock n roll. One of the interesting things about the music played on the radio and hit parade in the 50's and 60's was the variety of different styles that could all be on the charts at the same time, not the segregation that started in the 70's. So you could easily have a top ten containing rock n roll, easy listening, country, folk r&b, jazz etc all at the same momentSo the people that put this together deserve praise just for getting all this material together. Unfortunately once in awhile they must not have been able to get the original hit recording so they substituted another version which is the only reason I cannot give this 5 stars. I noticed for example a Dee Clark hit in one year that clearly was not the original and noticed others over the sets as well but fortunately not very often. If you were not around at the lime to hear the originals you likely would not even notice. I also had a skip on one of the discs which makes me question the quality of the discs in general. I also noticed different volume levels and clarity on some songs which I guess can be expected when they come fromdifferent sourcesAnother problem with a series like this that collect only top 10 hits is that in this era there were just as many wonderful songs on the charts that never made the top ten because competition was so great so you don't get to hear those. So the bottom line is that this is a wonderful series but don't expect to get all the great songs from this era.

I love all the songs from this year