Reviewed by Dave Brassington

Undoubtedly the re-issue of the year. This ranks alongside the previous mammoth project on Lefty Frizzell as just about the ultimate album! Of course this is only possible with deceased singers, but here on 16 CDs we get just about every Jim Reeves recording apart from a few live recordings which will be the subject of a later release. There are a total of 446 Jim Reeves tracks here, including his very rare early recordings for Macy and Fabor plus all his Abbott and RCA records. Amazingly, several RCA records appear here for the very first time and another bonus is to get all the overdubbed recordings, including those with Deborah Allen and the late Patsy Cline, together on one disc. In fact, CDs 14, 15 and 16 are all either overdub or demo recordings and very interesting they are, at least to fans of Gentleman Jim'. However, I do wonder sometimes how wise it is to pad the box sets out with such items as it does increase the cost to the general public and especially with this one, the most expensive Bear Family have ever put out with a retail price of £200.00! As far as Britain goes, Jim Reeves was and is the most successful country singer ever. One thing I immediately noticed as I went through the accompanying booklet was the volume of sales he accumulated in this country before and after his untimely death. During the last couple of years of his life he was selling records heavily in Europe and especially South Africa where such was his adulation that he was mobbed when he first toured there. He recorded specially in Afrikaans and made his only film Kimberley Jim over there and all these recordings can be found here. To those familiar only with the very many popular records like "He'll Have To Go" and "I Love You Because" may find some of the earlier Abbott and RCA recordings a surprise as they are in 50s country style with plenty of fiddle and steel guitar although right from the start of Jim's recordings piano would be a feature. Even more noticeable is that Jim's vocals are much more high pitched. It was Chet Atkins who was to uncover for the world that beautiful deep voice that Jim had, but which lay hidden until Chet became his record producer and friend and persuaded him to sing in that low tone. Basically gospel music is down to three well loved albums, God Be With You', 'We Thank Thee' and the very popular Twelve Songs Of Christmas' all of which are here of course plus a few songs Jim never commercially recorded, "Christmas Alone", "Jesus Is Calling", "Beyond The Clouds", "Near The Cross", "He Will" and an alternative version of "God Be With You" which appear on the demo recordings. Personally I was a bit disappointed not to get some clearer indication of Jim's religious beliefs in the booklet. Love him or hate him, Jim was basically a beautiful ballad singer and his subjects were lost love, some extremely successful novelty items, albums of hymns, western ballads and lush albums of pop ballads which were big sellers, hard to classify as country, but as I said earlier spent huge amounts of time in the US country charts. What is obvious listening to this magnificent release is that in the early days the 'Nashville Sound' was a vibrant country sound, especially as far as Jim was concerned, with Floyd Cramer tinkling on piano and arguably the most beautiful deep voice in any sort of music on classics like "He'll Have To Go", "Four Walls", "Billy Bayou" etc was something very good.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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