Various Artists - History of Pop Radio: 1920-1951 [OSA/Radio History] (CD)

All Music Guide

The first thing to note about this 15-CD, 300-track box set from Germany's History label is that, despite its title, it has little to do with radio, except that some of the recordings included on it have been played on the radio at one time or another. A prominent American mail order music seller described this album at the time of its release as containing "rare radio performances." Not true. While the album does not contain information on the sources of the recordings, only a few of them, if that, come from airchecks. Most of them are original studio recordings, with a dozen or so tracks drawn from motion picture soundtracks. The deceptive title should alert the listener to the generally slipshod nature of the project as a whole. In Europe, where copyrights on recordings apparently lapse after 50 years, it seems that anybody can compile an album of public domain material and release it. (Of course, that doesn't explain why recordings such as this then become easily available in the U....S., where the same material is still under copyright.) The History of Pop Radio 1920-1951 takes that principle and expands upon it to create a giant collection, but the terms are the same, and the box set illustrates both the advantages and disadvantages of the situation. To take the latter first, the album is put together in a wholly haphazard manner. Each disc lists a year or years covered, but many of the included recordings actually fall outside the period listed. Some volumes hew closely to the hit parade (notably Vol. 13 and Vol. 15), while others are packed with such genres as RB and country (notably Vol. 12 and Vol. 14), and several are padded with inferior covers of American hits by obscure British performers (Vols. 6, 7, 8, and 9). Some periods are given scant notice (1920-1927 gets one disc) and others too much (there are two whole volumes devoted solely to 1939). Credits are sometimes incorrect or misleading; for example, most of the big-band tracks are credited to the often obscure band singers rather than to the well-known bandleaders. Both the discs themselves and the 80-page booklet filled with brief biographies of the artists are rife with typos and grammatical errors. The text seems to have been translated ineptly from German, and even major artists such as Mel Tormé ("Mel Thorme") can get their names misspelled. The sound quality varies considerably, depending on where the compilers obtained the track. Sometimes a scratchy recording obviously taken from an old record is followed by a track that sounds like it was transferred from a recent CD reissue of the original master, as it probably was. But before you write off The History of Pop Radio 1920-1951, you have to do a cost-benefit analysis. Despite its failings, the box does contain 300 recordings, including dozens of major hits and major performers covering a period of more than 35 years. (The version of Nat "King" Cole's "Route 66" said to date from 1950 is really from 1956, so that lengthens the album's range.) Most important, it's cheap. At the time of its release, that mail order firm was offering it for sale in the U.S. for about 75, which is only 5 per disc. At the price, each CD needs only contain a few worthwhile tracks to justify purchase, and each one manages at least that. Anyone looking for a rough approximation of popular music in the middle of the 20th century could do well, and save money, by purchasing this box. Ignore the booklet and take the artist credits and dates with a grain of salt, but put the discs into a 15-CD changer, and you can spend a day reliving decades of pop music. (See reviews of individual volumes for more specific assessments.) - William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Read more Less