This is the best CD of the late great Tommy Edwards on the market.

Tommy Edwards was a very sucessful singer from the 1950's. With hit records like "Its all in the game" "Mr Music Man" and "Morning side of the mountain".

He started by writing songs and trying to sell them, but after finding limited sucess in selling his music and more than a little pinched for cash, he decided to sing the songs himself. Thank goodness he did as his voice was very special indeed.

Not dissimular to the legendary Nat King Cole, but amazingly Tommy Edwards was never to get anything like the recognition that Nat did. Why is a mystery, if anything arguably Tommy's music was a little more in tune with the late 50's sound and should of appealed to a larger audience. After a lull in sales around 1958 Tommy's record company "MGM" were close to terminating his contract, when he was persueded to re-record his previous hit "Its all in the game" with a gentle rock n roll / doo-wop beat, he was on to an instant winner.

Number one in the charts was achieved and Tommy's flagging career was reinvented. He continued to re-record other hits he had in the early 1950's and released an album named after his number one hit record that was very sucessful. "Its all in the game 1958" was followed by more beautiful albums,
"For Young Lovers 1959",
"You started me dreaming 1959",
"Step Out Singing 1960",
"In Hawaii 1960",
"Sings Golden Country Hits 1961",
"Stardust 1961",
"Soft strings and two guitars 1962".
All worth checking out if you can find these rare LP's.
I have been collecting them for years and have managed to transfer them all on to the compact disc format with outstanding sound quality.
Tommy was equally as prolific in the 7" singles market with many great records released between 1951 and 1966. He had further hits too with "My Melancholy baby" and the Gene Pitney penned "Blue Heartaches". By 1962 his star had faded slightly and his last single for MGM the beautiful "Love is best of all" sank without trace. He was back for another label "Musicor" in 1965 but despite some great recordings the music industry had well and truly moved on by this time and no more comebacks were possible.

This CD contains the big hits and the great memories of Tommy Edwards fro that late 50's early 60's hit period. A nice touch on the CD is the inclusion of the original 1951 "Its all in the game" and Tommy's beautiful 1954 recording of the Doris Day classic "Secret Love". Tommy was best at singing a beautiful ballad, but he also dabbled in swing and jazz and country music with great sucess too. He was very versatile and his voice never let him down. It is great to hear these songs re-mastered from stereo recordings and done with such care and attention to detail. This is the ultimate CD of "Tommy Edwards" that you can buy, and it gives detaild information such as chart positions and liner notes of great interest. Sadly Tommy died in 1969 and it would be all to easy for the music world to overlook this talented man, I hope that never happens and new releases like this should help to keep Mr Edwards in peoples minds. I am a true fan and I will always appreciate his music and his talent.

Memories from the 50's and 60's embraced us as we listened to some of our favorite "courting songs" and we enjoyed new ones as well.

The voice deserves 5 STARS PLUS, the recording 3. The stereo has a completely unbalanced mix, really it's 2 mono's. Many CD's of old recordings are remastered this way (fake stereo) don't know why. Leave them in mono if you can't do it. In fact the quality of the remastered sound is good, the channel mix is awful.
Anyway the voice of TOMMY is of another Galaxy ours, deaf, has ignored without even knowing it...another huge talent discovered only by few.

Ciao,
Franco

Since the advent of the CD a good number of artists we fondly remember from our younger days have fallen between the cracks, so to speak, in terms of having their music recognized and presented for posterity. Among those are the likes of Nick Noble, Dick Jacobs - and Tommy Edwards. They don't even rate a mention in Irwin Stambler's overrated Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul nor Rolling Stone's equally-vacuous "Definitive Guide To The Best Of Rock, Pop, Rap, Jazz, BLues, Country, Soul, Folk & Gospel."

Thanks to Eric Records, however, we at least have 20 of Tommy's best efforts rolled up in one nice, neat package, with excellent sound reproduction and two pages of informative liner notes written by Fred Bronson.

If there is a gripe - and it's a minor one - it's the exclusion of the flipside of I've Been There - I Looked At Heaven - which just made the Billboard Pop Hot 100 at # 100 in August 1959 [it is on the other Tommy Edwards CD offered by Amazon].

However, everything else he charted for MGM from his comeback hit in 1958 - It's All In The Game [# 1 Pop Top 100 for six weeks AND # 1 R&B for 3 weeks] - to his last in late 1960, ironically titled It's Not The End Of Everything [# 78 Hot 100], is in this set, including the uncharted flipsides Mr. Music Man [b/o Love Is All We Need] and Blue Heartache [b/o his last hit], and three failed singles [tracks 13, 14 and 15].

As a bonus you also get two of his early 1950's hits, still with MGM, and it's interesting to hear his first crack at It's All In The Game [written by U.S. Vice-President Charles Gates Dawes in 1912] which reached # 18 in the fall of 1951. Tommy, who started out recording for Top Records in 1949, also had a # 10 R&B in 1951 for MGM with All Over Again.

Something not mentioned in the liner notes, which you might find interesting, is that ALL of Tommy's records with MGM, both the early 1950's variety and his 1958-1960 cuts, were backed by LeRoy Holmes & His Orchestra, who would also have three instrumental hits of his own for MGM from 1954 to 1956.

Featuring one of the most mellow and distinctive voices of his era, this CD comes highly recommended.

This is a great compilation, but it lacks one of Tommy's best; that would be "All Over Again". I can only give it four stars.