More disrespect to customers from EMI
Constantinos Tzoannopoulos | Greece | 09/24/2005
(1 out of 5 stars)
"While I do like Julie London's voice and performance (although she really should NOT sing "Never On Sunday" ever again), I must bash EMI's complete and utter disrespect towards the customers. This disc is NOT an Audio CD, but, instead, it is a modified disc with "copy protection". Not that Macrovision's lock (which is basically just a way to swindle extra money from the unsuspecting clients, who think they're buying a CD) is offering any "copy protection". Anyone can rip it to their heart's content. But the original is unlistenable on car CD players and on a great deal of home CD and DVD players. Until EMI's bean counters stop their questionable - at best - tactics and until Amazon.com lists this album CORRECTLY as a COPY-PROTECTED product, AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE.
Furthermore, the track listing contains many errors: "Love Letters" is listed as "I Love You Porgy", "The Second Time Around" is listed as "And That Reminds Me" and so forth. So, not only are a great many legitimate buyers deprived of the possibility to play the disc on their home Hi-Fi's (although the "lock" cannot prevent the ripping of this disc into whatever format you may wish), but also they are made to guess what they are listening to.
Caveat emptor."
Awesome collection...
acshore | Seattle, WA USA | 12/04/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I am very happy that EMI/Liberty decided to release two more of Julie's LPs on CD. However, the sound quality is far from digitally remastered. Any other compilation which has been distributed has managed to make her recordings sound magnificent.
The first LP, "Love Letters," has a few good tunes, though. Covers of two Rosemary Clooney's songs: an intimate interpretation of 'Hey There,' and an overly sensual and suggestively-metaphored 'Come on-a My House,' which was not displayed (figureatively-speaking) in the original take of the song. It was drol, and utterly campy; London turns into a song actually worth coming to understand. My other favorite is the well-known 'Never on Sunday.' The track is a rarity, but avid London fans know of its existance and wonderfully-vocalized phrasing. One reviewer - before I - said London should have never sung the song. Hmm ...interesting perception. Do you suppose maybe that's because she is so suggestive she actually makes you think she 'is' a prositute, and when they 'were' worth the time of your lonesome night? Go figure....
Now ..."Feeling Good" has to be one of the best records Julie ever recorded. It's upbeat, very vegasish, and the type of music both teenagers and adults of the late sixties could identify with. Her take of 'Girl Talk,' makes you think of pubresent and also grown women sitting 'round in a bedroom or outside chatting up gossip. Purely enjoyable song, with an awesome arrangement by Neal Hefti. London turns up the smoke with a rendition of Roger Miller's country-tuned 'King of the Road.' It is so uplifting, it's sure to make everybody dance. Another song from this album, 'Watermelon Man,' has long-been associated with Julie's repeatoire, and is one of the record's stand-out tracks. However, a song that deserves honorable mention is a very rare, and unknown gem 'I Bruise Easily.' Displaying a girl's fun at taunting and holding her man at bay, she calls the shots, and plays hard-to-get; advising her sweetheart to go soft, but WAIT ...not too fast, now! You might bruise her. Perfect song."
Two great sixties albums from Julie
Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 04/01/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Like the other twofers in this series, the original liner notes are reproduced and I couldn't help but chuckle at some of the comments. Love letters, it says, is Julie's fifteenth album, except that it isn't because fifteen other albums are listed as already available. So I guess that made it her sixteenth, assuming none were omitted. Apart from that, the notes also say that the songs selected were all recent big hits. Really? Some of them were recent, but others had been hits several years before, or else my definition of recent is too narrow. But the liner notes to Feeling good are even more fun. The writer of the notes clearly didn't like the direction in which popular music was heading, being very disparaging about an English vocal quartet who he didn't name. I really don't see why anybody feels the need to disparage one artist in order to extol the virtues of another. I love Julie's music but I also love the music of the Beatles and Stones. There's room for all of them. Having disparaged mainstream pop, the writer goes on to suggest that Julie has made a modern vehicle out of Roger Miller's King of the road. But wait - Roger had his major international hit in 1965, the year in which Julie covered the song, so it couldn't be any more modern. So the writer alienated country fans to, but the music is great so I won't get upset at such inane comments.
The first album, Love letters, does indeed contain a selection of songs that had been major American hits. The title track actually dates back to 1945, when Dick Haymes had a hit with it, but it was revived in the sixties, first by Ketty Lester, then by Elvis Presley. Both of those versions were bigger hits than the original version had been, so nobody could dispute that this song, at least, was a recent hit when Julie recorded this album. But I don't recall a sixties revival hit of Come on-a my house, which was a big hit in 1951 for Rosemary Clooney. Whether or not the tracks here were recent hits or not, Julie performs them all exactly as you would expect.
The second album contains one song (Won't someone please belong to me) written by Julie's husband and another (Girl talk) co-written by him, so there is some original material here and it`s worth hearing. Elsewhere, there are plenty of covers, only some of which are famous. Personally, I'm not entirely convinced by Julie's so-called modern version of King of the road. It's certainly different and interesting in its way, but is it really appropriate? Another famous song that gets a major re-interpretation is Hello Dolly. Forget Louis Armstrong's version, or any other cover done with that arrangement. Julie turns the song into a slow ballad.
While these albums contain the occasional surprise as I've explained, mostly what you get is Julie singing the kind of songs that her fans came to expect, in the style that they expect. And that's plenty good enough for me."
Track Listings (22) - Disc #1