Alma Cogan - Celebration: The Ultimate Collection (2006)

24 Feb, 15:43
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Artist: Alma Cogan
Title: Celebration: The Ultimate Collection
Year Of Release: 2006
Label: EMI
Genre: Pop, Vocal, Easy Listening
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue, log)
Total Time: 3:13:33
Total Size: 910 MB
WebSite: Album Preview

Tracklist:

CD1:

01. Dreamboat (1:47)
02. To Be Worthy of You (3:04)
03. If I Had a Golden Umbrella (2:08)
04. Sittin' in the Sun (2:32)
05. Bell Bottom Blues (2:35)
06. Little Things Mean a Lot (3:17)
07. I Can't Tell a Waltz from a Tango (2:26)
08. Twenty Tiny Fingers (2:37)
09. Never Do a Tango With an Eskimo (2:11)
10. Naughty Lady of Shady Lane (2:30)
11. Sycamore Tree (2:23)
12. Mama Teach Me to Dance (2:17)
13. Lizzie Borden (2:35)
14. Hernando's Hideaway (3:07)
15. Mambo Italiano (2:25)
16. Why Do Fools Fall in Love (2:17)
17. In the Middle of the House (2:09)
18. Stairway of Love (2:01)
19. Willie Can (2:08)
20. You Me and Us (2:12)
21. Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets) (2:47)
22. The Story of My Life (2:09)
23. Sugartime (1:49)
24. Last Night on the Back Porch (2:21)
25. Blue Skies (2:56)

CD2:

01. Ja-Da (1:58)
02. The Train of Love (2:28)
03. Just Couldn't Resist Her With Her Pocket Transistor (2:26)
04. All Alone (1:55)
05. She's Got You (2:50)
06. Tell Him (2:11)
07. Fly Me to the Moon (3:49)
08. Just Once More (2:07)
09. Tennessee Waltz (2:12)
10. It's You (2:32)
11. I Knew Right Away (1:59)
12. Snakes And Snails (2:36)
13. Don't You Know Yockomo (3:06)
14. The Birds and the Bees (2:13)
15. Trains and Boats and Planes (3:10)
16. Now That I've Found You (3:45)
17. Love Is a Word (2:12)
18. I Know (2:31)
19. Quanda La Luna (2:27)
20. This Little Girl's Gone Rockin' (1:45)
21. Let Her Go (1:56)
22. There's a Time and Place (2:49)
23. Itte Kudes (Japanese Version of Tell Him) (2:15)
24. Nava Naguila (Dance Everyone Dance) (2:54)
25. Jolly Good Company (2:09)

CD3:

01. Help (2:11)
02. I Feel Fine (2:41)
03. Eight Days a Week (3:53)
04. Ticket to Ride (3:13)
05. Love Is (3:05)
06. Taking a Chance on Love (2:51)
07. You Do Something to Me (2:33)
08. If This Isn't Love (2:16)
09. Comes Love (1:59)
10. As Long as He Needs Me (4:00)
11. I Dream of You More Than You Dream I Do (3:09)
12. Let's Fall in Love (2:23)
13. My Heart Stood Still (2:25)
14. Love Walked In (2:54)
15. All I Do Is Dream of You (2:35)
16. Falling in Love With Love (2:09)
17. I Love You Much Too Much (2:38)
18. I Can't Give You Anything But Love (2:50)
19. I've Never Been in Love Before (3:07)
20. The Lady's in Love With You (2:37)
21. Love Me as Though There Were No Tomorrow (2:27)
22. Love Is Just Around the Corner (2:33)
23. If Love Were All (3:50)
24. More (2:28)
25. I Get a Kick Out Of You (3:50)

This triple-CD set devoted to Alma Cogan won't supplant the four-disc set issued a couple of years earlier by EMI, but it does contain a different breakdown of her music with a couple of tracks -- most notably, her rendition of the Beatles' "Help!" -- that aren't on the larger set. Each disc is broken down chronologically, into "The Fifties," "The Sixties," and "The Standards," respectively, and while John Lennon might've been amused by it, Paul McCartney will probably be downright impressed that the Beatles songs that Cogan -- a beloved personal friend of the band, but a half-generation older and out of a completely different performing tradition -- embraced during the final phase of her career, are presented on that last disc, alongside the work of George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Arthur Freed, and Nacio Herb Brown; as Cogan herself might've quipped, all "jolly good company." Although the music off of her album Alma, the one attempt that she ever made at a proper LP, has been spread around across these two discs, that work is so strong that it holds up even compromised in this manner. At the same time, there are a couple of oddities and rarities in her output, mostly distantly rock-related, that are still missing, such as her German-language rendition of "A Lover's Concerto," which one would love to have seen here (on the other hand, we do get her Japanese version of "Tell Him"). In defense of the 75-song set, however, the sound of what is here is excellent, and the annotation is extremely thorough, and at the very least this collection renders as obsolete all of those single-CD compilations of Cogan's early work that have been showing up since the late '80s -- the package is also nicely designed, with a delightful array of artwork in the CD panels, showing the evolution of Cogan's image and her work by way of sheet music graphics and more (yes, she went back far enough to represent a time when sheet music was a significant part of the business, and lived and worked just long enough to see the start of the pop side of psychedelia).

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