Various Artists - Threads of Glory: 200 Years of America in Words & Music (CD)

All Music Guide

This sixLP set (reissued as four CDs in a slipcase in 2003) was conceived and released as part of the festivities surrounding the American bicentennial of 1976. As a production, it stands somewhere midway between the CBS "Bicentennial Minutes" that ran for more than a year leading up to the event, and the 1950's Columbia Masterworks releases The Revolution, The Union, and The Confederacy the allstar cast, featuring such varied Hollywood figures as Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan, Burt Lancaster, Lee Bowman (as narrator), George Hamilton, Lorne Greene, Lloyd Nolan (as George Washington), Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray, Susan Oliver, Rosalind Russell, Richard Carlson, and Walter Pidgeon, mixes freely with the work of various orchestras and conductors; the result is almost as much a music release as a spoken word document, and is varied enough to be entertaining and informative, despite some fudging of certain information. The CD remastering is very successful, yielding a crisp sound and ove...rall very nicely packaged, matching the original LP edition in most respects. It was also something of a surprise when it appeared one imagines that this would never have been scheduled for CD reissue if not for the 911 terror attacks. - Bruce Eder, All Music Guide Read more Less