@Brady Love , I'm a huge Rat Pack fan, but due to the aforementioned scarcity of releases, the only music-making member I don't have a full discography for is Sammy! As of now, I have the four CD Yes I Can! Rhino box set, the DCC Sounds of 66 live album, the Reprise That's All and Cocoanut Grove CDs and the two Greatest Hits records from DCC. I'm still looking for the Alemeida CD. I also have the Our Shining Hour and Starring Sammy Davis Junior LPs. I'm ecstatically happy to be able to add Mood To Be Wooed to my collection! Thank you for helping promote the great man's legacy into 2022.
They don't seem to go for a lot on Discogs right now, actually! I might have a Mr. Wonderful weekend...
I've not yet bought this release, but if the above is true I would be interested to know the answer to this question. @Brady Love is this an officially sanctioned release by whoever owns the rights to Sammy's masters and are these sourced directly from the original master tapes?
A few short years ago I had virtually no Sammy CD's at all, everything I did have was on excellent UK mono LP's of Sammy's Reprise albums. It turns out that finding stereo LP's this side of the pond is even harder than finding CD's, so with this in mind I have for the last three to four years been slowly tracking down official CD versions of Sammy's Reprise albums to the point where I now only have six left to find. I did this through a combination of DCC, Warner UK and US Collectors Choice reissues. If you go straight onto the net you will see a lot of high prices, however, if you are prepared to be patient you can gradually pick up the CD's for very little money, this should be a much easier task for someone like you who lives in the USA because they are much more abundant and a damn sight cheaper to find that side of the pond.
I was good to my word and the new Sepia release and the incomprable results of Messrs Davis and Almeida are on their way to me now!
Anybody here have the MCA UK twofer of All Over But The Swingin' / I Gotta Right To Swing? I have barely any SDJ in my collection and this seemed like a good place to start, both value and interest wise. Yet the sound quality of the second album turns me off entirely. Sammy sounds like he's singing through a megaphone and the brass and violins squeal like a rusty hinge. Not sure if the digital transfer for this 1998 CD is to blame, or if the original LP and Decca master tapes sounded this way. These sessions were held in NY during 1960. Not sure if Decca used Pythian for the venue but it sounds like it, and everything is totally overloaded. It's so grating I had to listen at a low level and the ear fatigue prevents me from really getting into the artistry of those sessions. The first album sounds a little better, but still harsh. Must be the remastering, which is a shame.
Unfortunately that is just the way the album has sounded since it was released. Have noticed that overblown sound myself. Surely it was intentional given the intensity of it but have no idea why on earth they’d record it that way. This would come from the original Decca master tapes:
